Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Leonteq's half-year 2025 results conference call and live webcast. I'm Iruna, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Dominik Ruggli, Head of Investor Relations, Communications, and Marketing of Leonteq. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the press conference call of Leonteq's half-year 2025 results. The presentation material and the half-year report 2025 can be found in the IR section of our website. There you will also see and find the time series data Excel file and the comparison of the analyst consensus versus our actual reported results. Here with me today are Chief Executive Officer, Christian Spieler and our Chief Financial Officer , Hans Widler. We will start the presentation with our key messages and then further discuss the financial performance of the first half of 2025. Christian will then take you through a strategy update for Leonteq before we then move to the Q&A session at the end. With that, Christian.
Thank you, Dominik. Also from my side, a warm welcome to all shareholders, analysts, and media representatives on this call. As you know, I started as CEO of Leonteq on March 1st of this year. The past five months have been interesting, sometimes challenging, but above all, highly engaging and rewarding. I've spent most of my career of 30 plus years in capital markets and structured products, most of it at Citigroup and JPMorgan. I can certainly say that Leonteq AG is an absolutely fascinating company in many ways. More about that later. It's a pleasure to be here today presenting the results of Leonteq to you for the first time. Let's get into it. In the first half of 2025, Leonteq faced several challenges that have been building up over the past years, and I will come back on those later on in the presentation.
In addition, the implementation of the new regulatory regime demanded significant internal resources. Uncertainty around legacy compliance matters also weighed on client activity. We are confident that these matters are going to be resolved in the coming months, and we expect this to be supportive for the second half of 2025 and beyond. In the first six months of 2025, Leonteq 's underlying profit before taxes was CHF 17 million, which is an increase of 33% year-on-year. We are therefore very much on track to deliver on our full year 2025 guidance. For the first time since 2019, we have also disclosed capital ratios in accordance with the Swiss Capital Adequacy Ordinance. Under the simplified standardized approach, we reported a strong CET1 ratio of 14.4% as of June 30th, 2025. This is well in excess of the regulatory minimum requirement of 10.5%.
We've also taken decisive action to restore profitability while maintaining strong regulatory discipline. For 2027, we're announcing new financial targets that underline our commitment to deliver significant revenue growth with a broadly flat cost base. We're targeting PBT of CHF 60 to 80 million and a return on tangible equity of approximately 10%. The newly defined capital return policy will increase our capital generation capabilities while setting a clear threshold for returning excess capital to shareholders through share buybacks. I will now hand over to Hans, who will provide more detail on Leonteq 's financial performance.
Thank you, Christian. Also, a very warm welcome from my side, and thank you for joining us here today. I'm pleased to present to you the financial results of Leonteq. Let's start on page five, please. Our results for the first half of 2025 reflect Leonteq's ongoing business transformation. As you can see on the chart on the left side, total operating income decreased by 7% to CHF 124 million year-on-year. This result was mainly driven by lower net fee income and a reduction in the net interest result, which was offset by a higher net trading income. On the cost side, total operating expenses as reported under IFRS were reduced by CHF 11 million or 9% to CHF 110 million. The decrease of the cost base stems mainly from a reduction in personnel expenses and lower provisions.
Adjusted for one-off costs from the group's resizing program and one-off implementation costs for the transition to the new regulatory regime in the amount of total CHF 2.5 million, the underlying operating expenses decreased by CHF 13 million or 11% to CHF 107 million. As a result, our underlying profit before taxes rose by 33% to CHF 17 million in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year. Closer at our top line drivers on page seven. Our overall turnover decreased by 8% year-on-year to CHF 15 billion compared to a very high turnover recorded in the first half of 2024. This reduction was due to a decrease in turnover with our historic partners to CHF 2.9 billion, which was partially offset by a 14% increase in turnover with new partners, which grew to CHF 3.2 billion.
This resulted in a further diversification across our issuers Leonteq worked with. At the same time, turnover generated with own issue products totaled CHF 8.4 billion, corresponding to an increased contribution of 58% compared to 55% in the prior year. This clearly demonstrates the resilience of our own paper and underlines Leonteq's strong franchise. Looking at the net fee income on the chart in the middle, we see a decrease from CHF 180 million in the first half of 2024 to CHF 88 million in the current reporting period. The reasons were a reduction in margin, a decrease in large ticket transactions, as well as production impacts in some regions due to uncertainty around legal compliance matters, which weighed on client activity.
On the margins, we saw a reduction from 67 basis points in H1 2024 to 57 basis points in the first half of 2025 due to a lower contribution from historic partners, while new partners increased their production. Further, the fee income from large ticket transactions decreased substantially to CHF 2.4 million in the first half of 2025 compared to CHF 10.6 million in the prior year period. From a new business initiative view, net fee income from the pension savings, farm derivatives, and balance sheet light businesses declined. On the other hand, recurring revenues from actively managed certificates continued to register notable growth in terms of both outstanding volumes and net fee income. An increasing income contribution came also from our new retail flow business initiative, which is set to further expand in the coming years.
Looking at our net trading result, the chart on the slide shows that we generated CHF 39.5 million in revenues. This is approximately CHF 30 million more than in the two previous semesters, which mainly resulted from higher market volatility in April of the current year. Moving now on to page eight, I would like to give you more color on the drivers behind our cost base. Costs are down CHF 11 million or 9% on an IFRS reported basis, clearly demonstrating Leonteq's ability to tightly manage its costs. We reduced personnel expenses by CHF 7 million. This was driven by lower variable compensations, reductions in FTEs, as well as further transfer of services to our nearshoring center in Lisbon. Leonteq has now 567 FTEs compared to 583 FTEs at the end of 2024. Leonteq also recorded lower net provisions due to the conclusion of regulatory matters.
At the same time, we experienced a certain cost inflation in other operating expenses driven mainly by IT-related costs, such as market data or software licensing investments. Leonteq's underlying cost base went down by 11% to CHF 107 million. This underlying cost base excludes CHF 1.2 million from regulatory transition costs and CHF 1.3 million for extraordinary resizing costs, as mentioned before. Considering these developments, Leonteq is well on track to meet its cost guidance for the full year 2025. The guidance remains unchanged, with underlying total operating expenses of CHF 220 million and one-off costs of up to CHF 10 million for 2025 as we continue our guiding efforts and the implementation of the regulatory regime. Let us now move to page nine of the slide deck.
I'm glad to provide you the long-awaited transparency about the need for the strong capital base that we have built up in the past years. This is now possible thanks to the enhanced regulatory capital regime. Since 1st January, 2025, Leonteq is subject to enhanced capital and large exposure requirements as defined by the Swiss Capital Adequacy Ordinance, which governs capital requirements for banks and account holding securities firms in Switzerland. Effective January 2025, the revised capital adequacy requirements known as Basel III Final entered into force. For Leonteq, most relevant are capital calculations under the standardized approach for market risk introduced under the so-called Fundamental Review of the Trading Book, which I will refer to as FRTB from here onwards during the presentation. FRTB, however, comes with a certain complexity and takes time to implement and validate.
As announced at the beginning of the year, Leonteq temporarily applies the simplified standardized approach SSA for a transition phase of up to the end of 2026. During this transition phase under SSA, Leonteq applies agreed phase-in levels ranging from 0% to 100% for the market risk scaling factors. At the same time, we are well advanced with implementing the transition to risk-weighted assets calculations according to FRTB. These will replace RWA calculations according to SSA in due course. Based on the first estimates of the FRTB calculations, we expect to report a CET1 ratio of at least 14% upon implementation of FRTB. Let us now look at the current capital ratios calculated under SSA on the next page. Under the new regulatory regime, Leonteq's eligible capital decreased to CHF 658 million as of June 30, 2025, compared to CHF 740 million as of 31st December , 2024.
The decrease was mainly driven by a dividend distribution totaling CHF 53 million, as well as the strengthening of the Swiss Franc s against the U.S. Dollar, impacting Leonteq's structural FX position. Leonteq's RWA, as calculated under SSA, remained roughly stable at CHF 4.6 billion as a result of an increase in market risk RWAs due to a 25% phasing of the scaling factors. This was offset by a decrease in other risk RWA on the back of our restructuring efforts on the crypto asset offering in Germany. In terms of capital ratios, Leonteq recorded a strong CET1 and total capital ratio as of June 30, 2025. Both were well in excess of the regulatory minimum levels of 7% for CET1 and of 10.5% for the total capital ratio. This demonstrates that Leonteq has been prudently managing its capital base prior to being subject to the Capital Adequacy Ordinance.
As stated before, Leonteq is well advanced with implementing FRTB, which will replace RWA calculations under SSA in due course. Upon full implementation of FRTB, Leonteq expects to report a strong CET1 ratio of at least 14%. With that, I hand back to you, Christian.
Thank you, Hans. I would like to give you my perspective as a new CEO and outline the cornerstones of our strategy to bring Leonteq back to success and shareholder value generation. When I started at Leonteq earlier this year, I found a company with strong and distinct capabilities, but also areas that required change. It was obvious that we needed to sharpen our focus, simplify how we operate, and rebuild trust. We've moved quickly to set a clear direction and define what needs to be addressed. Let's take a step back to understand why Leonteq is where it is today. In the past years, the company launched a range of new business initiatives to compensate for an anticipated decrease in margins in the traditional structured investment products business.
Some of these initiatives overall delivered a double-digit compound growth rate, but could not offset the industry trend of the traditional autocall business becoming more volume-driven. In addition, interest rate hikes in past years reduced the relative attractiveness of our yield enhancement products. These factors, combined with legacy compliance issues, resulted in the subdued performance in recent years. Furthermore, the targeted regional diversification has not been adequately managed. Finally, the investments in new businesses, as well as regulatory-driven staff growth, increased not only complexity, but also the cost base. Over the past 21 weeks, we've taken decisive actions to address the situation. Let me give you an overview on page 12. We've initiated efforts to restore trust from our stakeholders. I personally met with more than 100 clients, business partners, and counterparties, and engaged with our major shareholders.
Significant work, both internally and with our regulators, has gone into addressing compliance legacies, and we expect these to be resolved by the end of 2025. The Executive Committee has been reduced from seven to five members to enable faster decision-making and streamline internal processes. Separately, an extended Senior Management Team was established to strengthen leadership and enhance coordination across functions. Back in April, we also communicated that in view of the upcoming retirement of our CRO, Reto Quadroni, we were well advanced in the search process for his successor. Now, I'm delighted that today we announced the appointment of Erik Finn Schaanning, our new CRO, starting from October 2025.
On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Reto for his many years of dedicated service as Chief Risk Officer, and I'm delighted to welcome Erik Finn Schaanning as a highly qualified successor to the role. Another important element that we started to address is that we established a culture of accountability and defined clear responsibilities and goals. The implementation of FRTB is well advanced and will be completed in due course. Importantly, we have defined a focused set of strategic priorities and an execution roadmap for the next 12 to 24 months. These actions will help put us back on a steady and profitable path. Now, before I elaborate on these strategic priorities, let me remind you of what Leonteq is at its core.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I've been around for a while and I've seen a thing or two in the international world of structured investment products. Now, looking at Leonteq, as we've done in a very fundamental way over the past few months, the group clearly has some exceptional features. In a nutshell, Leonteq is a structured investment products powerhouse with Fintech DNA and a large and valuable client franchise. Our USP lies in our ability to combine these three factors to generate value. Let us go one by one to see how we're going to expand on this from here. Firstly, our clients. Today, we have a large client base of mainly private banks, independent asset managers, and family offices across EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. We serve more than 1,500 onboarded intermediaries who, in turn, have hundreds of thousands of end clients behind them.
We intend to grow our client base even more by accelerating onboarding and also trading more with larger institutional clients. We also have a growing retail franchise in Switzerland and Italy and clearly want to continue expanding our direct reach to self-directed investors. Secondly, our products. Leonteq has outstanding product capabilities, with its product units being one of the largest investment solution providers. We have a fully dedicated structuring, trading, and STP manufacturing expertise and derivatives. These capabilities will be in focus for better promotion and wider deployment of our innovative capabilities. Thirdly, our technology. Our cutting-edge client-facing technology platform provides business partners with front-end integrated structured investment product solutions. Going forward, we will focus on better monetization of our leading technology and wider distribution of digital solutions. I'm convinced that through an effective and efficient combination of these core strengths, we will unlock the true potential of the company.
Let's look on page 14 how we will do that. We've defined a focused set of strategic priorities and an execution roadmap for the next 24 months. The plan is built around three pillars. We will resize inefficient or underperforming areas of the firm. As you would expect, we have taken a detailed look at our cost base, and the measures we outline are in support of our overall ambition to keep our costs flat. However, I would also like to stress, whilst we continue to strive for efficiency, our way forward is focused on establishing revenue growth in a sustainable manner. This is why we have identified areas where we will optimize established activities, and we will expand high potential initiatives.
These growth areas are set to be funded through business-generated earnings, as well as through optimizing our resources, all with a view of improving profitability, strengthening capital efficiency, and restoring trust in the business. Now, let me take you through the measures and milestones that fall under each of these pillars. Resizing first. Leonteq will exit the Japanese market by selling its entity there due to continued loss-making contributions to the group. This is expected to be announced in the second half of 2025. Leonteq will exit Bench by 2026, which is one of our pension savings initiatives. We're taking this step as the go-to market and client demand was significantly below management expectations and plans. By the end of 2026, Leonteq also intends to have a total of approximately 30% of its non-sales and non-trading staff base located in its Lisbon service center.
We already have a total of 85 FTEs in Lisbon, which is equivalent to around 20% of our non-sales and non-trading staff. In line with our plans, we expect to grow our Lisbon workforce to more than 120 FTEs. Let us now look at the second pillar, optimizing. We have identified several established activities which require adjustments to thrive. First, we are creating a more efficient management team, changing global and local sales leadership, and increasing accountability across the company. This optimization has already begun in Q2 2025 with the appointments of the new Head of Investment Solutions and of new heads in Switzerland and Asia. We will also increase revenue generation with existing white-labeling partners to optimize the return on allocated capital. We have defined a new partner acquisition framework that will help us to identify new partners with the best strategic fit for Leonteq.
On the crypto asset side, we have restructured our offering in Germany to optimize RWAs, while we maintain our Swiss business in this space unchanged. We now come to the area where we plan to expand, and which we believe will be the main driver of our revenue growth. First of all, we plan to increase the share of wallet with our clients in areas where we have a competitive edge. Our business of Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs) has consistently performed well and has continued experienced growth in terms of both outstanding volumes and net fee income in H1 2025. We intend to drive this business forward by implementing a new generation of AMCs. We'll also focus on scaling further our platform for Quantitative Investment Strategies, in short QAS. Our QAS platform offers highly customizable index strategies such as volatility target and thematic baskets.
Both QAS and AMC are areas where we see significant and accelerating client demand across regions, and both areas are expected to increase the share of recurring revenues for the firm. We will also deploy our award-winning digital solutions platform, LYNQS in further key markets. This will allow us to further increase our footprint at a low marginal cost. Finally, we intend to expand our efforts to distribute third-party products. This is an important area of growth, as it will allow us to leverage our significant distribution power with lower capital consumption. In order to enable investors and analysts to better track our performance and delivery against these strategic priorities, we will enhance transparency in our semi-annual reporting. We are therefore providing further details on our measures in the appendix of this presentation, and we will be disclosing new or amended metrics for issuers, regions, and trading books.
Let us look at this on page 15, where we are unwrapping the Leonteq reporting cube for you. Semi-annually, we will provide you with IFRS results, KPIs, and capital figures, and where possible or meaningful, we will break these down in three different views. First, we will continue to disclose revenues on a regional level. This reflects how we manage our distribution capabilities and client franchise in our target markets. Second, and this is a completely new reporting view, we will be disclosing revenues on trading book groups. This reflects how we manage our risk exposures by asset class and product groups. Third, we will look at the issuer view. Here, we will disclose turnover by targeted size of our issuer groups rather than by the time when they were onboarded. This reflects how we manage our multi-issuer offering and credit quality profiles.
We are convinced that this will help investors and analysts better understand the Leonteq business and revenue model and better track our performance. Moving on to page 17, we can now see how all this comes together. Through our focused strategy to resize, optimize, and expand, we seek to deliver a 7% compound revenue growth over the 2024-2027 period that will broadly be with a flat cost base. In terms of financial targets, we aim to deliver profit before taxes of CHF 60 million to CHF 80 million and return on tangible equity of around 10% for the financial year 2027. I would like to emphasize here that this journey, however, is not a straight line, and our revenue growth will not be linear. That being said, we aim for better results in 2026 than in 2025 on the way to our 2027 targets.
By delivering on this plan, we intend to be in a position to return excess capital to our shareholders in the future. You might have noticed that the abbreviation of our strategy, ROE, summarizes our focus in terms of delivering return on equity to our shareholders. Let's look at this in more detail on page 70. In the context of the new regulatory regime and taking into account the estimates we have from FRTB calculations, we are revising and updating our capital return policy. In order to increase our capital generation capabilities, we are setting a new dividend payout ratio while setting a clear threshold for returning excess capital to shareholders through share buybacks. Concretely, Leonteq now targets an ordinary dividend payout ratio of approximately 30% of group net profits for the financial year 2025 and going forward.
This is to be paid out in equal installments out of retained earnings and reserves from capital contributions. In addition, the Board will consider distributing CET1 capital, which is meaningfully in excess of CET1 capital ratio of 15% at the end of a financial year. In such cases, excess capital will be returned to shareholders through a share buyback program launched in the subsequent year. Our ambition is to return excess capital to shareholders for the first time in the first half of 2027. Before taking questions, let me summarize the key points we would like you to take away from today. Despite a challenging first half year, Leonteq delivered an 11% decrease in underlying cost and a 33% increase in underlying PBT. Leonteq is thus well on track to deliver profitable underlying results for 2025.
This path will also be supported by a removal of uncertainty stemming from legacy compliance issues. These are expected to be resolved by the end of this year. Our transition to the new regulatory regime is on track. We have reported strong capital ratios under SSA, and we will maintain a strong ratio when we move to FRTB in due course. We have defined a clear path to consistent profitability over the next 24 months. Delivering on those plans will put us in a good position to return excess capital to shareholders in H1 2027. I'm convinced that we can do this. Together with our highly capable and committed team, we're reshaping Leonteq into a more focused, solidly managed, and performance-driven business. I'm confident we're on the right track. With this, I would like to thank you for your attention and pass over to Dominik for managing questions.
Thank you, Christian and Hans, for the presentation. We are now happy to start with the Q&A session and will take the questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the attached telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question from the phone comes from Risold, Anne-Chantal with Octavian. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. To start with, I would like to know on the FINCOM stream, we have seen a strong decrease in H1, and I would like to know if there was or what was the impact of your enhanced regulatory and risk framework on the decrease of the large transaction result, and if there is something going forward that could impair large transaction opportunity. If you could also give us a more general update on what you expect in terms of FINCOM for H2. That's the first one. The second one is on the new business initiative. You have, as you mentioned, several initiatives. AMC looks like it has been developing very well. The other one a bit less. If you could give us maybe some outlook from the various initiatives and maybe also you mentioned expanding your distribution, expand distribution of new product issued outside Leonteq.
Maybe if you can give us a bit more color, what product or what you would expect in this field. Finally, on the new capital return policy, you mentioned a share buyback above a CET1 ratio of 15%, or you mentioned a meaningful above 15%. What is meaningful for Leonteq if you give us some indication? Thank you.
Hans, why don't you take the first one and I'll take the second and third question?
Thanks a lot for the question, Anne-Chantal. With regards to the FINCOM and the drivers for H1, as mentioned, Leonteq was impacted to some extent from the legacy compliance matters and the uncertainty it created for certain of our clients that specifically influenced the FINCOM in the first quarter of 2025. As also indicated, large ticket transactions reduced from CHF 10.6 million to approximately CHF 2.5 million in H1 2025 compared to the previous year's period. With regards to your question related to the regulatory capital impacts, the large ticket transactions per se, we do not anticipate that they are impacted from such regulatory changes. It's actually the opposite. We are quite certain that the respective large ticket transactions will stay, as they are. The fact is that they vary from quarter or half year to half year accordingly.
On average, we see those that they are rather in the range of CHF 8 million to CHF 12 million. In H1 2025, we saw less in this regard, but we expect that it will come back on a rival basis as they have come in the past.
Okay, going to your next question around new business initiatives and an outlook here. As you rightfully pointed out, AMCs is not a new business initiative for us. It's a very strong existing one, QAS as well. In this space, just to comment on this specifically, we're expecting continued very strong growth. We see it in the market, and we have a very competitive product offering here that we believe positions us right in the center of this dynamic, and we will continue to benefit from the market shifting towards those products. On expanding the distribution, that has several dimensions here. One is just our expansion of distribution for onboarding, as I mentioned, more clients and do transactions with larger institutional clients. When you specifically refer to third-party product distribution, we have this large distribution network, which we currently use only for our own manufactured products.
There are very interesting products out there, which we will not be manufacturing ourselves just because we don't have the capabilities to do so, but which could be very interesting and will be very interesting to our client base. You ask specifically what, so those could be, for example, private equity products. It could be certain quantitative investment strategies that we can't manufacture in-house, that we buy from external providers that have a high name recognition and where we can sell those into our wide distribution network and generate fees this way. This is a capital-efficient way of generating fees. That answers this question, and I would move on to your question regarding the capital ratio and the distribution of excess capital. We sit meaningfully above 15%.
That is the clear ratio here that we're targeting is 15%, and meaningfully means that we just want this ratio to be consistently stable above the 15% to then distribute capital. This is the idea behind the meaningful.
Thank you.
Good morning. I'm no longer at Credit Suisse Summit. I'm at Zürcher Kantonalbank. Never mind. I've a couple of questions, if I may. The first question is on the kind of decline in the volumes with historic partners, and maybe can you give us some additional color on whether this is related to the new contract you're having with Raiffeisen Switzerland? Secondly, and more generally, I was a bit surprised by the drop in the product margin in H1, obviously given the volatility environment. I would have expected rather an expansion in the fee margin rather than a decline in the fee margin. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on this and whether you might see a kind of a pickup into H2 in terms of margins? Third, about your pension savings business, you obviously are shutting down this Bench platform , which you have launched not too long ago, I think.
Can you maybe elaborate a bit more and what was the plan for the remaining pension savings business? Obviously, thanks a lot for the additional transparency you would like to provide. First question there is you will stop, as I understand, the disclosure of historic and new partners as you have done so far. Second question, can you maybe help a little bit understand how exactly this tier one, tier two, three, and third-party issuers are then split among each other? Or can I expect that tier one is at the moment still more or less the historic partners, or is there a bigger discrepancy between the old and the new disclosure? Thanks.
Okay, thank you for those questions. Let me take the second and the third question first, and then I'll pass over to Hans to take the first and the fourth. On the product margin question, now here's the thing with product margins, right? There is a fundamental trend, which is, and this is something that's been around in the markets forever, of existing products driven by competition and technology, margins are reducing over time. We did see in the period, of course, where volatility unfolded pretty significantly back in April, we did see an increase in the product margins, but that is normal in the more volatile environments to happen. That reverted back to the margin picture that we saw before.
That is on a macro level driven by this increased competition and technology, which is why we are increasing our client base, why we're driving lower margin product more to electronic distribution means, and as a consequence, having a lower cost base against that distribution, and while we're focusing on innovation to actually increase our higher value-added products, which we will take to the market with a greater focus. That's to the product margin question. On the pension savings business, we continue to be in the pension savings business, and we actually do continue to come up with new products in this space. It just turns out that this specific product and its design and the context of the distribution strategy with this product did not prove as it was envisioned originally in the business plan.
At some point, when you realize that with the targeted distribution that you had and the design of the product, this doesn't work out, you also have to call it a day and say, we discontinue this one. It's by no means a discontinuation of our effort in the pension savings business. We are continuing to work on new products there with our partners, and we are continuing to be in this business. Hans?
Thanks a lot, Daniel, for your questions. With regards to the reduction in turnover on historic partners, you know, we built up an extensive ecosystem with more than 10 white-labeling partners, 70 different counterparties, and more than 1,000 financial intermediaries. This is a dynamic construct in the sense that it continuously evolves. From time to time, white-labeling partners might have different levels of appetite for new fundings and/or risk exposures. You see that specifically in the current environment where the fundings offered by the various issuers vary quite widely. We have seen at the same time new partners increasing their turnover contribution by 14% to $3.2 billion. Partially, it was actually also a replacement by historic partners through new partner issuance volumes. We continue to diversify our partner base, that is, with the recent announcement of Islamic Emirates for Sharia-Compliant products, as well as with Mora Banc.
To answer your questions more concrete that you asked with regards to Raiffeisen Switzerland, there is no effect from the renewal of the respective contracts in this regard that is visible here. With regards to the risk or the portfolio approach that we undertake on the partner side by tiering them into tier one, two, and three, you know, historically, we have onboarded predominantly a majority of the partners that approached us. As part of the strategy review, we had a closer look and analyzed where we have strategic fits and where we have potential to optimize. This is what we are addressing now. We more focused addressed the respective partnerships for the mutual benefit. With regards to tier one partners, we have five defined as shown on page 23 of the appendices of the presentation.
This includes, next to the historic partners, specifically larger partners where we believe we have substantial growth potential, specifically in Europe, by addressing that through the extension of EU issuance programs and in the Middle East and Asia. That said, we also have important tier two and tier three partners that complement the respective services and distribution power that we have for our clients. Does it answer your question, Daniel?
Yes, thanks a lot. Very helpful.
The next question from the phone comes from Sylvain Perret with Alpha Value. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two on my side. The first one is on the CET1 ratios. You guide for the CET1 ratio to be at least 14% past the FRTB implementation. Does that include also the RWA savings from the further business optimization and resizing that you plan? My second question is on the retail flow business. I just wanted to know if you could provide a bit more color on the retail flow business. You mentioned the fact that it was developing well, but could you quantify it a bit? Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. I will take the first one, and then Hans will take the second question. Let me talk for business. On the FRTB, we've developed a prototype in absolute record time. This hasn't been done before for an organization of our size and complexity to develop FRTB within five months. We have a prototype, and that prototype gives us an indication of where we're coming out. We now have to test this for robustness and work with our auditors to get it all signed off and ready for permanent use. We're very comfortable with the model. To your question of how the optimizations planned feed into this, the optimization is really something, as you can see, that is part of our strategy for the next 24 months.
Some of it will happen over the course of the next months, but still some of the optimization will be ongoing into next year. As a consequence, as sort of like we're expecting to move to FRTB in due course, it will, of course, some of the number will be impacted by some of the optimization, but we're comfortable that we'll, even without FRTB optimization measures, we'll be hitting that 14% number when we publish it.
With regards to retail flow, Sylvain, we started, as you know well, first activities and tested the engine through market making at the BX Swiss, and that went very well and continues to increase in line with the volumes that you can see on the BX Swiss as a very complementary and important stock exchange in Switzerland. We then started this year, specifically in H1, or actually towards the end of last year, with a few products already to list accordingly retail flow products at the Swiss Stock Exchange SIX. In the meantime, we have more than 3,000 products outstanding at SIX, and we see a continuing increasing demand in this regard. We foresee to expand accordingly in the German market, as we have foreseen in the course of 2026, and then beyond to widen that further into Italy in the years to come.
That said, we have a meaningful contribution that we expect to further increase.
Okay, thank you.
I have said one.
Okay, it seems we don't have any more questions. I'd like to thank all of you for your attention, but also quickly hand back to our CEO, Christian Spieler, for some closing remarks.
It's been a pleasure to be with you here today on this call. I really thank you for the excellent questions that we received. I'm really looking forward to speaking with many of you in the coming months and years in person and take you through in more detail through what we're doing here. I am really excited about where we are and looking forward to an implementation of our strategy and reaping the rewards and seeing the results come through. Thank you very much, everybody, and have a great day.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Leonteq, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.