Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Swissquote full year results 2025 conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. In the interest of time, please limit your questions to a maximum of two and then re-enter the queue. This shall apply to questions asked by phone and to written questions. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing by the relevant field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Marc Bürki, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you and very good morning here at our annual 2025 results presentation here from our headquarters in Gland. We have our CFO, Yvan Cardenas, and myself, Marc Bürki, and we will guide you through the presentation that you may follow here live. It's quite an extensive presentation, so we'll try to go swiftly through the various slides. Of course, at the end, we'll be open for discussions. Also after the press conference, please don't hesitate to call us if you have any questions. Let's start with our full year 2025 results. 2025 was an amazing year for Swissquote, the best in our history, that follows another best in our history in 2024.
This company is growing at a very strong rate in an environment that is influenced by reducing interest rates, zero on the Swiss francs, which makes the results in 2025 even more amazing. In a nutshell, what happened in 2025? We realized CHF 723.3 million of revenues. This, of course, is the best results ever. We realized a pre-tax profit of CHF 420.2 million. Also our best results to date. We had CHF 8.5 billion of net new monies accumulated in 2025. This also is our best result ever. We added 506,000 new accounts, which of course is also our best results in our history.
Now, these 500,000 new clients needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, since this incorporates the full acquisition of Yuh and therefore all the clients, the 400,000 clients by the end of 2025 we had in our neobank. On the headcounts, we added 60 additional staff in our technology stack. More on that in a few slides. The net revenue of CHF 723.3 million you see here, distribution in our revenue segments and also a distribution over time.
You see how steady the revenue is growing over the last six years from 2019 with CHF 230 million at that time to more than CHF 720 million in 2025. You also see a good distribution in our revenue segments. There is no revenue segment exceeding 30%. That's a very sound and very solid distribution and also a good base for our growth over the next years. The net new money is the figure we are most proud of because this proves that we do not only acquire new clients, but they're also using our bank and our financial system. We had a very strong money inflow in 2025.
This is purely organic to be mentioned. We had similar numbers in the past, but usually it was with external growth, but this is not the case here in 2025. This really is purely organic, and you see that it's a good distribution, the from the money between our two hotspots, which is Switzerland and Europe, with respectively CHF 4.7 billion and CHF 3.3 billion of net new monies. Then we have the Middle East Asia with CHF 400 million, and then a little bit smaller number for the rest of the world. On the number of accounts, we crossed the 1 million accounts threshold in 2025, also for the first time ever with the help of the full acquisition of Yuh.
You remember that Yuh was a joint venture between PostFinance and Swissquote. We owned respectively 50% of that joint venture. Mid-year 2025, we came to an agreement with PostFinance, and we acquired the remaining 50%, which also created a one-off in our profit of CHF 50 million. We're coming to that point a little bit later. But of course, it also generated this additional clients in our total number of clients. You see here on the right side of the charts the distribution between traditional Swissquote clients in orange, and then in blue, the new clients. All together, we now have 1.15 million clients.
A strong growth here over the year. Another number to mention is the average assets per account. This has always been something very strong at Swissquote compared to other online bank or online brokers. The average assets per client is higher than 100,000, here at CHF 112,000 . You see really the difference between our neobank, where the average assets per account is much smaller, which is absolutely logical and expected here at CHF 9,150 .
This is really the idea is that we have a neobank that we use to pay, save, and invest, and it's also an entry point to our other services when the client is getting more wealthy and more mature. We are able to serve a very large range of service for a very large range of clients. Client assets are at CHF 88.7 billion. This also is our best results ever. It has been triggered by good markets in 2025, but of course also by this increase of CHF 8.5 billion. You see that the margin on assets is quite stable. We had in our forecast, we do have boundaries between 85 basis points and 95 basis points.
Here with 88, I think we are exactly within our boundaries. This is important for us because this shows that we do not only collect assets, but the assets are then also transformed into revenue for our bank. The trade invest bank, this is for Swissquote, this is what we stand for. We offer services for our clients to e-trading, so to buy and sell financial securities. We're also a bank where you can invest for the longer term your assets. Of course, since a few years now, we have started a transformation. We want to become the prime bank relations with our clients. We had success in that over the past year.
This also explains why, the net new monies has been so strong in 2025. From a pure growth here, the clients assets grew from 2024 to 2025 by 16%, which also is a very good number for Swissquote. If you look at the customer profile, it's interesting to note that Switzerland is really our key market. 56% of our revenue is generated with clients domiciled in Switzerland. You see here also that the growing importance of Europe with 19%. On the right side, if you look at the revenue by customer type.
This also is a figure that is quite stable over time. We are a retail bank. The B2C represents 73%, but we now have a decent almost 1/3 of revenue that comes from B2B2C and B2B clients. The net revenue by asset class on the left side is a chart we're very proud of. It shows that we have a good distribution in revenue by asset class. This is very important because we of course are exposed to volatility and if there is no volatility in an asset class, then of course our clients do trade less.
The fact that we are so diversified means also there is also always a segment that is more active and where the volatility is different. To give you an example, currently, of course, the trading in commodities and precious metal is very high, and there, of course, we have a very good offering. Also interesting to note that the Structured Products and derivatives represents now 5% of our revenue segment, and this is the highest number ever. Our turnover at SIX increased from 2% to 3.8%. Now we are the sixth-largest bank to trade Structured Products and derivatives, according to statistics from SIX. We were nowhere two years ago, and now we are almost in the top 10.
We are in the top 10 of all the banks in Switzerland. On the net revenues by nature, this is also a very important figure for us. We aim to have balanced revenues by nature, so it's not only transaction-based that represents 53%, but the non-transaction-based revenue segment is about half, 47%. This is mainly interest from Custody Fees, management fees or Securities Lending revenues, for example, would apply to this segment. It's very important to have a balanced revenue stream there as it guarantees and secures revenue for 2026 and the years to come. The headcount did grow in 2025 by 19% compared to 2024.
Now, it has to be noted that about 1/3 of that, or 25% of that growth is coming from the full integration of Yuh. So the Yuh clients were not counted previously in our headcount and the 62 full-time equivalent we now have through the acquisition of Yuh is of course participating to the increase. Now, if you have a more precise look, where does the increase in staff mainly come from? It's mainly technology-driven. So we hired 16% additional staff for our tech staff, tech stack and tech team.
We now have out of the 1,500 staff, 1,450 staff, about 500 staff are in the technology team, and you see the distribution here. This is no surprise. We are coming from the tech sector. We are a bank that believes in technology and with all the AI revolution coming, we of course want to benefit from that changes, and we think that we have a very good system in place to be the one bank in Switzerland that can profit the most from these massive changes that will influence the bank of the future. We are very well placed for that.
The other growth segment here, foreign offices, now represents 14% of our total staff. There also we had a strong increase. This is driven by the growth we experienced mainly in Europe, where we had quite an increase in number of staff. This is a tribute to the success of our bank in Luxembourg, but also the other part of the world, mainly the Middle East and Asia, are growing at a strong rate. This explains a little bit our growth of headcount in 2025. Now, the profitability has been incredibly solid.
If we start from the CHF 88.7 billion of client assets, we generate a margin of 88 basis points to this 720, and this generated the CHF 723 million of revenue. Out of the CHF 88.7 billion, 51%, 50 basis points or 51 basis points, transformed directly into pre-tax profit. CHF 420 million of pre-tax profit in 2025. Again, here, there is a CHF 50 million of one-off due to the acquisition of Yuh. This also obviously pushed the pre-tax profit margin to 58.1%. Otherwise, the pre-tax profit margin would have been closer to 51%, which was in line with our expectation for 2025.
Here also, you see over the last six years the very strong growth in pre-tax and net profit over the years. Now speaking about Yuh. The growth story of Yuh has been amazing. We have had a growth in number of clients of 40% from 2024 to 2025. That's more than 100,000 new clients. We expect to grow at the same rate in 2026. We expect to have 500,000 clients by the end of the year. As Yuh has become the number one regulated online or neobank in Switzerland, and the growth has been absolutely amazing.
The customer profile is different from the one of Swissquote, and this was the aim and the objective of us creating this neobank. You see it's we have more Gen Z and millennials in our customer base. That represents more almost 70% of our client base, and to be compared with probably less than 50% at Swissquote. The distribution by gender is also more positive than the one of our Swissquote clients category, since 30% represents our female clients and Yuh, and that also is one of the objectives we had with Yuh. The clients assets are growing.
We almost added CHF 1 billion net new monies in 2025, and total assets under custody are now at CHF 3.7 billion for 2025. This also compares favorably with other neobanks. We are among the neobanks, we are the clients with the wealthiest clients. If you compare us with other neobanks in the market, you will see that hardly anyone has an average client asset close to CHF 10,000. It's a very stable number here, around CHF 10,000, and we also see that in the new clients we onboard, on average, they are bringing CHF 10,000.
If we grow by 100,000 new clients in 2026, we also expect to have CHF 1 billion additional assets that would then bring the total assets to something close to CHF 5 billion by the end of 2026. The one element we are very proud of, I think it's currently being rolled out. We have created an AI agent embedded into our application. We call it Yuhlia. It's a very nice feature. It handles routine customer requests. You can ask complex questions. Or simple questions. You, for instance, can ask how many dividend payments you have received in our investments in Yuh.
You can ask how many fast food expenses you had with your credit card. You can ask questions about a specific stock. You can ask questions about your bank account. This is a better version that we are rolling out, and it's built in-house, using of course available large language models in the market, more than one actually. We think that these type of developments are a little bit a window into the future of how the bank applications will change. Just a few words about AI. AI, we don't think that AI will change the financial products as such.
It will, however, change the way our clients consume financial products, and it also will change the way banks are organized. We expect strong efficiency gains by using AI all across the board in a company such as Swissquote. The current headcount here, there is no tech team at Yuh. Obviously, it's mainly customer care, operations, product and marketing. It's because the bank account is actually run by Swissquote, where we have the bank license. All the banking services and also the tech developments are made in-house at Swissquote. Basically Yuh is a marketing organization.
By the way, we are relocating our headquarters of Yuh, which currently is in Gland. We are relocating our headquarters to Zurich at a brand-new location. This simply because the majority of our Yuh clients are in the Swiss-German part of Switzerland, and with a strong concentration in Zurich. It makes absolutely sense to put our headquarters where our clients are. I've spoken already a little bit about the new ecosystem we have with our two brands and two platforms. If on the scale here from retail to high net worth, we are dealing from very retail clients to mass affluent, that is now our very large segment. We start with Yuh, or one can start with Yuh.
As of 14 year-old already, you can have an account with Yuh. On average, people are 40 years old. On the other side, when you're getting wealthier and a little bit older, and have more complex financial needs, then you can use our full bank Swissquote. You see here on the banking services side, on the other scale, from brokerage only to full-fledged banking services, we are somewhere in the middle. We are not a universal bank yet, and we don't think that we should become a universal bank.
However, we offer many bank services and our clients can very well live with having Swissquote as his prime bank relation, and that's a little bit the aim of our strategic mission at Swissquote. The customer journey is also interesting because we can get the clients in a very young age. They start with Yuh. The digital natives, it's a good entry point for them. It's very attractive, very easy to use. While you grow with the ecosystem and while your financial needs expands, you may use the more complex services of Swissquote. Of course, between the two platforms, you have cross-selling facilities.
Many of our clients are using both actually. Me, for example, I have an e-trading account at Swissquote, of course, but also I'm strong user of our neobank application. Now, looking at the balance sheet, CHF 16.1 billion of assets, total assets at the end of 2025. This is a growth of 21%. We added almost CHF 3 billion of assets in our balance sheet at CHF 16.1. We're not far away from becoming a category 3 bank. We're not there yet. We're still a category 4 bank, but we're getting ready. It should happen at the rate we're growing, it should happen in 2026. The threshold there is CHF 17 billion.
These of course are points we've been discussed with with FINMA, and we're getting prepared for that change. Being a category 3 bank is of course a tribute to our growth. We're becoming one of the largest bank in Switzerland. But of course, this comes with strong responsibilities and also more investments in staff and in our organization. This has been anticipated. We are preparing that step since more than a year already, and we are from a organization standpoint now, we are ready to become a cat 3 bank. Now why does our balance sheet grow? It's mainly due to customer deposits.
Here on the liabilities and total liability side, you see that the growth in Swiss francs has been massive, from CHF 5.5 billion to CHF 7.1 billion. We had the same growth in other currencies, which here is a little bit misleading from the fact that we are reporting in Swiss francs, and you know what happens to the euro and U.S. dollar compared to the Swiss franc. We had growth in all our main currency segments, but of course, reporting it in Switzerland, you may see a drop here, which is explained by that. What are we doing with the cash of our clients?
Well, a big part is simply deposits with central banks here, CHF 4.8 billion. We have CHF 660 million in treasury bills and other bills, and the CHF 2.5 billion are deposited with other banks. We also have a strong investment securities portfolio that grew by 63% from CHF 3 billion to CHF 4.8 billion. We also increased our Lombard loans in 2025 from CHF 1.1 billion to CHF 1.7 billion. This is a strong growth of almost 50%. This also shows that our clients are active traders. They want to use the system.
They think that 2025 will have interesting opportunities, and they ask leverage on their deposits with us to be able to benefit from that increased volatility. It's good news for us on this CHF 1.7 billion, because that generates, as you will see later in the slides, decent revenues there. That's it here for these slides. Have a look at the various ratios here. 6.7% for the leverage ratios, high above the minimum of 3%. Our liquidity ratio, very solid as well, 339%.
The other ratios are also well within the criteria, 226% for the funding ratio and 1.4% for the interest rate risk, well above the minimum and well below the maximum of 15%. Looking at the net interest income distribution, our traditional slides that I comment from left to right. On the left side, you have this CHF 88.7 billion total assets. 15% of these CHF 88.7 billion are the cash part. This represents CHF 13.4 billion here in the middle. Out of these CHF 13.4 billion, about half, 49% are invested in loans and investment securities. That represents CHF 6.6 billion here on the right.
Distribution then CHF 1.7 billion in our margin lending portfolio. The Lombard loans we're giving to our clients and then the investment securities, almost CHF 5 billion. As you see here, the quality of our investments, it's 99% investment grade. This portfolio generates the revenue, which together with the liquidity portfolio, generates a net interest income in 2025 of CHF 217.6 million. The other part of our assets are the 51%. Again, the liquidity portfolio, that's CHF 6.8 billion here. You see the distribution in Swiss francs, U.S. dollars and euros mainly, that's the three main currencies our clients have.
Here, the rates we're earning are, of course, came down compared to 2024, but still, generates good revenues in 2025. In a reducing interest rates market, we obviously secured some revenues already by increasing our investment security portfolio. Now, these CHF 217.6 million is added to the CHF 505.7 million for other revenues, excluding the net interest income. Altogether, this makes CHF 723.3 million record revenue in 2025. A look on the equity. The equity reached CHF 1.4 billion. Of course, this is the highest number in our history.
This is driven by the constant profit we're making since many years now. We have a Tier 1 ratio now of 25.0%, and this is after the payment of the expected dividend that our board of directors has set at CHF 7.40. This is the amount that will be proposed to the General Assembly. If approved by the General Assembly, then of course, this will be paid out. This represents about 30% of our profit in 2025. After payout, the Tier 1 ratio still stays at 25%, high above the minimum.
High above the minimum of 11.2% that we still need to have as a category 4 bank, it will increase slightly above 10%. How much it was? It will increase to 12% once we are becoming a category 3 bank. You also see here our distribution, dividend distribution policy now stable at 30%. We set this 30% as a target in 2023, and since then, we are following our target of 30%. More to that in the slide here. The questions we sometimes have is why you keep so much cash in the company?
Well, first, we aim to be a bank that is solidly capitalized, and with Tier 1, with a Tier 1 ratio of 25% is certainly the case. We are among the banks in Switzerland with the highest Tier 1 ratio. We also have set some kind of targets. We want to grow our excess cash of currently CHF 300 million. This is the cash above our comfort Tier 1 minimum comfort ratio of 18%. Everything above represents about CHF 300 million. We want to grow that part to CHF 500 million. Once we reach the CHF 500 million, then we will think about a higher distribution to our shareholders. Why do we need to have this pocket of CHF 500 million?
First, this is our buffer for additional growth in the future. We may also see some inorganic opportunities in the coming year. We need to have this comfort zone to target opportunities in the future if they may appear. There are probably also some questions that will come for our CFO. Now, let's spend some time to discuss AI. AI for Swissquote is very important. We started our AI journey long time ago.
Two years ago, we started to invest in AI because we could feel that this is a further evolution in a further tech revolution in banking. We at Swissquote are very good at that. We do anticipate revolutions coming. We are born with a revolution. We created our bank when internet came to life. That's almost 26 years ago now. We have been the first internet bank in Switzerland. We also have been the first mobile bank in Switzerland. We were among the very first one or the first one in Switzerland to create an app. The Swissquote app, I think it was the first financial app in Switzerland.
Of course, we want to be the first AI bank, the first intelligent bank in Switzerland. I would like to spend a little bit of time on that. What will AI bring to banking? It may not necessarily change the banking products as such. Clients will always buy the same type of financial products. This, by the way, hasn't changed even with internet or with mobile banking. Our clients are still consuming the same financial products, maybe with the exception of cryptocurrencies or blockchain, that is a little bit special financial products, but otherwise, we are selling the same financial services as the banks did 50 years ago.
However, the way you consume these products have massively changed with technology, and we anticipate further change in the future. You see how AI is already influencing the way you're interacting with your service provider, with your bank. The example I mentioned before with Yuhlia, our AI chatbot is a good example. Our clients, we think that in the future, our clients will not only open an app, but they will talk to their bank service, and so you need to get ready for that. Now, why do you need to invest to be able to do that?
Because first you need to create the infrastructure and when speaking about infrastructure, and especially if you're a bank, you need to have a solid governance and in place. This is what we built since the last two years. We created the right governance, the right structure, the right organization. We also invested in staff, in resources. We now have in Switzerland one of the strongest AI staff that is in place. We invested in hardware solutions. We bought NVIDIA chips. We have 20 H200 NVIDIA chips. For example, we invest in processing powers, in data lakes, in big data.
We getting our infrastructure ready, and we can do this because we own our technology. That's very important. If you're just a consumer of external developments, then you're very much dependent on other providers, but this is not the case. At Swissquote, we have our own tech stack, and we have built this multi-layer architecture that is enabling us today to build on it and to create our AI environment. Once you have the governance, the AI infrastructure, you also need to be sure that the workforce you have internally are then using this infrastructure.
We have been very pushy in our teams and across the board at Swissquote to that everyone adopts AI at a very fast rate. Since you're a bank, you can't just open up to everyone. You have to be sure that there are guardrails in place and that banking secrecy and confidentiality is guaranteed. This is also part of our strong infrastructure that we have built. Again, why are we doing all this? Because we think that this is a strategic investment. We think that in the future, if you're not AI-ready, then you know will not be able to benefit from the increased productivity that now everyone is expecting with the coming with the AI.
The good news is that we are ready, and we have already first results on the, I have later on in the slides, I have a few ratios that I can show. For example, on the client interaction, we already discussed about Yuhlia, but also on the customer care. Now we have AI driven chatbots. We call it Swissquote GPT. It's a 24/7 available chatbot that is completely independent without human intervention. Later on, I can show some very first results on the success ratio we have there. On the product side, we have developed a set of tools.
You may, if you're a user of Swissquote, you may have used our Daily Digest, News Sentiment, Buzz Score. We have Snapshot, portfolio analysis. These are the first glimpse of what AI is capable of doing to bring additional tools to our clients. That's on the clients interaction side, but that's just the beginning. We have many developments in place that will be deployed over the next three years. We at Swissquote, but the entire industry, I guess, and it's really important that you are at the forefront.
Now, since you're a bank, you also need to do transaction monitoring, and there also AI helps a lot into forensic analysis of transactions, especially when you have a neobank with millions of transactions. Of course, you cannot put a compliance officer behind every transactions. Then to have AI forensic capabilities is super important. There we are working with our internal tool. We have a quantitative research team at Swissquote since years. They also have taken the AI change and but we're also working a lot with external partners.
We signed this agreement with ZISC, a department of ETH in Zurich, and where of course we use or they use AI applied research to transaction monitoring, and there is a lot of good developments we expect from that partnership. This is the third pillar. On the engineering side, I was speaking about being more efficient. Our engineers have taken the AI change. Now everyone is using GitHub Copilot on their development tools. We now have 400 GitHub Copilot license. We have 40 Claude license as well for code generations and code support. There you have later on a very good examples, and you see here the other developments we've made.
Swissquote is absolutely AI ready, and we think that the future will be fascinating from that standpoint. Here, maybe I promise to give you a short, small examples of what we did. We created a new page. It's called the Global Sector Movers, and it has been completely built with AI. Almost 90% of the code has been generated through AI, mainly with Claude as our AI code generator. It's just fascinating how fast this goes, and we really expect to have a speedy increase in time to market and also an increase in the quality of the code generation in the future.
90%, this is the rate that we are aiming at here. If you see what we have set our priorities in the here on the second line in the code generation with AI. We're expecting a 30% productivity increase in software developments already in 2026, in the second year of 2026. Currently we have probably a productivity increase in the first half of 15%, but the adoptions of those new tools goes really fast. We have a very young generation of engineers. They're young in age, they're fresh from school, so they are very eager to use these advanced tools.
We think in the next two years, the productivity gain we'll have will be higher than 100%. On the client interaction side, currently about 30% of all the clients interactions we have are handled through AI. This will increase to 50%, and we think that over next year, 2027, 2028, 90% of our interactions with clients will be fully handled by chats and bots and AI agents. Why not 100%? Because some clients have complex structures, and there will always be the need for human agents in the future. The growth in our customer care will not go at the same rate than the growth in our clients.
This is the entire idea behind increased efficiency with AI. Of course, we also use AI, as I said before, we call it payment intelligence. The idea here is to monitor our payment transactions. We aim to have 100% of AI coverage in every transaction, so it means that every transaction will be covered by AI. That's in the second half of 2026. We also think that in 2027 and 2028, we'll have AI agent-driven investigation in the payments. Less human interactions means better capabilities.
This is where the play we have with ETH Zurich and the deal which may be sent comes in place, and it will be a great help to monitor our transactions. Now that everything goes instant, you need to have very solid tools in place to analyze and handle those transactions. Of course, we will use the second half to bring new AI-enabled client-facing features. We have a full set of features for 2027 and 2028, where we will begin to unlock the new products and new services. So guided investments advice, almost automated robot investments in certain securities, though it's the full range of questions there.
Of course, this has to be embedded into the regulatory duties. There we are very well advanced, and we're discussing this with our various regulators about that. Now, guidance of the years to come. We are in 2026. In 2026, we'll continue to grow the business. It will grow from CHF 723 million to CHF 760 million in revenue here in 2026. It's a little bit more challenging year on interest rates, for example. The market is volatile, so we think that CHF 760 million is a fair, potentially a little bit conservative approach to our revenue.
Applying our pre-tax profit margin higher than 50%, we think that we will end the year with a pre-tax profit of CHF 385 million. This looks lower than the 420 we have, but don't forget we had this one-off of CHF 50 million. Otherwise it would have been at CHF 370 million. From CHF 370 million to CHF 385 million, it will be a further growth in 2026 in a year that is not so easy for, I think, every bank on the planet. Now, if you-, h ow do we compute those revenues here, the CHF 760 million we aim to have?
First of all, we have a fairly good idea of how much new monies, net new monies we will have in 2026. We haven't changed our target of CHF 7 billion net new monies. That's a number we know is solid and one we can achieve. We don't know, of course, what the markets will do in 2026, but we are assuming our forecast that the markets are stable. This is the way we forecast. If we add the CHF 7 billion to the CHF 89 billion we already have, we will end up the year 2026 with something which is close to CHF 100 billion. In fact, CHF 96 billion of total clients assets.
On this we do apply our margins, and we have three segments. We have the crypto assets, interest and securities trading. There we do take some assumptions. We think that crypto assets will generate 10 basis points on our CHF 96 billion, and will not change with 2025. 2025 was a good year, but not as exceptional as 2024. This is a reasonable assumption. On the interest rates, we think that the rates will go down. This is why we do forecast only at 21 basis points, but of course based on higher cash deposits with the growing assets and all the rest will stay stable.
We had a good start in 2026, but you know, the geopolitical uncertainty we have, but still we think that we can achieve something around CHF 52 million. All this combined will bring us CHF 760 million of revenue in 2026. Now, we do usually a three-year plan. The last one was we did in 2022 for 2025. We announced in 2022 that we aim to have CHF 350 million of pre-tax. Now, we have CHF 420 million, CHF 370 million without the one-off. We exceeded our very ambitious goal we set in 2022. We have goals that looks a little bit less ambitious but still ambitious for 2028.
We want to achieve CHF 500 m illion of profit in 2028. We think that the revenue will grow to CHF 950 million. We also think that the pre-tax margin will grow to 53%. There is leverage in our business and this means that we'll generate a pre-tax profit of CHF 500 million. Now, compared with 2025, this means that more or less we will have CHF 100 million additional costs to our cost base to CHF 450 million. The revenue will grow by CHF 227 million. The revenue should grow more than the cost.
This is simply because of the leverage in our operations, but also, as we mentioned before, by the use of AI and the efficiency gains we will have in the future. We haven't changed our forecast CHF 500 million by 2028. You know that at Swissquote we are very good in respecting the guidance and the forecast we set. This has been proven over the last years. We are almost at the end of our presentation. Customer loyalty. This is always a slide that is interesting to look at. We had 18% of new clients in 2025, and this 18% brought are representing 8% of new clients assets here.
Why only 8% versus the 18% is because it takes time to build up your portfolio, especially if you open your account on the 31st of December, then obviously you can't contribute yet. But also for the other clients, it's – you don't bring all the assets up front. It takes some time to build up. There we know that we have further potential because our clients are happy with our services. Then the distribution of net revenues from the clients we earned in 2025 also should contribute to the business in 2026. The product roadmap in 2025, I don't think we have time to comment that further, but we are constantly developing our various services. I've mentioned a few already.
We do develop our crypto offer. We have further developed our SQ Pro. This is our interface for our professional B2B clients. We are developing our software solutions for many type of clients we have. Last but not least, here for the specialists, if you want to ask me more questions about our Sovereign AI platform, this is also a very nice look at it. Please give me a call. Give us a call if you need further information there. Otherwise, you can always meet us in the various meetings we're organizing. We have our general annual meeting that will be on May 7th.
We have the various roadshow we have organized with the analysts that are covering our stocks. At the very end, the key figures as usual, and this would end my presentation. Thank you already for participating this morning. It's a pleasure of having you. We now will enter the Q&A session. As you know, we have set the limits of two questions since we have so many participants. After the presentation, feel free to call us. We're here for you and to answer your questions. Now, operator, we are ready. Please, let's start the Q&A session.
Yes, sir. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume of the webcast while asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relevant field. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Christiane Holstein from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Taking my questions. My first one is on costs. It did step up a bit in 2025, which was largely on the higher personnel hiring for technology. I know you flagged that it will increase in 2026 by about 6%, I think, and then again in 2028. I was just getting a bit confused on what's driving this additional step-up again. I was just wondering if you could explain a bit more how you're thinking about this and the moving parts like staff, marketing, AI. Does it also include additional costs for setting up AI and technology? My second question is on the AI roadmap. I also understand that the revenue and cost benefits you've spoken about are not included within the midterm guidance, so potentially provides upside.
Are you able to provide a bit more detail on how meaningful you're expecting this to be for revenue and operating leverage? You also noted AI is an opportunity but also a threat. Just wondering if you could expand a bit more on the threat piece and how you see your AI and tech initiatives versus peers? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will give the first two questions to Yvan, which is next to me here. About the threat, yes, it's a threat if you don't embrace AI. That's a little bit the thing. You know, AI will have a very strong effect on time to market. AI-ready companies will be able to bring faster features on the market and will also have a better cost income ratio. In that sense, it's a threat. It's not a threat for us, it's a threat if we don't do AI. I think that was the meaning of that sentence. For the rest, Yvan.
Yes. Good morning, Christiane. Yes, I think the big part of the investment in terms of hirings has been made in 2025. However, as you may have seen, we increased the headcount quite significantly in 2025. Now the increase we had, for example, in H2 has not yet impacted the year in full. We will have, I would say, a mathematical increase of expenses linked to the fact that, you know, the headcount first of January 2026 is 20%-19% higher than the headcount at the beginning of 2025. Adding on that, the fact that now we will as well consolidate the revenues of Yuh for a 12-month period, when in 2025 it was the case only for six months.
I think there is a bit of like mathematical impact of, basically starting the year with a higher base cost compared to 2025. As well, now we have factored a few hirings in the 2026 headcount, not necessarily related to additional investments, but just that, you know, as a matter of caution, we have included a few still a bit of headcount increase in the 2026 headcount. On the integration of AI initiatives in the outlook 2025, I mean, I think that as we have not changed the pre-tax profit target, I think we have certainly, in a relatively moderate way, included the benefits of these AI initiatives.
I have to say it's still today, if we are very convinced this is the right move to do, and I think we have a track record on being early movers in the technology, and this is the case today for AI, it's still very difficult for us to quantify. We have provided these KPIs in terms of AI adoption in the slides presented by Marc, but we have not changed the pre-tax profit target. I would say that there is probably an upside if these initiatives are delivered on time and they basically are material initiatives. At the same time, I would say for us, 2028 is not the end of the journey. We really focus as well beyond 2028 and our plans or strategic plan, they go beyond 2028.
2028 is sort of, an intermediary checkpoint with the market, but obviously we really are focusing as well, later than 2028.
Perfect. Thank you.
The next question comes from Christoph Blieffert from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. The BaFin in Germany is likely to bring some platforms to the market which might be available for M&A in the months to come. I'm just wondering whether this is the type of assets you are looking at, and more strategically, would you be willing to expand your neobank approach to other European countries such as Germany, organically or via M&A? The second question is on your 2028 guidance. You are expecting some 10% of 2028 revenues to be generated with Yuh, i.e., CHF 95 million. However, we have only increased the guidance by some CHF 50 million. Just curious to understand which other assumptions might have changed. Thank you.
Okay. I take the first questions and Yvan will take the second one. Yes, we are looking at M&A opportunities, of course, and we have this cash reserve that we could use. Now there's two things. The first one is those neobanks are super expensive out in the market. You know, you have a valuation that are very high in the sector, which means that probably if you would be a standalone bank, it would be valuated at a much higher price than it's now accounted in at Swissquote.
However, many of those neobanks are loss-making, and I think we are one of the few in the market that now the second year in a row is able to work profitably. It's quite a challenge to integrate a large client base with a new app that Yuh will then need to integrate in your own neobank. A little bit on the cautious side there. We do have plans actually to go abroad with Yuh. We think it's a superior product compared to other neobanks Yuh can bring to the market. You really have to focus on your home market first. You need to consolidate your number one position.
Switzerland has very high growth opportunities. You have this also. The wealth of the clients, even for a neobank, is much higher. These CHF 9,000 you have is probably also something unique in the European market, much higher than everything else you find in Europe. It would be wrong actually to go immediately outside of Switzerland whenever you still have these growth opportunities here. To be short, yes, we're looking at things. We haven't seen anything interesting so far, because of everything I said, and always a little bit cautious in our M&A approach.
Yes. On the other one, Christoph, good morning. I think it's a good one. If you still see the slides, in this table, we have provided the incremental revenues that were captured through the Yuh acquisition. You see that in 2025, basically starting July 2025, we have added revenues of CHF 10 million thanks to Yuh. I round it to 10. Then if you look-
Mm-hmm.
Look at the segment reporting disclosure that you find in the annual report. Here it's what Yuh has added in terms of revenues. Keeping in mind that before the acquisition, we had revenues related to Yuh as somehow related party revenues because Swissquote was invoicing Yuh for the services provided. Now, these related party revenues, they disappear, but we consolidate the entire revenue pool of Yuh. If you look in the segment reporting disclosure, you see that since the acquisition of Yuh, the net revenues of Yuh, they represented more or less CHF 20 million. It means that, you know, out of CHF 20 million of revenues generated by Yuh, only CHF 10 million were incremental to Swissquote because we would have anyway invoice Yuh for half of the revenues generated.
Mm-hmm.
Because of the services we render. We added CHF 50 million in the outlook 2028 because now part of the revenues of Yuh were already factored in the initial outlook in the way of related party revenues. You see here.
Mm-hmm.
That in 2025, that's more or less half of it. It means that when we say, well, basically, 10% of CHF 950 million, it's CHF 95 million, 1/2 of it is roughly CHF 50 million. This is a bit the rationale.
Yeah, this makes sense. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Next question.
The next question comes from Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Thanks very much for the presentation. Two modeling questions from me, please. Firstly, can you outline the cost implications of becoming a cat 3 bank, assuming that happens this year? And is this embedded in the CHF 385 million pre-tax profit guidance that you've given for 2026? And the second modeling question, you call out higher trading in foreign currency designated products as a notable revenue driver for FY 2025 from your clients. This is obviously a phenomenon that we're seeing in a lot of markets. Are you able to quantify the positive impact that this had on the 51 basis point margin on assets that you show on slide 30? And then perhaps what's embedded in the 52 basis points that you guide to for 2026. Thank you.
I can't take both of them, but I can start with the second one. Yes, what we have mentioned is we had more activity in foreign currency designated products. What we mean by that is, for example, a Swiss customer with Swiss francs trading U.S. stock. We had more. I'm afraid we don't disclose that much information, but you can observe that there is a growing trading income. I think this is a way to confirm this statement. Difficult to comment more, but what I can say is, in general, when I compare to the industry, we have more foreign currency designated trading activity than any peers. This is something that has a bit increased in 2025.
To give you an idea, U.S. market is certainly one of the most, if not the most traded, stock exchange at Swissquote, when, you know, we have mainly non-U.S. customers. Cryptos are exclusively traded in USD. Again, you know, so I think we have, in general, an important flow of foreign currency designated activity, but it's difficult for me to give you more with the information we have, publicly available. On the category 3 bank, what I can say is, what we expect to be the main change is a change in the minimum capital ratio that will increase from 11.2% to 12%. This is the main change that we expect.
From a supervision point of view, what we know and what we have been informed by FINMA is that we have somehow already been considered as a category 3 from many regulatory aspects. I would say that in 2025, you know, any additional costs linked to the change of category, they're already in the books. I cannot exclude a few additional costs, but I will say when you see the step-up in terms of head count, for example, in compliance teams and in general in the organization, I think we have here an indication that those costs, they're already here in 2025.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Daniel Regli from ZKB. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation and for having me for questions. The first question is a bit on the net new money trajectory, and maybe if you could talk a little bit more about the developments in the different markets, particularly in Switzerland. Obviously, clearly H1 was exceptional, but still, H2 was kind of only just a bit more than half of H1, so, can you maybe explain a bit more what happened and what kind of trends you're seeing also kind of throughout the second half year? And then my second question is a bit about, if you could give us a little bit, a wrap about the competitive situation in both, Switzerland and Europe. Do you see or feel any kind of increased competition from your peers?
What does this do to your kind of margin or pricing in these markets? Mm-hmm. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel, for your questions. I take the second one, and then Yvan will take the first one. Yes, competition is very strong in Europe, obviously in all sectors. Also in Switzerland, there are many banks that we're competing with. I think we have quite a unique position because we're not a discount broker. That's not our strategy. But we have a very good ratio between the quality of the service we're rendering and the price, the pricing of our services.
Even though there are competitors that are cheaper than us, to be fair, we haven't seen a loss in clients to any of our competitor. I think the clients in Switzerland do value the quality of the service. The fact that you can, at the very end, if you're not satisfied with the response from the chatbot, you can still call someone and ask a question in Swiss German, and that would still work. Competitive environment, yes. We're careful that our pricing and our proposal is competitive to the market, so we are adjusting our prices whenever we think we should.
So far, so good. The fact also that we have now a neobank in our offering with a price strategy that is more aggressive than the one we have on Swissquote, custody fees, for example. There are no custody fees on the assets you have at Yuh is also a way to please our clients when they say, "Well, you're too expensive." They say, "Well, you could also have an account at Yuh." It's quite a balanced offer we have. Now in Europe, the market is even more competitive than in Switzerland.
You know all these zero brokers and the deep discount brokers that are very active in Germany. Sometimes U.S. providers that have set foot in Europe, Robinhood being a good example for that. That's absolutely not the segment in which we are. We think we are targeting in Europe a more mass affluent type of clients. If you look at our client base we have in Luxembourg, it's a client base with higher assets than the one we have in Switzerland. We have on average EUR 250,000 as deposits. But this is a strategic decision we have taken. We think that this segment is underserved in the European market. High technology.
Good service at a better price than traditional banks, but not trying to compete with flatex, Robinhood, Trade Republic or other zero brokers out there. The strong growth we had in assets in Europe is also a tribute to our strategy there. About the net new monies strategy for or the explanation a little bit between the drop in H2, I think there's some seasonality there, I guess. You know, H1 is usually also a moment when you reorganize your assets. We always had very good net new monies in the first quarter of the year.
This is a pattern that is not completely unknown to us. This CHF 8.5 billion is really very strong. This is not our forecast, by the way. Our main forecast is CHF 7 billion for 2026, even though it has been systematically higher over the last year. Yvan?
No, yes, that was what I wanted to emphasize. I think H2, you know, in comparison to H1 looks weak, but, you know, we did CHF 3.3 billion of net new monies in H2. Our yearly target is CHF 7 billion, now it's CHF 3.3 billion compared to CHF 3.5 billion, so we're slightly below. This I agree. No, it looks less weak when you compare to the target of management than when you compare to a strong H1. I think the issue with H2 is we had a strong H1. Then what you have as well to take into consideration is FX rates, because Swiss franc was quite strong in H2. Any inflow of USD and euro, you know, when you basically counter value it in Swiss franc, you lose easily 10% at least.
I think this is what explains the difference between management targets, so the 3.5%, 7 divided by 2, and the actual 3.3%.
Okay. Thank you for the explanations.
Thank you, Daniel.
I think we have no more questions on the chat or the phone, but on the chat, we have a couple of ones. Marc, perhaps I can ask it to you. The one is, can you benefit from clients moving their funds from the Middle East in the context of the war?
Okay, well, that's an easy one. We have operations in the Middle East. We have about a team of 40 employees there. They're all well and sound, by the way, so we're taking care of our people. Nothing to report there. The booking center for most of the assets we have in the Middle East is Switzerland anyway. We haven't seen any sudden strong increase because the assets we are gathering in Dubai, for example, are already booked in Switzerland.
Another one is a bit more a more technical one. Thank you for the disclosure of the 16% net revenues from FX and precious metals in 2025. Can you share the momentum in this from H1 to H2 2025 and also comment on any activity 2026 to date? I think this one I can take it. The question is from Eli, from UBS. Eli, I think you should look at the segment reporting disclosure, where you have quite detailed revenues distribution by asset classes. If you would compare in the eForex segment, for example, if you compare the revenues we have generated in precious metals in H2 compared to H1, you see a significant increase, I think above 80% increase.
You can see that at the end of 2025, we could already see a pickup in the precious metals activity, as an example in eForex. This is otherwise something that we indicate in the press release, in the text, where we say by the end of the year, we could see activity rotating to precious metals. In the slide margin on assets, I think we indicate as well that we had a good start, and that's certainly explained by precious metals. The second question is net revenue margin is expected to fall from 88 basis points in 2025 to 83 basis points in 2026. Before then, recovery to 90 basis points in 2028. Can you help us to understand the moving parts driving this shift? Yes, I can provide a bit of color.
There is a drop in revenue margin on assets in 2026 compared to 2025. I think it's mainly explained by the strong growth we had in client assets in 2025. We increased client assets, I think, by 16% in 2025. That's quite significant. I'm afraid revenues, they may take a bit of time before to adapt to the new volume of client assets. Could it be that the situation, ultimately is better, but we always count with a certain delay before additional assets, they translate into revenues. I'm afraid they're not like fully linear and fully correlated. There is always sort of a period for the revenue margin to adjust, in particular, when you have a significant increase in client assets.
For 2028, 90 basis points revenue margin, why do you think it will recover? Basically, this is a margin between 80 basis points-90 basis points that we have been able to sustain in almost any scenarios or any environment. As well, what you have to take in mind is, we think that, the revenue margin will increase from one point of view with view, because before the revenue margin was lower, you see, we consolidated more revenues for the same level of assets. As well, we have more products and services that are not necessarily related to the client assets. For example, when customers, they do payments, when they, travel, when they do other product and services, they're not necessarily related to the assets. This somehow non-assets related revenues will still generate revenues, but therefore increase the revenue margin on assets.
I think there is as well a transformation effect from our revenues. We see more and more revenues that are not necessarily related to market volatility and therefore not necessarily related to the level of client assets. There are a few more, Marc.
Mm-hmm.
This one for you. How do you assess the current situation on the crypto market? I know you are very good in predicting the Bitcoin price. Are you already noticing that customers are acting more actively again?
Yes. Well, you've all seen the drop in the value of cryptos in the beginning of the year. It's not 100% clear whether crypto is acting as gold or is moving at the same rate than the dollar is moving, or is it moving with the markets. What we could see actually is that the Bitcoin found the bottom around $65,000, I guess. Now we are higher than $70,000 again. I think there's a good level for additional overall performance in 2026. In my opinion, at the personal level, but that concerns only me, Marc Bürki.
I think that the cryptocurrency will see a growth in 2026, and we may be even surprised how fast it can go.
A few more. I think we have as well people over the phone. I propose we finish the written ones. Can you please provide your rate assumption for the Swiss franc in your net interest income guidance? For 2026, yes. I think on the net interest income, you know, there are various scenarios in front of us that are possible. What we have factored in the net interest income guidance is, I would say, the assumptions of the market before the war in Ukraine, because assumptions are moving now relatively fast. For example, on the USD, we had factored 3 rate cuts. The news of yesterday is somehow good news because we had factored a cut yesterday. On the euro, we have factored flat interest rates.
Now market is rather betting for 2 hikes or 1 hike or 2 hikes, but we think these are assumptions that could move quite quickly. On the Swiss franc, we assumed flat interest rates, so zero, with potentially Swiss National Bank moving negative at the end of the year. This is a bit the assumptions we have on the interest rate side of things. More questions, Marc. I'm trying to find one. This ones have been already dealt with. There is one about, can you comment on today's price action, -4% at the start of the trading?
Yes.
I think things have been covered.
Yes, I think. Well, first again, a little bit of a surprise to me as well. I think we are providing very solid results and a very strong forecast in which we believe. It's a difficult day today on the markets in general. You know, the situation in the Middle East has a strong impact on our market. It also explains the drop of our share price over the last weeks, I guess. I'm not surprised. I was a little bit surprised, but I see it recovered since then.
I think it's a super good entry point, by the way, for under Swiss francs, with the CHF 500 m illion profit forecast in 2028. It's probably a good entry point, and now we are below most of the price targets of our analysts. I think it should recover.
I think we have two persons queuing on the phone, and then we are done.
Okay.
We have a question from René Locher from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. I hope you can hear me well. Just on slide 30, just a confirmation on these crypto revenues. For me, this looks very challenging. I mean, when I take average assets in 2026, they end up dropping to CHF 92 billion, and then 10 basis points, this would lead to crypto revenues of CHF 92 million, and when I compare that with 2024, CHF 35 million, CHF 85 million, CHF 81 million, looking at the monthly crypto trading, which is slightly above CHF 1 trillion. I'm really just wondering, you know, how you will end up with these CHF 92 million crypto revenues. That, that's the first question. The second one, quickly on again, on costs, you know what I mean?
I've seen a lot of questions, but again, when I'm looking at the cost, you know, on an absolute basis, so 2024, about CHF 360 million, and then up to CHF 350 million-CHF 375 million, and in 2028, CHF 450 million. Yeah, pushbacks I got from client this morning is that Swissquote is more like a platform, you know. They wonder a little bit, you know, why the costs increase how you outline in your guidance, you know. I guess another pushback in this context is earlier guidance, 2028 was a pre-tax margin of 55.6%. Now we are down at 52.6%, so that's minus 300 basis points. I guess mainly explained by the new integration, but perhaps you can comment a little bit on this cost issue again.
Thank you.
René, I propose I take the two of them, and if you're not satisfied, I invite Marc to join the discussion. On slide 30, it's really for number crunchers. What we say is, in text, we say we'll help to deliver results comparable to those of 2025. But then when you compute, you end up with a slightly higher number. When you read the text, you say, well, Swissquote is going for like CHF 85 million of crypto assets income in 2026. This is the case.
The thing is, you know, when you want to have rounded numbers, you know, 9 basis points will end up with, 9 basis points will end up with a number far too low, and 10 basis points you're slightly above what management intends to do. You know, we're not willing to start putting 9.5 basis points or 9.75 basis points. I think you should read the text. We expect in Swiss francs the crypto assets income to be exactly the same in 2026 and in 2025. Could be still seen as challenging, but you have to.
Yes.
Keep in mind that Yuh is providing additional crypto revenues, and if you go to the slide 39, you see that Yuh added in six months CHF 4 million of crypto assets income. If we say that when Yuh will add CHF 4 million more in 2026, in fact the forecast is CHF 85 million, the same number than last year, including an additional CHF 4 million of Yuh. It means that if you more or less compare things being equal, it will be CHF 85 million-CHF 81 million and not CHF 85 million. I hope I'm clear.
Yeah.
We can take it separately if needed. On the cost side.
No, this is helpful.
On the cost side.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, the cost, I think this is why we have emphasized the headcount growth, et cetera. There is this willingness of management to invest. We discussed about AI, that's one thing. We discussed about Yuh, which is, in my view, another investment. Deciding to go for full ownership is an investment. You see that we have as well hired more people in our foreign subsidiaries. Headcount increased by 90%, but if we exclude these three investment drivers, the headcount increase will have been closer to 6%, so much lower. I think if you want to quantify the volume of investment that we have made, I think this is what explains the difference between our numbers in 2026 and the consensus.
You have more or less the money that Swissquote has decided to invest to capture these opportunities, AI, Yuh, building this ecosystem, Swissquote Yuh, that is powered by AI. This is a bet from Swissquote, but it's not related at all to operating the existing platform. It's to really look for a brighter future beyond 2028 and not just stopping, you know, the story in 2028. I hope this is what I can give you, and Marc, if he wants to add something.
Yes. What is a little bit difficult in the forecast is to factor in the efficiency gains that we'll have through the AI. You know, you could actually see it from two angles. The first angle is that everything will be so more efficient. You know, the development will be more efficient, so we'll need to have less engineers. You will only have to, the growth in customer care agent will almost be nil because now you have this 90% of questions taken through the chatbot, so you don't need to hire anyone there. So this is not easy to forecast as.
To be honest, we didn't do it currently in our cost forecast for 2028. We took it a little bit out of the past to crunch 2028, but there could be a game changer. On the other hand also is that everything could go just faster. You know, like the world may run faster, and then the efficiency gains will be there, but at the same time, everything will be just much faster. I'll give you a small example. So I had a friend, he told me, "Oh, now I'm using Copilot, and Copilot answers about half of my emails automatically.
My life will become half better, because I don't need to spend so much time on responding to emails." What he forgets is that on the other side, they are also using Copilot. He will just potentially get double the amount of emails than he had previously. That's a little bit the trade-off, you know? For sure it will help. Efficiency gains are huge. The world will run faster. This goes a little bit back to one of the questions I had before, is why do you think AI is also a threat? It is a threat because for those companies who are not able to embrace AI, they will not be able to compete in the coming world.
Little bit more philosophical answer.
No, that's helpful. Thank you. Perhaps just a quick remark if I might. I think share price reaction is perhaps not only about the results. I think it's much more about market sentiment, right? I mean, the multiples in your sector, so like the Avanza, flatex and Robinhood of this world are trading now at much lower multiples. I guess this is also a little bit of a negative impact, you know, you see on your share price. I guess earnings are okay, you know, but multiples are down quite a lot over the last few weeks. Just a remark.
Yes. Yes.
Thank you.
No, you're right. It's a mixed bag of. It needs more than just a profit to create a price. That's true.
Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah.
[inaudible].
We have a follow-up question from Daniel Regli from ZKB. Please, go ahead.
Thanks for having me again. I have one last question on your net interest income guidance for 2026, and obviously towards the end of last year, I heard you once say you expect something more like a flattish net interest income, 2026 versus 2025. Now the new guidance implies kind of a 10% decline. What has changed in your view on the interests compared to end of last year?
A comment from my side, Daniel, on interest income. I think I will definitely acknowledge now there is room for higher net interest income. Again, what we have I think I've mentioned before what were our interest rate assumptions. That I think today will be priced differently by the market. The days we have nowadays are an opportunity for us. We're trying to capture now higher yield, for example, in euro because the markets are pricing other interest rates to increase when our scenario is interest rates will remain stable in euros. The question is, we don't know how much time it may last. If this situation may last more than, let's say, a couple of weeks, then I think we're very likely to over-deliver on the interest income.
We decided to stick on these assumptions, and I think I have pushed personally to stick on these assumptions because now I prefer to over-deliver if the situation lasts a bit longer than under-deliver because the war end up too early compared to my initial forecast, you know. I think yes, there are views of the CEO and the CFO, the guidance is a compromise, but we definitely acknowledge there could be a bit of upside, but I don't think I have to bet on the end of a war to deliver my forecast.
No, fully understand. Well explained. Thanks a lot.
There is a last question. I mean, you can take it, Marc, I can take it. Are there any plans to enter prediction markets?
Like Polymarket, you mean? No. No, this is not. We're not in the betting industry yet. We don't have plans there. I think this betting markets, Polymarket are also a little bit controversial to a certain extent because when you see what happened before the war started in the Middle East, you could question where the information is coming from. It's not a plan we have. Okay.
I think we are at the end.
I think we are at the end. Again, thank you very much for joining us this morning. It has been a pleasure hosting this presentation. Of course, we're here the entire day, me and Yvan. If you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to call us. Let's close here. Thank you very much, and see you soon.
Bye-bye.
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