Good morning and welcome to EFG investors da y. I must say it is very refreshing after many virtual presentations to have so many familiar faces here in the room. Also we would like to thank those who have joined via webcast and telephone. Today, we are here because we want to take stock of the last four years, and also we want to look ahead, we want to look at our ambitions and targets for the next planning cycle for 2025. We are here in Zurich at the SIX Convention Centre with all the top management team, as you can see on the slide. We have been working a lot on this plan over the last, I would say months.
If there is one point that I would like immediately to make, at the moment, is that at EFG, all is about the team, all is about our people, because we know that if the only way to succeed is to work together as one bank, one team. Let me now give you a bit the overview of the agenda for today. We have five sections. I will start with taking stock of where we are after the last four years, after the last planning cycle, and then I will set immediately clear what is our ambition for 2025. After that, we will look at the drivers for sustainable and profitable growth, Clients and Simplicity.
In section three, we will look at the areas where we can accelerate and the areas where we believe we are differentiating compared to our peers. We will look at content innovation, at the digital acceleration, and we will look at our people. Clearly, if we want to maintain such a strong trajectory in terms of sustainable and profitable growth, we need to have a strong foundation, and we will talk about resilience. Finally, Dimitris will wrap up all the initiatives and the actions that we will talk about and talk about the 2025 financial plan. We will have very short final remarks, and then all the management team here is at your disposal to answer questions during the Q&A session. Let us start with what we have achieved over the last four years.
Now I start with this page, we are on page six, which somehow sets a bit the stage of what we have done and what we plan to do. I see that many people that are in the room, and I'm sure also via webcast or and telephone, have followed us for many years, so they can relate to the three waves. We are at the moment in the second phase of our trajectory of profitable growth. I must say, and I'd like to say it upfront, we are very proud of what we have achieved over the last four years. As you can see at the bottom of the chart, we have more than doubled our profitability. We have increased our return on tangible equity from 8% in 2019 to 15% this year.
Clearly, looking ahead, we are very confident of what we can achieve. We want to sustain this trajectory of profitable growth, and we want to maintain a double-digit increase of net profit. As you can see here, we plan to have a 15% growth per annum. Clearly, this will allow us to improve further the return for our shareholders up to 18%. I would like that you consider this slide a bit as the fil rouge, a bit as the aide-mémoire for the presentation. Let us now look at what we have achieved in more detail in the last four years. We are now on page seven. I like to start from the right-hand side of the page. What did we deliver? In a nutshell, we delivered a continued growth.
This morning, we have also published our trading update for the first nine months of the year, and obviously with an update about Q3. Dimitris will elaborate later, but I'd like to say that this has been the fourteenth consecutive quarter where we have delivered positive NNA. This growth has also translated into a growth in profitability, as we have seen, and we managed to further improve year after year operating leverage. Why did we achieve that? Why we believe that what are the prerequisite for value creation? We are convinced that we have a distinctive value proposition, and later in the presentation, we'll go in more detail.
We have a very resilient business model that, as you know very well in the last few years, and probably for the next few quarters, will be needed given the uncertainty and volatility in the market. As I said, as a management team, we're very proud and overall, all our teams across the organization are very proud of what we have achieved over the last four years. Looking at page eight, the message we want to bring across is that we have entered the new strategic cycle, 2023-2025, from a position of strength. We have delivered in a consistent way. We have managed to grow our top line, to improve our efficiency, to increase our profitability. We have a very balanced and diversified business.
We have five regions, and we will hear later from the regional business head, their strategies. We have a very balanced way of growing between new CROs, client relationship officers, this is the way we call our relationship managers, our bankers. Existing CROs and new initiatives. Clearly, as you look on the right-hand side of the page, we have been very disciplined about cost management. We managed to bring down the cost/income ratio from 85% to 75%, a ten percentage point decrease. Now, before looking ahead, we need to look at the market, at the industry where we are in. Now, it is clear that if we look very short term, we all know what's going on in the markets. We all are aware of the disruption in the supply chain and the inflation.
We are all aware of the energy markets and also the inflation that is coming out of that. We are aware that the interest rates have grown at the fastest rate since the last 40 years, and everything that is creating in the financial market. Clearly, if we look at the next three months, or probably next two, three quarters, the going is gonna be quite difficult. The situation will remain complicated. Today, we are here to have a plan for the next three years. Besides the short term situation, we need to look at the long-term trends of our industry. We are convinced that wealth creation will continue in the future years, and therefore, we are in a very attractive and growing industry. You can see it on the left-hand side. We are now on page nine.
The growth in our industry and the growth of value creation is well balanced between growth in mature markets and growth in more growth markets. Is also very well spread between the segments, in particular, on the high end of the spectrum. We see that the ultra net worth individual and the high net worth individual will grow faster than the rest of the market, and this is where we are positioned. Another critical opportunity is also the growth in sustainable investing. We will talk about that. This is something that will shape the future of our industry going forward. Now, this page is about our plan for 2025, and as you can see immediately from the title of the page, I'm on page 10, our objective is to continue the trajectory and also to accelerate this profitable growth.
Let me start again from the right-hand side of the page. What do we want to deliver? We want to deliver a consistent financial performance. We want to continue to grow our business, to grow our assets under management via NNA growth and top line growth. Obviously, we want this growth to translate into profitability and deliver bottom line growth, earnings per share growth. Now, what do we have to do in order to achieve these targets and to implement this strategy? First of all, starting now from the left, we need to continue to do what we have been doing well in the last years, i.e., we need to focus on the drivers of sustainable and profitable growth, focus on our clients, and focus on simplicity.
We need to focus also, coming now in the middle of the slide, into what will allow us to accelerate this trajectory. In particular, content innovation, digital acceleration, and what will make us differentiating from the rest of the market, which is our people and our culture. It's clear that if we want to have a very accelerating and strong trajectory, we need to have a very solid foundation, and we will talk about compliance and risk management, and also about operational and financial resilience. This, again, helps you to visualize how we go about our 2025 plan, and in the next pages, in the rest of the presentation, we will elaborate on the various points.
In other words, I'm now on page eleven. What we are trying to achieve is to increase our operating leverage, maintaining a very efficient cost base, and accelerating the top line. One key point that I would like to make here is that we have built a very strong and scalable engine, and now it's about putting more scale into this engine. If you look at the last bullet point on the right-hand side, we can express this in a very simple way. What we want to do, we want to increase scale at all level, starting from the individual CROs, where we want to increase the average CRO portfolio, but also starting and looking at the regions, and in particular, at the key booking centers, where we want to increase the load and the AUM per booking center.
Now, trying to summarize all these points and looking, we're now on page 12, looking at what were the targets that we set ourselves in March 2019, and seeing where we are today, you can see that basically we are on track to achieve all our targets. I, Dimitris will elaborate later about the single individual components, but I want to immediately bring forward the targets for 2025. For 2025, in a nutshell, we are confirming the growth target. We maintain the 4%-6% NNA growth per annum for the next three years. We maintain the revenue margin at 85 basis points. On the other hand, we want to further improve our productivity and our efficiency, and that's why our target in terms of cost-income ratio is 69%, which is significantly better than where we are today.
Obviously, if we achieve all that, we will increase the return on tangible equity for our shareholders up to 18%. Quantitative targets are very important to define our ambition. At the same time, we believe that it is very essential to capture what makes us unique in the eyes of our clients and our people. We have tried next to the targets to distill what EFG stands for in a very simple statement. We have defined what is our purpose, and I think that this, together with the targets, will help us to succeed in the next planning cycle. Our purpose is about empowering entrepreneurial minds to create value today and for the future. We want, and we believe we have been empowering clients, CROs, and people.
All of them have a very strong entrepreneurial mindset, and we are here as a management team, but all the people at EFG, to create value for our clients, for our shareholders, and for our employees today, and obviously for the future. As I said, we believe that having very hard and clear targets and a very simple purpose helps us, all of us, to succeed going forward. I close now the first section, which was about setting the stage in terms of what we have achieved in the last four years and what are our targets going forward. In section two, we start looking at the drivers of sustainable and profitable growth. Clearly, we have to start with the clients.
The clients are at the heart of everything we do, are the purpose why we are here, and we are convinced to have a unique CRO model, a unique business model that allows to satisfy the client needs in the best possible way. Now, our value proposition, I'm now on page 15, is a client-centric value proposition. Clients are at the center of everything we do. The CROs that are here, and the CRO model that is here in the middle of the page, are the people that bring the value proposition to life vis-à-vis our clients.
We always say, and we will say later, that people are the most important asset of EFG, but the relationship between clients and CRO is the most precious asset that we have, that we want to nurture, to preserve, and to cultivate going forward. Now, obviously, clients want service and, by the way, let me say that upfront, we are convinced that our CROs are second to none in delivering top quality service to our clients. Want service, want a global bank, but want also the service very close to them, and this is why looking at the left-hand side, we are a global bank, but we need to be present locally and to deliver local know-how and expertise. Now, clients want service, but they want also content. They want also solutions.
If you look at the right-hand side, the third component of our value proposition is obviously to deliver a holistic client solution to our clients to satisfy their needs. Now, the way we need to frame our value proposition more and more going forward will be in the context of sustainability. Sustainability is for sure one of the top challenges that we will be faced, not only as a business, in general, as a society, and on the other hand, can be also an opportunity for society and also for our business. I believe that as a private bank, we have the ability to contribute to, you know, accelerating the transition to a more sustainable future. Basically, our strategy in terms of sustainability is based on two areas and two dimensions.
For sure, the biggest lever we have is to channel the capital and the assets of our clients towards innovation, towards technologies, toward companies that will support the sustainable development of our planet. I think this is where we have the biggest lever, and this again is a matter of partnership with our clients. We will talk later about how to define the preferences of our clients. Second stage, obviously, we have a responsibility as a firm. We have a commitment to our people. We have commitment towards the communities where we operate and commitments to the environment. The way we are framing our value proposition will be more and more embedded into the sustainability strategy. This is what clients want, this is what our people want, and finally, this is what society is going to be all about.
Now, let's go back to the CRO model. We are convinced that clients benefit from our unique and entrepreneurial approach of our CROs. This is something that we live every day with my colleagues here. We meet clients every day, and this is the feedback we receive. What are the key cornerstones of our CRO model? First of all is the focus on the needs of the clients. We are here to deliver independent and impartial advice. As you can see on the right-hand side, we have the values of EFG. One of the key values is about being solution-oriented, solution-driven, as we write here. For sure, the purpose of our CROs is to deliver solutions to our clients. We want to be independent and impartial.
I emphasize that because I believe that, in this day and age, this is a major differentiator in the market. We are also here, and our CROs are here to develop long-term relationships with our clients. Another key value is about partnership. We build partnership with our clients that usually go beyond one generation. On this, I think that we have a very clear approach, because for us, it's the client that has the choice to bank with us, and with whom to bank. We will talk about segmentation later. For us, and you saw in the video at the beginning, we put the client first, and the client has the choice of the client relationship officers, and that's why we want long-term relationship. Now, we have a model that is very transparent and very competitive.
We will talk in a minute about attracting CROs from the market and motivating our existing CROs. What is important for the CROs is to build, to have the ability to build their own team, and also to know that they are recognized in a very transparent way about their performance. Everything is based on performance and conduct, and we will talk later about our compliance and risk management framework. The fourth point is that, and we will hear it later, is not a one-man show. I think it is important to note that our CROs are obviously complemented by the product specialists, by the global markets professionals, and also by the support and control function. This is a team sport. I emphasize again that we talk always about team and not the individual effort.
Now, in the last four years, and I'm now on page 18, we've had a very good track record in attracting CROs. As you can see on the left-hand side, we have hired more than 70 CROs every single year over the last three years. To be fair, in 2019, pre-COVID has been easier. In 2020 was a bit more complicated, but we are very pleased that we could be very competitive in the market also during COVID. The new CROs that we have attracted, they have generated about half of the net new assets that we have generated over the period in the last, as I said, 14 consecutive quarters where we have generated NNAs.
Looking at the right-hand side of the slide, not only we have attracted new CROs from the market, but also we have managed to improve the productivity of the existing CROs. Now, on average, every CRO has more than CHF 300 million of AUM. If you look at the growth over the last three years, this is very significant. This is around 40% overall, which I think is something to emphasize. Looking now, I'm on page 19 of what our goals going forward for the next planning cycle for 2025. We write here guidance, and I'll comment why this is a guidance and not a target. What we intend to do is to hire every year between 50 and 70 CROs.
We still believe that the new CROs will be able to generate about half of the NNA that we plan to grow in the next cycle. Having said that, again, we are convinced that we can still close the gap versus our competition in terms of productivity and grow between 10% and 15% of the average AUM per CRO. Now let me tell you why we write here guidance and not target. The reason is very simple. For us, quality is more important than quantity. Therefore, if we do not find the right people, we will not hire just to fulfill a target. As I said, given our track record in the last four years, we are confident that we will be able to meet this guidance.
Now, on the right-hand side, we are trying to make two key points in the way we go about attracting new CROs. The first one is that hiring, identifying, scouting, and at the end, hiring new CROs, it is a top priority for our heads of private bank in the various locations. I see some here in the room, from our regional business heads that are here, from my colleagues in ExCo, and for myself. We dedicate a lot of time in identifying, talking, discussing, and hopefully attracting the right CROs for our organization. The cultural fit is extremely important. Obviously, we are complemented by a very dedicated team of strategic recruitment in HR that keeps the process very structured and systematic.
Obviously, the combination of the two is, I would say, very effective, as we have seen in the last few years, and I'm sure that we can improve further going forward. Now, hiring seasoned CROs, again, the key point I also would like to make you, I'm sure you've seen it in the previous page, is about teams. We want to hire, if possible, teams. Hiring seasoned CROs with sizable portfolios is part of the story. The second part of the story, we are now on page 20, is that if we want to play for the long game for the future, we need also to develop the next generation of CROs to support growth. Again, we can look, and we are looking in the market to attract junior CROs, top talents.
Also, as you can see on the right-hand side at the top, we want to support and encourage the progression of CSOs, client service officers, or other professional figures in the organization to develop. We have defined career paths and development plans so that people have the opportunity to develop into a successful CROs. Then something that we had since inception of EFG has been a very successful and structured succession plan that allows a very smooth transition from the, let's say, senior and seasoned CROs that has decided to move on and to retire to the new CROs. This obviously with the best interest of the clients at heart so that there is a smooth transition. This is also for us a key priority going forward for the next three years.
Now, as I mentioned already, we want also to improve and tailor our service model on how we go about dealing with the needs of the different clients and the different client segment. On one end, and I said it already, we do not believe in a rigid segmentation. We don't think that this is in the best interest of the clients. We believe this is very artificial. We believe that the clients have to decide who is the best CRO to serve them. But as you can see from this slide on the left-hand side, already 50% of our assets under management come from ultra-high-net-worth individuals, about 40% from the high-net-worth individual, and only around 10% from affluent.
Clearly, we need to become more granular in the way we service these different client segments in terms of the offering, in terms of the service model. This is something that we are working on and will become more effective and more granular. Now, I'd like also looking at the right-hand side of the page, and I'm on page 21, to make a key point that, I believe for our industry is very important. There is always a debate in the financial services industry whether at some point machines will substitute people. We are very clear about that. The client relationship officer will remain in our business as the key focal point for our clients. We believe that our clients want to have a very experienced and seasoned person to talk about their financial affairs.
Having said that, we believe that the digital solutions and the digital augmented capabilities will be extremely important going forward to deliver a better and faster service to our clients. We will discuss later with Martin and Dimitris about the digital capabilities and what we intend to do in order to give these augmented abilities to our CROs. Now, we would like on page 22 to focus and deep dive a bit on what we intend to do for the ultra-high-net-worth individuals that in terms of AUMs are already about half of our business. Now, clearly, this is a segment where we need to be extremely tailor-made, extremely sophisticated. We will listen from our colleagues later about the sophisticated solutions that we can provide to our clients. There is a lot of work.
We'll talk about content innovation that we are doing and will be a top priority for the next three years in order to meet the more sophisticated needs of these kind of clients. We believe that also speed and a fast delivery is extremely important. We believe that speed is a sign of quality, and this is why we are trying to make sure that throughout the organization, and this we're gonna talk about Simplicity and again digital. This is also to make sure that we have a faster delivery, especially for our clients in general, but in particular for the ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
To make sure that we can provide a holistic coverage and holistic advice to this kind of clients, we have set up a top-deal team that puts together all the specialists from the various functions, both in terms of product capabilities, but also in terms of support and control functions to make sure that again, we have the best and the fastest delivery possible. Now, I could talk about the CRO model for hours. As you can imagine, I am very biased, and I am a fan, but I believe that the best is for you to see the CRO video and to listen from the CROs directly, from the horse's mouth. Thank you.
Well, it's totally different.
It's our innovative and entrepreneurial approach.
At EFG, management is 100% focused on private banking.
EFG allows you to be authentic.
The flat structure.
There is no product push. We are not forced to sell certain products, and therefore, we can advise clients to the best of our ability.
We are very proud of our own CRO model.
Our unique compensation model.
Loyalty from the top down and from the bottom up.
The passion that we all place into what we do.
Trust, dedication, and anticipation of clients' needs.
Total commitment.
Try to understand what the client is not saying.
Continuity.
Communication. There are no shortcuts. It takes time to build this trust. It goes beyond just providing financial advice. It delves into the personal realm as well. You're not selling products. You're providing solutions.
You don't overpromise and underdeliver. Being a CRO is a long-term engagement.
At its very best, you become a trusted friend, a member of the inner circle.
It means more than meeting or exceeding clients' financial goals.
Services which are based on our open architecture.
You tailor-make things for your clients.
It's all about being close to the client when things are difficult.
Anticipation.
Creativity.
I need to think out of the box, think ahead of the curve.
Being available.
I'm reachable 24/7 to my clients.
After hours, vacations, I will always pick my phone.
If you understand what the client needs, you can give him the best services.
I need to be the client's ambassador.
This is not a one-man show. We need to work as a synchronized team.
These are the unsung heroes of our bank, yet they are our vital business partners.
They see beyond the clients being just an account number.
Together, we make sure that we win the race.
Excellent. I think it was very, very authentic, as it was mentioned, very refreshing, and very, very good. Now, let's look at our overall global presence. As I said, as you have seen from the video, our CROs operate on a global scale. We have five regions that are spanning four continents, and I think that the best in order to understand our regional strategies for the next three years is to listen directly our regional business heads.
Switzerland and Italy is EFG's largest region with over CHF 41 billion in assets under management and more than 100 CROs. Over the past three years, we have grown net new assets annually and improved our cost/income ratio significantly. More than 60% of our assets are in advisory and discretionary mandates, giving us the highest return on assets within all EFG. Our 2025 strategy builds on five drivers. First, growth from the existing CROs, which we'll lead by capitalizing on the strengths and network of our existing CROs. Second, we will add new hires, identifying and onboarding talented CROs. Third, market and segment developments, which we'll improve by expanding our offering to domestic clients and independent asset managers in Switzerland and using our recently opened office in Israel to pursue growth opportunities in the region. Fourth, our client offering.
We'll enhance investment solution and lending offerings to domestic clients and expand real estate offering. Fifth, profitability. We will continue to improve efficiency with emphasis on increasing our mandate penetration. Executing on the strategy will help us to deliver strong annual growth.
The Continental Europe and Middle East region has been a growth driver for years, delivering significant net new asset growth since 2019. During this time, we've built a team of over 90 key CROs and established a global Middle East franchise with redefined governance and roles.
Our 2025 strategy will build on three key pillars. First, we'll expand our Middle East business. Our key target markets are the GCC and the Levant. Second, we'll accelerate growth into Southern Europe, capitalizing on the two key hubs in Luxembourg and Monaco. We also have a unique position in Portugal as the first private bank with a physical presence in Porto. Third, we will broaden our investment and credit offering, with a particular focus on Sharia offering and custody services for local Middle East securities. These measures are part of our aim to support strong, sustainable, and profitable growth.
Our UK business represents a tremendous growth opportunity for EFG. Our team of over 60 CROs has helped deliver the highest ratio of revenue and assets per person within EFG. We've also made significant progress in evolving our foundational operations across systems, such as client onboarding and our new T24 platform. Our ambition for 2025 is driven by three growth levers. First, we plan to grow our CRO base by employing new digital channels and dedicated events to identify talented individuals. Second, we'll remain laser-focused on streamlining client journeys end to end to improve operational leverage as we scale. Third, we know that attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive UK market is critical. To engage, retain, and develop our people, we will improve our brand recognition, implement formal development pathways, and enhance our employee offering with next-gen ways of working.
Delivering on this ambition should significantly improve our underlying profitability and allow us to become the second center of gravity for EFG.
Our Asia-Pacific business continues to grow from strength to strength. We completed our integration with Shaw and Partners in Australia. We also substantially enhanced our presence in Singapore and Hong Kong, both key wealth management hubs. Our strategy will build on three growth levers. First, we will double down on strategic CRO hiring in attractive markets and client segments. Second, we'll grow our existing business in Hong Kong and Singapore through a refined credit offering, increased penetration of higher margin and income-generating products, and a rollout of digital trade execution platform for clients and independent asset managers. Third, we will also fully realize the synergies from the Shaw and Partners integration, and thereby increase the scale of the business through our Singapore hub by including bookings from other EFG locations, such as the Middle East.
Asia's strong valuation offer and our commitment to continue to hire the right talent will help to harness the region's immense potential for EFG.
With over 60 CROs, the Latin America region manages more than CHF 16 billion in assets. Over the last two years, we returned to robust growth, and we plan to continue that upward momentum. Our 2025 strategies focuses on four levers. First, growth from existing CROs. They will be responsible for 50% of the asset increase. Second, we will hire strong talent and grow our CRO team. The ability to cooperate across jurisdiction, relocate to EFG booking centers in Miami, in Switzerland, in the Bahamas, and in Cayman. Our competitive compensation model, as well as a strong investment solutions team, have appealed strongly to new talent. Third, we reinforce our commitment to Latin America. EFG is uniquely positioned for growth with an integrated presence in Miami, which is the preferred U.S. financial center for Latin America.
We will grow our footprint with new offices in Rio de Janeiro, in São Paulo, and in Zona Franca in Uruguay. Fourth, we digitize and enhance our offering platform. A digital platform and open architecture will allow us to increase share of wallet, to gain new individual and institutional clients, attract CROs, and increase revenues. Through these efforts, we expect to grow assets under management significantly by 2025 and achieve scale and profitability in the region.
Excellent. Well done, guys. Now, just to try to close this section, if we look at page 26, as you have seen, all the regional business heads have had very individual and specific levers that they want to pull for the next three years. The objective is to pursue growth and critical mass across all the regions. As you can see from this slide, basically, we want to grow in line or better than the market in every region. If I try to find the minimum common denominator about the levers, for sure, the first one is about CROs, hiring and promoting our CROs. The second is to have a very specific expansion growth in specific markets. This is the second bullet point on the slide.
Third is obviously to continue to adapt and adjust our holistic product offering to the needs, to the local needs of the various clients. It is important, we will see in a minute about content innovation, to have the right balance between the global approach and the local needs of the various clients. Now we continue regarding the next lever regarding profitable growth. We are talking here about simplicity. We want to, in a nutshell, improve the operating leverage via simplification. But I would like to tell a brief story about simplicity and where the term comes from. When I met for the first time Peter Fanconi, our Chair, about three years ago, he told me simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.
This is a quote by Leonardo da Vinci, and he basically told me, "You need to reduce complexity. You need to improve simplicity." This is how, when three and a half years ago, we embraced this concept, and we have started to develop very successfully, as you have seen, the Simplicity program. I will be very brief here. We are on page 28, because Martin, our global COO, will present the Simplicity strategy and the program for the next three years in the next video. The key point I'd like to make on page 28 is very simple. We are being very disciplined and very efficient in reducing our cost/income ratio in multiple ways. You can see them on the slide, and Martin will elaborate.
We managed to bring down the cost/income 10 percentage points to 75%, and obviously, going forward, we want to continue on this track up to 69% by 2025. The way to go about it is to be very disciplined, very structured with a program which we call obviously Simplicity Program, that will deliver CHF 40 million in terms of cost benefit that we will realize by 2024. This is the first phase of the Simplicity Program, but without any further ado, I'll give the word to Martin, our global COO.
EFG has driven its cost/income ratio down clearly below 80% during the current strategic cycle, 2019 to 2022, despite several external crises. We did so through consistent and disciplined cost management and by simplifying and harmonizing processes across the group. Simplicity will remain a key pillar of our strategy going forward, as we aim to further reduce our cost-income ratio. We are progressing along four domains. First, digitization, with a focus on expanding robotic process automation capabilities. Second, rationalization, with a focus on outsourcing non-core IT capabilities and optimizing our real estate footprint. Third, centralization of our support functions and harmonization across regions to enable streamlined end-to-end processes. Fourth, we're improving our front to back client life cycle through our new smartKYC and enhanced transaction monitoring solution.
These efforts allow us to manage higher business volumes and provide the funding for further investments in technology and data.
Thank you, Martin. Very, very good. With this, we close the second section about our drivers for sustainable and profitable growth, and we go now to the third section, which is about the areas where we can actually accelerate and make a difference. We will start with content innovation, where the focus here is about enhancing the quality and then reaching the product offering to drive profitability forward, obviously in the best interest of our clients. I'm now on page 32, and I think that we have heard it directly from the CROs mouth. Our game is not a solo game, it is a team. It's not a one-man show.
As you can see here, the CRO is complemented by about 350 specialists, 280 investment solutions specialists, and about 70 global markets professionals that work together in a team to create and deliver the best solutions from our clients. Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, we are trying now and obviously going forward for the next three years, to be more granular in the way that we match the needs of our clients, depending on the value segments with all the product suite and the services that we have, and also to find the right pricing for our services. I think this is extremely important. I think the area of product is an area where innovation is constant, we will hear it in a minute, and where the market never sleeps.
Now, to see and to give you a sense of our progress, I think that one way, one proxy to show it in the next slide on page 33, is to see how we have been progressing in terms of mandate penetration. Obviously, when we talk about mandate, we talk about the overall. They can be very different mandate. We always talk about open architecture, but this is where our investment process is obviously involved. As you can see, we have made very good progress. Now, the last few months with the markets tanking was more difficult to increase, also because the level of cash doesn't go down, but the level of securities does. But our ambition going forward is obviously to go between 65% and 70%.
You know, more than two-thirds of our assets under management to be basically under the EFG mandate umbrella. Moving forward, we will talk and Harald will elaborate on sustainability. As I said, the biggest levers that we as private bank have in managing or trying to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable future is to channeling the assets and the capital of clients towards innovation and companies and technology that will support a sustainable development. The first step is obviously to understand what are the preferences of our clients. This is extremely important. There are many nuances. You know, current generations versus next generation. Second, sustainability at the end of the day is a mindset, and we need to embed the sustainability across all the areas of the bank.
Training and ESG related research are key if we want to progress in this direction. Finally, we want to capitalize on the investment process, where the sustainability has been now for years embedded in our investment offering and proposition. We have developed, and Harald will talk more about that, a proprietary ESG rating methodology that we call GRIP, and this is becoming basically the key way of going forward about sustainability investing. Going forward, I think that our content innovation is not only about investment solutions. Obviously, investment solutions is a very important pillars, but it's also about global markets, especially with markets like this, where visibility medium term is very poor.
It is important to have a very strong global market, a very strong dealing room globally in the various key locations to be able to serve our clients if they want to take a more tactical and short-term view. Wealth solutions is extremely important, in particular for the high-net-worth individuals and ultra-high-net-worth individual to advise on the family affairs, succession, and structuring of their wealth. Obviously for us, credit solution is an asset class in its own right. Now without any further ado, let's hear from my colleagues, Harald, Reze, Kurt, and Anthony, about our content innovation.
Throughout the 2019-2022 strategic plan, we have successfully embarked on further developing, improving, and deploying our investment solutions across regions, leveraging our open architecture to bring high quality advice and solutions to EFG clients and CROs. We have five key initiatives in place to accelerate growth and improve client service. First, we plan to make discretionary mandates the preferred servicing choice for clients. Second, we plan to significantly expand our managed alternative volumes. Third, we will further invest in our asset management business to enhance our innovation capabilities, focusing on high conviction investment themes and investing in third-party distribution, especially New Capital. Fourth, we will make ESG integration the new normal across investment processes and products. We plan to convert significant amount of managed assets to the equivalent of Article 8 or 9.
Finally, we aim to grow EFG's structured solutions business through strong collaboration with global markets and treasury teams.
Our investment teams from around the world provide the platform for achieving EFG's ambitious 2025 growth targets. In recent years, their work has delivered impressive results. 75% of our New Capital Irish UCITS funds were first quartile in their respective Morningstar categories. Looking ahead, we plan to unlock additional value in two ways. First, we'll bring institutional quality to private clients by leveraging our extensive in-house research capabilities. Second, we'll enable greater client proximity but continue to provide clients and CROs with access to top talent within the organizations, such as our investor specialists and topic experts.
In close collaboration with investment solutions, the global markets and treasury team brings the best of EFG's institutional content, including research insights, specialist know-how, and trading expertise to our clients, such as independent asset managers, upper high-net-worth individuals, and sophisticated investors with direct access to our trading floors. From structured solutions to complex trade and currency executions, we are uniquely positioned to deliver on the expectations of our demanding clientele.
Credit and wealth solutions capabilities enhance EFG's investment solutions offering. On the credit side, our strength lies in Lombard lending, mortgages, and special products. We plan to accelerate our loan book growth and increase our global credit penetration by leveraging our strong balance sheet to extend coverage to more complex ultra-high-net-worth clients. On the wealth solution side, EFG will build on its trust capabilities in Jersey, Singapore, and the Bahamas.
Continuing to move the wealth solutions threshold upmarket, clearly linked to ultra-high net worth clients.
Excellent. Well done, guys. Let's try to summarize, I think, what does EFG stand for in this domain. EFG stands for independent advice, sophisticated solutions, and client proximity. Two points I would like to emphasize here. One, again, is about open architecture, and the second, that I think that most mentioned in the video, is the institutional-like investment process. Let us now go to the second element of acceleration. We talk about digital acceleration. I said it earlier, we believe that in our business, the client relationship officer as a person will remain the focal point vis-à-vis clients, but throughout the organization, we will need to augment our digital capabilities. We have a very clear defined digital strategies based on five pillars that you can see on page 39.
Martin and Demis, our global COO, will talk about the digital strategy in a minute. What I'd like to emphasize out of this page is that this digital strategy is directly linked to our strategy overall and is directly impacting our business metrics in terms of revenue growth, optimizing for cost reduction, and obviously strengthening the resilience. Also here, we are very disciplined in terms of having a roadmap for the next three years, and we have a very clear set of initiatives that will span the entire period. Now, without any further ado, Martin and Demis.
Over the past three years, our focus was on building the foundation. We successfully rolled out our new core banking platform, established a modern, centralized data hub, and introduced a new digital governance structure to improve execution speed. We expect to deliver personalized service to our clients, amplify our CRO and specialist capabilities, and achieve superior cost performance, resilience, and scale.
We are transforming our internal and external digital interfaces to turn EFG into the bank of the future. Over the next few years, we will be developing a new advisory tool and taking our order management system to the next level. Our electronic and mobile banking capabilities will improve the user experience and offer clients the digital tools they expect. Today, we are excited to announce our partnership with InvestCloud to deliver a tailored, augmented e-banking and cockpit for our clients and CRO.
EFG and InvestCloud are addressing client needs with a driven, designed approach to digital transformation, leveraging technology built to scale. The augmented advisor platform will deliver greater levels of connectivity, supporting new ways of working through an intuitive client advisor portal. It offers clients a state-of-the-art digital experience with access to personalized content and service at their fingertips around the clock, seamless across devices. It drives true collaboration in a digital world, bringing the strength of EFG to life across segments through digitally shared content, investment ideas and proposals, while at the same time learning from analytics. EFG, entrepreneurial thinking, private banking.
Excellent. Well done. Now, maybe in summarizing the last two sections before, I think that what we will focus on going forward is what we can do best, but also trying to accelerate on the content innovation and in the digital acceleration. The key differentiator to make all this happen, and what will at the end allow our strategy to be implemented are our people. That's why we talk about people as the key differentiating factor in our business and as our priority for the next three years. Our HR strategy is focused on three main levers. One is attractive talent. We have talked a lot about CROs, but talent is not only about CROs. We want to have talent across geographies, across functional areas, across the organization, and this is extremely important.
I repeat, not only the top management is involved in recruiting talent, not only for CROs, but also across all, the areas. We want to develop our people. It is very important that we invest in the future skills, that if we want to remain competitive, is to embed all our strategy and motivate our people, it is essential. The engagement of our people, mobilizing everyone for the new challenges, for the new strategic plan, is absolutely essential. I think, in a nutshell, from my perspective, we are a very good firm. I think it is quite cool, if I may, use this during an Investors Day.
If I look at all the work that we have put with a lot of people across the organization, not only the management team here, to prepare this investors day, I must say that it was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. At the end, we want to recognize and reward excellence, and we want to incentivize sustainable and long-term success. We talked a lot about values today, and our Ioanna, our Global Head of HR, will talk about them more in a video in a minute. The point that I would like to make and emphasize very clearly on this page, we are on page 44, is that at EFG, the values and the culture are embedded in the day-to-day, and they are embedded in the management processes.
For example, during the appraisal, during the valuation, during a lot of our discussions, very often, especially at the top management level, are about values of maybe sometimes how we can improve on those. Without any further ado, let us hear from Ioanna and the team.
As a wealth manager, our people are our most important asset. Our people are the ones who build the relationships with our clients around the globe, and they are the ones that our clients turn to for financial advice.
Trust is important. Trust is one of the most beautiful words there is, I think.
Across business units, geographies, and functions, they partner to develop tailor-made and innovative solutions, always keeping our clients' best interests at heart.
Successful entrepreneurs will typically think two steps ahead to deliver their solutions. That is exactly what we do at EFG.
EFG is giving us a very, very nice platform to be an entrepreneur ourselves.
It's not a matter of thinking in decades, but for me at least it's generations.
We look for entrepreneurial minds with a passion for challenging the status quo, people with a growth mindset, who are future-oriented and have the skills and experience to work hand-in-hand to meet the needs and expectations of our clients and future clients.
I joined the EFG because I can really relate with the values of the bank.
We trust each other.
The diversity of our workforce reflects the diversity of our global client base.
Lasting values for our clients, our employees, and shareholders can only happen when diverse thinking prevails.
This is how we at EFG live up to our corporate values and bring our purpose to life.
Well done, Ioanna and team. Now, I think that by now, I'm sure you have realized that we are very confident that we have the teams, we have the platform, we have the technology, to continue our trajectory of sustainable and profitable growth. Without a strong foundation, we could not go further. We want to talk here about resilience. We want to talk about compliance and risk management framework. These are the key prerequisites for profitable and sustainable growth. In a minute, you will hear from Kiki, our Global Head of Legal and Compliance, and Enrico, our Global Chief Risk Officer, about how to reinforce the compliance culture and how prudent risk management will support sustained value creation.
Robust compliance is a prerequisite for us to deliver profitable and sustainable growth. We plan to strengthen our compliance risk framework through continuous enhancement of our internal controls. We also plan to optimize our client lifecycle process through digitization and automation. Lastly, we will continue to promote the right compliance culture into our day-to-day operations, empowering the first line of defense and upskilling the compliance function where needed. At EFG, we follow a continuous journey to effectively protect the bank and our clients and help ensure sustainable growth.
At EFG, prudent risk management is not just a foundation, it is an integral part of the strategy. The first priority is credit. Lending and credit products are a key pillar in strategic asset allocation for wealth management. We are building a digital bank-wide credit platform that will offer competitive lending values, a seamless credit request experience, the right risk-adjusted price. The second priority for risk control is to enhance the operational risk control framework. As a global bank across 40 locations, streamlined processes and controls are key. We are enhancing our global framework to ensure ongoing integrity of our operations.
Excellent. Well done. Obviously on top of compliance and risk management, as we have seen over the last three years, to have operational and financial resilience is extremely important. Dimitris will elaborate about balance sheet and capital. Always in the last three years, we have further de-risked our operational platform, and we have given proof of our ability to react quickly to external shocks. We are convinced that this quality will be relevant also in the near future. With this, we have closed the first four sections of the presentation and now all the actions, the initiatives will be condensed into a consistent financial plan for 2025. Dimitris, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Giorgio, and good morning to everyone. Welcome to section five, consistent financial performance. We start on page 50 of the presentation. I think what you have realized by now is that the next three years are more about evolution rather than revolution. I think it is important for us given the track record we've had in the past four years. I think the best way to start is to give you a few glimpses of our track record and our successes in the last four years, and also to give you an update on what is our current financial performance. Like we went with a trading update this morning, so I think that is gonna be helpful for you to understand what is the starting point for the next three years.
Turning to page 51, you see the performance in the last four years. If there are two words I would like you to focus on, one is growth and the second one is operating leverage. The growth is on the top left. You see that we have been consistent in growing the business through attracting NNAs between 4% and 5.5% in the last three years. Even in a challenging year like this one, we've managed to have all three quarters of the year with positive NNA. The trading update we issued this morning states that our year-to-date annualized growth rate is at 2% for the nine months of the year. At the bottom left, you see our performance when it comes to efficiency. We've managed to decrease our cost/income ratio from over 85% to a run rate of 75%.
The run rate is our current run rate. I think it's been a tremendous effort in the last few years, which have been a combination of both increasing revenues and decreasing costs at the same time. What does that lead to? It leads to what you see on the right. Doubling of underlying net profit, doubling of reporting net profit. I should add, it's not just the strong and continued performance. What you should note is that performance is also accelerating over time, if you look at the performance over the last six or nine months. Moving to page 52. This is a bit of taking stock of where we are compared to our financial targets, the last ones that we put out in 2019. Clearly meeting all the targets.
If you look at the middle of the page, we have some indication of what is our current performance. We are at about 5% per annum on average for the period. For our NNA growth, we are at 85 basis points currently in terms of our revenue margin. Cost-to-income ratio is clicking at about 75%, at this point. This is again a run rate. Our return on tangible equity is about 15%. We also have the indications of our capital position. It's 15.5% core Tier 1 as of June 2022, and our dividend payout has been just over 50%, for the last dividend. That gives us a lot of confidence that with our current operating performance, we can continue growing the business and we can continue increasing operating leverage.
That is the reason that we have set the targets as they are, which you see at the right hand of the page. We are repeating or reiterating our first two targets, 4%-6% NNA growth for 2025, 85 basis points for the revenue margin. As Giorgio mentioned earlier, we believe that we can extract a lot more efficiency and use our scale to improve our bottom line performance. That's the reason we are going with 69% cost/income ratio and our return on tangible equity aiming at 18% towards the end of the period. I will come back to each one of the targets as we move along the presentation to explain what drives them.
I will also close the presentation with some indications on capital, where we have a management floor of 12% and a continued progressive dividend payout model based on 50% of underlying net profit. Now going to the first target, which is NNA growth, and I'm on page 53. I think you've heard every single regional head and Giorgio describing pretty much the same thing. There are two levers driving NNA growth. One is the further scope that we have to improve on CRO productivity. If you look at our track record until now, in the last three years, we've increased CRO productivity by 40%.
From the indications we have from the market, there is scope for another 30% if we are just to match our peers, and we plan to exploit that scope over the 2023-2025 period. The second point is recruiting high-quality CROs. We've had a good track record, as you see also in the last three years. Now the scope is between 50 and 70 gross CROs. This is a guidance, as Giorgio described. This is not a target. All in all, we believe that the 4%-6% will come from a balance between the two. It's not just one driving, it's a combination of both levers for us to get to our 4%-6% NNA growth over the next three years. Moving on to the second target or the second metric, which is revenue margin.
You will see that if you look at the last few years, it's, I'll just use the word volatile for lack of any other word in terms of revenue margin. You know, unfortunately, when we're planning the first plan back in 2019, we could not guess COVID, we could not guess a war in Europe. There's been quite a few things happening over the period. What is very important is now we are running at 85 basis points, clearly benefiting from movements in net interest income from interest rate hikes from central banks. We also provide you some sensitivity information on what would mean if we were to get another 100 basis points on each currency. This is on an everything else being equal basis.
If we get 100 basis points on every currency, our NII would benefit by CHF 150 million per annum. The area where we have really been focused on over the last four years has not so much been the net interest income, where you depend on external factors. It has been on growing the commission margin. What you see here is we started with 41 basis points in 2019, and by 2021, we have reached 45 basis points. There's been a lot of work on tactical repricing. There's been a lot of work in increasing penetration of high-value products. Clearly, this year the margin is lower because of lower trading activity, but we have the ingredients to recover a lot of that when markets normalize.
The last bit in terms of historical performance on the revenue margin is the net other income. We have been clearly benefiting from higher client activity on currency trading. That has been a boost. We are seeing that this continues very strong within the last few months of this year. Now moving to page 55, which is what we expect going forward. As I said, we are running at 85 basis points currently. We do expect to have tailwinds on net interest income, but we are also seeing very clear signs of substitution. Client accounts which were not remunerated in the past now become remunerated accounts, and clearly there's gonna be some loss of revenue of that.
In general, we prefer to be cautious on the NII line, and over the three-year period, I would expect that we would lose a bit of the margin that we have today as a run rate. As I said before, our main focus is and will be improving on the cost to income on the commission side of the business. You've heard Harald before in terms of all the areas that we're gonna be pushing in terms of improving the value propositions we have to the client, and what we have experienced is when providing a higher value proposition, you actually manage to earn a few basis points more. We also expect client activity to improve over the period.
I don't expect that what we're seeing in the last few months of the year is something that would be the norm for the medium term. We also have factored in some general dynamics of the business, which is that we've seen prices on a like-for-like basis going down with price competition between banks. Finally, we're also cautious on the other income line. We know that the currency trading levels that we've seen this year are also above normal. Kurt has described earlier a few actions on the treasury side that could help net other income. All in all, we'll also stay cautious on the net other income line, which means that all in all, we do expect to be running at 85 basis points of revenue margin in 2025. Moving to page 56.
It is very interesting because we, when we started preparing this page, we said we need to limit it to starting from 2019. For the ones who have been following us even earlier than that, you know that the cost effort did not start in 2019. Actually, it started back in 2015, 2016 with the integration of BSI and all the work that has been done since then. For me, stating that we have a strong track record, I wouldn't call it an understatement, but clearly it is. Cost has been on our minds for a very long time. We have managed to decrease the cost/income ratio by 10 percentage points throughout the last strategic cycle. You see that we have reduced our absolute level of operating expenses.
We have reduced our headcount, and one of the action plans that I'd like to highlight is what you see on the right. Clearly, Giorgio mentioned it earlier. We were a lot more complicated and unsimplified in 2019. One area that we focused was booking centers. Within the last three and a half years, you see the nine actions on the right-hand of the page, which we call them the footprint actions, which were about reducing, minimizing, making simpler all the booking structure of our entity. This is a combination of sales, restructurings, or other actions that we had to take to make our organization more efficient. Moving to page 57. I think Martin was very specific on our ambition on the cost side. What you see on the left is the Simplicity program.
Simplicity is a program that was not born yesterday. Simplicity was a program that started being designed in the second half of 2021. In May of 2022, we managed to lock in about 100 actions, which are being very rigorously monitored. There is a monthly update on each one of the actions, and each one of the actions has a price tag, a cost reduction target. This is how we get to the CHF 40 million. This is how we get to the timing of the CHF 40 million. As Giorgio mentioned, this is an ongoing review, and there's gonna be some additional effort or some additional scope that we will need to add to this Simplicity program. Now, Simplicity is more about restructuring, is about structural change.
What you see on the right-hand side of the page is the more day-to-day rigorous cost management. We have a number of KPIs that we follow in terms of efficiency. This is for the front line, this is for the front support, this is for the back-office units of the bank. We clearly pay a lot of attention on general and admin expenses. Third-party providers, negotiations, all these are handled by by specialized teams. I think what is more important is the last two bullets on that page on the right. There is a clear allocation, both locally and globally, of responsibility for specific expense lines. Our incentives are aligned on cost efficiency, so there are both targets and a bonus- malus system in the case that there's achievement or non-performance in each one of these areas.
On page 58, we decided to provide you a bit of a more detailed overview on our future investments in technology. Both Martin and Demis have been very explicit about what we're trying to achieve when it comes to technology. For me, the two operating words are focused and progressive. What you see in the chart is that we have already been investing in technology. Martin was explaining in his video that this has been more in the core operating system and more on the efficiency side. On the right-hand side of the page, we're trying to give you an indication of what has been the focus of investment in the past three years and how that will shift going forward. Overall, we are aiming for a moderate increase of investment.
You see that our annual investment goes to CHF 40 million, and this is capital investment. This is not P&L. This is the actual IT money that we put into acquiring the systems and making sure that we make them work. This is CapEx. It is a moderate investment. And also if you look at the chart on the right, you will see that there is a shift in focus, and that's the reason it is moderate. We're moving a bit less from the core banking system, which we already have completed to a large extent, to moving toward the client experience side, which is gonna be a lot more in focus for the next three years. Now, on page 59 is where all of it comes together in terms of the cost/income ratio.
We are currently running at 75 basis points. We clearly expect that Simplicity and day-to-day rigorous cost management will deliver improvement in efficiency. That's the first block. Digital investments will improve operational efficiency, but they also carry some modest investments. Growing the business, which is the third block, which we discussed earlier, will also be driving an improvement in cost to income. We expect to add more CROs. We expect to add more business. Giorgio explained that we have the platform, and we have the scale to actually capitalize on this. Clearly, given what is happening in the markets, we will need to make sure that we also accommodate some inflation in our projections.
Taking everything into account, all the levers that we can pull, both on the revenues and the cost side, we come to a target of 69% cost-to-income ratio for 2025. Moving to page 60. This is the bottom line. We expect that in the next three years we will be increasing revenues and increasing costs very modestly throughout the periods. This will lead to the 15% increase in underlying net profit on an annual basis on average for the next three years. This is what will get us to 15%-18% return on tangible equity by 2025. I think that on page 61, I would like to take a bit of a pause from looking forward, because clearly markets are volatile. There's a lot of uncertainty in the world at this point.
As Giorgio also said, you know, this is a plan for the next three years. This is not a plan for the next three months or three quarters. It is very interesting to see and to note that I'm personally convinced now, being at this bank for just over five years, the agility we have in execution is one of the more important aspects, and are more strong points than maybe some other organizations. I'll just give you an indication of what happened the last three years as a backdrop to the statement. If you look at 2020, which is the first block. Clearly with COVID, there was a significant impact on revenues. How did this bank react?
It actually managed to reduce costs by a bigger amount, and it managed to increase profitability in a very tough year. If you look at the bottom of the chart, you'll see that revenues went down by CHF 28 million, but costs went down by CHF 51 million in that period. If you look at the top part, we managed to increase profits by 5%. In the next year, clearly there was some relaxation. There was some more business development. We increased revenues by CHF 71 million, and we increased costs by CHF 24 million. We managed to create a 47% increase in bottom line profit that year. In the first six months of this year, we have been increasing revenues, but we have been keeping costs flat. This is a 40% increase in profitability.
I think this is very important. Our ability to react to external changing, external conditions has been very important in us getting exactly where we are today. Moving to capital, which is page 62. Just to remind you that in June 2022, our reported core Tier 1 capital ratio under IFRS was 15.5%. The principles that we are, have been working on throughout the period is a very capital light business model, operating model. We are reiterating our progressive dividend approach. We expect to distribute 50% of our underlying net profit as a dividend. For the ones who have followed us over the last few years, we have successfully de-risked our legacy issues throughout the last four years.
Which means that in terms of our capital framework going forward, clearly there is a 7.9% minimum regulatory capital ratio for core Tier 1. We are working with a 12% management floor, which is 50% higher than the regulatory minimum capital ratio. We are also proposing that there might be a potential to distribute surplus capital if our core Tier 1 exceeds 15%, and this is subject to market conditions, M&A opportunities that we might be exploring at the time, and also possible regulatory developments. We believe that through this structure, we have enough capital to support organic growth, but we also maintain the optionality to proceed with quick M&A activity in case we so decide. Talking about M&A activity, I'll take you to page 63.
M&A activity is something that we would love to do. We have been actively looking to do it over the last three years. Unfortunately, the number of targets or transactions in the market has been fairly limited compared to previous times. Here, in terms of our key assessment parameters, I would say that for us, what is more important is we want to acquire market share and/or increase our capabilities where we actually have a presence, where we have a booking center, and where we can realize synergies. For us, it is very important to focus on that. Clearly, we need a cultural fit. You know, if you don't have a cultural fit, you might as well not even consider the acquisition because it's gonna be a failure. The third point is that apart from being strategic and cultural fit.
There are very specific financial metrics that we consider internally when we review acquisitions. Every transaction that we make needs to be value accretive. We have included an example of one of the metrics that we use, which is we need a return on investment which exceeds 10% in year three, but clearly there are other metrics that any transaction needs to meet for it to make sense for us. To close, I'd just like to repeat the page with the financial targets. I will not repeat each one of them. I think that by now everybody is aware of the actual figures. What I would like to stress is the two concepts that are driving this are business growth and still increasing operating leverage, and that is what will be driving enhanced profitability for the next three years.
Thank you very much, and I let Giorgio take over for his closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, Dimitris. Very clear as always. We are coming to the close of the presentation, and as I said, the whole management team here will be happy to take your questions. I have only two slides. One you have already seen. I'm on page 66, you know, to do full circle and to come back from the beginning. Hopefully now this slide makes much more sense with all the color that you have heard, that you have seen, in the videos and in the live presentations. I will not repeat obviously everything that has been said.
I would like just to say again that we want to continue on our path of double-digit growth, as we said, and we are very confident that we have the people, we have the platform, and we have the grit, let's put it that way, to do it. The two key points that I would like to make about these slides are the following. The first is that, as four years ago when we prepared the strategic plan at the time, we will not be able to predict how the developments in the next three years will unfold. This I can guarantee you, we don't have the crystal ball. What I can say, on the other hand, is that the majority of the levers that we will need to pull in order to deliver the plan are levers that we control.
Obviously, in life, like in business, you know what you can control and what you cannot control. Given the poor visibility, we have tried to have a plan where we can control the majority of the actions going forward. This is very important because, as I said, and Dimitris mentioned also, the visibility at the moment for the next two, three months or maybe two, three quarters is very complicated. The second point, echoing what Dimitris said, is that the agility and the ability of the organization to react to external shocks or changes in the external conditions is, I would say, incredible. We have gone together through difficult times and, as I said, we are very fast in reacting.
These two points for me are very important because, as I said, we need to be able to control our destiny, and we need to be able to react quickly to changes in events. To close, our ambition for 2025 is clear. Our targets, I also put them on the right-hand side of the page, are clear. What is extremely important is the commitment, starting from the top management team here and all the teams throughout all the organization and all our people, is the commitment to increase value for our clients, for our shareholders, and for our people. This commitment is intrinsically linked to our targets. It's not a vague and generic commitment. It's a commitment linked to the targets, and I'll briefly repeat them. We want to maintain the target about NNA growth 4%-6%.
We want to maintain the target of revenue margin 85 basis points. We want to improve in terms of productivity and improve our cost/income ratio to 69%. We want to improve the return for our shareholders to up to 18%. With this, I think we can close the presentation, and I'll ask Jens to come on stage and start the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Giorgio, and thank you for the whole management team for the very insightful presentation. As usual, we will start with questions from the room first, and then we move to the telephone lines. If somebody in the room has a question, Andreas, then we'll start there, please. Thank you.
Thank you very much for the presentation. Andreas from Deutsche Bank, Vontobel. Maybe to start on your last note, Giorgio, you mentioned obviously things that you cannot control, the markets. Still, to have a three-year plan with very clear targets as we've seen, you might have to take some assumptions in terms of what you put into the trajectory. In terms of markets, maybe you can explain a bit more what your assumptions are there. Also on the capital management, thank you for the explanation of potential distributions. Maybe you can explain a bit more in terms of timeframe how we should look at that, when you might take a decision, assuming, let's say, you end up above 15% at the end of this year.
Is it already something that you would consider for next year, or are you still waiting for potential M&A? Maybe on this, in terms of timeframe, a bit more clarification would be helpful.
Helpful. On the product side, you talked about alternatives in a few slides. Maybe I will be interested there, what your intentions are in terms of offering alternatives to your clients. Also in terms of other income, you mentioned some enhanced treasury solutions. Maybe you can explain a bit more what you plan there. Thank you.
Thank you, Andreas. Nice to see you in person. Now, regarding the first question about the markets, as we mentioned, this is a plan over three-year. We believe that the cycle will at some point normalize. Regarding our assumptions, we believe that the next probably three quarters, it's gonna be complicated. We believe that at some point, you know, this has been the period where interest rates, where central banks have raised interest rates the fastest pace in the last at least four years. Even worse than 1994. I was there at the time, I still remember. Our view is that this will continue unabated, probably for the next few quarters. We will not see a major stabilization in the you know, next two, three quarters.
After that, we feel that at some point, situation will normalize and then the cycle will take its course. Again, I can make reference to the page, as I'm sure you have seen, that Dimitris showed how the cycle has been particularly volatile in the last four years. At the end, we managed to extract a good performance out of that. Regarding the capital management, I think, Dimitris, you take the question.
Yes. Good morning, Andreas. These principles or this framework is now, is gonna be effective starting first of January 2023. As you know, like, we go to the market twice a year to discuss our financial performance. I expect that this topic is gonna be a topic at the board meeting of those discussions every six months. It is the discussion of the board to decide whether we should be doing something which is extraordinary or not at that point in time. It becomes effective first of January 2023, and it will be a topic of discussion.
I think the other question was about the alternatives. Harald, would you like to take the question, please?
Thank you, Giorgio. Thank you, Andreas, for the question. You make me move, so it's good for me, so I don't need to keep seated. Thank you for that. Now listen, on the alternative side, obviously we do have already a very strong platform. In order to further enhance the platform, we have now decided to make it a separate business unit within investment solutions. Give it more focus, give it a clear business plan, give it very concrete KPIs in order to deliver. To be very concrete to your question, we have already embarked on our own proprietary offering. We have come up with a vintage program, series one, which we launched very successfully this year already. As we speak, we're in the phase of launching series two already, because we wanna come with vintage programs every single year for our clients.
What we do there is really best selection. It's not a typical fund of funds, it's best selection what we do there. We will also have a more robust illiquid offering overall, but we are also focusing on liquid and semi-liquid offerings. We will, as always, we are an open architecture, so we will have our own products in order to enhance revenues and in order to enhance capabilities, but at the same time, also open architecture. I think this combination is the recipe, if you ask me, for success, and this is also what our clients like.
The other question was about the global market solutions and the access to the trading floor. Kurt, do you wanna take the question, please?
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Andreas, for the question. I think it was more related to treasury performance and how treasury will help contributing to basically the top line and the revenue growth. The two main levers there are, from our point of view, the client offering. In this market environment, we will be able to not only reintroduce products which were just not attractive over the last couple of years, but also introduce additional new products which have been developed over the last couple of years. That is lever one. Lever two would be basically our own balance sheet. Also there, we obviously had over the past year big placements in money markets, big placements with central banks, like basically the whole financial industry.
There are opportunities which we foresee for the coming years, which will help the revenue contribution of the division.
Thank you. Other questions from the room? We would move to the telephone line and take a question there, please.
The first question from the telephone comes from the line of Adam Parodi with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thank you for taking the questions. I have a few on revenues and then one on cost as well. I wanna dig into the 85 basis point margin on the outlook. Clearly, are you running at that level on a fairly depressed activity and kind of the brokerage type revenues, and with rates still kind of pushing up as well? You mentioned normalization in the cycle further out. Is there implicitly some interest rate cuts baked into this on the forward look? Just to kind of explain kind of the moving parts between the different elements of the margin would be quite helpful. Then digging into each one slightly more, in terms of your current NIM or your NII, what sort of repricing have you seen already? How quickly do you see that developing?
Just kind of the profile of NII on the outlook from here. Then on fees, you mentioned, well, in the previous cycle, conversations were about repricing. Now I think there's a bit more of an element of competition being introduced into your commentary around the fee outlook. If you can just give us the idea of kind of how that's changing in your thinking, whether there's any more repricing actions or whether that's part of the strategy or whether it's a bit more upsell against kind of offsetting some of the competitive elements that are coming through. A bit more detail on both the NII outlook and the fee outlook. Then finally, quick one on cost. Just want to understand your inflation assumptions. What are you seeing?
Clearly, Switzerland is more insulated, but are you seeing competitive dynamics through your relationship manager headcount? Is that an area of inflation we need to worry about as well? Thank you.
Thank you. I think the first question about margin and NII, Dimitris, you wanna take it? I'm happy to take later the fees repricing, and you'll take, then, inflation, and I'll take CRO's.
Let's start with the revenue margin. If you turn to page 55, we try to put together our best possible guess of how the cycle would evolve. As Adam as you mentioned, we clearly are positively positioned to gain from additional interest rate increases. We're using the expectation of the market, so the dollar yield curve and the euro yield curve for our views in terms of what's gonna be happening. We are not more educated than that in terms of our estimates. What we also do expect is substitution from non-remunerated accounts to remunerated accounts to happen. We've seen that already happening on the dollar in the last five months. We haven't seen much in other currencies.
We expect that movement to eat up the benefits of any future increases in interest rates, so it will be a slight negative. Now, let me just step back because we can talk about each one of these assumptions, and we can have a debate whether it works or doesn't work. The way we have built this plan is we have been more cautious on the elements that we do not control, like interest rates, and we have been more ambitious on the elements that we know that we control or the areas where we've had a good track record. That's the balance we've tried to strike in this plan. I think if you look at this page, it's the middle part which we want to drive.
The other two, I'll be very happy if the things turn out to be better than this, but I would like to be on the cautious side when we have a discussion as the one we're having today.
Now, regarding the fees and the repricing, maybe to complement what Dimitri just said, we believe, and this is in line with what one of my closing remarks. Clearly competition has always been there. I don't think that in the last 10 years, there has been a moment where there has not been competition on fees. I think that our industry is affected by a secular trend of margin compression, in particular on the fees. I believe that the way we have built the plan is that we have enough areas, enough levers where we can still improve the pricing. This is a bit like Simplicity. This has become, again, a program that we have started and continues on a regular basis. There are always pockets of the business where you can do better.
For sure, as you have seen in the slide where we mention the improvement in terms of penetration of the mandates, there will be an important, let's say, work to convert more of the business into high quality, high value business and obviously high margin. You know, we deal with clients that obviously have the ability to pay, and they are very much prepared to pay if they get value. Obviously, if they get for a commodity, they are the guys that will be extremely tough in negotiation. That's why as part of the accelerators, the content innovation is so important for us.
I think on that, to close the point, we believe that we have sufficient areas where we can still extract value, and this is what is built on the plan. Regarding the competition, we feel that this is the same level it has just been over the last decade or so. I think, Dimitris, there is a question on inflation overall.
Yes. Now, clearly inflation is becoming a significant variable in all these projections. We are using whatever is publicly available in terms of expectations for cost inflation in the different jurisdictions. What I would like just to say is that if you look at our cost base, about 50% of our costs are in Switzerland. You know, from an efficiency perspective, it may not be the most
Cost-efficient way of doing business, but at least when it comes to inflation, the level of inflation in Switzerland is clearly the lowest that we're seeing from another market. That gives us a bit of protection in terms of how we see inflation going forward.
There was, I think, a question about inflation and the impact on the competitive tensions with CROs. I would say that probably this is not the area where today we see the biggest impact on inflation. For sure, we see the impact on inflation on other, let's say, professional jobs and figures. I think on the CRO, there has been always, again, it's a bit like the fees, a very intense competition. At the end of the day, the you know I think we have a very competitive model. This has been you know proven in the last years.
For us, what is critical is to be able to, you know, to be very attractive in bringing the CROs in terms of the proposition we have, in terms of the platform, in terms of the locations, in terms of the offering. This is where the competition for talent in terms of CRO is played. I think that our compensation model is attractive and inflation at the moment is not a major impact.
Brilliant. Thank you for all of that. Can I ask one very quick follow-up on NII? You've given reference points for deposit shifts in the past. Could you just give kind of a reference point for what you're seeing so far and what you've kind of baked into the forward plan in terms of volumes of deposits shifting to term?
Yeah. I'll give you sort of very broad indication. I think the currency to focus on is mostly the dollar. If you look at the disclosures that we had at year-end, we had about 25% of the deposits that we have in dollars in remunerated accounts and 75% in non-remunerated accounts. At this point, we are roughly at 50/50. We were at 50/50 back in 2019 as well, so it's not something which is unexpected. This is what we were actually expecting. To remind you back in 2019, we're also at a roughly 3% interest rate environment. This is the shift we've seen. Actually, we've seen this shift in the dollar already.
What we are now trying to figure out and calculate and include in the plan is any shift in other currencies. Clearly we don't expect the same level of nominal interest rates on the euro, for instance, but we also do expect a shift in that currency, going forward.
Amazing. Thank you for that.
Is there another question in the room? I think we have currently no question on the telephone lines. What else? There, there. Very good.
Good morning. It's Michael Kien from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Just some very straightforward questions. Firstly, one of the focuses that you mentioned is that you want to focus on hiring CROs.
Can we extend your microphone?
One second. Thank you. Sorry. It's Michael Knaus from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Hopefully some very straightforward questions. Firstly, on your focus on hiring new CROs and also fostering a development of the new generation. Can you provide some information in terms of the current turnover numbers? Also, how many juniors do you have in the pipelines in terms of developing? Finally, also, you mentioned the three-year succession plans. How many people are currently involved in that succession plans? Secondly, also, you mentioned obviously in terms of investment product alternatives as a key focus. I guess high interest rates also means that some other products are going to be more interesting, therefore question, what are you already seeing?
What’s your expectations for the coming quarters? Thank you.
Thank you. I'll take maybe the first question. I didn't catch the second. It's about obviously with interest rates, other products are more interesting. So you would like to so can you repeat the second question?
Yeah. Just with the high interest rates, obviously, there are quite a few products that become
More attractive. Okay.
Attractive again in terms of opportunities.
The trend in that space.
Otherwise, low interest rates just meant that some products were not interesting.
Okay. Regarding, I think the first question. The first question was about turnover. I believe that, regarding CROs, you know, the turnover, if you consider the turnover, how many people that are with us go to competition, I can be very, you know, blunt in saying that usually this is basically minimal. In our case, if CROs at times want to, let's say, continue their entrepreneurial journey, at times they decide to become independent. We have seen over the years some of that, but also that is more anecdotal and there is no trend. I think what is more relevant is what is, let's say, the percentage of the new hires when we have new hires that are successful?
Obviously our objective is that all the CROs that come to EFG are successful and become, you know, top CROs within a three-year period. Over the last few years, it was challenging. At times, and depending again on the class of the various CROs, we had different percentages. I think that the process is a very transparent process where both parties. Again, it is a partnership. We assess month after month where we stand and then very often the decision is a mutual decision. If there is, if the prospects of success are not there, it is better to part ways. This is, I would say, the key element. Regarding the. This was one question.
Regarding the junior, I think also this, I would say that this is something that regarding the ability. Thank you for the slide. We are on slide 20. The ability to have CSOs becoming junior CROs and ultimately CROs, this is something that we have been done over the last 25 years. This is something that happens, let's say, continuously. What we want to do it is to do it more, let's say, in a more structured way. Regarding the three-year succession, also this is something that we have been doing. We used to be 25 years ago a very young bank. We were a start-up. Now we are also a start-up, but we're 25 years older, and so we still have more experienced, and we have people that also retire.
If my memory helps me, I think like the retirement last year was like 10. I mean, we're talking about, less than 10. Global Head of HR tells me less than 10. This is the areas. The other question was about the product, trends. Maybe, Harald, you would like to take the question. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Of course, we did see a pickup in the very recent past because obviously fixed income has become much more attractive again, so we see more inquiries by clients to put portfolios together on the fixed income side. What is also picking up at this moment in time is obviously when you have clear trends in the markets, you have CTA, commodity trading advisors, who seem to do very well. We see also pickup in inquiries there. We do have a very robust offering there on the CTA side, on liquid alternatives, and I can tell you some of the managers are up significantly this year. These are two areas just to make the point where we do see a pickup in activity. Thank you.
Maybe to complement another area is clearly FX. We have seen this year, and Kurt might comment on a lot of business in FX. Obviously, FX as an asset class was quite, I would say stable, let's put it that way, for many, many years. This year it has been the opposite, and I think that in our trading floor, we have a very strong team, and a lot of clients have decided to take very active views about the treasury market. This is reflected in the net other income.
Hello, this is Angela Rizzo from Octavian. I would like to come back. You mentioned on the cost side that you have 50% of your costs now, mainly, originating from Switzerland, which at the moment is maybe good as an inflation protection, but, also as cost will be a big part and cost leverage a big part of your strategy, do you think that Switzerland could be also a driver or a provider, a main provider of cost optimization?
Let me take it, and then I'll also pass the floor to Martin for some more comments on cost. Clearly, I agree with you. Like, having 50% of your cost in Switzerland maybe is not the most efficient way of doing business. In terms of our approach the last few years is to have this first step where we actually consolidate, automate, and become more efficient. Because we have our biggest operation in Switzerland, it was relevant to do that in Switzerland. For us, it was a natural way of going in terms of becoming more efficient. Our main hub is Switzerland. UK has been also consolidating, becoming sort of a second hub in terms of operations. This has been the approach now. I know that we have many more plans.
I'd like to pass the floor to Martin in terms of how we think about that specific point.
Yeah, thank you very much for the question. I think there are a number of initiatives that are ongoing. We have been harmonizing processes across the group and centralizing quite a lot of these processes, both regionally in the UK or in Asia, but also into Switzerland. I think the next horizon that we are looking at, and we alluded to a bit in our presentation, is looking at outsourcing components, so non-core IT capabilities, for example. We are looking into the cloud, which will help us reduce the cost components that we still have in Switzerland.
Working closely together between the different entities allows us also to profit from some nearshoring possibilities in our own network, and that will also, on the basis of simplified and harmonized processes, allow us to further reduce costs.
We don't have any more questions, I understand, neither in the room nor on the telephone. If this is the case, confirmed?
I think we have no further.
This is confirmed. Well, first of all, thank you very much for attending. It has been a two-hour session for us. Very interesting. I hope you enjoyed it as well. I would like to leave you with three key points. The first is that, as you have seen, we have delivered in the last four years against our targets, and this is thanks to the fact that we have a very distinctive business model. Second, I believe that our business model is not only distinctive, but is also very agile, as it is mentioned earlier, and resilient, which is something that, I'm afraid we will need in the next few months and maybe quarters.
Finally, as a management team, and with all the teams and the rest of the organization and our people, we are very committed to create long-term value for our clients, our shareholders, and our employees. With this, thank you very much. We can close the investors' day of EFG. Thank you.