Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Leonteq Full Year 2020 Results conference call. I'm Constantino, the Conference Call Operator. 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.
Good morning, everyone, welcome to the press conference call for Leonteq's Full Year 2020 Results. All presentation materials, as well as the annual report, can be found in the investor relations section of our website since this morning, 6:30 A.M. In the same section, we have also published a comparison of the analyst consensus summary versus our actual results. Here with me today are Chief Executive Officer, Lukas Ruflin, and Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Marco Amato. We will start the presentation with an overview of the highlights of 2020. We'll then discuss the financial performance of 2020, continued by an update on our business and strategic priorities, before closing the presentation with a summary and outlook. The presentation will last about 60 minutes, after which we are happy to take questions. We intend to close the conference call at 10:30 A.M.
It is now my pleasure to hand over to our Chief Executive Officer, Lukas Ruflin.
Thank you very much, Dominik. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, analysts, and media representatives. Before we start today's presentation, I would like to quickly look back at mid-2018. If you recall, at that time, we shared with you our plans regarding the journey we were embarking on as a company. A journey to overcome certain limitations we faced and to grow and transform our business. A transformation completed by a set of strategic priorities that we have diligently executed in the last few years on. In 2020, the results of these efforts resulted in major strategic progress, with our investments starting to bear fruit. Let me please start now on page four of the presentation by expanding on our progress.
2020 was a pivotal year in which we achieved significant progress against our strategy as promised three years ago, despite a global pandemic and unprecedented market turmoil in March and April this year. At the same time, Leonteq improved its profitability in the second half of 2020 after a challenging first half of the year impacted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We reported on this extensively when we presented to you the half-year numbers in July 2020. The second half of the year was particularly driven by a record fourth quarter, where we reported CHF 80 million in economic revenues. As a result, Leonteq's group net profit in the second half of the year improved to CHF 34.4 million, compared to CHF 5.5 million in the first half, and up 6% from the prior year period.
Our shareholders' equity also remains strong, with about CHF 648 million at the end of 2020. At the same time, we are also reporting to you today that our board of directors will propose a 50% increase in the distribution to shareholders at the upcoming annual general meeting, which will take place at the end of March this year, so a dividend per share of CHF 0.75. Looking at our strategic progress, I can confidently say today that strategically, 2020 was the best year in Leonteq's history. Let me now highlight some progress before going into more detail later in the presentation. SHIP is up and running with seven hedging providers connected to the platform. In addition to obviously Leonteq being a hedging provider for our clients are facing eight counterparties and contributing to 9% of the balance sheet light turnover we have reached in the second half of 2020.
We have signed cooperation agreements with four new white labeling partners and initiated two content and technology enhancing projects. Lastly, as part of our growth strategy to strengthen our presence in these regions, we have opened new sales offices in Milano and Dubai this year. Let's now move on to page five. 2020 has also shown how Leonteq can withstand one of the most severe capital market shocks and global pandemics in modern history, steering through the difficult periods of market stress, which, if you want, was both a stress scenario becoming reality, both from a financial market stress point of view, but obviously also from a technology point of view. We moved our staff very quickly into a local home office setup that obviously for a very active and expanding platform like ours, was a stress test, which I think we have withstood with remarkable resilience.
Throughout the period of this market stress, we had the strength of our client business becoming very clear. We were certainly helped by our capital position and the robust and effective infrastructure and business continuity management we had put in place before the onset of the crisis. Important, our platform has remained available to our employees, stakeholders, and particularly our clients, without any major faults during the entire period. It enabled our business to remain up and running, our employees to seamlessly transition to remote working arrangements, and our colleagues on the sales front facing clients to serve those clients at all times throughout the year. In this environment, and on the back of increased activity on the client side, we were able to report for the year 2020 a record fee income of CHF 335 million, up 26% from 2019.
Particularly pleased I am with the feedback we have received from our clients on our consistent service, both in the first and second half of the year. In particular, I had some very complimentary comments from major clients when it came to the very turbulent years and weeks of March and April, when at times we saw highly liquid markets being much less liquid, and when despite these external restrictions, Leonteq consistently and without breaks offered its clients fullest liquidity on all products traded through the platform. As a result, we have our clients available at all times, before i actively engage with any conversation of new business.
I'm also proud to see that on the back of those conversations in the dark days of 2020, we saw clients confidently engage in new business transactions, which obviously with hindsight benefit have turned very profitable in terms of performance record, helped by clients markets starting sometimes middle to late March onwards. We processed record levels of secondary market trades, client transactions, and life cycle events. We traded more than 2,500 client portfolios on our platform, LYNQS. We will come to that a bit later today. Moving on to page six. As I said before, 2020 was the best year ever in Leonteq's history when it came to strategic developments. We believe that this didn't just happen coincidentally.
What we think 2020 shows is that a focused execution of strategic priorities eventually pays off, and we see early signs of our execution, but also significant investments in new growth projects which we have embarked on since 2018 become reality. Take, for example, SHIP. We told you in 2018 that SHIP would be up and running in 2020, and that it was vital for our future because obviously it's reducing our hedging exposure on our own balance sheet, and thus making the business in many ways more scalable. 2020, soon forward, we believe we have delivered on the promise. Again, bear in mind that SHIP only went live in the middle of the year as a full functioning technology platform, and of course, we expect higher turnover and higher share of business going through SHIP in the years to come than in 2020.
We also told you in 2018 of our intentions to focus on our clients' digital experience. LYNQS and our AMC Gateway have made major progress in 2020, and as time goes by, we are increasingly seeing the share of client business executed through these digitalized platforms increase. We told you about our regional growth strategy, and on the back of this have opened new offices in Milan and Dubai to cover the Middle East in 2020. We told you that we were in discussions with potential new partners. Many of you asked repetitively when we would announce those. We told you that you should please bear with us, that it was taking time, but conversations were ongoing, and clearly 2020 has shown those conversations turning into signed agreements.
We are in the process of launching these four new white label projects, so we expect 2021 for all of them to see new product issuances. We are, of course, also in parallel conversations with other potential partners. We also started collaborations with BlackRock and with Google Cloud, which will help us further leverage on the ecosystem and digital platforms Leonteq is expanding on. We finally expanded on our product offering. We launched new investment theme trackers, where we cooperate with Morningstar and Derivative Partners, and these sort of content partnerships will certainly also continue going forward. All in all, the trend of focused execution that we have been diligently working on for the past three years, and that is starting to become visible will continue. We will continue to invest, which explains why our cost guidance for 2021 is increasing.
As we continue to invest, we obviously also expect over time for these investments to yield a return, which should then be visible both in the top line and ultimately bottom line of the business. I would like to pause for a second and thank all of the employees of Leonteq for the very focused execution. In particular, in 2020, when at some times there were other concerns on the mind of all of us than just business-related issues. I'm very pleased to see the strong commitment and strong support I'm seeing all our colleagues showing towards Leonteq, and that's another reason why I'm personally quite positive about the outlook of the business going forward. With that, I'd like to go on to page seven.
In the last 14 years since starting Leonteq in 2007 as a very focused expert of structured products, we have developed into more than just an expert of structured products. Namely, first, we are today a provider of investment solutions, and we offer one of the largest universe of structured products with over 2,000 underlyings that include major asset classes as well as fund derivatives, cryptocurrencies, systematic indices. The last three being notably strong growth areas where the firm expects to do significantly more business in the coming years. At the same time, our offering is very much a function of the big technology investments we have made throughout our 14 years. Those investments have enabled us to become a leading technology platform, which should support issuance for hundreds of products a day and of large amount of client transactions every day.
The provider of investment solutions on the back of a leading technology platform is clearly one pillar, but it's not the only one. As a second pillar, we are a service and technology provider for banks and insurance companies, and have by now successfully established a white labeling business model with state-of-the-art services in the areas of structured investment products as well as savings and retirement solutions. As we expect the pressure on both banks and insurance companies in terms of the macro environment, which is clearly now defined by low interest rates, if not negative interest rates in all major currencies to continue, we believe that the need for leading banks and insurance companies to rely on highly specialized and focused outsourcing partners when it comes to certain of their own client offerings will increase.
We believe as a specialized service and technology provider to those institutions, we are very well-positioned to play a role in this further, I would almost call it megatrend, we believe has been exacerbated by the macro environment, again, defined by low interest rates. Third, we are by now clearly a marketplace for structured products where it becomes almost irrelevant what Leonteq as an institution does in terms of product offering. Where the key point is that the Leonteq marketplace enables our clients on a one-stop-shop principle to lead part, if not all of the structured platform flow through this platform. We have built a multi-issue platform, has connected to 30 issuers, and are connecting those 30 issuers with over 1,000 clients. You add to that highly innovative, and as far as I know today, unique offering we have on the SHIP side.
You enable your clients to really be in a position to have basic execution on any zero bond embedded in a structured product. They can just choose the zero bond of their choice. Of course, through SHIP, they can then also marry that zero bond with a basic execution on the derivative element. All of these efforts are still in its infant state. We onboarded those 30 platform issuers in the last 12 months. SHIP, as I explained before, has only been up and running in the middle of 2020. Whilst at this stage you might still think that this is a small offering, it's probably the area where I personally see the highest growth to come, and we will certainly continue the significant investments we have made in the last four years into our marketplace and into SHIP and the related services that are offered.
I just named one potential avenue where we see a lot of potential but have not yet been able to grasp that potential, and that's obviously all the data relating to these transactions happening on the marketplace. As a fourth pillar, Leonteq is a savings and retirement solution platform. We have today already more than 50,000 policies serviced through that platform. Clearly, again, here we offer a service for our B2B clients, but ultimately for them to then offer those products to their end clients. It's a B2B2C service offering where we identify that there is a lot of further potential. In summary, these four areas are in many ways deeply interconnected, but at the same time, standalone four pillars on which we feel quite positive in terms of future potential. With that, I would like to transition now to our financial performance.
I hand over to our Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Marco Amato.
Thank you, Lukas. Good morning and warm welcome to all participants from my side. Let's move into the Leonteq financial performance for the full year 2020. This begins on page nine. I would like to start by highlighting to you today that Leonteq has fully recovered from the COVID-19 impact, which negatively impacted, in particular, our hedging results during the first half year 2020. The chart on the left-hand side of slide nine highlights that we are back on track in terms of delivering total operating income. You can see here that total operating income notably improved from the first half of 2020 to CHF 131 million. Our net profit, which you see on the right-hand side, is back in line with the track record built throughout 2018 and 2019.
After reporting CHF 5.5 million in bottom line in H1 2020, group net profit improved significantly to CHF 34 million, up 6% compared to the H2 2019 results. For the full year, group net profit totaled CHF 39.9 million, compared to CHF 62.7 million in 2019. Looking at the weekly revenue development on page 10, let me continue to provide you with a fully transparent illustration of the business development on a weekly basis. After a challenging first half of 2020, which we reported on six months ago, Leonteq had a subdued start to the second half of the year, with a slower-than-usual summer period extending well into September, as you can see from the graph. Our weekly performance further stabilized in October, client demand was lower than in the prior year period.
This was mainly on the back of investor uncertainty due to concerns about the second wave of COVID-19 and the tensions in the runoff to the U.S. elections. Following that, we saw a strong pickup in client demand from mid-November onwards until year-end, resulting in the best quarter results in Leonteq's history, with economic revenues of CHF 80 million, as mentioned already by Lukas. On the cost side on page 11, I'd like to note here that Leonteq significantly invested both in initiatives in 2020 as well as in hiring. Our staff grew from 508 to 519 FTEs year on year, yet our total operating expenses remained in line with our guidance at CHF 197.9 million for 2020. I'm also pleased to report the notable progress we have made on our nearshoring initiative in Lisbon, which is being implemented in a phased approach.
In phase I, which commenced in the first half of 2020, we established a service office set up, employing a handful of external IT development personnel as well as other shared service functions. We hired by now 20 employees in 2020 as part of phase I. The phase II consists of Leonteq setting up its own office and legal entity and hiring up to 200 designated roles along the entire value chain. We expect to open this new office in 2021 and complete phase II by the end of 2022. We expect to see enhanced cost efficiency through the optimization of our personnel expense cost structure from 2022 onwards. Let's turn now to page 12. On page 12, you will see the results of our investment solutions business line.
You can see that margins both for Leonteq and its platform partners remained elevated in the second half year of 2020. This is mainly due to the fact that following the onset of COVID-19 in the first half of the year, we took the decision to limit activities in the high turnover, low margin flow business, in particular with OTC options and leverage certificates. Furthermore, we saw that the overall pricing levels became less competitive following market turmoil in March, allowing us to price more conservatively our product and charge a slightly higher margin. These circumstances are also one of the key drivers behind the decrease in turnover in the platform partner business to CHF 14.8 billion in 2020, compared to a very strong prior year period performance of CHF 18.8 billion.
Looking at our own issued product, so the Leonteq product, we report platform assets reached a record of CHF 4.9 billion as of the end of year 2020, which is an increase of 20% compared to the end of 2019. We generated turnover of CHF 11.6 billion in 2020, which is up 1% from the prior year. This positive development is also in part a result of our investment-grade rating that we obtained in January 2019. Looking at our Insurance & Wealth Planning Solutions business line on page 13, you can see that the number of outstanding unit-linked products continues to increase. Even though somewhat slowly, it is a consistent increase with a 9% increase to almost 52,000 policies from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020.
The net fee income, which you see depicted on the right-hand side, was significantly impacted by the low long-term interest rate environment in 2020. Furthermore, as Leonteq depends on the external distribution channels of its insurance partners and insurance brokers, communication and meetings with potential end clients have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, also affecting our fee income development. As you can see, the net fee income in the second half of the year dropped significantly compared to the first half of 2020. This was also due to, and built on the back of the one-off revenues that we reported in the context of our 2019 and first half 2020 results, which reflect the effect of changes in the future service obligations. To put this into context, the 30-year Swiss franc swap traded negatively, with long-term interest rates consistently below zero throughout most of 2020.
This is the first time in history that this happened. The unprecedented market environment put high pressure on the product condition, competing with products not directly linked to market rate. We see this below zero trend to break in 2021. We remain confident that this will be beneficial for our IWPS offering in 2021 onwards. Let's now continue on page 14 with a look at Leonteq's capital base. Over the past years, Leonteq has built up a strong shareholder equity. Looking at the left chart, you can see that our shareholder equity decreased slightly from CHF 662 million -CHF 647 million at the end of 2020. This compares to a capital base of approximately CHF 400 million from two years ago. Since the beginning of 2020, Leonteq has been operating under a new regulatory framework for securities firms.
The new capital requirement of CHF 20 million was significantly exceeded as of the 31st of December 2020. Looking at the chart on the right, you see that we report a CHF 25.9 million decrease in our deferred fee income to CHF 75.9 million as of the end of the year 2020. This is on the back of a review of the estimate inherent in the revenue recognition model for fee income in the investment solution division to take account of the increasingly competitive market environment in recent years. We reported on this effect already in the first half year 2020. Overall, to conclude, we report a strong capital base, with defined as aggregate amounts of our shareholder equity and deferred fee income together and totaling CHF 723 million in 2020.
I would like to turn now to discuss how this normally drives for Leonteq capital management and also dividend policy on page 15. I'm pleased to report to you today that in line with Leonteq's conservative dividend policy, the Leonteq board of directors will propose a shareholder distribution of CHF 0.75 per share for the financial year 2020 with the annual general meeting, which will take place on the 31st of March 2021. This is a 50% increase from the CHF 0.50 per share distribution for 2019, and will be paid in equal amounts out of retained earnings and capital contribution reserves. Today, we are also providing transparency about our ambition to move to a progressive dividend policy. As a prerequisite, we're targeting for our capital base, which just for clarity's sake, includes also the deferred fee income, to reach the CHF 800 million area by the end of 2021.
This area is defined as a range of ±3% of the level indicated. Once the threshold is reached, we intend to transition to a progressive dividend policy and intend to propose a shareholder distribution of more than CHF 0.75 per share for financial year 2021. Thereafter, we aim to maintain a minimum capital base in the CHF 800 million area and foresee payout ratio of over 50% of net profit for the financial year 2022 and onwards. Before I conclude, I want to leave you with three takeaway messages. First, Leonteq is back on track financially, and we have recovered our profitability, putting it back in line with what we delivered with half year in the prior year and also 2018. Second, our cost remains well under control, and we're making good progress with our nearshoring initiatives, which will improve our cost efficiency from 2022 onwards.
Last but not least, we are proposing a 50% increase in shareholder distribution for 2020 and are providing transparency about our ambition to transition to a progressive dividend policy. With that, I hand back over to you, Lukas.
Thank you, Marco. Let's now take a look at our business and strategy update on page 17, please. As I presented to you in the beginning of this call, Leonteq has made significant achievements, both in terms of establishing a certain financial track record, notwithstanding, obviously, the COVID impact experienced in the first half year in 2020 and also visible there, but also in terms of our business model and comprehensive offering. We feel confident that our business model for structured products, coupled with attractive markets, which is structurally benefiting from a low interest rate environment, has positioned us well today to now deliver attractive and sustainable returns to our shareholders going forward. Let's look at page 18 and talk first about the attractive market we see.
Markets, and as you see on the left-hand side, we are active in, which is ultimately the global wealth market, has clearly shown a strong growth compounded year in and year out at roughly 12%. Likewise, The Market turnover for structured products in Switzerland has been growing 13% each year. We are taking this proxy. We are obviously active in other markets too, but the Swiss structured product market is both well-researched and published, and we use that data as a proxy, given that about a third of our business activities are in Switzerland. We are, and remain convinced that structured products should play an important part when it comes to considering asset allocation in a portfolio context for investors, and therefore, have used those wealth market growth numbers to illustrate the, I would say, macro picture in terms of the development.
What has fundamentally changed with the decrease of U.S. dollar interest rates in 2020 is the structural macro situation. All major current currencies showing low, respectively negative interest rates, which makes, obviously, the issues around investments in attractive and payoff structures, respectively, underlines increasingly difficult. We have seen similar developments in Japan starting much earlier than in Europe and the U.S. We have seen on the back of it, Japan becoming the world's largest market for structured investment products, a trend which we believe structurally will continue in Europe and in the U.S. as well. In this environment, we believe we are well-positioned with our expertise and our offering. Clearly, on the right-hand side of this chart, you see that when it comes to Switzerland, as reported by the SIX Swiss Exchange, we ranked overall third place, covering 9% of the market share.
When it comes to yield enhancement products, we have been consistent in the last 10 years, ranked number one, with a 32% market share. These are obviously data based on listed products at the SIX Swiss Exchange. There are also OTC products, non-listed products. You have to use those numbers with a certain caution because they are not entirely representing the market, but they give a good indication of our relative position. With that, I would like to go on to page 19. We have built, as I said at the beginning, over the years, out into a service and technology platform, have created a marketplace that connects and enables investors and providers of investment and retirement solutions. On the investor side, we have numerous different financial intermediaries in over 50 different markets across Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Latin America.
We work with more than 1,000 clients, which are financial intermediaries. They could be private, regional, or universal banks, independent asset managers, independent financial advisors, family offices, and other institutional investors. We do not service end clients. We bring those intermediaries together with providers of structured products and savings solutions. There's today, on the platform, 10 white labeling partners, four of them are in the process of onboarding. I referred to that before. Furthermore, we offer nowadays products from 20 third-party issuers, which includes Societe Generale. I name those two as we have created in 2020 to both of them, automated connectivity between our marketplace and their respective pricing platforms. That's important because it increases the velocity of decision-making at the end of our clients. As technology developments will continue, we believe the automated connection to the technology platform of these third-party issuers will obviously continue.
With Societe Generale and Barclays, we have two renowned market participants now connected, obviously providing their respective pricing to our client base on a daily basis. If you then add on top the Leonteq issuer, our historical business activity, we can confidently show to clients now the availability of 31 different providers on the platform. We think that's quite an attractive marketplace for any potential client to consider. As referred to SHIP before, we have now seven leading investment banks connected as hedging counter-parties. As I said also before, Leonteq, in addition, obviously always provides prices, investors and clients get the selection of eight prices when they go through the SHIP platform. We have added two content and technology enhancers, BlackRock and Google Cloud, works today together with three product partners locally in Switzerland.
There is the market, and Finanz und Wirtschaft, and we have also added Morningstar to the content provider universe. We will obviously continue adding additional content and technology enhancers in the coming years. Again, 2020 shows the beginning of a trend. It doesn't show at all the end of our missions. If investors and providers brought together on our technology platform brings us to the marketplace. Core application on the marketplace are the LYNQS platform, the SHIP platform, and the Omega platform, which I believe you have not heard from us. Often, Omega is our new proprietary savings and retirement platform, and I'm confident that we'll talk about that a little bit more in the future. We are clearly replicating this technology-enhancing idea we have executed on the investment solution side into our second business line, Insurance & Wealth Planning Solutions. Their technology platform is Omega.
Obviously, an internal development and obviously also an internal name we have given to it. We then move on to the next page, 20. What we are trying to show you here is the execution and achievements of our strategy in 2020. Again, and I apologize if I'm a bit repetitive, 2020, SHIP became fully operational. We have also enabled additional underlyings on SHIP. It's not just that SHIP became operational, but we have expanded the SHIP service universe, and that expansion will continue. I'll come to that in a second again.
The progress we have seen on SHIP has obviously also been evident in the increased share of the SHIP line turnover, which has on a year-on-year basis gone from 3% - 9%, so roughly tripled in terms of share, and we would expect that this share of market of SHIP internally will obviously continue. On LYNQS, we introduced new functionality throughout the year, including a new portfolio allocation feature for clients. We have now more than 1,500 users as being active LYNQS users and have rolled out LYNQS as an application. You can download that through App Store functionality in 20 different countries, which gives our clients access to LYNQS anytime, anywhere. I'd like to stress again, this LYNQS platform is not a service offering today to end clients. We don't service retail clients.
The 1,500 users has to be understood as individuals within our 1,000 client universe, so typically employees of the financial intermediaries I referred to before. In 2020, we signed new cooperation agreements with PostFinance, Basler Kantonalbank, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, and Rheinland-Pfalz Bank, a division of Südwestbank. Additionally, we launched projects to develop and market structured products on the BlackRock and iShares fund universe as underlying assets and started the collaboration with Google Cloud. Lastly, we have expanded our product offering by adding products on systematic indices and extended our underlying universe for actively managed certificates. We continue to improve the operational efficiency of our AMC Gateway. The technical platform, which allows our clients to seamlessly execute and transact on AMCs, and we have entirely redesigned the AMC client portal.
Again, efforts which explain the cost line related to the significant investments in the last years, of course, investments we will continue on the back of our belief that, for example, in particular on the AMC business line growth will continue, and there is a good position for Leonteq to have when it comes to that service offering to our clients. Finally, that's probably right now a bit of a hot topic, but it's something we are very consistently focused on in the last years on the belief that the trends relating to cryptocurrencies is only the beginning of a larger technology revolution happening. We have significantly expanded our efforts in offering tracker certificates on a larger range of cryptocurrencies, which includes today Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Litecoin, and Ripple. We are, as we speak, continuing offering our clients new payoffs.
We have been, I believe, the world's first who has offered about 10 days ago, an autocall strike product on Bitcoin. If you want an exotic payoff on an innovative new underlying, which as such has not existed in the market before. We will clearly continue offering our clients interesting products on the cryptocurrencies. You see just between December 2019 and December 2020, what I would call an exponential growth of about 500% in terms of outstanding volumes on our platform. We are obviously seeing this growth continuing into the first weeks of 2021. It might continue, it might also reduce in terms of investor appetite for a certain period.
The message I'd like to convey to you today is that our service offering and our focus on cryptocurrencies on AMC, on digitalized product offerings on SHIP, on the marketplace will continue no matter what the short-term trends in a given week or day might suggest. We have obviously also used 2020, I said that before, to launch new theme-related products where we have teamed up with Finanz und Wirtschaft, Morningstar, and the market. Our AMC business has significantly increased in size. That's also important in terms of fee income distribution we charge on AMCs, which are typically open-end certificates, an annual fixed fee on the total outstanding volume. We are very much expanding and diversify into an annuity-based fee business, which obviously is a nice addition to our investment solution business and our IWPS business, the latter then being much more annuity-based, fee related.
While I'm quite proud of these 2020 achievements when it comes to the strategy achievements, we obviously have large plans for 2021. With that, I'd like to go on to the next page, please. On page 21, you see our priorities and targets for 2021, again, centering around the same initiatives. SHIP, we will continue to add new payoffs and product features to the platform. We believe that will enable us to also see higher percentage of balance sheet light products being transacted through the platform. We will also use 2021 to extend our AMC offering and related product initiatives. For LYNQS, we plan to go live with our pricing module, which will replace our click and trade platform Constructor. Constructor was launched by us probably about 2013. By now, while it has been very successful, it's in many ways old technology.
LYNQS is in many way the technology of the future, and I'm very pleased to see that from a technology point of view, we concluded the biggest investments in 2020, can now really start rolling out the service offering according to clients. We will furthermore, as I said many times during this presentation, focus on AMC and integrate the AMC portal into LYNQS. We are making sure that our different digital efforts will not be eventually ending up at clients' desks through different applications, but all be wrapped up in one lead application. As we expand LYNQS with further functionalities, we will obviously also think of how we can integrate LYNQS into our white label partners in a fully white labeled manner.
Our platform partner business will hopefully continue to expand, as we will not only launch the first products in 2021 with the four partners announced during the year, but we will hopefully also be able to announce further cooperation agreements as time goes by. Last but not least, we will make sure that our product offering will continue. I've said it many times, AMC, we believe in those initiatives. We see a lot of traction with clients on the systematic indices universe we have built up over the last 12 months. We are talking to clients about quantitative investment strategies and, of course, about fund derivatives and in the last few weeks, in particular, about cryptocurrencies. We have not surprisingly been unaffected by the very big heads-up the world is facing when it comes to sustainable initiatives.
We want to not just be part of these developments, but to make sure that we can become, for our stakeholders, including shareholders, as one of the key companies to consider when it comes to companies executing on sustainability efforts. There is a lot of words around that effort, and at this stage, we'd probably be a little bit short on words. I think when it comes to sustainability, companies have to be measured by actions. At this stage, we'd like to communicate to you all that we will use 2021 to fundamentally redefine Leonteq from a sustainability point of view, to make sure that when it comes to the relevant ESG criteria, we meet any relevant threshold to the extent possible.
We would then turn to words when we can demonstrate to you what we have done and would consequently also intend to publish for the first time in our history, a sustainability report next year together with the annual report. On to page 23, summary and outlook. Leonteq is on track financially. It doesn't come as a surprise for Marco and myself. We have told you in the first half year that we were and still are as unhappy as you have been about the first half year results. We clearly told you the reasons why the results were what they were. We'd like to stress that despite everything, we still showed profitable numbers. We told you that these were one-off effects. We understand that some of you questioned whether it was one-off effects.
I responded to that you shouldn't listen to words I convey to you, but to actions. I think the action we are seeing in the second half speaks for itself, and we hope that the actions you will see in the coming half will also speak for themselves. We are back on track financially and are reiterating what we said to you middle of the year. 2020 first half was driven by one-off effects. I've never seen such one-off effects materialize in the first 13 years of Leonteq's history, and I certainly haven't seen them materialize in the second half, and I absolutely do not expect them to materialize in 2021.
Having said so, of course, I can't predict future and of course, if they were to materialize, we would face those challenges with a very strong balance sheet and a business model which will be able to withstand such shocks as we have clearly proven in the first half. On the back of our improved performance, particularly on the back of a record quarter in Q4, we have been able to show again normalized profitability. Together with the clear communication about our total capital targets, we believe we are able to achieve by the end of this year of area CHF 800 million. We will maintain for now a conservative dividend policy, which we are doing by increasing, nevertheless, our dividend payouts ratio by 50% to CHF 0.75 a share. That, as Marco laid out, conservative dividend policy will eventually transition into a progressive dividend policy.
Before closing, I would like to briefly also address today's announcements when it comes to Jochen Kühn and him stepping down from his role as member of Leonteq's executive committee and head of IWPS, our second business line. Jochen joined Leonteq in 2017 to lead and further develop Leonteq's insurance platform. We are all, in particular, I'm very grateful to Jochen for his contributions in building out Leonteq's business in this area over the last four years. I think together with the team, he has laid a strong foundation, and I look forward, not just managing myself the unit going forward, but together with the team, lead that unit into some concrete execution steps on which I hope we will be able to communicate in the course of the foreseeable future. With that, the floor is open for questions. Back to you, Dominik.
Thank you, Lukas. Also thank you, Marco, for the presentation. Happy to start the Q&A session now.
The first question is on the line of Regli Daniel with Octavian. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning, thanks for the presentation and also congratulations from my side to, on one hand, the clarity you provided on the capital targets and also for your H2 results. Nonetheless, I have a couple of questions. I have three specifics. Four, I will ask them one by one, if it's okay for you. Then I would like to start with a question on this management action. You did obviously limit turnover on the low margin and high volume business. It actually came as a surprise to me, and my question there is a bit, what has triggered this? Was this a capital consideration, or was it a consideration with regard to trading hedging results, firstly? Secondly, is this still in place that you're limiting this kind of turnover, so what should we expect for H1 2021?
Shall we answer, and then you ask the next question? Do you want to ask all four questions, and we answer at the end?
I thought it's better if you answer directly, and then I continue with the next questions.
No problem. As long as you then don't come up with additional questions. I'm fine with that. First of all, good morning, Daniel, and thank you for your kind words. Appreciate it. That you also understand, we are facing different stakeholders, and the key and core stakeholder which must be on our mind every single day are our clients. It would be a bit strange if I went out together with Marco mid of the year and just to then say we are going to limit turnover on low margin, high turnover volumes, because it's obviously affecting some of our clients we are daily contact with.
That sort of management discretion we will keep and want to keep going forward, so I can also not give you any reasonable predictions of what we do, because that's our daily job of assessing how aggressive we want to be with regard to certain flow. The high turnover, low margin flow is not a bad flow at all to us. It also brings some diversification benefits to our other flow. Of course, it is a bit a function of the overall market reality and also bit a function of our ability to then unload that flow to other market participants. What we have seen following the COVID-related events was a general dry up in almost all sort of markets, and it took them time for one market thus to be able to become more liquid again. Capital was never a consideration at all on our side.
I think enough of this for ourselves. Capital is not limiting us. What was here more a consideration when we made those decisions was the general outlook. It wasn't so clear to at least myself that the normalization we are seeing happening in the last few months would happen as it did. Clearly, it was helped by vaccine and the good news around that. Again, we are not scientists, and we are not trying to predict markets. We are trying to manage Leonteq. In the context of potentially additional COVID-related crises, in the context of potentially additionally negative hedging-related effects, particularly when it comes to liquidity of available markets, willingness of counterparties to take on such flow, it was the prudent thing to be a little bit less, how shall I put it, forthcoming when it came to this flow.
As time goes by, that's very much a discussion by counterparty. You can and should obviously expect that we will again be more flexible when it comes to that flow. The effect will be a decrease in margin. There'll be an increase in turnover. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to now just guide you for the first half. I think as a general trend, you should expect that our margins will come down. That's something we already told you in the first half. As a general trend, you can certainly also expect that the turnover will normalize in terms of the headline figure.
Okay. What is the normalized turnover numbers you have in mind? What should we look at if you talk about normalized turnover? Is it H1 2019 or H2 2019 rounds?
Well, I would say normalized is a bit the trajectory we saw and we see if you take out the whole COVID event.
Okay. The second question, you already started on discussing margins. Obviously, these two things are offsetting each other a bit. What would be the adjusted margin would you have in a normalized environment in H2? What is your expected margin for 2021? I understand that you cannot give a clear guidance, but just give us an indication where margins could land or respectively, what was your exit margin of 2020, if you want.
I think, Daniel, as highlighted also, I think as part of the presentation, we would have expected a margin for 2020 which would be below the 100 basis points that we reported now if we would have not taken that decision for especially after the COVID impact. Definitely something around roughly 100 basis points and 118. For the future, I think as highlighted by Lukas, we expect margins to still drop further, but based on different aspects which we can't influence, in particular also the volatility and also the market development. It's very difficult to predict margins going forward. I would say, yes, they will probably still further drop, but it's very difficult to give you a clear guidance for the future. Otherwise, we would have certainly done so.
Okay. Then maybe the third question is regarding the dividend policy. Again, my compliments to provide clarity today. You were talking about a payout ratio of more than at least 50% after you have achieved your capital target, which does not seem as aggressive as it sounded one year ago. Can you maybe give me some further detail what kind of payout ratio you have in mind, let's say, for a normal year after you have achieved your capital target?
It's a good question, and it's probably the only question where I can rightfully say, so it's a decision the board takes, and it's not a decision the Chief Executive Officer should try to second-guess ahead of time. I think what is clear, Daniel, is that the statement about 50% means about 50%. We also very much refer here to a dividend policy, and we do not refer per se to shareholder return policy. As you have seen with some other companies, you can obviously do other things than just pay dividends, such as, for example, share buybacks, to be specific. Then, of course, I think also at Leonteq, and I said that I think in an interview a year ago when we started our conservative dividend policy, we want to have some continuity in the dividend payment.
It would not be, for example, very wise, I believe, to just link it to a net profit line and then make the dividend line itself to some extent a bit volatile. The inherent message here is that, A, Leonteq is very well capitalized. B, we will very soon, assuming our risk profile does not change, which obviously we are assuming, be in a position where we don't need to further increase our total capital base. C, the combination of all of that will allow us to hopefully turn to a quite a attractive return on shareholder approach. Again, it is kind of inappropriate now to be too specific on such a number, which anyway the board will decide when time comes, taking into account all sort of considerations you can rightfully assume the board to consider before making a proposal to shareholders.
Okay. Thanks for that. My last question is on the cost line. Obviously, we have seen cost inflation of about 5% annually over the last year, and now we see another 5% cost inflation for 2021. Is this kind of what we should factor into our models going forward, or we at one point expect this cost inflation to slow down?
Thanks, Daniel. I'll take that question. I think we've seen over the last few years, the investments that we have done have been quite significant, and I think they will also pay out in terms of top line development. We have also indicated for 2021, yes, you would have to assume that costs will still increase. We have, at the same time, also recognized that this trend, we need to do something about it, and that's why we launched the nearshoring initiative in Portugal and Lisbon specifically to also address this one concern. I think we're progressing pretty well, and also today as part of the presentation, we highlight that you would expect.
They're continuously to come in, starting 2022 to also reflect this effect that we do on the personal expense side. I think my answer in essence is for 2021, yes, hopefully starting 2022 onwards, we will obviously see the effects of the Lisbon nearshoring initiatives to kick in on our cost line.
Okay, thanks a lot.
The next question is from the line of Andreas Brun with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you. A look at the question on SHIP. You said SHIP makes the business more scalable. Could you split the 9% in kind of real SHIP and then back-to-back hedging and then other contributions? Second one on SHIP, you said that you see the highest growth to come from SHIP going forward. Is it kind of incorrect to think that one should see a steeper start at the beginning of the launch of such a platform and not a rather linear and then low growth rate? Thanks.
Thank you, Andreas. Of course, we know the breakdown to your first question, there is a reason we don't show the breakdown, and that has nothing to do with transparency to you. It has to do with us being agnostic to what ultimate flow becomes balance sheet light. The KPI we have given to the entire team, which has consolidated all the efforts, is the balance sheet light turnover. The bigger share of that turnover is SHIP. I hope you understand that we don't want to go into the specific sub-disclosure because it's really relevant as far as we are concerned. What counts is that the client does a transaction which is not impacting the balance sheet of Leonteq.
We obviously also having as a side comment now, 20 partners on the third-party issuance want to be able to also have season flow with these partners, and they would by nature not have their products going through SHIP. A third-party issuer is offering his balance sheet together with his derivative element. Therefore, it is quite critical for us that we look at all the subsections of the balance sheet light turnover being successful. I hope I don't just see our team deliver SHIP turnover increase, but also the turnover increase on products by third-party issuers, et cetera. On the growth question, it is probably at the beginning slow and linear and hopefully over time accelerating. It's not, as you put it, the other way around. I would expect it more to be a stochastic experience than the other way around.
In all fairness, we are only at the beginning, and maybe at the end, I tell you, "Look, it has been linear." Hopefully, it will not be flat or no growth anymore. Why is that? Simply because obviously SHIP on day one is not what SHIP will be two years later. We are continuously expanding the underlying universe of products which can be shipped. We are also adding, as we have done in the last few months, additional hedging partners. As we told you, that will eventually be limited because we want all of the existing hedging partners to have a good experience in terms of business flow. As the platform expands, as the flexibility expands, as we are also better able to understand restrictions clients might have, and as we are addressing those, I would expect volume to increase.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Michael Schulz with JMS Investment AG. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, gentlemen. I have a question regarding the capital allocation and the capital management on your slide 14 and 15. The base for your capital management is obviously the target of CHF 800 million that you want to reach. That is a combination of your shareholders' equity and the deferred fees. You start from CHF 723, if I understand that correctly, which gives you a gap of CHF 77 million to reach a target of CHF 800. If we add back the dividend, roughly CHF 10 million, you're at CHF 87 million, a gap of CHF 87 million to breach in 2021. In 2020, you had two major negative items, this allocation to OCI and the negative deferred fee income, which kind of reduced the impact from the net profit contribution.
In 2021, will these two items be positive, or will they be neutral, at least, in order to get to the CHF 800 million? CHF 87 million as a gap to the CHF 800 million is quite a number.
Oh, yes. It's just your comment on that. Thank you very much for the question. Good morning. It's a very good question. I let our Chief Financial Officer answer it. Nevertheless, I'd like to point out to you the footnote two of page 15, which shows that we define area as a range of ±3%. Your CHF 800 million is still off the range. Of course, if you deduct the CHF 24 million, the number calculation you have just done on the phone, that would be adjusted by that number. With regard to the specifics of your question, Marco.
Thank you. Actually, it's a very good question. The negative impact on the income that we have seen in 2020 was on the back of estimates that we changed from an accounting perspective. As of today, I would not expect such changes to happen in 2021. We do that on a regular basis. We do the assessment and see if we have the right assumptions underlying or authorized judgments underlying our estimates. That is something I would not expect to change in 2021. That one, you can expect deferred fee income might change depending on the production of our fee income. It might be slightly higher, slightly lower, but that would not be a significant change as we had it in 2020. On the OCI, you have seen that, you see that also from our tables and changes of our net equity.
There has been a quite significant impact in 2020 from the movement of the U.S dollar against the Swiss franc. As you know, we keep a quite significant position of our equity also in U.S dollar. This has negatively impacted our OCI, and that's obviously something which is very difficult to predict, depending on the movement of the U.S dollar. You might still have a movement there as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right.
Next question is from the line of Mateusz Dykacz with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. I have three questions, please. Firstly, on your comments regarding a good start into 2021. Could you clarify a little bit what exactly do you mean by that? Is this relative to a record Q4 or relative to a more of a normalized, on basis in terms of income? Secondly, the CHF 800 million targeted capital base. Could you perhaps discuss what would make actually this number change? What are the sensitivities here? In which scenarios would you require, let's say, a substantially larger capital base than this CHF 800 million? Thirdly, if you could just talk a little bit more about the opportunities the Omega platform might have in the future, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mateusz. Good morning to you. Just, I missed, unfortunately, the first part of your first question. Were you asking about the start into 2021?
Yes. Actually, I was asking about a bit more color on the start into 2021. Is this relative to the good start, is that relative to Q4 2020, or is that relative to Q1 last year or a more normalized quarter? Just if you could help us understand.
A good question. I was afraid last night when I drove home that someone would ask me that question. Look, I think the simple answer is it's a good start, full stop. Of course, as any other business, we have certain cyclicality, so it would be wrong for us to benchmark a January against a December, for example. If I just very broadly answer, I've seen this business now perform for 14 years, and I've seen 14 starts and 12 years, 14 years, and compared to these 14 starts, it's a good start. That's probably all I can say. That okay?
Yeah, that's okay.
Now, on the target, the capital base, I can answer that very simply, and it's kind of self-explanatory. We don't expect that the CHF 800 million number is changing. Of course, we can't, because of this guidance now, take away any strategic flexibility Leonteq could or would have. I guess on the positive side is, if our balance sheet light turnover goes to an incredibly high number, then we would probably say, "Okay, CHF 800 is just not a relevant number, and it should be less." Now, you will then ask, "Okay, what's happening on the negative side?" It's difficult to predict that because I don't see us strategically undertaking anything which could change that. To take an example, and that's really not the message that we are considering anything in that direction.
Of course, if you all of a sudden were to do a big acquisition and had a lot of goodwill on the books, you would also have to look at your capital base differently. You know, Mateusz, we do not carry goodwill on the books. To date, the numbers we report are very much cash-like equivalents on our balance sheet. Of course, if strategically in three years the board was to decide such a step, then you would also want to revise the capital outlook. That's really what this footnote tries to cover, i.e., this is a clear guidance, but of course, strategically speaking, Leonteq keeps flexibility to consider further developments as it considers appropriate. Have I answered your question?
Absolutely. Yes, that was helpful.
Very good. Then on Omega. Omega, I think is a very promising technology development. The IWPS team under Jochen has successfully embarked on the platform is standing. I think the potential is very large, but the potential is absolutely reliant on us onboarding B2B2C partners, as we are not going after the end clients ourselves. The potential is such that we could, in a highly, fully scalable way, offer many more policies than we have today on the platform. It's reliant, as I said, on us onboarding new partners. If you allow, I'll be more specific, and I hope I will be able to be more specific if and when we would make such announcements. Should we fail to make such announcements, then we have a great technology, but scalability needs to be deployed for it to have any meaning.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Reto Huber with Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question, and also congratulations from my side on your robust results as well as on the strategic progress you have made over the past year. I'll take you two questions. One of them relates to your margin again. I mean, you have demonstrated that you can manage your margins. With third-party products increasing as a share of your turnover, how should we think of investment solutions margins or margin going forward? That's the first one. The second question relates to capital requirements. I wonder, how likely do you see it that with the new, maybe less Anglo-Saxon theme now ahead, the regulatory environment could reverse back to the disadvantage of Leonteq business model with higher and stricter capital requirements?
Okay, thanks for the question. I think just to make sure on the first question, because I think we already talked about margin and margin outlook and how we could see the margin development in the future. Did you have a specific question on the partner margin development?
Yeah. I wonder what's going to be the impact of the third-party products that you are trading over your platform, what impact that will have, maybe longer term, after 2021, on your margin.
I don't think it will have a significant impact. If any, I think it would contribute same outlook as we anticipated before, that the margin would slightly increase over time, and the third-party products would also contribute a bit. I think it won't be a significant part, as we still have most of our turnover generated with basically our partnerships or corporations that we have in place.
Okay. Interesting. Thank you.
I take on the second question, and you will appreciate that Leonteq is in no position, and there's also no insight in any sense that our many regulators around the world might have when it comes to regulations. Certainly that applies with regard to the specifics of your question. What I can generally say is that the change in law, which was a change defined by the legislature in Switzerland, and then, of course, reflected by subsequent ordinances by FINMA, but the starting point is the law, is aligning the Swiss regulatory regime when it comes to security deals without any client account customized with such security deals to international law.
If you look at security deals in the U.S., in Japan, to take two markets where you have a lot of such market participants, then the Swiss environment has aligned itself to those legislations and also regulatory regimes, and not the way around. That is the first observation I can make. I personally would therefore believe that there is some stability in that law provisions. Again, that's an opinion and not at all an educated view. The second point I'd like to make is that the capital regime and requirement to us is CHF 20 million. With the CHF 800 million guidance in terms of capital base, we are significantly exceeding that by any metric you'd like to apply.
We were regulated under the old regime until the end of 2019 and had a Core Equity Tier 1 ratio without any high-risk capital instruments in the balance sheet of well over 20%. Of course, should there be such a change, i.e., you go to extreme, we are regulated as we were regulated before again, we would expect that we would, subject to a customary transition phase, again, be absolutely capable of complying with any such regime. It also has to be said that SHIP originally was designed as a project to take care of the capital burden that additional growth has on our business, and we are obviously continuing to expand on SHIP. If anything, I think in the future, we would actually be better positioned to absorb such change than before.
All right. Okay. Thank you.
Very good. Thank you all for your questions. We have no further questions on this call. With that, I'd like to thank everybody for their attention and participation, and we wish you all a good day. Goodbye.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.