Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Leonteq half year 2026 results conference call and live webcast. I am Shari, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Dominik Ruggli, Head of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Today at 6:30 A.M., we published the results press release, the results presentation, and the half-year report for 2026. All these documents can be found in the investor relations section of our website. I would like also to refer you to the usual cautionary statement at the end of the press release. That statement also applies to the information provided verbally in this presentation and the Q&A session. Here with me today, our Chief Executive Officer, Christian Spieler, and our Chief Financial Officer, Hans Widler.
We will start the presentation with our key messages for the first half of 2026. Afterwards, Hans will provide you a detailed discussion of our financial performance in the first half of 2026. Christian will then return to take you through our strategic progress and our outlook for H2 2026. The presentation will last about 35 minutes, after which we are happy to take questions. We intend to close the conference call latest by 10:30 A.M. With that, I hand over to you, Christian.
Thank you, Dominik. Also from my side, a warm welcome to all investors, analysts, and media representatives on the call. The first half of 2026 has been a pivotal period for Leonteq. I am very pleased to report that we have returned to profitability in line with our guidance. This is a testament to the successful execution of the measures and initiatives we set out to deliver, and it demonstrates the progress that Leonteq has made across multiple fronts. We delivered double-digit growth in turnover and in fee income, driven by growth across all regions.
We have significantly reduced our cost base, which demonstrates the effects of our cost program, and we have maintained a strong capital position. With the closure of all regulatory legacy matters, we have reached an important milestone and have removed a key constraint on growth. While there's more to do, we are on the right track. We will continue to execute our strategic priorities with focus and discipline. We confirm our full-year guidance and expect to report a positive pre-tax result. Now, I'll hand over to Hans for the financial update.
Thank you, Christian. 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 for the first half of 2026. Reflecting the successful transition to our enhanced regulatory framework in November 2025 and the completion of our cost program at the end of last year, we have ceased to report underlying results. Today, our discussion and analysis of our financial performance will focus on IFRS-reported financials. Let's start with our income statements on page six of the presentation.
In the first half of 2026, we recorded increased client activity and fee generation, driven by continued improvement in client sentiment since the second half of last year. This was further supported by the recent closure of all regulatory legacy matters, which has had an immediate positive impact on client momentum. Net fee income grew by 10% year-on-year to CHF 96.8 million and by 7% compared to the second half of 2025. At the same time, hedging activities returned to a positive contribution, although below the prior year period, which was driven by the April 2025 short-term spike in market volatility after the Liberation Day.
In H1 2025, our net trading result amounted to CHF 13.4 million, compared to CHF 39.5 million a year ago and compared with CHF -42.6 million in the second half of last year. The net interest expense improved to CHF 0.6 million compared to CHF 4.9 million in the prior year period. This was primarily driven by balance sheet optimizations. Our total operating income was CHF 111.6 million, compared to CHF 124.3 million in the prior year period and compared to CHF 48 million in the second half of last year.
While year-on-year, this is a 10% reduction in total operating income, we are very satisfied with the underlying improvements in the quality of our earnings. On the cost side, operating expenses decreased by 10% year-on-year to CHF 99.2 million, reflecting the benefits of the resizing program. Compared to the second half of 2025, total operating expenses are up 4%, driven by normalization of accrued variable compensation. I will give you a detailed breakdown of the costs shortly. In line with our guidance, Leonteq returned to profitability in the first half of 2026.
The company reported profits before taxes of CHF 12.2 million. Income taxes were positive at CHF 0.5 million, mainly driven by a reduction in profits recorded in foreign jurisdictions. Group net profit increased by 37% year-on-year to CHF 12.7 million in the first half of 2026, and earnings per share increased by 34% to CHF 0.71. Finally, our return on tangible equity also improved to 4% in H1 2026, which puts us back on the right trajectory towards our 2028 targets of 10%. Moving now on to page seven. I want to first look at the turnover generated through our platform, which you can see in the graph on the left-hand side.
Our platform turnover increased by 10% to CHF 15.9 billion. This growth was supported by a strong increase in demand for Leonteq own-issue products, which was up 21% year-on-year. We also benefited from the enhanced risk and credit profile under the bank-like regulatory framework, which supported the ongoing improvement in client sentiment. Turnover generated with Tier One partners decreased by 17% year-on-year to CHF 3.8 billion. This reduction was partially offset by a 25% increase in turnover with Tier Two and Tier Three partners to CHF 1.5 billion, in addition to the strong increase in Leonteq issuances.
This development is in line with our strategy to diversify revenue contributions across a larger number of different issuers. From a regional perspective, Leonteq maintained its strong position in our home market in Switzerland. Together with our platform partners, Leonteq remains the leading issuer of six listed yield enhancement products with a market share of 34%. Across all six listed structure products, we rank as the third largest issuer with a market share of 14%.
Net fee income in Switzerland amounted to CHF 43.6 million in the first half of the current year, up 4% compared to the prior year period. Operations in Europe generated net fee income of CHF 37.3 million in the first half of 2026, also up 4% year-on-year, reflecting the successful expansion of Leonteq's range of quantitative investment strategies and the improved client [inaudible] We additionally appointed a new head sales Europe, who will join Leonteq in a few weeks' time. This is the first step in our efforts to strengthen again our sales force through dedicated hires. In Asia and Middle East, net fee income grew by 57% year-on-year to CHF 16 million.
This was driven by a significant pickup in demand in the private banking segment, as well as the expansion into institutional-type transactions. Moving now to page eight, I'd like to give you more color on the drivers behind our cost base. We initiated a resizing program one year ago, and the following results demonstrate the significant progress we have made in reducing our cost base. Personnel expenses decreased by CHF 7.8 million or 13% year-on-year to CHF 51.6 million. This was driven by a FTE-related reduction in fixed compensation, as well as lower recognition of deferred compensation from prior years.
The overall number of FTEs declined by 6% year-on-year to 531 FTEs. Headcount in Switzerland reduced, while headcount in Europe increased as a result of staff growth in our group's service center in Lisbon. Consequently, our ratio of non-sales and non-trading staff in Lisbon improved from 21% in June 2025 to 28% in June 2026. Other operating expenses remained broadly stable year-on-year at CHF 30.4 million in the first half of 2026. While we achieved cost reductions, for example, in electricity and market data, these were partly offset by higher banking fees and inflation-driven price increases, particularly in software licenses.
Depreciation of tangible and intangible assets declined by 7% to CHF 16.5 million. This was mainly driven by the exit of the bench initiative, where we wrote off the platform last year. For the full year 2026, we reiterate our cost guidance and expect total operating expenses of approximately CHF 200 million. Continuing to page nine, let's look at our balance sheet. Overall, Leonteq has a highly liquid hedge book and runs a very conservative investment portfolio. This puts us in a sound position to manage our assets and liabilities in very different operating environments.
In terms of numbers, we reported an increase in total assets of CHF 1.2 billion- CHF 12.4 billion at end June 2026. This is predominantly driven by an increase in trading financial assets on the back of higher equity hedging positions, which in turn increased our securities lending activities. Cash and receivables increased mainly on the back of higher client and trading activities. We also optimized our investment portfolio, which was reduced by CHF 0.5 billion- CHF 2.2 billion. On the liability side, Leonteq own-issued products increased by 5% to CHF 5.6 billion, underscoring the continued confidence by our clients in Leonteq.
We shifted some of our funding activities in relation to the before-mentioned increase in equity hedging positions, and so an increase in short-term credits and liability by 22% to CHF 2.8 billion. Lastly, our shareholders' equity increased by CHF 18 million- CHF 710 million. Continuing on to page 10, let's look at our regulatory capital position. Our eligible capital increased to CHF 655 million at end June 2026, mainly driven by retained earnings and positive currency translation adjustments following the appreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Swiss franc.
Risk-weighted assets increased by CHF 208 million to CHF 3.97 billion, compared to CHF 3.76 billion at December 2025. This predominantly reflects higher market risk RWAs driven by increased business flows and higher market volatility at end June 2026 compared to year-end 2025. We herein maintained our strong capital position and reported a CET1 capital ratio of 16.5% compared to 16.9% at the end of last year.
As communicated in February 2026, the Board is determined to return excess capital to shareholders provided that the CET1 ratio is maintained at a level meaningfully in excess of 15% and on a sustainable basis. The Board confirms its intention to launch a share buyback in early 2027 and will consider a total distribution to shareholders in the form of a dividend plus a share buyback in line with the group net profit for the full year 2026. I will now turn over to Christian for his remarks on our strategic progress update.
Thank you, Hans. When we presented our full year results earlier this year, I asked you to look beyond the unsatisfactory results for 2025 and measure us against disciplined delivery of our strategy and steady progress in our performance step by step. I also mentioned that we need the time to complete this turnaround and to fully deliver on Leonteq's value creation potential. We manage this delivery against a clear execution framework, Resize parts of the business that are not profitable, Optimise established areas, and Expand initiatives with strong future potential.
Let me walk you through how we're executing our ROE strategy and the measurable progress made since the beginning of the year. Let's start with the Resize pillar, where we are reshaping our cost base with discipline. We are improving our footprint where it is strategically and economically sensible. As planned, we completed the sale of our Japan entity in Q1 2026. We're also on target to complete the controlled exit of our pillar three initiative called bench by end 2026. We are actively improving the structural efficiency of our organization with 28% of non-sales and non-trading staff now based in Lisbon. Also here, we're on track to reach our target of approximately 30% by end 2026.
In our optimized pillar, we are improving profitability by focusing on the levers that matter most. Stronger operational execution, lower capital consumption, and tighter control of complexity and risks. The enhancement of our operational leadership be completed by end of the second quarter 2026 with the streamlining of our leadership structure in markets and investment solutions. Further, we transitioned to the Basel III fundamental review of the trading book framework in November 2025, significantly ahead of schedule and in record time.
Since then, because our capital requirements are mainly driven by market risks, we have implemented capabilities to monitor RWA movements on an ongoing basis. It allows us to better track and understand our sensitivity to market movements. This is a continuous process which takes time, we have shown that we can maintain a capital ratio well in excess of our minimum capital requirements and well above the share buyback threshold. Furthermore, we have increased balance sheet light turnover by 28% to CHF 3.6 billion, corresponding to 23% of the total turnover, highlighting our continuous journey to a more capital-efficient business model.
With regards to our white labeling partners, we have revised our acquisition framework and are working on further diversifying our partner network across regions. Most importantly, our Expand pillars. We are developing initiatives that generate more recurring revenues, improve our capital efficiency, and expand our total addressable market. This includes businesses like quantitative investment strategies, QIS, actively managed certificates, AMC, the retail flow business, and LYNQS. To be clear, this is not growth at any price. It's targeted expansion into areas where Leonteq already is a leader or has a clear right to win and can achieve superior margins.
Let's now move to the next page to provide you more detail on each of these expand initiatives. Starting with our AMC. We continue to make progress in expanding our recurring revenue base through our AMC offering during the first half of 2026. With our next generation of AMCs, we managed to attract strong client inflows, resulting in an increase in outstanding volumes to CHF 2.4 billion. This corresponds to an annualized net new money growth rate of 9%.
Demand remained particularly strong among Asian clients, where outstanding volumes increased by approximately 45% during the first half of the year. In addition, we enabled PostFinance to act as guarantor for Leonteq's next generation AMCs. This gives clients the flexibility to select a high-rated guarantor, which further strengthens the attractiveness of our offering. Furthermore, as you can see in the chart in the middle on the slide, our AMC solution is already well-established across all regions. Here on the next slide and page 14, we see the development of our QIS offering.
We further expanded our product offering to include a broad range of quantitative index strategies, including advised, decrement, and thematic indices. Referring to the chart on the left-hand side, the number of quantitative investment strategies more than doubled to 700 indices. This reflects the growing client demand for our customized solutions. The offering attracts particularly strong demand from institutional investors and family offices, contributing to a more diversified client base and increased share of wallet among existing clients.
Clients value our flexibility and ability to deliver tailored solutions quickly and efficiently. From the chart in the middle of the slide, you can also see that so far, we have mainly focused on rolling out our QIS offering to clients in Switzerland and Europe. For the QIS offering, you need specific product and structuring know-how. Now that we have seen a successful traction in Switzerland and Europe, we are starting to build up such resources and know-how in Asia to serve the local client needs. This presents yet another growth opportunity for us. Let's look now at our retail flow business. We entered the market of listed leverage products in Switzerland in April 2025.
As of June 30th, 2026, Leonteq had more than 20,000 products listed on SIX Swiss Exchange and BX Swiss, establishing Leonteq as one of the leading issuers in the Swiss market. Looking at the chart on the left-hand side, you can see that we increased turnover on the SIX Swiss Exchange 15-fold year-on-year to CHF 170 million. The second chart in the middle shows the translation of these numbers into market share within the relevant product segment. Within just 14 months of entering the Swiss market, we achieved a 7% market share based on turnover and 10% based on number of trades.
Another strategic milestone was the receipt of BaFin approval for the license extension in Germany, enabling our German subsidiary to support our trading activities in Zurich. We have since made good progress in preparing for the launch of listed leverage products in the German market. On page 16, you can see our progress we've made with our digital investing platform LYNQS. Starting with the chart on the right-hand side, you can see that we increased the number of products initiated through LYNQS by 42%.
As a result, our click-and-trade ratio improved to 36% in H1 2026, compared to 34% in the prior year period. In other words, more than every third product issued today is initiated directly through our digital platform. We continue to enhance our platform capabilities to further improve client experience. In the first half of 2026, we expanded the platform's capabilities by adding credit-linked notes. This broadened the range of available payoffs and marked the platform's expansion into fixed income products. Let me wrap up today's presentation on page 17. Following the conclusion of all pending regulatory proceedings, we have clarity and certainty for our business priorities.
Our focus remains the diligent execution of our growth initiatives. Our aim is to accelerate growth, among others, by increasing our sales force in selected key growth regions and optimizing our target market strategy. We confirm our full-year guidance and expect to deliver a positive pretax result for 2026. Lastly, provided that the CET1 ratio is maintained at a level meaningfully in excess of 15% on a sustainable basis, the Board confirms its intention to launch a share buyback in early 2027. In this context, the Board will consider a total distribution to shareholders, that is dividend plus share buyback, in line with the group net profit for the full year 2026. With this, I would like to thank you for your attention. I hand back over to you, Dominik.
Thank you, Christian and Hans, for the presentation. We are now happy to start with the Q&A session.
We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their 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 comes from the line of Anne Risold, Octavian, please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. First question is, now that you have solved your regulatory issue, what are the most immediate opportunity to accelerate growth? Or, in other words, what are the low-hanging fruit that you expect to capture first? On the second is, as part of the strategy, you mentioned that you want to grow business that are less dependent on market volatility, including this AMC product. After reaching CHF 2.3 billion at the end of last year, now you had CHF 2.1 billion.
What are the expectation or the growth path for the midterm for this in terms of volume growth? Maybe on the guidance, you reach your guidance for the half year. Now having CHF 10 million, would that be possible to refine a bit also for the full year? Because if you say continue to be positive, it's maybe a bit vague. Would you have any more definition of the pre-tax profit expected for 2026? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the question. Immediate growth opportunities following the closure of all the regulatory legacy matters. Look, we had already seen an improvement of client sentiment throughout the second half of 2025, that trend has continued over the second half of this year. That said, clearly once we announced the closure of all the regulatory legacy matters, we did see a significant pickup in client activity from that date onward across the board of our existing client base. If you think about it, that's just natural because an overhang, a question mark that was there was removed and people just felt a lot more comfortable, again, engaging and doing more business with us.
The truth is, just on the broadly, we're going to just do a lot more business with our existing client base. At the same time, we're obviously, and that is independent, but it's also in a way linked, we are growing our client base significantly through specific target markets and hires in sales. We will be growing that, obviously the clearance of regulatory issues is a very positive backdrop for that growth path that we have. On the strategy and to your question on the volatility, yeah.
As we said, we emphasized very much the growth of the businesses that are less dependent on market volatility. Asset management like product AMC, actively managed certificates and the QIS product space, which also cater for more institutional business. We see a continued strong trend in the market, continued strong demand for these products. We have an extremely innovative offering in this space, which is considered leading globally.
We see that continued demand across all regions. We believe that this will support our growth significantly going forward. We are not commenting on exact targets for the individual segments. Rest assured that these areas are in our focus. We are very well positioned, We see significant growth going into the future. Hans, on the topic of guidance, you want to-
Sure. Certainly. Thank you, Christian, and thank you, Anne-Chantal for the question. We reiterate our guidance that we gave earlier to have a positive result. The focus of management is on continuously delivering on the strategic execution on that, specifically the expansion pillars that we have defined. In this regard, our focus is clearly to increase further the fee income, the turnover, but at the end, of course, also the profitability.
The next question comes from the line of Daniel Regli, ZKB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. I have a couple of questions, if I may. First of all, it's kind of a follow-up to Anne-Chantal's question on the closure of the regulatory proceedings. Can you give us maybe a little bit of an indication of the magnitude of pickup you have seen with customers post the closure of the proceedings or the conclusion of the proceedings, to give us a little bit of an idea of what kind of recovery is possible for H2? On the net trading result, I wasn't able to find the breakdown into treasury results and hedging contribution anymore.
Maybe I was just a little bit low on time, but could you give us a little bit of an indication how these two elements of the trading result have developed? The third question is on the payout. Did I get this right that shareholder distributions in line with group net profit means more or less a 100% payout ratio for full year 2026? Last, can you give us a bit of an outlook for the cost development into next year? What do you expect there? Should we continue to expect kind of flat cost, or is there any kind of growth in cost expected coming from the initiatives you have started? Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel. In terms of the magnitude, it is hard to quantify that, and we're also not want to give these detailed numbers, but the point is that we very clearly saw a pickup of engagement, willingness to talk about new projects, and simply a totally different approach of engaging for future business with us. The regular flow of business has been, as I said, improving since the second half of 2025. That's been a constant trend, and that trend continues. Above and beyond that, we clearly saw in the days and weeks following the announcement that people were again calling in to say, "Okay, are there these new products that we can tackle?"
A lot of it is in the space of the high-value-add product, AMC and QIS. It's hard to say what the exact volume impact of this was already and will be going forward, but it's definitely going to be positive because we can see from that request for these specific high-value-add products that we can deliver that clients have significant additional comfort now of engaging in these long-term, high-value-added projects with us. Hans, do you want to-
Thanks a lot. Thank you, Daniel, for your respective questions. With regard to trading results and treasury results, you see the breakdown still as part of the respective documentation that we provide in the Excel sheets. The treasury carry amount for H1 2026 in the trading line itself, CHF -8.2 million, while hedging contributions amounted to CHF +21.6 million . In this regard, you need also to consider that, as you can see, the interest expense reduced by approximately CHF 4.3 million. That is, in essence, we optimized also our financing structure more towards Leonteq issuance, given the continued strong demand in this regard.
As you also see, we increased physical hedging activities with equities, and hence, those were financed accordingly by treasury activities. With regards to your question on payout, your assumption is correct. Assuming that Leonteq intends to maintain a CET1 ratio sustainably and meaningfully above the 15%. Assuming that and the positive net result, you can expect an unchanged dividend of 30%, which is our current dividend guidance. On top, we announced today, accordingly, a share buyback at the level of 70% of the net profit.
Regarding your last question with regard to the cost guidance, we gave you a cost guidance for the current year that we reiterated with regards to the CHF 200 million. With regards to the years to come, you can expect a moderate cost increase given the very selective investments that we undertake, specifically into the areas o f sales and structuring and the initiatives that we have in place. As you notice also from the historical developments, the number of trades lead practically to very little, if at all, to incremental operating costs. That is, the platform per se, from an operating cost level, is strongly scalable.
Sorry, one quick follow-up on the treasury results. For H2, should we kind of expect a similar treasury result as we have seen in H1, or is there any changes to be expected?
We're not giving guidance on treasury result level, it should not be very different to what you see.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Sylvain Perret, AlphaValue. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions. My first question is on the margins evolution. Judging by your fee income growth and your turnover growth, margins seem to have stabilized in H1 compared to full year 2025. I wanted to know if you could share your views on the margins evolution from there, if you expect to see some improvement as the client demand increases in the coming quarters.
If you would rather see them remaining stable over time as you will prioritize volume over margins. My second question is on the retail flow business launch in Germany. Provided that the business is launched in H2, how fast do you expect to see a sizable contribution to your revenue generation after the launch? Thank you.
Thanks for those questions. Look, margins are influenced by a range of factors, including the product mix, client demand, and the underlying transaction volumes. As a result, we do not manage our business based on the overall margin level, but focus on the broader quality and profitability of the business. The product mix, for example, has an important impact on margins. In the first half of 2026, we saw increased activity in leverage products, which are typically shorter-term products with lower margins but higher turnover potential.
At the same time, we recorded improving margins on traditional autocallable products. In addition, I would say certain parts of our business model, such as AMCs and parts of the QIS offering, generate revenue primarily on outstanding volumes, resulting in higher share of recurring fee income. From our perspective, the key metric is the continued growth in overall business volumes and fee income across the platform. Our business operates with a relatively high fixed cost base, but benefits from a highly scalable platform with low marginal cost.
As a result, we place greater emphasis on growing overall volumes and revenues than on managing to a specific margin target. Ultimately what really is to look out for is the volume growth and the revenue growth. Margin focus can actually be misleading when you look at a business like ours, because our business is highly dynamic, it's innovative, and tech-driven. We have low marginal cost, a relatively high fixed cost base. What really drives our profitability is the volume and the overall level of fees.
On the RFP, we've made very good progress, we've been almost surprised by the incredible take-up of that initiative in the Swiss market. I don't want to extrapolate necessarily from the speed of success we had in the Swiss market with our RFP initiative. Of course, we have the ambition to have a very meaningful and impactful start in the German market as well. As I mentioned before, we're not providing detail on the product level in terms of these projected revenue parts, you can rest assured that our ambition is measurable and very meaningful.
Okay, thank you.
As a reminder for questions, star and one. The next question is from [Jenny Yang] AWP. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have two questions regarding the CET1 ratio and the planned share buyback. Can you give some light on what you expect for the CET1 ratio for the full year 2026? You said there will be the share buyback if the CET1 ratio maintains a level meaningfully in excess of 15% on a sustainable basis. Could you elaborate on what do you mean by sustainable basis? How long and meaningful in excess of 15%? How much more over 15% is needed? For example, the 16.5% in the first semester, is that meaningful in excess? If I may, one more thing. What do you think are the most important Examples what Leonteq still has to do or to achieve. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Look, on the expectation of the CET1 ratio, we are not guiding specifically on that. As we said, we are targeting a CET1 ratio which is sustainably and meaningfully above 15%. We have now demonstrated that we were able to have 16.9 ratio at the end of last year, 16.5 ratio now. You can expect us to, of course, shoot for a similar result or higher result in the future. At this point we are not guiding specifically on that number. With your respect to the question of the share buyback, the meaningful above 15%. Here is the thing.
Look, we need to have gained experience with the FRTB framework. It is a very advanced framework. It is actually the best capital framework for an organization like ours. We now have about eight months of experience with this framework and calculating our capital ratios, and we can observe how the capital ratio behaves as a function of market movements, changes in the market overall, and also the volumes that we see in our underlying business.
Those are really the things that we are watching and want to be really comfortable with before the Board can consider announcing the actual share buyback. Clearly, as you've seen from the enhanced statement that we've made today, or the board made today, in over and above what we said at the beginning of the year, we are clearly getting more comfortable with the whole framework and the stability of the ratio and how it moves. I think this will be taken into account in the Board's decision at the beginning of 2027 to consider launching a share buyback. Hans, do you want to take the second one?
Sure. I'm not 100% sure whether I grasped the third question entirely correctly. With regards to the capital, we work obviously on a further optimized
No, it's not it. Sorry. I didn't make it clear. The third question wasn't regarding the capital, just in the whole, because you also said it in the questions and Mr. [Widler] said it now also that while there's much, still you achieved a lot. I was wondering if you could say a few words on what do you think are the most important things that are now still left to do. What is?
Thanks a lot. I assumed so. Thanks a lot for clarifying. In essence, it's really to deliver across the pillars that we have defined within our ROE strategy, specifically on the expand side. If you look at the AMCs, they have grown by 4%, right? Accordingly, we believe that the potential is obviously substantially higher. We clearly want to extend the capabilities and specifically also the distribution power in this regard. If you look at the index-based offering for quantitative investment strategies, you see that the revenue contribution from Asia is practically in existence as of now, as shown in the presentation separately.
We believe that this is also a key offering for the Asian market. Certainly, we can substantially leverage there. Looking at the LYNQS offering, you see that 1/3 of the product initiation is going through LYNQS, despite the fact that a further rollout obviously is envisaged in various other markets at the moment. The functionality to initiate trades through the platform is used in Switzerland, and in Hong Kong and Singapore. We can obviously much further leverage in this regard. Retail flow, we indicated to go live in Germany. The German market is 10 times as big as Switzerland. Certainly, we need to build up first a different reputation.
This is why we are not guiding a timeline in this regard, but the potential that we do believe to capture is substantial. With regards to the FTE side, I think we also try to give you some more color. We have reduced the relative distribution force compared to the total FTEs, and we clearly work now on changing, reversing the respective trends because we do believe that there should be ideally a front ratio of about 1/3 to a back ratio of 2/3 over time. We are not there, given the recent focus on the regulatory legacy matters. Does that give you some more color? I'm not sure, Christian, whether you want to add something.
Yes. No, thank you. Thank you so much.
The next question is from Reto Huber, Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Just one question. Just the fee income from long-term savings and retirement products, they continue to shrink. I was wondering, what are your plans with the business line that's driving that income? Whether we could expect some recovery one day.
Thank you, Reto. We are obviously fully committed to both the pension business, our respective partnerships, and we clearly have the ambition to grow that business further. We have communicated at year-end that one of our major partners in that business on the recent merger, for obvious reasons, their focus is still on the respective post-merger activities. That said, we are in close contact with the respective partners, as with all, and work closely on a relaunch of the respective additional new product offerings also in this regard.
Okay, basically an unchanged situation. Thank you.
That was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Dominik Ruggli for any closing remarks.
Maybe one last comment on the because you mentioned the pension savings situation as being unchanged. That, I would say, is not exactly correct because that merger has been completed and as it's typical during merger period and also quite for some time after, there are changes and organizations are obviously tied up with implementing those changes. We believe that In fact, we're confident that we can now pick up discussions in the course of the second half of the year again for intensifying the business and potential new product initiatives. We're actually looking at that quite positively, and we do think there has been a change, in the sense that the merger has been closed.
Okay.
Thank you, Christian. With that, we thank you all for your attention and the interesting discussion. We're looking forward to speaking to many of you directly in the next few days. Have a nice day.
Bye-bye.
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