Finecobank Stock

This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the FinecoBank Second Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Foti, CEO and General Manager of FinecoBank. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining our results conference call. First half adjusted net profit up by 8% year-on-year at around EUR 343 million, revenues up by around 11% year-on-year at EUR 713 million with all product areas contributing positively. Banking up by 8.5%, thanks to higher deposit volumes, investing up by 11%, thanks to the volume effect. Brokerage up by 15%, thanks to the higher stocks of assets under custody and expanding active investor base. Adjusted operating costs well under control at around EUR 193 million, increasing by around 6% year-on-year, excluding the additional costs related to the growth of the business. Cost/income ratio at 27%, confirming operating leverage as a key strength of the bank. Capital position confirmed to be strong and safe with a common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.18% and a leverage ratio at 5.02%.

Among the main events, we have signed with CNP Assicura, a 4-year exclusive partnership for the distribution of life insurance products. The deal improves both the quality of products and services and Fineco marginality moving to her. Moving now to our commercial performance. We are experiencing a material step-up in our growth. This is driven by our unique positioning, capturing long-term structural trends and by our execution on several initiatives. The impact of this acceleration is clearly visible in our numbers. In the first half, net sales increased by 35% year-on-year.

In July, estimated net sales at EUR 1.7 billion, around 40% higher year-on-year with around EUR 0.4 billion assets under management, around minus EUR 0.3 billion deposits and around EUR 1.7 billion assets under custody. Brokerage clients were very active buying the dips, leading to very solid brokerage revenues estimated at EUR 23 million, up around 20% year-on-year. New clients continued to grow at a strong pace, up 26% year-on-year in the first half. In July, new clients are estimated at around 21,000, up by around 40% year-on-year.

Now move to the guidance. Further upgraded outlook for our 2026 and 2029 plan, confirming the quality of our diversified business model. The better outlook is driven by a combination of better-than-expected net sales with all the mix components contributing positively to the revenues, combination of deposits, net sales and interest rate evolution, slower growth of operating costs going forward compared to the CMD expectation. We are redesigning the backbone of the bank with artificial intelligence that is gradually moving into the execution phase 2026.

We expect all the product hires contributing to higher revenues, thanks to the acceleration of our structural growth. We expect net financial income growing, thanks to the combination of positive deposit net sales and rates, investing, a solid increase of revenues, thanks to the combination of resilient net sales and mix improvement. Brokerage, we expect another record year. Banking fees stable year-on-year. Cost, we expect a growth by around 6%, not including around EUR 50 million additional costs for growth initiatives and around EUR 5 million for pan-European platform setup. Compared to the previous guidance, we are embedding a EUR 5 million increase related to the marketing in additional cost for growth as clients are very responsive to our value proposition, and we see a clear opportunity to further accelerate.

I now hand to our CFO, Lorena Pelliciari, to start diving on results.

Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning, everybody. Let me start with Slide 7. Net financial income in the first half increased by around 8% year-on-year and [Audio Gap] supported by a positive volume effect [Audio Gap] Highlight is the quality [Audio Gap] of revenue is capital-light and [Audio Gap]. This allows us to generate profitability across our entire client base, including small banking-only clients. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see the solid dynamics of our liquidity despite the significant level of client investments during the period.

Let's now move on to Slide 8. The slide provides a deeper view of the nature of our deposit base. Our liquidity is not opportunistic or rate driven. As just said, it is transactional, granular and deeply connected to the daily use of our banking platform. Clients use Fineco for their everyday financial needs, and this creates a highly stable deposit base. On the right-hand side, we provide benchmarking based on Pillar 3 disclosures. Fineco enjoys the highest level of stable deposits with the median ticket equal to around EUR 4,000. This combination of granular [Audio Gap].

On to Slide 9 related to investing. Investing revenues increased [Audio Gap] driven by growing volumes. The growth of assets under management remains consistent with the client demand [Audio Gap]. Liquidity coverage ratio and net stable funding ratio well above regulatory requirements and among the highest levels in Europe. Overall, we continue to combine growth, profitability and a very conservative risk profile while maintaining one of the strongest capital and liquidity position in the sector. Thank you for your attention.

Now I'll hand back to Alessandro.

Thank you, Loren. And let's move now to Slide 14. Fineco benefits from a unique market positioning, fully capturing its long-term growth opportunities. On the left, we show our market share on the addressable financial wealth, which is still very small. On the right, we summarize the key structural trends that are reshaping the financial services industry and reinforcing our strategic positioning. First, AI disruption, which is driving for higher transparency in financial services and higher productivity. Fineco is already well positioned, thanks to its market positioning and state-of-the-art platform. Second, the massive generation of wealth transfer, new generations are looking for efficiency, transparency and convenience, all core elements of Fineco value proposition. Third, the consolidation in the banking industry with traditional banks not focused on customer experience. And Fineco sits exactly at the crossroads of these 3 big structural plans.

On Slide 15, we show a clear example of our distinctive positioning compared to the industry, focusing on the investing business. Fineco is a clear outlier in the Italian market with a value proposition based on efficiency, transparency and convenience. This is reflected in the great quality of our investing revenues that are driven by recurring management fees based on fair pricing with no performance fees and negligible amount of upfront fees. This is marking a clear difference in the long-term sustainability [Audio Gap]

[Audio Gap] And higher brokerage fees. Second, ETFs are very well in demand for securities lending and are a strong opportunity and it's a strong opportunity for our internalization engine. Third, the data platform fee agreement by the beginning of the second half 2026. And on the investing, the strong clients interest means a big volume for our advanced advisory service, resulting in stronger revenues. Second, Fineco Asset Management is live with its active ETF range for passive ETF, has a co-branded partnership with one leading issuer. Finally, ETF accumulation installment plans are now fully available in our investing services also through the application.

So let's -- now let's quickly move to the Slide 24. The plan for the deployment of our pan-European platform is progressing as expected. We confirm that by the year end, we will launch the family and friends phase with a full launch in early [Audio Gap].

Moving on Slide 25, we summarize the deployment of our artificial intelligence on our platform. So our initiatives are already starting to deliver. For example, PFA constantly using the AI platform. So an increase, as we already said, around 20% of their commercial proposals. And let me now briefly summarize the most recent artificial intelligence initiatives. So first, we are now live with customer relationship management for our financial planners, is a key step to increase their productivity. It is fully integrated with Fineco platform and data and allows our network to better cluster clients and identify priority actions. Second, we have already -- we are already live with the brokerage copilot that will improve the awareness and the engagement of our direct clients. And this artificial intelligence tool allows clients to screen securities, analyze portfolios on relevant news and it's fully integrated in the execution engine of the Fineco platform. So we are -- here, we are already seeing -- start to see the first evidence that this tool is leading clients to the order execution.

And now thank you for your time, and I'll hand it back to you.

Thank you, Paolo. And let's now move to Slide 26, guidance. further upgraded outlook for 2026 and 2029 plan, confirming the quality of our diversified business model. The better outlook is driven by a combination of better-than-expected net sales with all the mix components contributing positively to revenues, combination of deposits, net sales and interest rates evolution. slower growth of operating costs going forward compared to the CMD expectations. We are redesigning the backbone of the bank with artificial intelligence that is gradually moving into the execution phase.

For 2026, we expect all the product areas contributing to higher revenues, thanks to the acceleration of our structural growth. We expect better net financial income, thanks to the combination of positive net sales and new rate environment. Investing, solid increase in revenues, thanks to a combination of resilient net sales and mix improvement. Brokerage, another record year, thanks to higher assets under custody and active investors. Banking fees, stable year-on-year. Operating costs, we expect a growth by around 6%, not including EUR 15 million additional costs for growth initiatives and around EUR 5 million for the pan-European platform setup.

Compared to the previous guidance, we are embedding a EUR 5 million increase related to marketing in additional cost growth for growth as clients are very responsive to our value proposition, and we see a clear opportunity to further accelerate. Cost income, we expect it comfortably below 30%, thanks to the scalability of our platform and strong operating gearing. The cost of risk was equal to 7 basis points, thanks to the quality of our lending portfolio is expected in a range between 5 and 10 basis points. Finally, payout ratio is expected for 2026 in a range between 70% and 80%. On leverage ratio, our goal is to remain above 4.5%.

Thank you for your attention, and we can now open the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from [indiscernible].

[indiscernible] Specifically on the guidance, you have further upgraded the guidance, which is qualitative before. I was trying to figure out what could be the implication of the revision, especially on net interest income, including all the items and then the adjustment method of the one-off wondering why you present the number in this way and where the of the one-off is included in which line item of the P&L...

Thank you for the questions and sorry for the bad quality of the line. So -- and so the upgraded guidance is clearly is moving on. There is a continued sensitivity upgrade that is current with the evolution we are experiencing. As we explained, the main -- the most relevant KPI to look at for having an idea of the possible evolution of our revenues and also profits is the progression on the net sales because as we explained during the presentation, we -- the net sales, whatever is the mix is contributing in a big way to the revenues of the bank. At the same time, we have some quite evident -- very clear evidence that what we are doing in terms of redesigning the backbone of the bank using technology and artificial intelligence is starting or emerging as paying off.

And so we are extremely confident that going forward, we can expect a material impact on the evolution of the operational cost. And so this is the reason why we also introduced an additional guidance in which we expect the beginning of the deceleration of the growth of the operational cost happening definitely before than we presented during the plan. Finally, then there is an excellent combination of evolution of deposits and interest rates because clearly, if the rates are evolving, they are higher. At the same time, despite the higher rates, deposits are emerging extremely resilient, and we expect keeping on growing. And so this means that clearly, it's -- if we put all of these components all done together, it's clearly that we have the evidence that of a material improvement of the results we expect to generate throughout the plan.

On regarding the 15%, you are referring to the increase of the -- Lorena, this was the...

The second quarter 2026 compared to we have the second quarter 2025 net interest income. Net interest....

Yes, net interest income. So clearly, we cannot give such a precise numbers because, as you know better than me, clearly, there is a component that we are not controlling that is the level of rates. But clearly, what we are absolutely sure that the continuous growth of the net interest income is going to continue. And this is clearly -- is mostly driven by the quality of our deposits because I would like to remind that the quality of our deposits means that our -- the beta of our stable deposits is practically 0. So this is making -- think working incredibly well.

On the operating cost, as explained, answering to the updated guidance. So again, we are extremely confident that the growth of the operational cost going forward is going to keep on going down and more rapidly than we were expecting in the -- we were expecting when we presented the plan.

For the adjustments of net profit, I'll leave the floor to Lorena.

Thank you, Alessandro. So you can see on Slide 6, the P&L adjusted with the net profit adjusted in which we have reported a dedicated line item lines related to nonrecurring expenses, net of taxes, which are equal to EUR 3 million. And we have a detail in the same slide on the bottom side of the slide, in which we have reported the fact that this amount corresponded to EUR 4.6 million expenses gross and is related to the termination agreement with an executive occurred in the second quarter of 2026 connected to the reorganization of the bank.

Okay. If I may follow up on another topic, which is the net inflows and the stronger assets under custody was probably the second record month in terms of assets under custody. Is this a trend of investments by clients that you expect to continue also in the coming months or related to some specific reasons?

The reason is related to the unique positioning of Fineco. Fineco is offering the only one powerful brokerage platform available on the Italian market. So if you are a client in Italy that you want to deal with a very powerful platforms offered by robust, significant and trustful bank. The only place in which you can move is in Fineco. Fineco is offering a unique combination of robustness, reliability and also quality of the platform. So this is making the -- particularly the most interesting clients interested in dealing directly with the markets moving to Fineco.

So -- and this trend is accelerating for the reasons we explained because the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence is making progressively clients more and more aware more and more demanding in terms of quality, transparency, fairness. We are observing a very fascinating trend that is now we are starting on accelerating and attracting directly private banking clients that are entering just for using the platform. So this clearly is signaling and progressively accelerating change in the structure of the market. So we expect this trend is going to continue and reinforcing.

The next question is from [indiscernible]

The first one is on the partnership with [indiscernible]. Can you provide us more color on the details of the partnership and how much margin accretion we can expect over the coming years? The second one on the German pension reform, the new reform significantly opens the system with a more flexible and, I would say, market-friendly approach. In light of the upcoming entry into Germany, have you already made any consideration on how to capitalize on this opportunity? And can you provide us with more color on this thoughts would be appreciated. And the last one on cryptos. We have seen some operators authorized by regulators in recent weeks. How are the discussions with the regulator progressing? And when do you expect to receive the authorization?

Yes. Let me start by the partnership with CNP. So now clearly, this partnership that is a partnership that has a 4 years horizon, clearly, is a partnership that is going to allow us to be more efficient in providing to our clients higher quality services. So -- and second, clearly, according with a decent development of the volumes is going to be -- is going to create -- is going to generate higher margins. So because the partnership is absolutely great because CNP is an incredibly efficient partner. So we have been keeping on working with them by many years. And so -- and we are sharing with them the same value proposition because the insurance if they are provided to clients in a way that is fair, transparent and efficient are great solutions. And on that side, we are on the same line. We -- in our agreement, we cannot give a precise indication of the conditions. And so -- but clearly, it's -- for sure, this is respect what we were doing until so far is going to generate higher margins for the bank.

On the German market, I don't know, Paolo, if you want to elaborate. So because -- honest speaking, what we are -- our plan on Germany is not driven by the pension reform. This is a nice to have, but it's not -- we are not moving there for that reason.

For sure, the new pension reforms are going to go in our direction. So every time we have something that goes in the direction that you have to use efficient products, you have to use funds, ETFs, assets under custody that for us, it's perfect, just perfect. So as Alessandro said, we're not 100% concentrated on the pension reforms in Germany. We know that in Germany, there is a huge opportunity for -- not just for us, but for many players. We know that the majority of the assets are still in the traditional banking system, not just in Germany, but almost everywhere. And this is something that for us is just gold. So it's -- yes, that's it.

Also crypto...

The crypto, we are processing quite well. We are in, I can say, final talks to with the regulators. At the same time, we are organizing the backbone and the infrastructure that will be the one that the platform our clients that they're going to use. So I'm quite confident that is going to be live not probably first months of 2007 or so. So we're still talking to the regulators.

The next question comes from Adele Palama with UBS.

[indiscernible] I mean, I understand that you provided guidance but can you remind us the [indiscernible]? Then second question is on the management fee margin. So I the how we look at the total cost including the cost for the growth initiative?

So sorry again for the bad quality of the line. So -- and so I'm trying to give you some -- so let me follow up on the net interest income. So the -- clearly, the positive expectation on the future evolution of net interest income is a combination of the expected evolution of rates and also the expected evolution of our base of deposits. Clearly, there is -- so just to give you an example because there is a very clear correlation. During the month of July, for example, we had more or less a negative deposits for -- in the region of EUR 300 million that clearly this is clearly is negative for the evolution of net interest income, but this has been driven by a significant rise of interest rates.

And so if you put the 2 components of them together, the month of July, for example, has been definitely positive for the future evolution of the net interest income. So we -- our expectation in terms of rates are clearly that we are embedding in our -- in when we are making the fine-tuning of the plan. This is remaining more conservative with respect to what is -- what you have in the forward rate curve. because we prefer to be cautious. Nevertheless, this is clearly showing the clear evidence that the net interest income is going to continue to progress and is going to keep on growing. And again, the main reason is that the quality of the base of deposits.

So the presence of such large amount of stable deposits means that clearly, also when you have a significant increase of rates, the impact on your base of deposits tends to be not such as big. On the other hand, you are capturing an interesting chunk of the evolution of rates and so on. So this is the so then on the question on the management fees margins, yes, we are -- this is aligned with the previous guidance where we were guiding for relatively stable margins, management fees. And going forward, considering the kind of actions we are taking on the -- in terms of how we are guiding our network of financial finance, we are confident that progressively, the mix of our assets under management sales is going to progressively improve. And this clearly is boding well for the -- at least the maintenance of stable margins.

But clearly, we think that we cannot rule out that there is room for also some modest increase of the margins. And so we -- so it's -- so this is more or less. On the guidance for cost going forward, as we were saying, we started now our activity driven by the usage of artificial intelligence and is progressing very rapidly because I would like to remind that Fineco is a tech company. So for us, it's extremely rapid and easy to work the dividend represented by artificial intelligence and what is emerging as a clear evidence that the room for accelerating the reduction of the growth of the operational cost going forward is clearly emerging. Clearly, it's difficult to see -- to give you a precise exactly phasing of this process, but we are extremely positive on that side. And probably going forward, approaching the year-end, probably we are going to give an even more precise indication from a numbers point of view, but clearly there.

And so this is on the cost. So -- excuse me, may you repeat your question, sorry?

[indiscernible] didn't answer.

So on NII, clearly, we remain positive on the continuous growth of the NII going forward. The reason is a combination of the outlook on rates and the quality of our deposits. because clearly, when you have rates going up, clearly, you can expect some pressure on deposits. But the pressure we expect is clearly pretty low because as we showed during the presentation, Fineco has the highest percentage among the European banks of stable deposits. So this means that on the vast majority of our deposits, the beta of the deposit is 0. And so this means that you have a significant positive impact generated by the rise in rates. We are using in making our revision of the plan, a conservative approach because we are not using the forward rate curve, but we are using a curve that is more conservative than the forward rate curve.

I don't know, Lorena, if you by -- so we can say by how much is more conservative.

We can on average by 30 basis points.

Yes. So we are on average 30 basis points below the forward rate curve. So this is what -- so this is the assumption...

The next question is from Marco Nicolai from Jefferies.

Can you explain us a little bit better what are the implications in terms of EPS growth? Because you guided during the plan to double-digit EPS growth. So what are we looking at now? So can we say are we closer to 15%? Or where do we stand? This is the first question. do you have an update on the securities lending platform? How is that progressing? And what volumes do you expect to reach by the end of this year versus the end of next year? Then a question on the senior issue senior preferred bonds. So what are the funding needs for the business going forward? So the market once per year or okay for a few years?

I don't know, Paolo, do you want to elaborate both on the EPS growth ambition and update on securities lending battle. And then Lorena, then you will give a little bit more color on our funding needs.

So yes, on the EPS growth ambition, yes, we are very positive. Of course, we confirm what we said to the Capital Market Day, but we have also new information that we are very positive we can probably do even better. The initiatives are going very well. One of the initiatives that you mentioned, the securities lending, now we are fully operated. So now we are concentrated in -- on one side, bringing new counterparties in the platform. And so I remind you that the new platform is a new marketplace where we can share securities with external counterparties. So the more counterparties we have, the better is for the platform.

And so on one side, we will keep on onboarding new counterparties, institutional counterparties interested on our AC we mentioned is very valuable in terms of granularity and the fact that it's retail AUC. And on the other side, we keep on pushing on having the permission from our clients to use their securities to lend to the platform to put into the platform. We have a very high percentage of permission, almost 40% and is already quite big. And on the other side, we push on the gathering assets under custody from the outside. So from new clients or existing clients, and we're doing a great job on this. So the more AUC we have in the platform, the better it is for the securities lending platform.

So -- by the end of this year, we will start seeing some results, and I think we can start sharing some significant numbers. But for now, we are just concentrating and keep on onboarding new counterparties and gathering as much AUC as possible in the platform.

Paolo, I just want to give more color on the -- excuse me, EPS or ETS. EPS growth ambitions now. So [indiscernible], excuse me because I got wrong, so I confused EPS with ETF. So -- but your question was not on ETS, clearly, it's much more relevant, so the EPS growth ambition now. Yes, clearly, now the ambition has gone up because we made 2 upgrading in the evolution of our -- in our outlook for 2026. And at the end of the story, clearly, the final landing point of the upgrading is an improved EPS growth. Yes, clearly, it's we are not giving yet precise numbers. But clearly, now it's -- the ambition now is definitely higher currently with what we are experiencing.

But again, honest speaking, it's not a surprise because as we are continuously repeating, so if you want to have a proxy that is suggesting to you the future evolution of our revenues and EPS, look to the evolution of our net sales. The more we have net sales coming on board and the more we are accelerating on net sales and the more you can expect a continuous acceleration in the growth of EPS. So this is -- but clearly, now the outlook is clearly higher than we had when we presented the plan.

Lorena, if you want to spend a few words on this.

So as you know, in May, we issued EUR 500 million of senior preferred. In this issuance was made because in October, the issuance of EUR 500 million of senior preferred issued in October 2021 will not be any more eligible from an MREL point of view and will be recalled. Now we have on the market EUR 1.3 million of senior preferred. But in October, we will come back to an amount of EUR 800 million. And our expectation is that this amount is fully compliant for the following years. So we will probably issue a new senior bond, a new senior preferred in 2028 for the substitution of the issuance made in 2023.

The next question is from [indiscernible]

[indiscernible]

[Operator Instructions]

[Audio Gap]

[Audio Gap] the extremely important questions you raised. And thank you for joining our conference call, and feel free to make us a call for any follow-up. Thank you again.

[Audio Gap]

[Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Foti, CEO and General Manager of FinecoBank. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our results conference call. First quarter net profit stable year-on-year at EUR 162 million despite the higher tax rate by 2 percentage points. Revenues up by around 4% year-on-year at EUR 343 million, with all product areas contributing positively. Banking up by around 2% with higher deposits volumes more than offsetting the lower interest rates. Investing up by 8%, thanks to the volume effect. Brokerage up by around 5%, thanks to the higher stock of assets under custody and the expanding active investor base. Operating costs were under control at around EUR 95 million, increasing by around 5.2% year-on-year, excluding the additional costs related to the growth of the business. Cost-income ratio was equal to 27.7%, confirming operating leverage as a key strength of the bank. Our capital position confirmed to be strong and safe with a common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.34% and leverage ratio at 5.14%.

Moving to our commercial performance. We are experiencing a material step-up in our growth. This is driven by our unique positioning, capturing long-term structural trends and by our execution on several initiatives. The impact of this acceleration is clearly visible in our numbers. In the first quarter, net sales increased by 44% year-on-year. In April, net sales at EUR 1.3 billion, plus 6% year-on-year with around EUR 600 million deposits, around EUR 320 million assets under management and around EUR 320 million assets under custody. Brokerage revenues estimated at a solid EUR 22 million. New clients continued to grow at a strong pace, up by 18% year-on-year in the first quarter. In April, new clients were equal to 17,500, up by 16% year-on-year.

Now coming to the guidance, upgraded outlook for our 2026 and 2029 plan, confirming the quality of our diversified business model. The better outlook is driven by a combination of better-than-expected net sales and client growth, very strong brokerage expected to grow further highest interest rate environment. No change on investing guidance to 2026. We expect all the product areas contributing to higher revenues, thanks to the acceleration of our structural growth. We expect net financial income rising, thanks to deposits, net sales and the new rate environment, investing a solid year-on-year increase in assets under management net sales. Brokerage, we expect another record here. Banking fees stable year-on-year. Cost, we expect the growth by around 6%, not including around EUR 10 million additional costs for growth initiatives and around EUR 5 million for the Pan-European platform set up.

Let's now move to Slide 7 and start to dive on the quarterly results. Net financial income is up 1%, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, led by the positive volume effect on deposits and by the higher reinvestment yield of our bonds running off. This performance is particularly remarkable when considering that the quarter-on-quarter comparison is affected by fewer calendar days, lower rates versus first quarter 2025. Let me reiterate the quality of our net interest income. It is capital light and industrially driven by our clients' sticky transactional liquidity. Deposits come to our platform for the quality of our services, not because of aggressive commercial campaign on short-term rates. This translates into cost of funding close to 0. As a result, even a small banking-only client is profitable.

Now on the right, you can see the very strong dynamics of our deposit net sales in the first quarter. Deposits grew by 32% year-on-year before clients' investments. Those dynamics were even stronger in April with around EUR 700 million deposits net sales.

Let's now move on Slide 8. Investing revenues increased by around 8% year-on-year driven by the growing volumes. The quarterly comparison is characterized by the usual seasonality. PFA costs related to FIRR and Enasarco that are higher at the beginning of the year. Other commissions in the fourth quarter of 2025 due to operating efficiency achieved by Fineco Asset Management, which are booked for accounting reasons in the fourth quarter and fewer calendar days.

On the right, you can see the drivers of our investing revenues growth mainly the higher year-on-year asset under management volumes where 53% is represented by explicit fees solutions. On the other hand, let's move on to Slide 9 for a focus on brokerage.

Let's move to brokerage. One main pillar of our business model, a business that is growing strong, highly profitable with high operational gearing and with a clear market leadership. The charts on the slide highlights the long-term correlation between brokerage revenues and the stock of assets under custody. The brokerage business represents the best sign of the how fast the structure of the financial market is evolving. Technology is driving a quick change to clients' behaviors, thanks to the demand for higher transparency led by AI. For this reason, we can see that the brokerage Italian market significantly still underpenetrated, and we see a strong opportunity to grow. Finally, we are rolling out new initiatives to further unlock the potential from our assets under custody, which we will deep dive later.

Now let's focus on Slide 11 on our capital ratios. Fineco confirmed once again, capital position well above requirements on the wave of a safe balance sheet. Common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.3% and the leverage ratio at 5.14% with risk-weighted assets at EUR 6.3 billion, total capital ratio at 39.27%, liquidity coverage ratio over 950% and net stable funding ratio over 400%, high-quality liquid assets on deposits at around 80%.

Let's now move to Slide 13. Fineco benefits from a unique marketing positioning, fully capturing its long-term growth opportunity. On the left, we show our market share the addressable financial wealth, which is still very small. On the right, we summarize the key structural trends that are reshaping the financial services industry and reinforcing our strategic positioning. First, AI disruption, which is driving for higher transparency in financial services and higher productivity.

Fineco is already well positioned, thanks to its market positioning and state-of-the-art platform. Second, the massive generational wealth transfer. New generations are looking for efficiency transparency and convenience, all core elements of Fineco's value proposition. Third, the consolidation in the banking industry with traditional banks not focused on customer experience. Fineco sits exactly at the crossroad of these 3 big structural trends.

Moving now to Slide 14. We show a clear example of our distinctive positioning compared to the industry, focusing on the investing business. Fineco is a clear outlier in the Italian market with a proposition based on efficiency, transparency and convenience. This is reflected in a great quality of our investing revenues. Our revenues are mostly driven by recurring management fees based on a fair pricing with no performance fees and a negligible component represented by upfront fees. This is marking a clear difference in the long term sustainability of our investing revenues compared to the system. As you can see on the right, other players are not just applying performance fees on the top of highly expensive investment solution, but also clearly pushing stronger on upfront fees. Fineco clearly sits on the other side. And moving to Slide 15, you can see how all this is leading to the inflection point of our growth.

Our most recent numbers are clearly showing a material step up in the magnitude of our growth in net sales and new clients. Let me reiterate that total net sales remain the most important KPI to evaluate our growth on each component of the mix contributes positively to our revenues and net profit. Asset under management leads to higher investing growth. Assets under custody net sales are a key driver for our brokerage revenues and transactional liquidity, which is gathered with the cost of funding close to 0, contribute to our capital light and industrially driven net interest income.

Let's now move to Slide 20, guidance. Upgraded outlook for 2026 and 2029 plan, confirming the quality of our diversified business model. The better outlook is driven by a combination of better-than-expected net sales and client growth, very strong brokerage expected to further growth, higher interest rates environment. No change on investing guidance 2026 on investing. We expect all product areas contributing to higher revenues, thanks to the acceleration of our structural growth. We expect better net financial income, thanks to positive deposit net sales and the new rate environment, investing solid here on here increase in asset under management net sales.

Brokerage, another record year, thanks to higher assets under custody and active investor base. Banking fees stable year-on-year. Operating costs, we expect growth by around 6%, not including around EUR 10 million additional cost for growth initiatives and around EUR 5 million for the pan-European platform set up. Cost income, we expect to hit comfortably below 30%, thanks to the scalability of our platform and strong operating gearing. The cost of risk was equal to 9 basis points, thanks to the quality of our lending portfolio, and this is expected in a range between 5 and 10 basis points. Finally, payout ratio is expected for 2026 in a range between 70% and 80%. On leverage ratio, our goal is to remain above 4.5%.

I will now hand over to our Deputy General Manager, Paolo di Grazia. Thank you.

Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning. Good morning, everybody. On Slide 21, we focus on the initiatives to fully unlock the value of our asset under custody and increase our brokerage revenues. The securities lending -- first, the securities lending platform which we'll plan to launch by the end of this June and will be a marketplace for institutional counterparties, giving direct access to our high-quality and fast-growing stock of asset under custody. Let me remind the quality of our AUC, assets under custody, highly granular, well-diversified across classes and geographies and retail-driven which adds significant value in the securities lending market. Importantly, more than 40% of the stock is already opted in combined with the expected growth of AUC, the opportunity can be very relevant.

Second -- second initiatives, the Auto-FX which is now live on all our client base. And the Auto-FX gives clients a leaner customer experience with no exposure to ForEx risk. At the same time, it presents a structurally more profitable setup for the entire bank, improving both revenue, revenue generation and client satisfaction.

Finally, on our -- finally, our activity as a systematic inernalizer and market maker. So we are positioning Fineco to benefit from the shift of European brokerage market toward a more quote-driven model, increasingly similar to the United States. In the future, we expect growing volume to be internalized across multiple asset classes. And also, we will expand our activity as issuer and market maker for a wide range of products. Finally, this activity is a backbone of the launch of our future pan-European platform.

Down in this slide, we show the strong upside potential of these three growing initiatives to our brokerage revenues. Their contribution today is progressively building up, and we are very confident that will become increasingly important going forward in the future. So let's now move to Slide 22 to dive on ETFs.

Fineco is uniquely positioned to capture the strong client-driven shift toward ETFs. For a player like Fineco, the business represents a strong growth opportunity and a new revenue engine for brokerage, both and investing, thanks to two main pillars. The first, our very efficient trading platform that is building up strong in volumes on the ETF side. And second, our distribution model based on advanced advisory solution with an explicit fee, where ETFs are synergetic with no significant high to margin and profitability of the bank. As a consequence, on the left side, you can see the strong acceleration in revenues from over the recent years. The stock on our platform is quickly on the rise and is now close to EUR 18 billion, gaining strong traction both among clients supported by financial planner and among direct clients. To further monetize ETFs, we are acting on several levers both on brokerage and on the investing side.

On the brokerage side, we -- first, growing client's engagement means higher turnover and higher brokerage fees. Second, ETF are very well in demand for securities lending and we are -- and it's a strong opportunity for our internalization engine. And finally, the platform fee agreement with a selection of ETF issuers will be in place by the end of this half, adding a further recurring revenue streams.

On the investing side, we see the strong client's interest means a big volume for our advanced advisory services, resulting in stronger revenues. Second, FAM, Fineco Asset Management is live with its active ETF range. And for plain vanilla ETFs is entering in a co-branding partnership with one of the leading issuer. And finally, ETFs accumulation installment plans are now fully available on our investing services.

Let's quickly move to the Slide 23. The plan for the deployment for our Pan-European platform are progressing as expected. And we confirm that by year-end, we will launch our first Friends and Family phase, which will follow the full launch on early 2027.

Finally, moving on to Slide 24. We summarized the deployment of our artificial intelligence across our proprietary platforms. As a reminder, our AI-driven initiatives are already starting to deliver results. As an example, personal financial adviser constantly using the AI platform, so an increase close to 20% of their commercial proposals.

And finally, let me now briefly summarize the most recent artificial intelligence initiatives. First, we are live with the customer relationship management for our financial planners, a key step to increase their productivity is fully integrated with Fineco platform and data and allows our network to better clusters, client and identify priority actions. And second, we are in the Friends and Family phase also with the brokerage copilot that will improve the awareness and the engagement of our direct clients. The AI tool allows clients to screen securities, analyze portfolios on relevant news and is fully integrated in the execution engine.

So thank you for your time, and we can now open the call to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Enrico Bolzoni with JPMorgan.

First question. I just noticed that there was a small drop in management fee margins over the quarter. I suspect might be related to the fluctuation in markets and the mix. Can you perhaps help us to understand a bit what drove it? And perhaps it would be helpful to know, for example, what proportion of your IM was in equity or, let's say, high-margin product at the end of March relative to the beginning of the year? So that would be helpful for us to understand how the margin might evolve over the coming quarters.

The second question I noticed that there's a very, very good trend undergoing on your salary pension transfer. So I was looking at your slide where you showed the money coming in from these. And on average, in Q1, for example, your bank transfer and salaries have increased by 13% year-on-year, so compared to the same quarter last year. Despite average clients having increased only by 9%, so the same trend applies to 2025. So it really looks that either your existing clients are giving you more money or transferring the back book or the new clients on average have higher initial transfer compared to the historical one. Can you maybe give us some KPI. I don't know perhaps how many clients are you seeing using only Fineco or Fineco as their main bank? Is the trend increasing because clearly, this looks like a very positive trend.

And then finally, on NII. I appreciate that you don't provide a very specific guidance. But if I look at consensus currently expects about 6% increase year-on-year, that looks pretty light. One of your competitors just reported and they revised their guidance [ they now ] expect 15% growth year-on-year. Can you just give us a ballpark figure even based on current deposit levels and then forward curves, I think it would be very helpful just to get a sense of how NII could evolve.

So thank you for your questions. Let me start by the first one on the small drop in management team margins. As you are correctly underlying, it's really very small drop. So it's clear that the reason -- the combination of change in the market -- change caused by the market effect because, clearly, when you have a negative impact because by the market, clearly, this tends to drive down the -- also the margins because it is impacting. And clearly, there has been still the reason the largest component in terms of net sales represented by fixed income solutions that clearly.

But again, as we are continuously repeating, we are not particularly focused on the very small evolution on the margins because at the end of the story, what is -- for us, it's important, is the combination between volumes and margins at the end of the story, the evolution of revenues because clearly, it's -- we have been always extremely transparent on this point. We think that, generally speaking, on the asset under management side, the industry is expected to keep on experiencing some kind of pressure on margins but what is important that if you are able to keep on growing decently and robustly and at the end of the story, delivering a good evolution of the revenues.

At the moment, the proportion of assets under managing in equity is probably in the region of 35%, more or less that. And we didn't see any significant change at the end of the first quarter 2026. And we don't expect any significant change in going forward on the short term.

On the good trends on salary and pensions. Clearly, this is a combination of new clients that they are entering into the bank and using the platform. And clearly, what we -- for us, it's very important to underline that how the way we are gathering clients.

Fineco's not gathering clients throughout aggressive offer or paying very high rates. Fineco is gathering clients because the clients are truly interested in using our services because they are considered state of the art. And clearly, in the evolution of the crediting of salary by clients, there is clearly a great contribution by the new clients, but we have also the clients that we acquired in the past that they are becoming more familiar with the platform. And so they are deciding to credit their salary with us. It's a kind of increase of the share of wallet in terms of experience of our clients. And clearly, the Fineco is -- we are -- we think that probably Fineco is the -- what is important is to look at -- which is the -- to say if Fineco is not [indiscernible] yes or not the main bank for higher clients. The answer is that this is clearly is yes. But this is perfectly demonstrated by the -- when we look to the -- what's going on, on the private banking side.

Fineco is growing 3x faster than the industry. And this is the segment in which we are growing the most in terms of speed of acquisition of assets exactly for this reason because the more the generational transfer is progressing, the more the clients are becoming and realizing the quality of our offer. And the more we have clients that they are using upper end clients. They are using more and more, Fineco is their reference Bank.

Consensus expect a 6% increase on our net interest income. And clearly, we think -- the reason of the upgrade is because clearly, we expect more because the -- clearly because we clearly -- and this is -- we are confident on that because on one hand, there is the very clear evidence that the growth that the bank is experiencing is debt very well ahead of our expectation. And by definition, growing net sales is bringing together higher deposits as well, the same story for the client acquisitions. And so this is the main driver. In terms of change of the interest rate environment, we took a conservative approach. So clearly, now we are expecting a forward-curve that is higher. We expect the forward-curve we used for preparing the plan, but is remaining definitely below the actual forward rate curve. So it's -- so the expectation in terms of evolution net interest income is clearly above this 6% increase, but remains, let me say, reasonably cautious, so it's not -- we are not bringing any [ book of dreams ].

The next question is from Christiane Holstein with Bank of America.

My first question is just around the upgraded guidance outlook. Obviously, the numbers have been very good. But this is quite fast given guidance was only given two months ago. So I was just wondering if you were able to quantify how much stronger this is versus your expectations?

And then on the net sales and client growth, in particular, I was just thinking what you think the drivers are of this. I'm just wondering if this current growth is sustainable or it's more been driven by recent volatility in marketing spend?

My next question was also just on the update on the Germany launch. Just wondering if there's anything to say there around timing? So when in H2 or H1 next year? And anything on variable costs? And I guess, how are you also thinking about the competitive environment given the commentary from recent years?

Giving a very precise -- quantifying it precisely the upgrade of the guidance. It's always -- can be extremely difficult for -- just to give you an example because if we look -- so for example, we -- as I was saying before, we are using a prudent approach. You can see the impact of the interest rates on the interest rate environment. And so it's difficult to say exactly because of what can be the real dimension of the increase of the financial income for these reasons because clearly, it's -- if we consider the actual forward-curve, maybe can be definitely much higher than we can have if we are considering just -- and small uptick in respect to the initial forward-curve we used for our plan. So this is the reason why.

So what is important to underline that it's -- if you -- what is driving the increase of this guidance is, as we said during the presentation, what is key as a KPI to keep in mind is the evolution of total financial assets or the net sales because we consider in the business more than the positioning of the bank every single component of the mix is contributing positively to the increase of the revenues at the end of the story profits because deposits is pretty clear, considering that these deposits are gathered in extremely healthy way. So -- and this means that the most part of these deposits are characterized by [ 0 beta ]. And so clearly, these are incredibly profitable.

Second, the asset under custody. So there is -- as we showed during the presentation, there is a very evident correlation between the dimension of the asset under custody and the progression of the brokerage revenues and so clearly, the more assets under custody we gather then the more you can expect that the floor of the brokerage revenues is going to keep on moving up. And this is the reason why we are confident in expecting for another record year on the brokerage side exactly for this reason. So asset under custody, it's a great business. So very profitable, fast-growing and with margins that are not too different by the margins we have on the assets under management. And finally, there is assets under management that it's extremely easy to explain why it's profitable.

The growth, yes, it's absolutely sustainable. We think, on the other hand, that we are in the position to keep on accelerating even more the growth of net sales and clients. And regarding the marketing expenditures, it's what is very important to underline that the growth is not a direct consequence of the marketing expenditure. The growth is a direct consequence if you are spending your marketing budget in the proper way. So the concept is, I think that probably Paolo can be even more precise regarding -- when you're spending in marketing, it's very important that there is a high probability that someone is listening to you because, for example, if you are a bank that is not correctly positioned. And you are transferring the concept that you are a great bank doing a great service for our clients. These are a completely waste of money. On the contrary, if you are a bank that is perfectly positioned currently with the messages that you are delivering, the more you spend and the better it is. But clearly, this is the -- so the real reason behind this growth is the positioning of the bank and exactly that is exactly capturing perfectly the incoming trends.

On the -- I don't know, Paolo, if you want to spend a few words on the German launch?

Yes. The German launch, as we said, we expect to launch the initiatives by the end of this year in the friends and family phase. And it really depends. It will depend on the friends and family phase. For now, we stay for the final launch to open for everybody in the first quarter 2027. But again, the friends and family phase will give us the exact launch date. We will have more details by then.

The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM.

I have a couple of questions. One is related to the securities lending platform launch in June. Maybe -- can you give us an order of magnitude of revenues that you expect in a, let's say, full year of operations of 2027? Is that going to be a significant contributor to revenues in your view? It's quite a new one because it's also for institutional. So it could be interesting to understand.

The second question is on the total financial assets breakdown. There has been a slight decline for the private banking. Of course, it has been impacted by the market performance, but I was wondering if there is any other specific reason for the slight decline. And if you still expect this part of the business to grow significantly in the future? And yes, what are your expectations on the, say, private banking part in terms of net sales and future evolution?

So on the securities lending, clearly, what the bank is preparing is an extremely efficient platform because clearly, the success of the securities lending business is going to be driven by two components: one, the dimension of the asset under custody business. and second, by the efficiency of the platform and the meaning that the platform has to be able to deal with the broadest possible range of counterparties because this platform is going to interact with our internal clients. So asset managers, hedge funds, market makers, prime brokerage desk and so on. And this has to be a platform. It's going to be a platform able to give real-time interaction with all this extremely broad range of players.

So it's clear that it's -- we are moving in a kind of -- we are extremely confident it's clear that this so far, the contribution of securities lending has been pretty small, and we remain quite positive in our plan. As we said, we took a reasonable conservative approach because we are entering in a kind of unchartered territory, a very promising unchartered territory. But in any case, it remains to be tested. And so we think that to give to you a precise numbers by year end is.

In the guidance we are giving, just to be extremely transparent, in the just recent upgraded guidance for 2026 and the plan we are not embedding any gigantic contribution by the securities lending, but not because we are not confident that we can achieve that because it's a brand new activity that we are entering but the combination of the dimension of that asset under custody. The granularity of the business we're running because this is another very important component. And the usual state-of-the-art capability of the bank of building up very efficient platforms is making us extremely positive and confident on the evolution.

On the private banking, as you -- is exactly what you are aware underlying, is just being driven by the market performance because it's clear that there's more clients. By definition, there are a percentage of liquidity that is much -- tends to be much bigger than the big clients. And by definition, when you have declining markets by definition, liquidity is performing well. So -- but this -- and so we don't expect -- so the trajectory in terms of growth of private banking is remaining absolutely intact and very promising.

Okay. So going back just to understand to the securities lending from what you're saying, the assumptions underlying also in your mid-term guidance are not particularly aggressive. So that could be an area in which if things go in the right direction, there might be some potential positive news for. Is that correct [indiscernible]?

It's exactly that.

The next question comes from Ian White of Autonomous Research.

Two from my side, please. Just firstly, on the AI enhancements that you've talked about, can you just say a bit about what usage you're seeing on those so far? And how will you incentivize that usage among your own advisers? And relatedly, what KPIs should we look out for to see that those tools are having the desired impact on the business? That's question one, please.

Secondly, just on this theme of competition within European brokerage and distribution, why do you think that's less evident for you in Italy versus some of the listed peers over the first 4 months of this year? And what do you see as the main structural barriers to competition that will support your business over the next few years, please?

I don't know, Paolo, do you want to start with the AI announcement giving some colors and?

So in terms of usage, the usage right now, we delivered the AI platform just to the financial planner, and they are able to use it to build a portfolio, check portfolio if they're in line with the MiFID, for example, or with the profile of the risk profile of the client. They can use it to check on the news that have an impact on the client's portfolio. They can use it to build a pitch for new clients or maybe new portfolio, new allocation for clients they already have. So they can do multiple things with AI right now. And the usage is just massive. I mean 90% and more of the net used already used the system, the engine and every day, we see a growing number of financial planners they get used to the platform, they keep on using more and more. So we are very -- we -- of course, we're very happy with that. It's probably the -- as I said many times, is probably one of the highest adoption we experienced in our journey here in Fineco since the beginning. So it's quite impressive.

In terms of how we incentivize the usage actually, we until now, at least we didn't incentivize much because they just use spontaneously the platform. Also having said that, we have a training program for the financial planner in place here in our Academy training hub that we have here in the headquarter. And we plan in the future to train more financial planner using the AI that we're releasing every month more or less new pieces of the platform. As I said before, we just released the customer relationship management for the AI, CRM, for the financial planner, which is, in my opinion, is going to be even bigger in terms of impact than we already have in place.

And in terms of KPI, we monitor different list of different KPIs. One of the KPI is the one I mentioned during the presentation as the number of proposals that a financial planner using AI are proposing to the final client, which is number is quite impressive. It's 20% and more. And this is a clear sign that is -- they have a higher productivity. They're more active. They use the AI to be much more in contact with the final client, then we use also another KPI very importantly, is the number of new clients that financial planner use in the AI are having. So different KPIs, still, in my opinion, it's too early to share all these KPIs. They're all very good. We're very happy with what we've seen. But again, it's -- we need to look for at least -- wait there for at least probably 6 months to a year since the launch and give the possibility to all the financial planner to get used and use every day the technology.

Thank you for raising the point on the competition -- EU brokerage arena. And first of all, it's not completely correct saying that the competition does not come in Italy because the competition has come in Italy by many years because here in Italy, we have all the -- by many years, we have here in Italy, all the most aggressive players in the brokerage arena. We have Trade Republic that is operating in Italy. We have Flatex and DEGIRO that is operating in Italy by many years. Revolut as well. Interactive Brokers on the other hand. So there is all the broad range of the most significant and aggressive players operating all around Europe are here in Italy by many years. So it's not -- so for which reason, we -- the Fineco model is keeping on growing and it's a great business.

We have several reasons. So number one, clearly, there is the concept of the one-stop solution, Fineco is offering to the clients and an extremely broad horizontal experience. And this clearly is extremely important for making the big clients very sticky because the big clients with the big money that they are using the brokerage platform, clearly, they are appreciating a lot the fact that Fineco is offering such a kind of broad and great experience.

Second, the experience we are giving is incredibly robust. So it's because at the end of the story, what is very important to underline is that for a client, it's important, it's very important for example, the reliability, the robustness of the platform because, clearly, when you have particularly a fast market and so on. It's very important that everything has to be very strong. Fineco has an incredibly robust infrastructure.

Third, and this, again, is driving back to the concept of the big clients. In the case of clients with a decent amount of money, Fineco is the only one player among the most relevant brokerage players in Europe that is, at the same time, is a significant bank. So Fineco is the only one. All the other platforms are small. And so this clearly, it's important for clients being sure that you can get your services by an extremely robust, solid trust for bank.

And then also on the terms of offer pricing, Fineco is incredibly competitive because we -- during the presentation, we stressed the point that how Fineco is advanced in the direction of business model similar to the U.S. one, which you are managing the floors. So -- and Fineco is internalizing a lot of the activity. So it means that we are able to offer right now a quite significant range of solutions characterized by zero commissions, for example, because I think that -- and this is a fast-growing component of the business. I'm just thinking about it today. But we -- I don't know, Paolo, it's...

Yes. This is totally true. I mean the most -- the product most used from traders like, for example, the most aggressive are commission-free, the ETFs -- basket of ETF are commission-free, certificates where we are issuer, fixed leverage and variable leverage certificates are commission-free. Our own -- we internalize our own products. So we -- on the training side, a big range of clients are already commission-free. So they're already profiting from the model that we have, that we are able to internalize flows and give commission-free business to the final client.

So summarizing, it's a unique combination where you can get a very broad experience and great services, robustness, provided by a large significant and trusted bank with a level of commissions that are absolutely incredibly favorable and they can match also the most aggressive offer by the, let me say, new brokers or something like that. So this is what is making our position incredibly strong and continuously growing. But the competition is here. It's not -- we are facing this competition by many years. We have some of these plays that have been -- that [indiscernible] Italy going back in 2014. So going back to 12 years ago, offering, for example, zero commissions.

The next question comes from Oliver Carruthers with Goldman Sachs.

This is Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. So on the kind of recent comments from your international peers, I think the marketing comment and the cost of marketing per unit return, I think it's been well covered by you. But I think one of the other interesting comments we got from another one of your peers is they were making the point that the cost of software is coming down in part due to AI making international expansion easier. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, what you're seeing and really how you're thinking about domestic and international growth priorities for your retail brokerage platform with that in mind?

And second question, could we potentially double-click on the comments you made around growing the systematic internalization and your market-making activities. So really, what's driving this? It sounds like that's a little bit incremental today as well. And if you move to becoming more of this principal agent model in brokerage, are there any capital requirements associated with this that we should be thinking about?

So the first question -- answer on AI is clearly is making much easier than international expansion. So I'm just thinking about the remember that a few years ago, there was a big hurdle represented by the CRM, so -- for the languages. And so now, clearly, it's something that you can manage incredibly well and easily because theoretically you can build a CRM that is speaking a local language also with the local dialect and without having the need of a physical person. But it's -- I don't know, Paolo, if you want to make some comments or so on this point?

I mean everything is easier with AI, not only for the expansion abroad, but for sure, for the expansion and broaden the translation of the front end was quite a problem a few years ago. And now we can translate our front ends in as many languages as we want in seconds. So it's much, much easier. That's for many different reasons.

Also it has made incredibly easy to go through to navigate through that just small, a little bit different regulations because we know that we are in the European Union, but, for example, the way compliance is working is not exactly the same. But -- and so a few years ago was a mess because it was necessary having in place a team of people that are taking care of, considering the different kind of compliance requirements in the different regions. Now this can be done really in a few seconds by artificial intelligence.

So clearly, it's -- and so the timing of our decision of moving abroad has come also thanks to the confidence now we have, thanks exactly to the presence of the artificial intelligence. And the growing internalization market, it's -- this is a worldwide trend because if you look to the U.S. market, now the U.S. is clearly is a completely quote-driven market. It's a market where when you see the price is placed on the screens are the prices provided by the market makers that they are collecting the orders that is different by the -- what has been, until so far, the prevailing situation on the European market where you have an order-driven market with the client.

And in U.S. now, practically, this model is the results that the brokerage industry is an industry which practically there is the numbers of players that they are charging zero commissions is incredibly large and the most part of the revenues are coming from the management of the [ flows ]. This clearly is an extremely easy also very easy to be understood by client's process. So -- and in Europe, probably is going to be this approach is even more robust because in Europe, there are extremely strict rules on the best execution side. So this means that you don't run the risk to have a little bit a situation which you get a zero commission trade, but there is a question mark on the quality of the execution. In Europe, you can get both. So commissions and at the same time, an extremely fair and transparent execution. So this is the reason why this approach is growing popular.

And what is key in order to play big in this arena? Number one, having the right kind of clients, we take clients that are perfect. Second, you need to have also the dimension because clearly, this is a business of dimension. If you are big, you can play this game. Otherwise, there is no way. Third, technology and infrastructures, try to mention what does it mean to adjust in a small fraction of seconds [ match ] client's orders fulfilling perfectly the best execution requirements and so on. So this is what is driving the growth of the -- and so this is going to be the market of the future in Europe. And this is one of the main point of strength on which we can leverage in our, for example, plan of expanding abroad. And so -- and this is what is making us extremely confident. So this is going to make our offer extremely distinctive. And in terms of capital requirements, not at all because this is a kind of, let me say, smart market making that it's not implying any usage of capital. So it's a completely capital-light activity.

The next question is a follow-up from Enrico Bolzoni with JPMorgan.

Just a small follow-up. In one of your slides talking about ETF, you say that you will have a platform fee going live the first part of this year in 1H '26. Can you clarify, is this the fee that you will charge ETF manufacturers to distribute their products on your platform? And if that is the case, are you able to just give a rough quantification of how much that is going to be and how many players have already agreed to pay this?

On the -- so at the moment, we have the arrangement is going to include probably what are the, I can say, the 3 largest players in the industry. We cannot give you any disclosure on the dimension of the agreement because there is, as you can imagine, this is an extremely delicate point. So we signed a new disclosure agreement with them because this is an inflection point in the industry of ETFs because it's marking the point in which clearly the industry is recognizing that more and more who is on the driving seat of this business is going to be are going to be the platforms. Because they clearly -- the ETF's world is an ocean.

Just to give you an idea, on our platforms, we have 400 different MCI-world ETFs. So it's for clients apparently they are all the same. So clearly, the way the clients are navigating in the platform is key and so on. And so this is a clear -- and the issues are fully aware of this. And so this is an incredibly important point in the evolution of the industry, and we are extremely positive on the fact that clearly, we are in that kind of position. Again, it's a business of scale, it's a business of volumes. And clearly -- and the more we grow in terms of volumes and the more clearly we can leverage on that. And this is going to become an important and relevant and giving us an edge. And is going to be in the region of as a startup of several millions of euros. Clearly, we cannot give you any precise numbers right now.

Clearly, this number are going to keep on evolving because it's going -- it's not going to be a number that is going to be fixed this year for the future. It's going to continuously being managed and negotiated with the counterparties accordingly with the evolution of the volumes and the business.

I don't know, Paolo, if you want to add a few words on this much.

I can't say much more. As Alessandro said, we have very hard NDA signed, so we cannot say much more.

Yes. That's very helpful. And just for clarity, these additional millions, will people [indiscernible] brokerage commission? So we will see [indiscernible] brokerage commission?

Yes. I'm looking to the CFO because she is in the driving seat of the -- for the accounting of the...

Mr. Foti, there are no more questions registered at this time. Back to you for any closing remarks you may have.

Thank you for attending our results conference. Thank you for the usual extremely interesting questions. And as usual, every one of you that is interested in deep diving a little bit more in numbers concepts, please call us any time for a follow-up. Thank you again, and see you soon.

Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Established to Disrupt is summing up today agenda, where we will focus on our company mindset and culture that are the key elements that allow us to unlock Fineco growth opportunities. Today, it will be a very customer-centric CMD. We will focus on the upgrade on our platform to improve the overall experience of both customers and personal financial advisers. As you can see from the agenda, first section will cover Fineco unique positioning, the disruptor advantage that we have been building over years, thanks to efficiency, transparency and convenience. This will allow us to benefit from the structural trends that are reshaping the financial industry.

Section 2, our colleagues will guide us through the growth initiatives. This will shape Fineco next growth cycle with AI, it is going to further amplify our competitive edge. After a 20-minute break, we will then dive into our platform, IT platform that is the key engine of the bank -- of the bank's scalability. Section 3, financial and guidance up to '29. Here, we will sum up all the structural trends and how this is pushing stronger growth. And this growth is going to further accelerate, thanks to the initiatives that we have been -- we will be disclosing today. There will then be a 45-minute Q&A session. And for those attending digitally, you'll have the opportunity to submit questions through the platform.

Now I'll cut the story short and just introduce the speakers. They are going to be our CEO, Alessandro Foti, Deputy General Manager, Paolo Di Grazia; the CFO, Lorena Pelliciari; CEO at Fineco Asset Management, Fabio Milanesi; Chief Information Officer, Gianluca Martinuz; Head of Products, Romualdo Guidi; Fabrizio Lingesso, Head of Marketing. I'll stop here and ask Alessandro to join me on stage. Thank you.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for being here today. Now we enter the first chapter of our agenda where we define what is an established disruptor. You know very well Fineco a quality story of growth, execution and consistency, an outperformance of 6.7 points versus the system and a 25% ROE in 2025, clearly demonstrate our ability to generate growth and value. And most important element is the way we achieved those results by winning client trust, leveraging on our core values of efficiency, transparency and convenience. It means we grew and delivered with no compromise on the quality of our revenues without shortcuts and with a full alignment with all stakeholders' interest of our clients, of our employees and financial planners and of course, of our shareholders.

This is why Fineco stands as one of the strongest long-term success story in the Italian financial services, delivering efficiently priced products to clients and quality returns to shareholders. Let me now to go deeper in what we mean by established disruptor and why we enjoy unique positioning in Europe. Every market has several layers of players. In Italy, like in the most of the EU countries, we have 4. First, traditional banks. They control most of the total financial assets, and they are structurally losing market share due to overpriced and inefficient services. Second, classic traditional asset gatherers, not positioned for long-term trends due to whole commercial logic, high fees and questionable practice like performance fees or large upfront. Third, neo-banks and neo-brokers. They grow big in number of clients, but lack the trust to attract big assets. Finally, the fourth layer, the one of established disruptors. In Italy, there is just one Fineco.

We are the only big financial institution that is combining in one platform, the trust of a big significant bank together with the mindset, the user experience and pricing of a challenger. Thanks to this combination, we can grow strongly, both in private banking clients and in the younger generations. This is what is making us a winner in long-term game. This is what means being an established disruptor.

Let me now share you the picture of the opportunity. Our addressable market in Italy is in excess of $4 trillion in household financial assets. Fineco accounts for only 3.7% market share. As you can see on the right-hand side, we have a long story of growth, but 2025 is marking a clear change in the magnitude of our growth. And here, we come to the next question, why in Capital Market Day now? The reason is pretty simple. The most recent data tell us that the structural trends are clearly accelerating strong and Fineco growth trajectory is going throughout an inflection point. Three big forces are reshaping the industry, and everything is happening at the same time.

First, AI disruption. AI is changing how people work, how they invest, how they bank. It will drive for both higher transparency in financial services and productivity. Second, we are seeing a massive generational wealth transfer. This will completely change client needs and expectations. Third, the consolidation in the banking industry with traditional banks trapped in a oligopoly game where customer experience is not a focus. So these forces are reshaping the landscape and Fineco is at the crossroad of this big structural change. Today, we are setting the foundations for the next cycle of our growth. Let's watch a quick video to transfer you how our company culture and mindset in a quickly evolving context.

[Presentation]

Now we step into one of the main topics of this Capital Market Day, one which has been discussed heavily in the last few weeks, AI. Let me take 1 minute to explain why Fineco is structured in an AI win. AI creates value if you have the right foundations and Fineco has all of them. Thanks to our strategic decision to internalize IT, we have a large proprietary data on a unified architecture, a deep internal know-how, allowing us to innovate and build our tech in-house. All of this is channeled through one integrated platform across our businesses. This means that we can scale fast and scale cost effectively. And we can do this as a trusted player by both clients and regulators and ultimately play the efficiency, transparency and convenience game.

Thanks to this setup, AI becomes a real amplifier of our competitive edge. In banking, where it boosts customer experience and accelerates clients growth, which in turn brings valuable transactional liquidity. In investing, it increased PFA productivity, allowing for a better quality service to clients, improving retention and net sales. In brokerage, it refines the quality of our platform, making it the natural home for self-directed investors, improving clients' engagement and revenues. In Fineco, overall efficiency as we are going to reshape our internal processes. Given all this, AI is the enabler that will allow Fineco to capture even more market share.

Now we step into one of the most transformative force reshaping our industry, AI as a driver of transparency and disruption. For years, financial products relied on complexity. But today, AI makes opacity much harder and financial products are becoming transparent by definition. Thanks to increasingly accessible analytical tools, clients can compare costs and returns with a single click. You can easily understand what this implies in a country where 65% of the domestic mutual funds are charging performance fees on top of priced products, together with a huge amount of upfront fees. While in the past, many traditional players have benefited from information asymmetry, today is much more difficult game to play and tomorrow will prove to be even harder. Fineco stands on the other side of the story, non-performance fees, low upfront fees and a value proposition built on fair and transparent pricing.

Now let's move to one of the biggest financial transformation of our time, the generational transfer of wealth. This is going to be really huge and unprecedented. For some research in Italy, more than 2 trillion of wealth is on the move over the next 2 decades. And this is part of a broader global trend that is true also for Europe. Within private banking, up to 24% of financial assets will be transferred by 2033. And here is the key point. 77% of the next-generation clients choose a different private bank compared to their families one. Fineco is perfectly positioned to capture this flow. We are a safe, highly regulated bank. We have a full range of products aligned with efficiency, transparency and convenience, all backed by capable tech-enabled financial advisers. And our user experience is what younger generation are looking for. To sum up, Fineco is the best place to deliver value for money.

Let's shift to what is happening within traditional banks. They are keeping consolidating and playing more and more in oligopoly game that ultimately let them lose sight of customer and innovation. This leaves plenty of room for quality players like Fineco. In the end, consolidation is creating an average low-quality service offering in traditional banks. A player like Fineco consistently delivering superior experience becomes a natural alternative.

Fineco is perfectly positioned at the crossroad of these structural trends. The way we are growing in both young and private banking clients tells you more than any statement. Let's start with the younger generation. In 2025, clients out of 35 represented over half of our new accounts, an extraordinary shift compared to only a few years ago. At the same time, our presence in private banking is strengthening clearly from 2.9% to 5.7% market share in just a few years. This is not coming by chance. It's the result of a platform that delivers value for money, efficiency and transparency. Together with these 2 segments, put Fineco exactly where the future of wealth will be. Today's plan sets the foundation for improving our quality offer, boost our growth potential and deliver shareholders' value.

I will now leave the floor to Paolo for giving you a little bit more in-depth color and description of all the initiatives that we have -- we are preparing on the market. Thank you.

Thank you, Alessandro. Welcome to the Capital Market Day. I want to start with a video that showcases a classic Fineco journey. And, yes, let's play video.

[Presentation]

So, the video shows quite clearly the power of the Fineco model, combining banking, investing and brokerage, all 100% digital and with a physical touch when you need it with more than 3,000 financial advisers and more than 400 Fineco centers. So the feeling of clarity and speed of the video you've just seen is exactly what we are scaling. So before we enter the plan, one important note, you will see today many previews, videos, you will see demos of our services and the Fineco people who build and use them every day. So -- this is not theory. It's what client and adviser actually use and we use in real life.

So from now on, we will talk about the growth initiatives. Our plan stands in 3 pillars, 3 main pillars. The first one is more client acquisition. The second one is higher productivity with AI. And the third one is more value for advisory and brokerage. So let me clarify that these initiatives accelerate a path that is already very strong. So now we're adding new tools to amplify that momentum. So what is it in practice? In practice, we acquire more faster with less friction. We use AI to simplify and make client life even easier than today. And we extract more value from what we already do very well, especially assets under custody, and you will see exactly this in the demos during the day.

So let's now move to the growth initiatives in the banking area. And let's start with the onboarding, the new onboarding. It's a crucial point, the entry point of our client. Opening account must be simple, fast and smooth. And that's why our new AI-powered onboarding reduces drop-offs and speeds up the very first important steps of our clients. So in short, less friction, more conversion, better experience from minute 1. So at the same time, the new AI onboarding is -- comes with a new AI chatbot and is transforming the prospect engagement. So since launch, the chat volumes have increased fourfold, while the intervention, the human intervention has dramatically dropped.

So AI now handles most conversation, giving faster answers and freeing our operators, human operators to focus on higher-value tasks. And this means more meaningful interactions with clients, better qualified clients and clients who really use the platform. This is very important. And even more important, they stay in the platform. They remain in the platform. They're sticky. They use the platform every day during the lifetime. So let's watch the first demo of the day on the new onboarding powered by AI, please.

[Presentation]

So the onboarding -- the new onboarding doesn't just improve the experience, but also dramatically accelerate the speed of acquisition. So increase operational efficiency. We are much more efficient on our operations and ensures that every client and every prospect actually enters the platform with a clear intent and higher chance of becoming an active and most of all, long-term client of the platform.

Let's now move to the -- now to the new account offering. It's a key step to better segment our proposition and unlock the full potential of the bank actually. We make it clear and flexible with simple plans with competitive pricing. Including 0 fees where it makes sense, of course. And we speak to the younger generations, of course, with one account. And they're looking for clarity and convenience for sure. And at the same time, we speak to smart investors and private banking clients who wants either simplicity, transparency and fair pricing. So I ask Romualdo to join me to see together some more details on the new plan. Please, Romualdo.

Thank you, Paolo, and good morning, everyone. As mentioned, the trend in acquisition is already very strong, and our goal is to push it even further. So just a few weeks ago, we decided to launch a new offering on account designed around 2 main objectives. First one is removing friction. So this allow us to attract clients with the free solutions and then leverage on our outstanding platform and our financial planner network. Second, giving the right value to the services we offer with a clear pricing differentiation. So today, we have a comprehensive offering, including 3 accounts. Fineco One is the free solution with a digital-only customer support aligned with a fully online experience. The second is Fineco Classic is a paid account with full customer support. And then Fineco Max represents our high-end proposition, including priority assistance, premium cards and transactional conditions. It becomes free for clients who has more than 500,000 in assets.

So this reinforce our value proposition to private clients and in particular, create a strong lever for our financial planner. Across all 3 accounts, we also waived fees on foreign currency transaction by debit card. Following our analysis, this is a key factor influencing customers' decision when they have to open an account, in particular, young people and travelers. Alongside this solution remain active, the brokerage account, which has been very successful in these first few years with more than 50,000 clients acquired. It's a dedicated solution to self-directed investors with the main point is the immediate access to the market. Overall, clients basically now can decide regarding their needs. They can choose depending on their needs. And then we think this is the best way to have a full acceleration and to push again this strong momentum we are seeing.

Thank you, Romualdo. Please stay with me. Let's talk about the new application. We start with our application, we started from a strong rating on the app stores. So for sure, we want to raise the bar. And the new app will be AI native and mobile first. data-driven personalization means each person sees what matters and the application is dynamic. Clients choose what they want to see and AI adapts content. design is clean, navigation is straight. It's fully aligned with the Fineco DNA of clarity and simplicity.

Absolutely. Absolutely. But the results we are aiming for are clear, increased engagement, higher satisfaction and deeper client relationships. So the app is a key branch of our client experience. It must perform reliably and keeping the user experience intuitive and friction-free. Here on the screen, you can see just the first -- the very first concept reviews of the new app. that is a complete rebuilding we are currently working on. But to give you a better sense of how this redesign is coming together, we recorded a short video that combines the first animated preview of the app with a commentary from one of our colleagues, one team members, the design team who work on it every day and so bringing this vision to life.

[Presentation]

Watching this demo, seeing this demo, the advantage is quite clear. So our new app is going to be AI native which is going to be a huge advantage for us and for our clients. And this can be possible, thanks to the fact that our data and technology were born AI-ready, and Gianluca later on will talk a lot about this. So we're not adapting systems. We're just accelerating what we already have. So let's now move to investing -- growth initiatives in investing. So as Alessandro mentioned before, markets asked for more transparency for sure. Clients want to know what they pay and why they pay. And this favors exactly our advanced advisory fee-based model, which is growing and getting quite stronger. So as you can see from the figures. And over time, we've seen AUM rising and larger share of explicit fee solution coming out strong. And for sure, AI rates and the ETF wave is pushing this, of course, this model, the fee-based model.

Fineco is uniquely positioned to capture the trends that are coming out very strong. So we answer with our fee-based model simple tools and digital processes that bring speeds and quality to our platform, to our client and to our financial adviser. So our network, our financial adviser is widely active on this kind of tools and using this fee-based model. And AI becomes just a multiplier of everything. So more transparency, more trust, better long-term growth. And now let's watch some interviews among our financial plan that are already using the fee-based model. They're going to explain us how they use it, please.

[Presentation]

So what you've just seen is the new application for our financial planner, new design with the CRM embedded in the application. We will see the -- their interviews later on. And -- but just seeing -- watching this demo, can you imagine the impact of all this. This level of AI support will dramatically boost the quality of our advice and the speed of execution and the productivity of our PFA. For sure, we will have sharper decision, faster actions and more time for what really matters. So stay with the clients.

Let's now move to another chapter of AI for financial planner. Now I want to show you another powerful capability available on X-Net. X-Net is the platform that our financial planner are using to manage their clients every day. And the tool is the AI portfolio rebalancing. What it does, flags portfolio off target, prioritize actions, generates proposal, move from proposal to execution in a single step. So why it matters? More time for the relationship, less manual screening, more client time, explainable rebalancing and commercial lift. So turning rebalancing into concrete commercial opportunities. So let's see it in action.

[Presentation]

So what you've just seen is just -- it's a real breakthrough. So this tool allows personal financial -- financial adviser to run dozens of high-quality simulations in just a few minutes. So generate tailored content instantly and move from analysis to execution in seconds, turns complexity into clarity and for sure, boost productivity and sharpen advice and giving our PFA, our financial adviser, a level of speed and precision that simply didn't exist before.

Let's move to the -- let's go deeper into our advisory model. Before we continue, one thing is clear, quite clear to everybody. Today, the ETF world is gaining strong traction. So both among our clients, followed by a financial adviser and among our direct clients, self-directed clients. So ETFs together with active funds and the broader assets under custody are becoming a fundamental components of our advisory model. And clients want, again, transparency, efficiency and clarity and our fee-based model deliver exactly that. So to capture this trend, we are upgrading the entire ETF experience for our financial adviser, a better selection, a clearer visibility of automated plans, transparent cost -- and again, we are among the very few players who can fully capture this opportunity and the impact is clear. So a new revenue engine that strengthens advisory and push the whole value chain.

And now this is not just theory. So now let's watch the interviews of our financial planner showing how they work with the model I just talked about.

[Presentation]

So this is how the majority of our financial adviser works every day with this model. And they can do it because they have the right ingredients. They have a solid fee-based model. They have an advanced technology, and they have fair pricing for clients. So this combination elevates advice, strengthens relationships and set the stage for the next wave of quality growth.

Let's now move to ETF. But as asset under custody. So coming from advisory where PFAs financial adviser play a key role, here, the focus shifts to direct clients and assets under custody. And also here, the trend is very strong. So we're well positioned to capture the rising ETF demand for self-directed clients. And the ETF stock within AOC is growing fast year-on-year. And this is not just a buy-and-hold story anymore. So we see more activity, more turnover and significantly more revenues from that. So -- and to fully monetize this exploding market, we are deploying the key levers.

So the first one, the platform fee, platform fee agreements with selected ETF issuers, our own systematic internalization of the flow that is supported by higher volumes, the additional push from Fineco Asset Management, Fabio will talk about that later on, which has begun issuing both passive and active ETF. And then the securities lending, our platform of securities lending, we will talk about that a lot. So -- and finally, ETFs are becoming one of the most powerful client acquisition engine in our model. So it's a structural path for the next years. So -- and we are among the few, again, players fully equipped to capture this trend. And now let's deep dive into our Fineco Asset Management, and I'll hand over to Fabio. Please, Fabio, join us.

Thanks, Paolo, and good morning, everybody. I think that the first key message that I would like to address to all of you is we are ready. Fineco Asset Management is now well established, perfectly positioned with full internal capabilities able to fuel the next chapter of Fineco Bank growth. We reach our results, thanks to fierce competition inside the Fineco Bank platform. We are competing with the global brands since the beginning, we were born to compete. And then we are providing an effective time to market. We are providing solution investment strategies in less than 5 weeks. 5 weeks. Think about that. We are listening customer, involving financial planners and delivering what they really want in this time horizon.

On top of that, we are used to provide a superior risk control that is able to increase, of course, transparencies and consolidate relationship between financial planners and customers as well. And finally, convenience. We are spread in our offer range, convenience, better price for customer, better quality and of course, better margin for the group. EUR 42 billion. EUR 42 billion in less than 8 years. Over 30 investment strategies that we have realized in our catalog. It's a fairly young asset management company that already shown is able to scale up fast. Then today, we have presenting -- we are presenting some important actions inside the Fineco Bank slide, considering the big event, we are now representing not just new strategies for enriching the catalog, but actions that can create impacts on our stock or extending our customer base or talking about private equity solution that we just released.

Let's have a quick overview about these actions. Global Defense. Global Defense is a time-to-market product that we release in the market. We reinvent the formula funds and we created a successful story. Now we are able to sustain additionally the important bulk of assets moving gradually, but mechanically, the asset allocation of these funds supporting customer and financial planners in a better asset allocation. We can include also a sleeve of equity only when products are close to the end, and we can roll the products creating a very effective asset allocation. On ETF, Paolo mentioned, I think that we are quite fast-evolving player in the Italian ETF industry. We released in 2022 a good portion of our passive ETF from 2024 and 2025, we step into active ETF and now we have just released wrappers of ETF that can maintain the asset allocation accordingly with the risk profile of customers always in the efficient frontier.

I think that is really supportive for productivity of the financial planners, but also better quality for customers as well. And for a pure entry points ETF. You can consider [ MC award ], S&P 500, Euro Stoxx, where a new segment of customer can start with. Now we are able to create a cooperation with one of the most important global issuer, ETF issuer in the market, and we can enter also in this arena. We would like to enter in this arena, and it's very important for us because we can extend the customer base on which we can deal with. At the moment, we love to stay with the customer of financial planner, but thanks to this initiative in the ETF, we can deal with a broader customer base.

And finally, we have -- probably we have released a private market solution first private equity strategy, very promising in terms of results, very effective in terms of time to market. We prefer entering the time to market in the market when we have concern, when we have cautiousness in evaluating the quality and the dimension of our liquidity and the multiples that we would like to put in our portfolio. We started with the co-investment solution. The results are important. We would like to move ahead the catalog and move the catalog further.

In closing, I would say that our journey, the possibility to extend, as I said, the actions in the market. Our crowded pipeline can support FinecoBank expectation of growth, but keeping margins in-house. Thank you.

Thank you, Fabio. Fabio and his team, they are doing a tremendous job in pushing the Fineco model. And we expect actually a contribution of Fineco Asset Management in our stock of AUM to move from current 39% up to 45%, 50% by 2029. So it's going to be a massive improvement.

So let's now move to another topic on our agenda, our brokerage business. In today's market, being fully integrated and owning the entire technology stack is unique. And it's one of the strongest advantage that we have actually. So our brokerage is vertically integrated. We have our own proprietary platform, our own products, our own systematic internalizer, our own securities lending platform and our own integrated CRM. And all this gives us full control over the quality, the reliability and the service continuity. And this integrated architecture is not just a technical detail. It becomes the backbone that powers everything. So greater system stability again, more flexibility on pricing, higher client satisfaction and most of all, stronger economy of scale. So everything we've just covered converge in one place, our trading platform, the FX, let's watch a demo of our trading platform.

[Presentation]

And so this is truly distinctive. So a platform with the depth and precision of a professional trading platform, combined with an immediacy and usability of a consumer-grade interface is quite unique. So the combination simply doesn't exist elsewhere. So it's a true market unicorn and delivering power without complexity and raising the bar for the entire industry.

So let's now move to -- again, let's talk again and move to another section of brokerage. With our integrated brokerage in place, let's look at the structural growth ahead. So retail engagement in equities is still at the beginning. And there is room to grow, big room to grow. And we are in the right position, just in the right position. We have a large and growing amount of assets under custody base, and we are ready to extract full potential from our huge asset under custody base with clear levers also here. So first one, more efficient internalization, securities lending platform, again, the Auto-FX, the new Auto-FX service in the platform, the ETF for self-directed clients. The crypto business, actually, we're in talk with the regulators. So we are still waiting for the green light. And the pan-European platform, we will talk about later. So to talk about -- go to a bit in the details, I'll ask Romualdo to join me in...

Okay. Yes, Paolo, thank you. As we have seen, the asset under custody we have is large and is growing faster. So in this slide, we will see how we think to give a very big boost to maximize the value of this asset under custody. First of all, the first initiative is the security lending platform. We are already active on this service, but just for a small amount. We just -- we are lending just a small amount of what we have. So we are working with -- for a new lending platform that will be launched in June that will allow us to extract more value. We have a very highly granular retail-driven asset under custody with ETF with a good part of Hard to Borrow that adds significant value in the lending market. Additionally, more than 40% of our volumes are already opted in. So the clients has already signed the authorization to use their assets. That's a very important point.

And these numbers, 40% that I said, continue to growing year after year. So historically, it's continued to grow. Finally, a portion of the revenues generated by the lending is shared directly with clients. So at the same time, they -- we enhance the service also versus them. Second point, Auto-FX. From effective March 6, so on Friday, 1 million multicurrency clients will have the option to use Auto-FX. At the order entry, they will have this option. Auto-FX allows clients to buy or sell securities in foreign currencies without taking FX risk on their cash balance. This help to reduce friction, delivers a smoother experience and simplify access to the foreign markets. So we expect also more execution from them, thanks to this function. Obviously, clients who want to continue the multicurrency clients who want to continue using the multicurrency option obviously to do so. Finally, flows management. We have a systematic internalizer. We are enhancing it to extend the growing share of client flows. Also here, we are internalizing part of the flows. This announcement will help us to capturing stronger and more sustainable revenues together with more liquidity for the clients. So also here a win-win solution.

Together, all these 3 pillars levers our assets under custody IT growth engine, driving additional revenues for Fineco and delivering an improved service to clients. This, we can say, positions the bank ahead of Europe shift toward a quote-driven markets.

Thank you, Romualdo. We definitely expect big contribution from all these growing initiatives. Let's now move to -- same to the brokerage, but let's introduce our AI for the direct clients. So I want to show you our trading copilot for brokerage account client. And it's going to be an AI platform that helps clients to find ideas, understand portfolios and follow the news that matters. And it's going to have 3 simple functions since the start, screening securities, analysis on existing portfolios, on relevant news, natural conversation that takes clients from question to action. And the beauty is that everything is fully integrated into the execution engine. So fewer steps, more fluidity, more engagement. It's a totally new way to use the platform in a simple -- very simple way. And just to be clear, this first release will soon be available only for our full brokerage account clients. Let's watch a demo on this.

[Presentation]

So this goes far beyond a simple feature. It's having AI fully embedded in the execution engine creates a new level of engagement for clients. So clients discover ideas faster. They understand their choices better and act with more confidence. So it's the power, again, of a professional grade platform with the ease of an everyday tool. So a unique combination that elevates awareness, strengthens the loyalty of the client and pushes our already high satisfaction rate even higher.

So let's close the brokerage, the AI on brokerage, let's talk about our pan-European expansion. Our pan-European expansion, our pan-European platform actually rests on clear pillars. So the first one, very strong, the operating leverage. The second, low fixed costs, the reuse of our Italian IT infrastructure, the reuse of our EU banking license, the we're going to use the EU passporting and a distinctive, very distinctive offer on pricing and experience. So we are fully convinced that this is a powerful mix. Again, aggressive pricing, high-quality service, being a significant bank, we can enter with focus and scale where we see traction. So -- and at the same time, control risk with variable costs tied to results.

For sure, this is a growth option and with an attractive ROE, Lorena will talk about it later on. So let's look at the number at the environment. So in the Continental Europe -- Continental Europe, we see pretty much the same drivers as in Italy. We see a large generational wealth transfer coming. We see a big share of wealth still actually, the majority is still in the traditional banking system, very inefficient, and there is a big room for efficient platforms. So our target is clear. So quality clients segmented by real needs and value potential. We offer, again, solidity, fair pricing, very simple usability. And we plan selective entries, so country by country, where product and rules fit our own model. So -- and to give you more insight on the go-to-market strategy, I'll ask again Romualdo to join me.

Yes. A simple idea to close. Our strategy is based on these 3 pillars. Solid trust, we are a significant bank, premium services, as we have seen and the challenge of pricing, enabled by the integration of the value chain. On top of that, I want to add a deep financial expertise, a knowledge, very strong knowledge of retail clients, retail markets and proven marketing capabilities. Altogether, this address us to serve demanding clients who seek for a convenient and top-tier digital experience. The idea is that pan-European strategy fills the gap between the low-cost fintechs and the traditional banks. There are only these few place today. We think to be positioned in the middle to be attractive for both for the clients who want low cost and very user-friendly platforms and the one who want the solidity of a brand of a traditional bank. So I close saying that the launch is expected by the end of this year, early '27.

Yes. Thank you, Romualdo. We will give you much more details closer to the launch date and some more with Lorena later on. Now let's move to the last part of this section to marketing, which is a core engine of our growth. We have been working for years to strengthen our brand, very important, with consistency, discipline and a clear long-term vision. We built a marketing machine that optimizes client acquisition, maximizes returns on every single campaign and reinforces Fineco brand day after day. So today, we will show you how these engines evolve. And I'll ask Fabrizio to join us. Please, Fabrizio, give you the floor.

Thank you, Paolo. Good morning. Let me start with a simple observation. Today's financial services market is overwhelmed with noise. You can see it everywhere. Every player is shouting promotions, offers, cash backs, short-term incentives. The result that advertising clutter keeps rising. At the same time, customer attention is shrinking. Now most banks respond to this by shouting even louder, more messages, more promotions, more discounts. At Fineco, we don't compete on noise. We compete on clarity, trust and memorability. In a market where products and services often look the same, brand is our primary scalable differentiator. It's not just a nice-to-have. It's a structural advantage. And let me please explain you why it works.

A strong brand does something that most marketing cannot. It makes acquisition self-reinforcing. About 50% of our entire customer base was directly influenced by word of mouth, 1 in 2, no by promotion, no by discount, by someone they trust. And 75% of our clients saw Fineco advertising before opening their account. So now these 2 forces, word of mouth and brand, they are not alternatives. They work together. Word of mouth delivers trust and advertising delivers reach. Together, they make our acquisition engine, both very powerful and remarkably efficient.

How do we make this happen? Before walking you through the 4 pillars of our marketing strategy, let me be clear about something. Marketing at Fineco is not a set of campaigns. It's one single system designed to optimize the full customer life cycle. The first pillar is brand. Our NPS, our Net Promoter Score is 44. This compares to an industry average of 19. Customer satisfaction sits at 96%. These are not vanity metrics. They translate directly into lower acquisition costs and higher retention rates. Second pillar is acquisition. We combine internal and external data with AI to reach the right audience at the right time at the right cost. This is the power of a value-based bidding. Third pillar, customer development. We use a fully integrated CRM and marketing platform to deliver personalized journeys across each client segment. This way, we turn value into a better understanding of the client and at the end, a higher lifetime value. Fourth, the human factor. Our advisers run roughly 1,400 events every year all over Italy, reaching more than 70,000 participants. And this is a marketing you cannot buy because it's based on relationships.

So now the question becomes, this model actually improves over time or is it a one-off? The answer is clear, and you can see it in the numbers. Our digital cost per acquisition has dropped 64% since 2022. Minus 64% is still is not a one-off. It's operating leverage that builds over time. We're basically transforming scale into advantage and not into costs. And this is a fundamentally different equation from what you see in most financial institutions today.

Coming to the bottom line, what all of this mean in economic terms? Every euro we invest in acquisition pays for itself in less than 12 months, and the value keeps growing from there. So this is why our growth model is structural, scalable, defensible. And ultimately, this is the return of building a brand instead of just running campaigns. Thank you. And Paolo, please join me back.

Yes. So let me -- first of all, thank you, Fabrizio. And let me reinforce one point. Marketing has been a fundamental part of Fineco since the very beginning. So it's not just a side function. It's not, as Fabrizio just told you, a set of tactics. It's one of the structural engines that shapes how this bank grows, communicates and build trust. And with that legacy behind, I think it's a perfect moment to launch our new TV campaign. Let's watch it.

[Presentation]

So thank you all. This concludes our session. We will now have a coffee break, and then we will start again with Information Technology. Thank you very much.

[Break]

Good morning, and welcome back. I'm going to walk you through the technology platform that underpins Fineco's multiyear plan and more importantly, the platform that will deliver it. So we have built over the years a platform that is one of the most efficient and effective in European banking. Well over 99.9% availability, a tiny fraction of 1 basis point for adverse events coming from fraud, cyber events, technology events, adverse events, I mean, 1.8 million customers served, over 400 million digital accesses per year and an IT cost to revenue ratio of just 6%. We'll come back later to that figure, quite important for us.

This is the foundation. Of course, the next phase demands more. Artificial intelligence at enterprise scale, keeping our total cost of ownership for technology low under control, having the option to open our platform to European markets. And this challenge is real. We think we believe that we have the architecture, the capability and the credible plan to execute it. Here, you have an outside view or some figures regarding our platform. So 4 data centers between on-premises and cloud, over 1,800 servers under management, over 1,000 applications and so on. We have around 250 tech professionals in our department, managing all of this and with a low turnover, by the way. So the department is stable in that respect. We control -- we have a high level of control on our infrastructure and application landscape, close to 100%. And this is unusual in banking if you take a look at other banks. So I want to focus on this slide on the total cost of ownership for technology.

So we like to do benchmarks, okay? So on the bottom left of the slide, you can see Fineco Bank total cost of ownership versus the Italian market. This data are related to midsized banks in Italy. So banking for Italy, midsized banks. And as you can see, in all categories, we have a clear advantage. Take IT cost to revenue ratio, for example, or even IT cash out over revenue. IT cash out means that we operating expenses, capital expenses, salaries and so on. So as you can see, we are 49% or 50% more cheaper than our competitors in this segment. This is for Italy, okay? But take a look at the bottom right side of the slide. This is a Gartner IT spending benchmark. Gartner is a renowned IT research company, as you all know, I guess. And basically, they score financial institutions using a kind of metrics in which they score with 2 indexes, the cost index and the value index, financial institutions all over the world, okay? So the panel we are comparing against here is a global one. hundreds of institutions coming from North America, for example, Canada, United States, South America, Europe, Asia and so on.

Now as you can see from the data, let me comment on cost index. Cost index is basically how much you spend in technology, how much a financial institution spends in technology. Divided in categories like hardware, software applications, cloud outsourcing, whatever, departments, technology professionals, wages and so on. The value index on the Y-axis is basically how much business value you create by spending $1 in technology, okay?

So as Gartner does every single time, they divide the world in 4 quadrants, okay, meaning that if you are here, for example, revenue efficient, basically, you are creating business value, but spending a bit too much in technology, okay? So you are spending much in technology, you are creating business value. That's fine in some context. If you are cost efficient, then you are spending in a good way, you are spending less than others, but you're not creating business value, okay? If you -- go back, please. Okay. If you go to the data here, you can see that we are placed here value for money quadrant, meaning that we cost less and we deliver more, okay? So if you take a direct look to the data, 2.36 for us in cost and 1.94 compared to the best peer of the panel. The panel is made up, as I said, by hundreds of financial institutions all over the world.

So basically, this means that we are achieving business value by spending the money in the right way, okay? This is not -- by the way, this is the fourth year in a row that we achieved this kind of result from Gartner, okay?

Next. Artificial intelligence. Well, this is a cornerstone of our multiyear plan. We see impact on 2 main dimensions here, revenue and client experience, of course. My colleagues before told you much about this. So tailored advisory, for example, AI-powered insights, intelligent onboarding, frictionless onboarding, for example, client life cycle and so on. Also, on the efficiency side and operating leverage, we are investing much in this. So process automation, of course, AI-assisted software development. I'm sure you -- lately, you have heard many, many things on this, okay? Announced the risk management process like fraud detection, like cybersecurity risk and so on can benefit from artificial intelligence, okay? And intelligent platform operations, of course.

So our artificial intelligence program for the multiyear plan is structured in phases. We call those phases gates, okay? Gate 1 is the foundation. This is already complete. So we have now, as we speak, an internal AI team, a strong one, very skilled. The hybrid architecture, I'll come to that later, a governance framework in place, very important. And the literacy program for AI across the board for the bank, for the organization. So to spread knowledge, know-how, awareness, not just in technical people, but in all the bank, the organization.

Gate 2, largely underway. We complete this before this year results. Regarding more technical stuff, machine learning pipelines, first agentic solution. We have, as we speak, agentic solutions in place and more will come in shortly in the next weeks or months. AI assisted development, I mentioned before. And then from 2027 and onwards, AI first operations and scale. Basically, from 2027, our aim is to scale artificial intelligence across the bank, okay? So not just a bunch of use cases here and there, but across the banks. So operations, compliance, risk management, technology and so on, okay?

So very important, we measure artificial intelligence value with KPIs, okay? So those dimensions, cost saving or avoidance, of course, revenue impact and speed. So shortening time to market, for example, for the delivery of services. And the KPIs will help us in understanding if we are moving in the right direction or we need to adjust something, okay? This is our approach to artificial intelligence.

Of course, artificial intelligence doesn't work without data. We all know that. So our position here is a good one because we have 1.8 million customers. And we collected data over the years for them, behavioral data, transaction data and so on. So as we are not using integrators or we are not using outsourcing, we can have a ready access to those data. We can collect, we can analyze, we can reach those data and build on top of those data, our artificial intelligence models internally, by the way, using, for example, open source models and then fine-tuning them on-prem, okay, with our own personnel.

More important, we have what we call a kind of client data set model across all the business lines. So brokerage, investing, banking, of course, and others can benefit of the same data model, okay? So we can access data here and there independently from the business line, okay? This is not discounted in other banks where maybe they have silos, okay, with the silos here and there. Of course, this is quite important because the data basically represent the fuel for proprietary AI models, proprietary in terms that we are managing them. Hyperpersonalization, of course, next-generation fraud and risk intelligence, I mentioned before. So you can use artificial intelligence with the data you have to announce your models, for example. So you can combine a market solution for cybersecurity, combined with your own artificial intelligence model internally. And then the combination works very well, okay? We are just doing that in this period, for example, for fraud management.

And then crucially, when we launch a new market, this is an option. Those AI models will be ready. We are not starting from scratch, from 0. So we will use the artificial intelligence model we have built with Italian customer data. We'll fine-tune those models to open new markets, having hopefully the same outcome we are having in Italy. Last but not least, in Europe, regulations are strong. So GDPR, data residency and so on are managed from scratch. They are built in as we are doing that in Italy right now. So in the future, for European markets, we won't have to start again over to put the GDPR requirements or data residency or ECB regulations on those markets because we are ready for that, okay?

Hybrid architecture, I mentioned before. When much of the industry pursued cloud first years ago, we chose to have a hybrid model. What is a hybrid model? Hybrid model is a model for technology platform that works at the same time on-premises and in the cloud. So we have cloud. We do have cloud and our footprint will increase in the future, but we have a strong on-premises technology infrastructure. So let me do an example to clarify my point. Take trading engine. Trading engine, also called matching engine is at the heart of our internalization market, for example, brokerage, okay? This kind of solution requires at the same time, very low latency. And a predictable latency at the same time. So you need to be very fast, but also to predictable latency, meaning that this latency must move in a narrow range, okay?

You can achieve, with difficulties sometimes, the first requirement, very low latency in the cloud. But you can't achieve in public cloud, a predictable latency. That's why we are running that engine on-prem in our own data centers. Go to the other side, elastic workloads. We have applications or solutions that benefit from having a large computing power available, but for, I don't know, a few hours a day, a few days a month, something like that. That's a perfect place in the cloud to put those applications on. Why? Because we can increase and shrinking the computing power we have in the cloud at will on a short notice, okay? So those kind of workloads we run in the cloud. So -- and then we have development and test environment in the cloud. We have a standard software as application service and the like.

So the idea here is to say, okay, we have many workloads. Workloads are application basically. imagine take whatever you want, databases, final applications, applications for customers for internal use and so on. And then we can choose basically where to run those applications. And the best idea is to have the optionality to move those applications from on-prem to cloud and the other way around that we based on the market condition. Imagine next month, last example, Microsoft or Amazon or Google just raises the bill for their cloud infrastructure. If you are stuck in that kind of public service cloud, then you have to pay. We could move some of our workloads back to on-prem, even the elastic ones, okay?

Next one. Okay. On resilience and trust. Basically, for a branchless digital bank like us, resilience and trust, cybersecurity are not just requirements, but our commercial assets we can sell basically, okay? So we are investing in -- on 3 main fronts. You can see on the slide, technology resilience. So making basically our technology more robust and secure. next-generation security operations, so adapting to new threats and malicious factors out there is a jungle, by the way, and post-quantum cryptography, post-quantum technology. Imagine quantum computing is an emerging technology. We all know that. But in a few years, that technology will break a bunch of traditional cybersecurity measures we have today, cryptography, first of all.

Of course, this allows us to do what. We have low operational losses. So this means that our earnings are more predictable because if you have operational losses, basically, we have to pay customers or funds from the regulators, whatever, this will impact your, of course, earnings and proven resilience. So lower risk, of course, operational risk and client trust. So client trust can help in putting your churn rate for customers lower, of course, because a customer usually stays -- stays on a platform that he perceives like being reliable and secure, okay?

Scaling for Europe. European expansion, as my colleagues told before, is a strategic option for us, okay? It's not a mandate, strategic option. Our platform is designed to unlock that option. So as you know, launching banking services across Europe is really complex. It's complex. You have different regulatory regime, local compliance, data sovereignty issues and the like, okay? Those challenges are not trivial. But this is what our architecture was designed for. First of all, our platform supports pan-European expansion natively. We don't need to rebuild it. We don't need a parallel technology stack to open new markets. And this new market then adds revenues faster than it adds cost.

Our current regulatory readiness. As you know, Fineco is a bank regulated by ECB and because it's a significant bank. So ECB, Bank of Italy and the likes are already regulating us. So basically, we have a current regulatory readiness that will make things easier to be DORA-compliant, to be aligned to ECB requirements. We have already a robust cyber framework in place. So this will be a competitive advantage for us, okay, because we are ready in Italy, so we can be ready at the same time in Germany, say, or in France, just to give you an idea, the road map. In end of 2026, we'll have our infrastructure ready. We are planning to have a family and friends kind of testing. And then we should be ready to open in early 2027 in the market if the bank decides to do so. I'm talking to you from the technology standpoint, okay? Then I'm not talking about the business side. Alessandro can confirm this. Then from 2028 onwards, we'll have hopefully a proven playbook. And so the operational leverage here will accelerate, okay?

Next one. This is an important slide, technology position, where we stand. Let me put in context all I said before. If you map European banks on a chart on 2 axis. So you have an axis about cost efficiency, X-axis. I think of the revenue, for example, you can take whatever ratio you want. And on the Y-axis, the full stack ownership. Full stack ownership in this context means how much of the technology chain a financial institution controls end to end, okay? So basically, it's a level of control of your own technology. We can usually place traditional midsized banks in the bottom right quadrant, meaning that they are expensive. Their cost, they are not efficient in technology costs, okay? And at the same time, they have a low control on their own technology because they are starting to vendors, for example, outsourcing for the infrastructure and also, in many cases, also for applications. And so they are there, okay?

If you take large universal banks, they are, believe it or not, more efficient than midsized banks. So because they have economies of scale, they have -- basically, they have large revenues, okay? So if you take a ratio like that, you are spending technology, but your revenues are high. So they are more efficient in terms of cost compared to traditional midsize. However, their level of control on technology is low. Why? First, because they have complex infrastructure and applications landscape environment, okay? It's a mess, first of all.

Second, they are damaged, if you like, somehow by a massive amount of legacy systems they are trying to transform, okay? This is a problem for them. So level of control, not so good. Then we have digital challengers. They control much of their technology, more than you expect, but they are expensive. They are really expensive. So they spend more than us, no question about this. Then we have Fineco Bank. We are in the bottom left in our opinion, because we -- basically, on the cost efficiency, I told you before, the data are there. So you can just check them out. IT cost to revenues and so on. But also, we control a large part of our technological stack, close to 100% for infrastructure, for example. And most core applications are managed or even built in-house, okay?

So this is a happy combination. It's a powerful quadrant to operate from because you can choose what you will do in the future. So we are required to give artificial intelligence at scale and operating leverage and a solid rock solid, hopefully, resilience. And let me tell this. If you don't own your stock, technological stack, you can't move fast. No question. If your cost base is already high now, then you can't promise that cost base will stay flat in the future with higher volumes. We can make both promises on this.

Last slide. Over the plan, we have a plan, 4 main things will happen in parallel. First of all, AI moving from foundation to integration and then to scale, okay? In the slide for AI, I told you our approach in multiphase approach, okay? Operating leverage. Operating leverage means that our cost base for technology stays flat. Why? Volumes go up. Third, Resiliency & Cyber. Our resilience must stay high. We are working on that. Even if, as I told you before, our current operational losses for adverse events in cyber or fraud or technology events is just a small fraction of 1 basis point, okay? So it's very low, among the best in Europe. But we are investing on that because the threat landscape is an ever-changing place. And also you have also new kind of threats coming from artificial intelligence, for example, are emerging and so on. So we're investing in that. And then European expansion, of course, I mentioned our aim is to be ready to open new markets when the bank decides to do so. okay. So what we have in 2029 at the end of the plan.

First, an AI first across the bank, first approach across the bank. So we will design not processes to be more efficient using AI, but we design processes to use AI first and then use human if needed, okay? So this is an approach -- a strong approach on this. Agentic solutions at scale, of course. We hope our TCO will stay flat, flat or increasing at a moderate rate compared to revenues, for example, with higher volumes. Post-quantum ready, I mentioned this before, and then be open to entering new markets if needed.

So this is the last slide, and we have a claim over there, more clients, more markets, same cost engine, smarter every day. But I leave you -- telling you that we are starting from a good position, okay? That's a fact. Starting from a good position is better than starting behind, okay? So if you are a delay to recover, it's even more difficult, but we are starting from a good position. So this is -- this makes our plan more credible, if you like. So this is a technology engine behind our multiyear plan. Thank you.

Now I leave the floor to Lorena Pelliciari, our beloved Chief Financial Officer.

Good morning, and thank you again for being here today. In this section, my aim is to give you a clear view of Fineco, looking at where we come from, the key strengths of our business and most importantly, where we are heading. Before going any further, we would like to show you a short video highlighting Fineco results since the IPO. Please.

[Presentation]

As we have just seen, Fineco has constantly delivered robust growth confirming operating leverage. And the plan we are presenting today is firmly built on the same foundation with a clear focus on accelerating client acquisition and asset growth.

Let's start from Slide 52 and focus on the key strength of Fineco business model. A distinguishing factor in the quality of our -- is the quality of our balance sheet, leading to sustainable and resilient revenues. Our liabilities are almost entirely represented by customer deposits with the cost of funding close to 0 to the nature of transactional liquidity. This is reflected in a net stable funding ratio above 400%, which is the highest in Europe. And this is why our deposits are intrinsically stable as they are led by the quality of our business proposition and not by tactical short-term aggressive offers on rates. This implies that when market conditions change, clients do not move away from the bank. They simply reallocate within the Fineco platform across asset under management or asset under custody products, confirming their engagement with our proposition.

On the asset side, lending activity remains intentionally limited with a conservative risk profile because it is focused on our well-known clients. The vast majority of customer deposits are invested in low-risk assets, mainly European govies and supernational bonds. Looking ahead, we expect our balance sheet to grow driven by higher deposit net sales. We also expect an increase in Lombard lending, which is a very low risk and low collateralized business, closely connected with our brokerage and investing activities.

Considering that more than 70% of our assets are invested in financial instruments, let me now move to our investment policy, which is built on 3 principles: First, diversification across European government bonds, supranational bonds and agencies. Second, safety with no use of speculative derivatives. And furthermore, our new investments are going to be mostly at a fixed rate, allowing us to decrease even more our interest rate sensitivity. Thirdly, shorter duration with new investments typically around a 3-year maturity, progressively reducing the average duration going forward below 2 years. These pillars sustain an industrially driven NII, resulting in a less volatile and more predictable interest income profile. In the annex, you can find the usual details about the existing portfolio. This will allow you to assess the opportunity we have from reinvestment yields as our existing portfolio progressively rolls off. So we have seen our investment strategy and our solid balance sheet.

And these 2 elements translate into net interest income structurally different from that of a traditional banking system. Fineco benefits from highly sticky deposits with cost of funding close to 0, as already said, making even small banking clients profitable. In addition, low-risk financial assets -- the absence of corporate lending and limited credit exposure made our NII free from the credit charges that weigh on traditional lending-based models.

Finally, NII growth is driven by client acquisition and deposits and not by increased risk taking. These features define the structurally higher quality and value profile of Fineco NII. With this framework in mind, let me now clarify why all our business areas are well positioned to sustain revenue growth through 2029. By integrating banking, brokerage and investing, all in one platform, Fineco benefits from a natural diversification that stabilizes results across market cycles. When market challenge one area of business, another tends to accelerate, thanks to the natural hedge that is embedded in our business model.

This is clearly visible in the quarterly net profit trend, which shows steadily increasing profitability with limited volatility across different market environments. Starting from banking, we have just discussed how NII guarantees a high quality and resilient contribution to revenues. In investing, our revenue mix is increasingly recurring and transparent. Management fees are supported by very low upfront fees, no performance fees and the growing share of advisory solutions with explicit fees. This model is fully aligned with long-term structural trends and with client demand for transparency and value for money. This approach leaves us in a better position to deal with the industry pressure on margins. In addition, we have still a lot of room to improve from Fineco Asset Management penetration into our value chain.

Finally, brokerage. Brokerage continues to strengthen, driven by the increase of assets under custody. Over time, revenues are expected to naturally rise due to the correlation within assets under custody volumes. In addition to extract more value from the existing stock, we are launching all the initiatives that have been presented earlier by my colleagues.

And now we'll turn to 2026, 2029 plan. Let me first focus on the key macro assumptions behind our outlook. For the purposes of our guidance, we have based our modeling on Moody's outlook for the European rates market. 3-year bond yields and Euribor 3 months are the key macro variables which impact our revenues, together with assets under management market performance. Of course, we don't control market, and that's why we are strongly focused on the execution of our initiatives and on what we can control, which are clients and net sales growth and our operating efficiency.

Let's now move to our concrete guidance. As a preliminary comment, we will guide separately on pan-European platform because this is a greenfield development. Let's start with 2026, where we expect growth across all business areas. As you can see from the slide in detail, we expect net financial income to grow driven by more deposits. On investing, we expect a solid year-on-year increase of asset under management net sales. Brokerage should deliver another record year. Banking fees are predicted to be stable. Operating costs are expected to grow by approximately 6% in 2026, excluding around EUR 10 million of additional costs for our growth initiatives. The cost income is expected to remain comfortably below 30%. The cost of risk should be low between 5 and 10 basis points. Our payment ratio is expected in a range between 70% to 80% and our leverage ratio target will remain above 4.5%.

Now I will move to 2029 guidance. Between 2021 and 2025, our net sales grew by a 6% compounded rate. Looking ahead and excluding the European platform, we expect net sales to grow at a low double-digit compound annual growth rate to 2029, also due to the growth initiatives explained earlier today. Total clients are also expected to accelerate from around 6% year-on-year to a low double-digit CAGR. This represents a clear acceleration of our growth trajectory, building on a client and asset base that has already expanded significantly over Fineco's evolution. As Alessandro said at the start, we believe we are at an inflection point, and these expectations reflect that confidence.

Let's now move on to another key feature of our business model for the future, our operating leverage. Operating leverage has always been a structural advantage for Fineco. In the coming years, this advantage will expand further, supported by technology, particularly artificial intelligence. AI will reshape, we have seen before by Gianluca. AI will reshape the way the bank operates and streamline our internal processes. It will enhance service efficiency and automation across the organization, supporting the strong growth of our client base. As a result, we expect the increase of structural operating costs to gradually slow down from around 6% growth in 2026 to around 4% growth by 2029. The cost increase for growth initiatives excluding the European platform will peak in 2026 with around EUR 10 million, mainly related to AI, marketing, Fineco Asset Management. The cost for growth are then expected to increase by approximately EUR 5 million per year for the rest of the plan as our efficiency-related initiatives are progressively deployed.

I will now focus on pan-European platform, a very promising growth option. We have projected to enter Europe with a proposition focused on brokerage and smart investing, a model that is even more capital-light than the one we have in Italy. We will address our expansion abroad with our usual pragmatic cost approach. First of all, we will leverage on our existing Italian infrastructure. Secondly, we will have limited additional fixed cost with direct setup cost of EUR 5 million in 2026. In the following years, we expect fixed cost in a range between EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million per year. Thirdly, variable costs are mainly represented by marketing expenses. And here, our approach will be progressive and pragmatic based on business results.

The pan-European platform represents a valuable option with a limited capital requirement and the gradual buildup of profitability, leading to strong ROE over the medium term. broader business overview will be provided at launch as for commercial reasons, specific terms, pricing and the implementation plan cannot be disclosed in advance. Based on the macro assumption and the guidance which we have disclosed so far in our 2029 plan, we expect a clear step-up in growth driven by higher net sales, higher client acquisition and new revenue opportunities, and we expect improved operating efficiency supported by technology and scale. If we combine all our initiatives with the macro assumption outlined earlier, we expect to achieve a low double-digit EPS CAGR over the plan horizon. Low double-digit earnings per share is confirmed even including the fixed cost for the pan-European platform.

Let me close with a few words on capital allocation. Our priorities remain unchanged. First, to maintain -- the first priority is to maintain the necessary levels of regulatory requirement and especially leverage ratio. I want to spend a few words on the leverage ratio because it is the key KPI on our capital management. The reason is simple. We have a very low risk profile and our risk-weighted assets are low relative to the size of our business. This explains why we have a CET1 ratio far exceeding regulatory requirements. In order to keep the leverage ratio above 4.5%, which is our management target, we operate with a structurally high CET1 ratio. The second priority in our capital allocation framework is to invest in accelerating the long-term profitable growth of our business. Much of today's presentation is focused on how we will do this.

Thirdly, our strong organic capital generation allows us to target a regular and generous dividend with a payout ratio in the range of 70% to 80% throughout the plan. And finally, if we have excess capital, we will evaluate the best way to return it to our shareholders. As a final point, I would like to leave you with 3 messages. First, Fineco's financial profile is defined by quality with a natural hedged business model, delivering recurring, capital-light and industrially driven revenues. Second, we combine this growth profile with one of the strongest balance sheet and one of the strongest capital and liquidity position in the banking industry, ensuring resilience across market cycles. Thirdly, our plan to 2029 is focused on growth, execution and scalability while preserving a low-risk profile and delivering sustainable long-term value to our shareholders. This closes the financial section.

Thank you for your attention. And now I leave the floor to Alessandro for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Lorena. So today, I think that we have been able to show how Fineco is perfectly aligned with the major forces reshaping our industry, AI disruption, generational wealth transfer and the consolidation of the traditional banking. Our model is built to capture these trends AI-powered banking, a future-proof investing platform, a brokerage engine that keeps gaining momentum and a more efficient cost base. All of this, combined with our unique positioning as an established disruptor is what moves Fineco confidently into its next cycle of growth. Fineco 29 is the bank of the future built today. Thank you for your attention. And now we can open the floor for the Q&A.

Everybody. I hope you found the morning a useful one. We are just now giving time a few seconds to our colleagues to arrange and set the stage for the Q&A session. As a reminder, people attending in person will have the opportunity to ask questions live, of course. And for those attending virtually, you will be able to write questions directly through the platform. So let me ask Alessandro, Lorena, Paolo, Fabio and Gianluca to join me on stage, please.

It's Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan. Thank you for the very useful event. I think the technological DNA of Fineco was clearer than ever. Just a few questions from me, please. So starting from the expansion abroad. You mentioned this fixed cost of between EUR 10 million and EUR 5 million every year. Can you maybe break down for us a bit what are these costs for in terms of is it setting up premises there? Or it would be just interesting to know what actually are you going to spend this money for?

And also related to the expansion abroad, can you please clarify, will you launch simultaneously across the 3 countries or it's going to be country by country?

Then I had a question on the adviser and AI, I guess. You showed these amazing tools that are quite impressive that should make the life of adviser much easier. Can you please clarify, number one, if these tools are already available to the adviser? And second, you mentioned the targeted improvement in productivity. But can you -- what are you doing to proactively stimulate this increase in productivity? Are you thinking about poking the adviser a bit and making sure that the time they save is then not spent for the personal time, but actually used to onboard more clients?

And then just finally, a technical question on AI. It's great to know that you are vertically integrated and you can do most things in-house. Just my understanding, which is quite limited on AI is that these are very complex models. And you told us that wherever you are using in-house solution. And I think at some point, you mentioned open source models. Can you please elaborate a bit? I'm just curious to understand whether you are at all relying on third-party vendors for AI and how this relationship might change over time?

I think Paolo, if you want, you can start with the -- giving a little bit more of color on the cost breakdown on the expansion abroad and what we plan to do in terms of regions to target. So...

Yes. Basically, the costs are very low. They're related to the upgrade of the platform. So that's the biggest part that we have to do, we're working on. But it's -- again, it's a few money actually to evolve the platform and be ready to go abroad and in multiple countries. I go to the second question, if we launch simultaneously or not. The platform is going to be ready simultaneously at the pan-European level. So the structure is going to be ready since the startup at the pan-European level. But we are going to launch gradually. So we decided to launch first in Germany, which is the country we believe there is the biggest opportunity in terms of total assets and again, generational transfer, but also the fact that the banking system is not very, let's say, very efficient. And yes, so basically, I don't know if Lorena has a breakdown -- exact breakdown of the cost abroad, but is...

So the costs abroad are related partially to people that is dedicated to the business, to the development of the platform. And partially to the development to the improvement of the current platform that we have. And so they are disconnected by the volume -- for sure, by the volume and the number of customers.

Now jump through advisory productivity. So the answer is, yes, AI is already available in the hands of financial planners and more is expected to come mostly on the CRM side in order to make their interaction with their agenda, their clients even more efficient. And you're raising a very good point, how to make -- because typically, as I like to say, financial planners are not different by the human beings. So clearly. So typically -- so every human being tends to be a little bit lazy. So trying to achieve the highest possible results with the lowest possible effort. And so this is not going to -- AI is not going to change dramatically this approach. What is AI is changing that practically is what the bank is going to is to do more and more on their behalf, many of these, let me say, time-consuming, labor-intensive activity. And so making for them easier to achieve better results without changing their lifestyle, so what I mean.

And so this is the way -- and clearly, the way to make them more engaged is throughout making them familiar. So the more clearly, they are going to keep on using, they are going to become -- they are realizing that it's a great -- is a great step forward. Probably, Paolo, you can confirm that the highest...

Yes on the -- also the -- which one is already live and which one is going to be live. Where are you? I don't see where -- I don't know where to look at. Okay. Sorry. And so the portfolio builder is already live. We launched the portfolio builder now 6 months ago, pretty much. And just to share with you, the adoption rate is quite impressive. So just after the launch, 90% after a few weeks, 90% of the financial adviser were using the portfolio builder to be faster and more precise and to hire the quality of their output for the clients. So this is the reality. This is today.

What you've seen today is, one, the portfolio rebalancing, which is going to be live in April. So we're there. So pretty much almost online. The application, the CRM for the adviser, April, we target April also for this. And it will probably -- we need more time for the application, the first demo I showed you, probably we target the end of the year or a few months -- the first few months of the 2027. And -- but again, what we see now in terms of adoption and also the productivity that this kind of users are having, it's quite huge. I mean we are very happy with that. We monitor for the productivity, the number of proposals they do every day on their clients. And this is -- we have very good signals on this. And then we monitor also the opening account, and we monitor the -- all the operation they do on creating content, analyzing portfolio. And this also shows very good signs on those that are using this kind of tools. So it's pretty much -- we see very good signs and everything is going to be online in a few weeks. Almost everything, not everything.

Gianluca?

That was a good question. First of all, let me say that artificial intelligence is just not strictly related to GenAI, okay? So we are using machine learning models internally that are not using, say, ChatGPT or Anthropic or Claude or whatever. If we stay on GenAI models, our approach is this. First of all, we are using -- starting the use case, for example, for PFA or for prospect as I showed you before, using the reference for the market, say, an OpenAI model, say, ChatGPT or Google Gemini, okay, the best of the market. Then we start collecting data when the use case is in production, okay? So we are collecting data for financial advisers or for prospect. And those data are basically analyzed with key performance indicators and the like metrics, the level of satisfaction of the customers, if the model is reliable, if the model is precise in what is selling to customers and so on -- and the customers.

So when we have the statistics and the model, then in parallel, we use an open source model. There are plenty, okay? There are multiple models. So this is a really dynamic environment out there. And then we feed the data to the open source model. And then we're fine-tuning that model, quite more manageable. Of course, we don't want to replace OpenAI or Anthropic. This would be ridiculous in those terms. But we are using not just a large language model, just to give you an idea, but also a small language model, okay, specific model. So they are smaller, faster, and we can run those models on our own servers. We acquired in 2025 servers with powered by GPUs from NVIDIA, for example, so we can run inference and training on those open source model on our own infrastructure, okay? When the performance of the open source model is comparable to the performance we obtained from OpenAI model, for example, then we switch, okay? That's the approach.

It's Andy Lowe from Citi. I wanted to ask on -- a little bit more color on 2 of the initiatives that you talked about in the slides. The first is securities lending. Could you just quantify your expectations for the utilization of that and also the yields that you could achieve on those balances?

And then the second question is to do with the recurring fees from ETFs where you note that you've negotiated some fees from some providers. So again, if you could just quantify that, that would be really helpful. And you've mentioned fees with some providers. So should we expect that you should roll that out to other providers going forward?

Let me make a preliminary consideration on the enhancing initiatives. So first of all, clearly, we -- so the assumptions we made in embedding the impact of these initiatives in the guidance we gave, clearly has been characterized by a good sense level of cautiousness. So we -- because we don't want to sell a book of dreams. And so clearly, there is -- and so we -- by definition, when we are entering in a new dimension in a new landscape, the definition, you have to keep a little bit of cautiousness in what we are doing. So this is a preliminary considerations that I think that it's important.

And on securities lending, I think, Paolo, that you can try to give clearly some boundaries or some indications on some metrics that we can expect by securities lending, yes.

So the securities lending is something that we didn't exploit yet. So it's -- we started the securities lending many years ago, but just on a small part of our clients. So now we have $64 billion of assets under custody. And we have roughly 40% of the client they opted in to let us use their assets to -- for the securities lending. So considering that the clients are growing in a fast way and the assets under custody in the same way, they are growing very much. And the fact that we completely modernize the infrastructure that we use to operate the stock lending. So this will give us the possibility to use external counterparty in a very efficient way. So we can use our 40% of this EUR 64 billion, a part of this, not everything is available for -- is in demand in the market for stock lending, but a good part of that, we can use them to lend it to external counterparty, mainly institutional player.

And this is something that is going to give us a quite interesting yield on the assets. So just to give you an idea, so there is a strong demand on -- also on ETF for stock lending. And we had some offer from counterparties lately offering us for some ETF. Of course, I'm talking about some ETF, not every ETF, but they're offering us -- they were offering us up to 75 basis points, which is -- it's a good -- very good number. So the more we grow, the more we have assets under custody, the more we have external counterparties to deal with and to do agreements with, now that we have the platform, the more we will generate revenues on this kind of business.

Besides that, we still continue to lend money to our own clients because they -- we also operate stock lending for clients. They want to use the short selling services on the margin trading. So -- and this is, of course, is a business it's even higher in terms of revenues and margin. So internal margin with clients are higher, but volume is smaller. With external counterparties, volumes are much bigger, but margin a little bit smaller. So this is pretty much...

Probably it's worth the case to mention also that, for example, if we make a comparison with the German world, clearly, it's the process of onboarding clients in entering in because you have to get the permission by your clients in order to in order to lend their stock, the process of getting the permission by the clients, for example, is much easier than in Germany because it can be managed purely in a digital way, so not using paper like in Germany. So this means that also we expect also an adoption rate that is going to keep on building up and growing. So it's -- and so yes, it's a great deal.

On recurring fees on ETFs, just as a reminder, so in order to going throughout the -- why the ETFs it's a great word in terms of generating revenues because, number one, ETFs clearly are not characterized by a pure buy and hold strategy by clients, but clients are actively managing their ETFs position. So this means that the more ETFs you are building up on the platform and the more you can expect that this is going to fuel growing revenues generated by brokerage. This is the reason why we are so positive on the evolution on the revenues on the brokerage side. Second, there is the platform fees. I think Paolo, [indiscernible] how everything has been finalized.

Yes. We're going to be finalized and ready by half of this year, so by June. We selected the preferred partners. And it's going to be -- there are going to be agreements with a short in time. I mean, probably every 2 years, every year or every 2 years, we will renegotiate. And this is something that is going to help us to exploit a part of the value that we see in the ETF world. As I showed in the presentation, there are multiple source of revenues on ETFs. This one is just one of them and very promising, but it's just one. Then the fact that ETFs are, as a matter of fact, are also a trading product. So people, they use ETF to trade. They move a lot. They go in and out. So we -- it's a very good source of commission on brokerage.

Then we internalize ETF -- so the more ETFs we execute, the more revenues we will generate with our systematic internalization. And then there is the Auto-FX, of course, ETFs that are denominated in U.S. dollar or some other currencies. This is another source of revenues. And yes, there is a very promising asset class.

And without mentioning that it is a gigantic as we explained during the presentation, is gigantic entrance gate in the platform because this is what is making -- because what is very important to underlining is the unique positioning because what we mean -- so because if you want to get an efficient, convenient service on ETFs world provided by a large credible and trusted organization, in Italy, there is just one place in which you can move that is Fineco. We are in control more or less of nearly 70% of the retail flows on ETFs. And so this means that thanks to the nature of our platform when the clients are entering and usually, they tend to do also something else, just for example, the banking activities and so on. So it's incredibly important. So ETF is an incredibly huge opportunity for us and it is a very rich product.

And then it's an fantastic entry product, both for clients that are using directly the platform or client using -- they have a relationship with the financial plan because in the video, in the interviews that we saw today, we watched today, the majority of our financial plan use fee-based model, so the transparent fee. And so they can use either ETF or under custody or active funds or bonds, govies, whatever they think is the best asset allocation possible for the risk profile of their clients. And ETFs are playing a big role also in this because it's -- they use ETF as an entry product.

Which is the reason why the traditional players are shy in promoting ETFs for a very simple reason because if you don't have the right infrastructure, clearly, you cannot exploit all the values attached. But more importantly, ETFs clearly can be a gigantic line of you also on the investing, assuming that you have a business model characterized by an advisory platform where the client is paying an advisory fee, very transparent. So clearly, in this case, ETFs are working in a synergic way. But if you are just purely relying on a model based on inducement, clearly, ETFs is like [indiscernible] cannot stay there. And so this is the reason why traditional banks, traditional asset gatherers are absolutely against -- they are just giving these solutions to clients if they are really asked by the clients.

And so this is, again, considering what's going on there, the gigantic opportunity, and we have the privilege to be the only one because it probably is the only region in Europe with there is just one that is positioned that way is great.

Elena Perini from Intesa Sanpaolo. I've got 3 questions. The first one is on margins for investing. So you are mentioning the fact that FUM weight will increase in comparison from now. And so I would like you to add a bit more color on the trend in margins because on the other hand, you also have the increase of the weight of ETFs, which can be dilutive in terms of margins, but also in this, you have FM on this product.

The second question is more on how to model your costs because I was wondering which starting point shall we take for the 6% year-on-year growth and then down to 4%. So the starting point is, in my view, the EUR 350 million that you had in 2025, excluding the one-off costs, okay?

And then -- well, finally, I was wondering about your business trends in February about investing and brokerage. And now how have you opened this new months with its new challenges?

So let me start by the investing margins. As we are always explaining. I think that we -- I'm not telling to you anything strange and brand new. So the investing world is expected to keep on facing pressure on margins. I think that we are in the same boat with many of you. And -- but having said that, clearly, Fineco is in a much better position than the industry for several reasons. The first one, clearly that considering that Fineco has been always characterized by being positioned as an efficient, transparent and convenient player. Clearly, we are -- our starting point is more manageable than the starting point of some other players. So clearly, if you have -- I'm going throughout some of the plans presented recently by traditional banks that as a cornerstone insurance wrappers that are, for example, unit-linked. On average in Italy, they are charging 350 basis points of running cost per year. It's clear that the more -- it's going to be a little bit more difficult to convince the clients that is the right pricing. So our starting point clearly is much better.

Second, there is for sure, as you were mentioning, Fineco Asset Management is going to keep on giving a great contribution because as Fabio has very clearly underlined, we don't have a model in which we are forcing financial plan asset clients in moving in Fineco Asset Management. Fineco Asset Management has to fight in order to get the attention. And Fineco Asset Management is -- which are the main point of strength of Fineco Asset Management. Number one, incredibly fast and reactive in supporting emerging needs and the interest by financial planners and clients. And then as Fabio was saying, the time to market is incredible because just 5 weeks from an idea to a living product, it's -- and so this means that they are able to be always and step ahead of the market. So they are able to bring to the financial planners and clients something that is not available yet on the market.

And so this means that we can, at the same time, remaining an open architecture, the broadest open architecture operating in Italy. But at the same time, with Fineco Asset Management, keeping on increasing the penetration of the market share. So we think that probably reaching a penetration of close in the region of 50% makes sense without changing our approach. And this is going to help in sustaining the margins because clearly, not because we are making clients paying more, but because we are in better control of the value chain. So this more or less is the picture. But in any case, the ETFs are not necessarily dilutive because the most part of the ETFs used by our financial planners are used in the advisory platforms. So at the end of the story, it's not such as dilutive.

And in any case -- so the pressure on margins is there. We cannot -- nobody can deny that it's there. Fineco is in a much better position than the market. And finally, in any case, when we are -- for us, what is important is the trajectory of the growth of the revenues generated by investing. So that is a combination of volumes and margins. So it's on the -- yes, on the cost, I think, Lorena, you can confirm that.

Yes, it's correct. So for the modeling, you can start from the cost -- 2025 cost, EUR 356 million to add the 6% growth related to the structural operating cost and add the increase in the cost related to the growth initiatives.

Regarding the February trends, I'm sure that Lorena, she's not going to be happy because I'm giving a little bit more in anticipation...

You can't, you can't.

I can't. But yes, I can give some color, please. So the numbers are really, really great. We are on the border. I'm not saying the precise number. They are great numbers. And regarding -- so also the point was on what's going on. So as you can imagine, clearly, if you put together, the continuous growth of the base of clients, the traction of the brokerage platform and so on, clearly, the this volatility the brokerage numbers in this moment are absolutely really great as well. Yes, I can confirm.

This is Christiana Holstein from Bank of America. I have 3 of them. So my first one is on the multiyear guidance. So from my understanding, you have included the costs for Germany, but not revenue. So I just wanted to see from your perspective, how much upside potential that could be? And then how do you also think of the timing for such a substantial uplift in guidance as well? Do you think it will be more back-ended when that growth will come through?

My second question is just on the Germany expansion. So you highlighted previously that marketing and word of mouth are also both very important for the business. I assume you won't have such strong word-of-mouth benefits for Germany given it's a new market. And your costs are quite low for Germany and doesn't seem like you have a whole lot associated for marketing. So just wondering how you're thinking about growing your share there in customer acquisition?

And then my third question was on AI. So you mentioned that it will improve price transparency and also expose or highlight that a lot of the other funds charge higher fees and performance fees. Do you expect across Italy then that it will create some margin pressure or fee pressure and competitors will lower fees? And do you think that could also flow through to Fineco?

So let me start then Paolo will leave you the -- so -- but on the cost on Germany, just in order to clarify. So the message that we want to transfer on Germany that is a kind of free option that we have on the table. Everything is there. Then clearly, the approach in terms of what we want to -- we are going to spend in terms of marketing and so on is going to be completely in our hands and it's going to be related by the progressively feedback we are going to receive by the market. So -- and on the lack of word of mouth and how we think that we can be effective despite that clearly, we are completely unknown in German. So Paolo, if you want to.

Yes, you're right. I mean we can count on word of mouth since day 1. I mean you need a critical mass to kick in the word of mouth. But we think that for sure, we will have a unique proposition. So it's going to be a very peculiar commercial offering. I can reveal right now what it's going to be. It's going to be -- we're going to be not a neo-bank or neo-broker, a significant bank. We're going to have a level of service very, very high. And the combination of all these 3 things, we think will accelerate the critical mass from where we can use the word of mouth. Besides that, of course, we will spend some money on marketing for sure. But we're not talking about $100 million of expenditure in marketing. So it's a mix. Some marketing done in a very, I would say, in an intelligent way, the way Fabrizio explained it before.

So I was very -- I tried to transfer you that marketing is very important because we have a very strong knowledge in marketing. We know how to do marketing, digital marketing. We already have the platform in Italy, and we can use it pretty much everywhere. I mean the marketing is pretty much the same in terms of logic, in terms of digital marketing. So the combination of this, very strong on knowledge and marketing, using the very unique proposition, the combination of the 3 pieces I just mentioned, I think we can reach the critical mass pretty -- in a very fast mode. And then from there, of course, we will have another engine to adapt to the growth.

So the more distinctive is the proposition and the easier is going to be the process. And clearly, as we explained, we think that clearly offering to clients kind of the holy grail that is to give an absolutely amazing level of convenience similar to what is offered by the challengers with an absolutely amazing quality of services is a very good starting point, and this is going to make our life much easier. And on the transparency, we mentioned before that this is going to be one of the main impact that AI is going to cause in the market because clearly, AI now is pervasive. So everyone is -- nobody is now anymore using the search engines in using the AI for everything so on.

And so clearly, this is going to put -- we don't need to be genius. It's going to be put and continuously growing accelerating pressure on business model based on clearly completely unfair and unsustainable practices and pricing. So personally speaking, I'm convinced that the market is completely -- is making a huge mistake. It's using the same metrics of the past. So the typical [indiscernible] that I'm listening by some of my colleagues is, come on, the clients have been keeping on behaving this way over the last 20 years for which reason they have to change now. But now I think that we are talking about that we are living in a completely different world. So this -- and so we think it's going to happen much more rapidly.

And in any case, the evidence we have because the numbers that we are experiencing in terms of commercial results are really confirming this because our numbers have been absolutely amazing, not just by February, but several months and so on. So clearly, this -- and Italy is characterized by a situation that it's a little bit out of scale in terms of what is proposed to clients because clearly, it's among -- probably is among the 3, 4 most expensive markets in the world. We have market practices that we know. We have commercial banks that now they have nearly 40% of their investing revenues that are driven by upfront fees, totally unsustainable, clearly. So it's -- and so clearly, AI is going to make a mess of this. And for us, it's the best possible news.

If I can add, it's also just to give you more color on AI. Our financial planners are already using massively AI and building portfolios, but most of all to compare portfolios of clients they have maybe outside in the traditional banking system or in other banks, it's very easy to compare portfolios and or to analyze portfolios and create a commercial pitch to say, look, you pay this, these are your performances. And it's very easy to highlight what are the weak points of the portfolio, and this is already happening. So this is something that is live. One of the most used services in the platform is exactly this one, so the comparison. So they drop in portfolios from other banks and they just -- they're very efficient in explaining the client why maybe their allocation is not efficient 100% in terms of costs or performances. So it's a reality.

Because, again, the typical narrative is, okay, the clients are paying 350 basis points of total expense ratio because they are so happy of the service are receiving by the others that they are paying, they are happy to pay. But this is not true. The clients are paying 350 basis points because they don't know how much they are paying. And so AI is going to be -- it's just right now, it's incredibly easy for our financial planners to approach and prospect clients or also clients we have in the bank because we are increasing the share of wallet. And so it's the easiest way to get attention of clients that come on to that.

Alberto Villa, Intermonte. I have 3 questions. One is on the -- something that I asked many times during the results maybe in the Capital Market Day, there will be more time to deep dive that is the impact of the advanced advisory fees on the model. There was a slide, Slide #21 that was explaining how fast you are growing in this business. So how should we model it looking at your plan to 2029 in terms of contribution coming from advanced advisory fees, how much you are charging? How does it work basically? If you can give us some color on that, it would be very useful.

The second question is on capital remuneration. We have the cart of the excess capital being distributed that is probably postponed. Is it fair to assume that this is not going to happen before the end of the plan due to the fact that you are growing so fast in terms of total financial assets. And so you prefer, as usual, to keep the buffer of capital to sustain your growth going forward?

And finally, on -- I would think about the growth in total financial assets. How should we look at the composition of this? Is it mostly coming from existing clients, new clients, a mix of the 2, 50-50 or something like that?

So let me start on the impact of advanced advisory fees. So first of all, if the point is which kind of impact we can expect in terms of on margins, we don't expect any significant impact because clearly what we are offering is pretty much aligned with the -- what we are doing in using other solutions. So clearly, the biggest impact of the advisory fees model is going to accelerate probably the speed at which we are going to gain market share because clearly, it's a model that is transferring to clients transparency. And clearly, again, AI is clearly moving more and more the clients in that kind of landscape. And so clearly, this is going to be there.

So in terms of margins, honestly speaking, we don't see any significant difference between what we are doing there, we are doing. And what is important on the advisory model, the advisory model is important because it can play a big role in accelerating our gain of market share because, again, the system is still stuck in approach in which transparency is not there because again, the pure inducement approach is an approach that is clearly the aim of this approach is to hide the highs of the clients exactly what is paying. So this is there.

On the capital remuneration, the point is -- so Fineco is a growth story. So I want to be very clear on this point. So it's not a dividend stock, something like that because if someone is interested in picking up the stock with the possible highest possible dividend yields, clearly, this is not the stock to buy because it's a growth stock that at the same time is distributing very generous dividend, generating -- keeping on generating a significant amount of organic capital. And clearly, being a growth stock means that you have to be, let me say, cautious because clearly -- and now I'm going to make another consideration that I'm sure that is not going to make my CFO happy.

Because clearly, because if you ask me to meet personally, this is not -- now it's not the point of view of the company. This is my very personal point of view. Clearly, I'm much more positive. So I think that considering the positioning and what is the landscape, the opportunity we have, clearly, I'm going to be -- let me put it this way, I would be very disappointed if we are not going to do more than we are presenting because clearly, the opportunity is so incredible, huge and so on, clearly. And in what we are presenting, there is just -- I was making calculation just a modest increase of our market share of an additional 1%. I have difficulties in thinking that with this kind of position, this is just -- but when we are presenting a plan, clearly, you have to keep your feet on earth. Otherwise, the market thinks that you are selling a book of dreams, and we don't -- we want to do that. But clearly, it's -- and so clearly, it's -- we don't need to rush in giving back capital when the opportunity for growing is so enormous. So clearly, it would be absolutely crazy.

So the rush in distributing capital is fine if you are a traditional bank that is not growing, keeping on losing market share, keeping on squeezing clients. So this makes sense, but not for us.

And regarding the growth, at the moment, the growth is more or less 65% that is the growth in terms of total financial assets is driven by the existing clients -- by the new clients and the remaining part of the existing clients because clearly, we are keeping on gaining steam in getting -- in increasing the share of wallet of the existing clients because particularly in the upper end, because when you have in front of you a rich client, typically is a client that has more banks, is banking with more banks. And clearly, the more they are realizing the difference between us and the system, clearly, this is making us gaining additional share of wallet.

Sometimes the share of wallet is just happening throughout the generation of transfer. Because the new generation that is taking the helm of the portfolio is, but probably it's better I move everything there. So 65, new clients and the remaining part of the existing clients.

New clients considering the client acquired in the current year and also in the previous year considered clients after 1 year of life.

It's Ian White from Autonomous. Two questions, please, both on AI. Firstly, thank you for the detail in the presentations around functionality that you intend to introduce or are introducing. Can you help us to think about the degree to which these are really idiosyncratic innovations that will help to differentiate Fineco even more from competitors over the coming years as opposed to reflective of general industry trends towards more technology, more sophisticated solutions, I guess, sort of table stakes for want of a better term, that the whole industry will roll out. So that's question one.

Question two, can you comment a bit about the stability and stickiness of your deposit base in an AI world? Will we see a lot more optimization from clients on the cash deposit side?

So before leaving the floor to Gianluca, just -- I make a preliminary comment on the first question. And please, Gianluca, if I'm going to say something that is horrendously wrong, please jump in. So it's clear that for sure, we are not here for presenting -- we are not presenting the case of making something that is strange. We are not -- our aim is not to get a novel price for innovation in what we are doing. What is a very important element that we are in an absolutely great position because everybody is talking about AI. But for example, as Gianluca has shown very clearly the possibility to get easily high-quality data is the preconditions. The same story if you can work on this data and so on. And so this, in my opinion, is much more a matter of who is going to be really in the position to make things and to transform this is something that makes sense and who is not. But Gianluca, you are in a much better position than me for elaborating.

If we stick on our AI program, for example, we start in a good position, as I said before, okay? So we have full access to data. We don't have any major outsourcer. And this means that we can implement our AI program in a faster and cheaper way, okay? So first of all. Second, our ambition for 2029, for example, but in an incremental way, so not just in 2021, but also in 2028, part in 2027 is to fully redesign processes inside the bank. So I'm not talking to you about our use cases for customers or for financial advisers. This is a topic for my colleagues here. But what we are doing is just basically rethinking on how Fineco works from the internal, okay?

So this is ambitious, but we are not here to say, okay, we just implement, I don't know, a bunch of use cases, very visible, maybe on the market or whatever and to lay off people somehow. No. We are redesigning the bank, okay, with a view that is AI-centric, okay? We are already starting that roadmap. It will be not this year, maybe we'll see in 2027, some of this effect. And then in 2028 and 2029, we'll be much more there, okay?

So the idea is not to use AI to be more efficient, say, but to think the bank in terms of AI. okay? That's very ambitious, I know. But our position is a good one because as I told before, we don't need to ask anybody to do that, okay? So we have the data, we have the internal infrastructure. We have skilled people internally. So we can go to, of course, to some vendors, integrators, whatever, but we'll have a full control on our AI program, okay? So we'll focus on high-impact use cases, for example, in terms of efficiency or in terms of revenues, okay? I don't know if I...

On stability and stickiness of the deposit base, this is quite -- is a recurring topic. So first of all, let me start by -- first of all, let me start by a more general comment on this point. So it's AI so it's -- using AI for optimizing the way clients are using deposits, honestly speaking, I think that is a little bit misplaced activity because it's something that is done by many years. So it's many years that are existing engines that they are trying to explain to clients where he is the best place to put that money and so on. So it's not a particularly sophisticated topic. So we -- I don't think that AI is going to add much more. So this generally speaking.

Second, and now coming back more directly to the specific case of Fineco. Fineco as we explained, as a business model that is based on the idea that we are not attracting clients using shortcuts, strange offers and something like that. The clients are opening accounts with us because they want to use our platform. And when a client is using a platform, technically speaking, is leaving on the platform, what we call the transactional liquidity is the liquidity that everybody of us we have on the current account we are using for the day-by-day life. Nobody -- it's impossible to keep a current account perfectly at 0 is the transactional liquidity that is kept by the brokerage clients on the platform because they need to have immediately available liquidity for taking the marketing opportunities.

And clearly, this liquidity is not chasing the rates because, first of all, it's small. The median -- and so just some numbers. Because in our world, it's just a matter of numbers. So we can -- so the median deposits of our clients is EUR 4,500. It's clear that -- so for which reason someone has to try and see. It's clear that theoretically, you can say I keep my current account, not EUR 4,500, but EUR 2,000 because I can get more. Come on, who is doing that. So it's impossible. Second, the expected stability of the deposits, we are really -- we have the privilege of being under the supervision on an extremely efficient central bank. So what the ratio that Lorena was mentioning, the net stable funding ratio in a bank like us that we have our liabilities are just represented our deposits is practically measuring that is the expected stability of deposits. And the fact that Fineco has the highest net stable funding ratio among the European banks is telling the full story.

So it's -- so this is -- so it's clear that if you are sit on a base of deposits that is deposit that has been built throughout offering of term deposits and competing with the market, trying to offer rates, this clearly, by definition, completely unstable. And so we think that artificial intelligence is not going to change anything from that point of view. Our -- the stability of our deposits are going to remain rock solid and the base of our financial income.

Transactional liquidity from banking and from brokerage. Both.

Yes. Just to tell you, I'm also very interested in looking to the -- when there are the presentation of results of the other brokerage platforms, particularly U.S. because U.S., they are. And at the end of the story, I went through the numbers of, for example, Robinhood, their plans. So the plans of Robinhood, everything is based on what they expect to grow in terms of transactional liquidity to their clients. This is great. So it's -- for sure, you're right. Same story when they're looking to interact with brokers. 65% of their revenues are represented by financial income, again, and the market is right in considering this valuable. Probably where he is a little bit wrong when he's considering our liquidity as a poor business because when I'm going throughout some numbers on the sales side, usually, this financial income is treated with a very low multiple, the same multiple of the traditional banks, but Lorena has been quite effective in explaining the difference. But yes, our deposit base is incredibly value and really, really incredibly rock solid.

It's Marco Nicolai from Jefferies. It's a -- first question is just a follow-up on the international expansion. I'm here. So I just wanted to make sure like what do you include in terms of revenues in this business plan from the international expansion. My understanding is that you don't include revenues of it, but you do include the costs. And so the follow-up on this is essentially, when do you expect this to be EPS accretive to your business? Like when do you expect this -- the revenues from this to go above this EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million fixed cost? So is it going to be within this business plan?

Usual? For sure, yes. for sure, yes, this is the case. And clearly, when we are measuring what's going on in a business like that, for us, what is typically is important when you have the moment in which the revenues are exceeding the operational industrial margins. And clearly, this can -- considering the -- this is the reason why we are continuously stressing the point that the huge operational leverage, the fixed cost we have for running the platform are so small that to reach a positive industrial marginal positive contribution is going to be extremely easy. So because we are talking about really very few money. So it's -- yes, this is the great advantage we have. So it's something that can achieve very easily and gross operating margins positive relatively in a short period of time.

And then perhaps another question on the crypto. Mr. Di Grazia mentioned quickly the initiative -- also this initiative before. Any updates there? I understand now perhaps speaking about crypto is not appealing given that Bitcoin is under pressure. But I guess these things move in cycle, right? So you've got to be ready for the next up cycle. And so perhaps this is the right moment kind of to prepare your infrastructure. What you're doing on that front?

Yes, you're totally right. I mean it's a gap that we have right now, but not because we want it, it's because we cannot do it until we have the green light from our regulators. So we're in talks. We have a clear idea of the infrastructure. We have a clear idea of the commercial proposition. We have everything in place. So -- and I think the day we will have -- if we will have the green light, we will be very, very fast in implementing it. But for sure, in the future, I see this world in the platform. I mean it's something that is evolving. Maybe it's going to become something also different from now. But for sure, you will see tokens, maybe not crypto tokens, but tokens on -- for sure, on equities or bonds.

So we need to be ready on the technological point of view. And we're studying how to evolve, how to create an ecosystem for the tokens -- so this is a very important point. And it's going to be -- at least on the token side, it's going to be mandatory or you in or you out. I mean it's -- the world is going in that direction for sure, 100%.

Paola Sabbione, Barclays. I have a couple of questions. One is on your new client segmentation. It seems that there is obviously a new offer, for example, on the current account for the younger generation. And I wanted to ask if you have a specific marketing campaign or marketing tool, maybe digital tool that you're using for this cluster of clients with clearly a long-term ambition to capture them more and more.

And then another set of questions on the financial advisers. I wanted to ask if you think your AI-powered tool for financial planners can be a distinctive factor, maybe helping you even in hiring them versus the competitors. And still on the competition, we have seen the banks, so not necessarily asset gathers, but really the banks planning, targeting new network of financial advisers, they want to hire more, even the 2 main largest Italian banks. So do you see this as a threat or maybe as an opportunity creating more professionals to hire yourself?

Yes. On the new client segmentation, we just started the new offering. We launched a new offering a few weeks ago. And you can already see how the new clients are positioning. So for sure, the biggest part is on the free account, the one, and then we will have a split from the classic one, the 395 per month and the max one. But this is crucial for us because it helps us to better segment the clients in the sense that we are very strong in acquiring both private banking clients and on the other side, let's say, mass affluent or also mass clients, so very young clients. So they both want the same thing. They both want a platform that works. They want to pay the right amount of money. They want efficiency, they want transparency, but they're totally different. One is the a few money and the other one, the big amount of money.

But we think it's very important for us because the youngest one is the future. So without the youngster, the future -- there is no future. So it's better to think about it now. And so we want to be very aggressive on this. And we will have in this segment many, many headcounts, but fewer assets in terms of probably cash. We will have benefits on brokerage, a huge benefit on brokerage. And on the other side, private banking clients, I mean, it's quite clear where you have the advantages. So I think the new offering is going to work very well. The combination of a mass market account that is going to compete with the new banks. Actually, if you do like a comparison now, our account fee with a new bank account, I mean, there's no match. I mean, we are so much better. So we are a significant bank. We are very solid and then all the other things.

And on the private banking side, it's very difficult to match our offer because, again, we are 100% digital, but with a physical touch, if you want to have a physical touch. And if you have money, you want to have a physical touch. And I don't think it's going to change in the future. So I see a future where financial adviser, they use AI massively for clients, they have money for private banking clients. So just to say that the new offering is just the right balance to get every single segment of the client we aim for, we go for, for the next -- not 3 years, but probably 5, 10 years from now.

In terms of marketing campaign, we do a lot of marketing campaign. Again, we have a fantastic marketing platform, 100% proprietary. So we have the know-how in-house, and we are very good at targeting and performing digital campaigns, performer marketing. Usually, we pay what we get. So we don't just say we spend $1 million, and we don't know what is going to come back. So if we spend $1 million, we know we spend because we gather our cash or brokerage activities. Anyway, we pay for what we get. So this is very smart and very efficient. And with the platform campaign, we target all different targets. So from -- again, from a private client to mass and mass affluent. And private banking clients are very interesting right now because the majority of the private clients are going to -- are connected to a financial planner.

But we have a significant number that is growing of clients, private banking clients that start using by themselves the platform. And eventually, they will use them the financial adviser. And it's something that is all combined, it's a very bright future in our opinion.

A quick comment on the -- what's going on in the financial planners world, AI tools. For sure, the AI tools we have in place, we are implementing on our network are going to make clearly, for sure, much more productive in the network, but it's going to make, for example, easier to take on board new financial plan -- the financial plan of the new generation. So because now -- and this is a very important topic because the industry has been until so far and still it is very shortsighted because it has been an industry that not investing on the young generation and talking about financial planners is an industry characterizing a significant high level and high age. And because for a very simple reason because the industry has been much preferred to take the shortcut hiring seasoned financial planners, overpaying them.

Clearly, this has made easier to get immediately the impact in terms of total financial assets because they are just paying and so on. But clearly, this is creating a significant problem ahead because the more you have your network hedging and the more it's going to become difficult to stay on the market. And clearly, Fineco has been characterized by many years, have been extremely active there in investing on the new generation. And the new generation clearly are thinking and acting -- during the video, there was the young guys. They are just thinking and acting using this new approach based on technology, artificial intelligence, combining together efficient assets and so on.

And so clearly, this -- on the other side, unfortunately, the industry is keeping on reiterating the hold in my opinion, bad habits of keeping on playing the game of overpaying seasonal financial planners for convincing them in joining them, but this clearly is a losing game because it's a vicious cycle because clearly, when a financial planning is hired through a huge payment, clearly, this at the end of the story is paid by the clients because we are not talking about charitable organizations. So the more they pay and the more they are asking for their clients to pay. So and this clearly is not working in this kind of world. And we are not playing that kind of game clearly. But our numbers are very clear.

If we look to the net sales of our financial planners network, more than 90% is generated organically by the existing financial planners and just less than 10% by financial planners recruited over the last 24 months. We have an organization in which the weight of the recruiting is in excess of 50% and clear is. But this is a word that we don't want to have anything in common with that.

On the hiring, using AI for the hiring of the financial planner, it's a huge advantage, just a huge advantage. We don't have to show you also a demo, a live demo of the Met, the platform that are using our financial planner, but it's something that doesn't exist in the market. So we use the technology to hire, especially young financial planners. So a young financial planner wants to use the technology. The old-fashioned financial planner, I mean, it's totally different from what we have here, especially the new hire. So they want the technology. They want everything digital. They don't want to see paper, of course, we don't either. And this is already a big boost in hiring, but it's going to be better and better, and we're going to use it more and more as we release the new AI services. So it's -- again, it's a huge service, and it's a unique platform in Italy right now.

On banks targeting network financial planners, we have to make a kind of distinction because we have banks, but they are many years ago. They moved in the direction of offering to their employees a kind of a hybrid contract. So making them half an employee and half a financial planner. But this is not only speaking, is not efficient because if an employee has the commercial traction is someone that is perceived that is in the condition to get great results for which reason I have to stay by half. Who is remaining there is are the people that are not characterized by any significant commercial traction. In this case, it's not worth it.

And then we have the other situation which we have some banks that have started an aggressive hiring of financial planners, but it's to say repeating all the old mistakes made in the past, overpaying them for making them. And so I'm not -- I don't want to repeat myself on this point, considering underestimating that it's not enough having financial planners on board, but you need to have a platform. You need to have an ecosystem in order to make them working because if they don't have the platform, it's completely -- it's a waste of money to hire a financial plan.

And third mistake is to put together financial planners with branches. If you want to have the best way for experiencing a booming level of fraud and wrongdoings, put together financial planners with branches. So this is because you put the payment system together with who is in control of the relationship with clients is the [indiscernible].

Gian Ferrari, Mediobanca. Still on the network, if you can remind us how many new additions you are expecting per year from now to 2029. I think you're giving a base salary as a remuneration at the beginning. When is the switch from a salaried person to fully commission based?

The second is on life insurance. I think we discussed in some calls the make or buy decision if to keep distributing third-party products of its time to leverage on FUM to manufacture yourself life insurance. There is nothing in the plan. I was wondering why you still go for the buy decision.

Third is on protection, so P&C insurance. Don't you think a platform like yours is also probably useful or in the need of offering also this kind of products?

So in the plans, what...

[indiscernible] New senior and 120, 130 billion...

In case it is not a cornerstone of the plan. So just -- so we are not -- it's not a big driver of the numbers. Regarding the beginners and so on, I'm seeing there is our Head of HR. Marco, do you want to jump here to give some color in how does it work in terms of salary and so on? So excuse me for the short notice, Marco, but I know that you are extremely flexible. So...

First of all, we are hiring more or less 100 new personal financial adviser per year. That's more or less the number, and we will increase in the next year based on the multiyear plan. Regarding the payout...

Begin so how does it work? So the fixed salary...

Yes. In the first 2 years, they are receiving a fixed salary, and they are participating to the incentive plan. Starting from the third year, they are full financial adviser, so they are receiving the fees for what they are producing.

How much we are paying as a fixed salary in the new plan?

EUR 1,200 for the first year and EUR 1,000 for the second year.

Excuse me. Marco, on the insurance side, we know we are not planning to internalize anything because our volumes are not justifying such a kind of a move. We are not planning any kind of involvement of Fineco Asset Management there. And on the other side, we think that we have still some room for making what we are doing there more efficient. But clearly, in any case -- and on the -- I think on the latest point, insurance power because...

Yes, it's something that makes totally sense. And we always -- it's one of the points in our road map that never reaches the top 5 or top 4. And so -- but it's something that it has sense. So in the future, maybe we will add also this kind of products, insurance...

Antonio Gianfrancesco, Intermonte. Just one from my side on the pan-European platform because I think it's an important test for your business model. So it would be interesting to better understand the competitive environment for that platform because you explained the positioning, but I'm curious about where do you expect strong competition from existing or other new entrants players in that new geographies on technology, on pricing, a mix of this, something like that.

So this is a very competitive landscape. There is no doubt. So usually, the players acting there are extremely efficient. So they are not -- at the same time, we have -- on the other hand, still the journey is just at the beginning because also Germany that is a country which probably the acceleration is the fastest. still the vast majority of clients assets is still in the hands of really inefficient traditional banks. So clearly, the room for growing there. So my suggestion is not just looking to the -- starting immediately making a direct comparison among the different players assuming that is a kind of limited world. So it's -- we are just beginning. So what is going to be very important is the effectiveness of what we are proposing because when we are saying that we are going to bring on the market something that is combining together an absolutely amazing level of convenience and an absolutely amazing level of quality, it's not such as easy. So usually, it's quite impossible to find that kind.

So we think that -- but in all the industry, if you are able to do that, there is no doubt that you are going to make your way through. And in any case, consider that it's not a limited world. It's a world in which this process -- this transformation is just at the beginning because we are in front of a gigantic and secular transformation, which you can expect that a growing -- continuously growing direct interaction of clients with the market. And so this is going to increase the market because when you are meeting some numbers of some of the fastest-growing players, for example, in Germany, but they are just scratching the surface of that. I don't know, Paolo, what do you think...

Yes, you're totally right. I mean we're talking about a market that is huge and still concentrated in traditional banking system. But it's pretty much the same everywhere in pan-Europe. So it's pretty much the same probably. Yes, I don't want to go far away, but it's...

Yes, for sure, yes. So probably only the Nordics are probably the most advanced.

There is -- yes. And then where do you compete? We compete mainly on trust and efficiency. So this is our territory. And then, of course, pricing is helping for sure. So we -- that's why we have in mind something very innovative. And I cannot tell you more now, but it's a mix of competing on trust and efficiency. And here, we compete with the traditional banking system because the trust, you find trust in the traditional banking system, not in the neo-banks and neo-brokers.

And this is just a pure technical point. Consider that usually a client that is using actively a brokerage platform is not just using one platform. They have more for many reasons. So just for example, the reliability and the resilience of the platform. And so the more you are emerging as a high-quality platform, something that I would be very interested in recently, for sure, in the last few days, there has been days of absolutely incredible numbers and volumes, but I'm sure that there are going to be also days of malfunctioning and downtime by many platforms. And this clearly is that if you are consistent doing that, okay, fine is a significant bank. I can trust them, incredibly competitive pricing, very efficient, great services, very reliable, for which reason I don't have to open an account with them.

If you also add the fact, we were talking about the new generational transfer. So younger generation, they will look for a model like our model. So I would say in Germany, but everywhere, there is no space just for Fineco. There is space probably for 3, 4, 5 Finecos. So it's just the right moment to be there with what we have. So that's...

I don't want to be boring, but it's amazing that in Italy, there is just one Fineco.

Yes, right. This is what is incredible.

[indiscernible].

Adele Palama. Can you provide a guidance on the expected average asset under management per annum in 2026 to 2029? We don't enter in such precise guidance because clearly, it's very difficult to give precise numbers there for a very simple reason because there is a trade-off because between -- depends also by what's going on in the market. What we can say that we have a steady, progressive continuously rising growth of asset under management net inflows per year. So this is something that is going to keep on building up that. So this deposit flows per annum.

Deposits is so -- when I was answering to the point of the capital, I was explaining that clearly, we had to be cautious on not rushing in trying to give back to the market as soon as possible the theoretical potential remaining capital we have because we are a growth company. The probability of growing even more than we expect is not -- can be material. And clearly, this means that clearly, you can have an even higher growth in the deposits and so on. And we are a developing story. We -- I don't know if we have been able to transfer to you the concept that we are entering in a kind of unchartered waters. Very positive unchartered waters. With incredibly huge opportunities. We try to build up a plan that for us, the main objective was to give the flavor of the opportunity to give a base of rock solid numbers without selling a book of dreams. But clearly, as I was saying before, if we put together everything, clearly, have difficulties in seeing for which reason we cannot grow more. For this reason, in my opinion, it's difficult to give you such a kind of a number.

So it's in 2026, 30% -- 36% cost income is not a target. So in the 2026, 30% cost income target, including the cost of the pan-European platform, no. So what we are saying, we are going to stay comfortably below the 30% level. So it's not a target. So clearly otherwise, it will be insane as a target. So it's -- and can you provide the guidance for tax rate in the business plan?

Yes. So the tax rate in the business plan is expected around 33% due to the new legislation, including the 2% additional and also the nondeductibility of interest expenses in Europe. So we expect a tax rate in that region, 33%.

Guidance on possible banking levies expected in the business plan horizon.

No, we don't expect what we have included is that is the additional Europe already started -- that will start in 2026. Exactly. Who knows? We have included what we already know.

And very interesting questions. And as usual, every one of you that has interest in deep diving in getting more details and numbers and so on, please make us a call. We can arrange a follow-up anytime. Thank you again.

Thank you very much.

Good morning. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the FinecoBank 4Q 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions].

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Foti, CEO and General Manager of FinecoBank.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. In 2025, net profit was flat year-on-year at EUR 647 million and revenues at around EUR 1,317 million, supported by our nonfinancial income, investing up by around 10% year-on-year, thanks to the volume effect and the higher control of the value chain by Fineco Asset Management and brokerage is up by around 18% year-on-year, thanks to the enlargement of our active investors and stock of assets under custody. Operating costs well under control at around EUR 356 million, increasing by around 6% year-on-year by excluding costs related to the growth of the business. Cost/income ratio was equal to 27.1%, confirming operating leverage as a key strength of the bank.

Moving to our commercial results. The underlying step-up in our growth dynamics gets crystal clear month by month. This is underpinned by the positive tailwinds from structural trends, and we are leveraging on this solid momentum through and more efficient marketing. The results of this acceleration has been clearly visible in our most recent numbers. First of all, recorded our third record year in a row for new clients at around 194,000 new clients, up by 27% year-on-year. In January, new clients were 22,000, hitting the best month on record, up more than 70% year-on-year.

Second, our net sales recorded a new high at EUR 13.4 billion in the year, up by a strong 33% year-on-year. In January, total net sales saw a further continuation of this trend at around EUR 1.1 billion, up by 21% year-on-year. The mix was, as usual, characterized by the monthly seasonality for assets under management with around EUR 260 million, net sales up by 16% year-on-year, assets under custody at EUR 1.1 billion and deposits at around minus EUR 207 million as our brokerage clients were active on the platform, given market volatility, thus resulting in solid brokerage revenues estimated at around EUR 22 million, up by 7% year-on-year.

Our capital position confirmed to be strong and safe with a common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.3% and the leverage ratio at 5.07%. We are very pleased to propose to the next Annual General Meeting a dividend per share of EUR 0.69, increasing by 7% year-on-year.

On our 2026 guidance, this year, we expect all the businesses areas to contribute to the revenues growth, thanks to the acceleration of structural growth underlying our business. We expect a further acceleration in both total net sales and new clients, another record year for brokerage revenues, a cost income comfortably below 30%. More details will be provided during the Capital Market Day on March 4, 2026, together with the multiyear plan 2026-2029.

Let's now move to Slide 5. Before moving in the details of the presentation, let me stress that month after month, Fineco is recording a continuous acceleration of its growth dynamics, supported by very sound underlying quality. As you know, our business model relies on a diversified and quality revenue stream, allowing the bank to deal with any market environment. the banking revenues, our net financial income is a capital-light one with lending being only an ancillary business, and it's driven by our clients' valuable and sticky transactional liquidity. Let me remind that deposits are joining our platform for the quality of our banking services and not due to aggressive commercial campaign on short-term rates. That's why our deposits are so valuable and our cost of funding is close to 0.

Our investing revenues are recording a sound and future-proof expansion as they are already aligned with clients' rising demand for transparency, efficiency and convenience. This approach is mirrored in the quality of our revenues mix, which is almost entirely recurring with a very low percentage of upfront fees and no performance fees at all.

Finally, our brokerage is clearly experiencing a step-up in the floor of the business, thanks to the capability of our platform to structurally have a higher number of active investors, leading to structurally higher stock of assets under custody. This is driven by an increase in clients' interest to be more active on the financial market and is building a bridge between the brokerage and investing, which we are the only platform able to scope given our market position.

The net financial income was up 3.1% quarter-on-quarter, led by our valuable positive deposit net sales and the higher reinvestment yield of our bonds running off. Let me quickly remind you that the quality of our net interest income, which is capital-light and driven by our clients' sticky transactional liquidity. That's why our deposits are so valuable and will be the driver going forward for the growth of our net financial income.

Let's now move to Slide 8. Investing revenues increased by around 10% year-on-year on the back both of growing volumes, thanks to our best-in-class market positioning and of the higher efficiency of the value chain through Fineco Asset Management. Let me remind you the great quality of our investing revenues, mirroring our transparent and fair approach towards clients. Our revenues are mostly driven by recurring management fees with very low upfront and no performance fees at all.

Let's now move to Slide 9. In this slide, we are representing the 2 main sources of growth for our investing business going forward. On one hand, Fineco Asset Management is progressively increasing the control of the investing value chain. Its contribution to the group net sales has been consistent over the cycle, thanks to its incredible time to market in delivering new investment solutions aligned with clients' needs. The contribution of Fineco assets under management out of the total stock of assets under management has been steadily growing, and it's now equal to 39.3%. On the other hand, being a platform, Fineco is the best place to catch the latest trends in terms of clients' investment behaviors.

There is a clear change underway in the structure of the market with clients increasingly looking for efficient, transparent and convenient solutions. All of this is channeling a strong demand towards advanced advisory services with an explicit fee, where Fineco is by far the best positioned in Italy, as you can see down in the slide.

Let's now move on Slide 10 for a focus on brokerage. Brokerage registered a record year with around EUR 256 million revenues, driven by our larger active investor base and growing stock of assets under custody. January further builds on this with EUR 22 million estimated revenues. Let me stress that the revenues of our assets under custody are expected to grow as we roll out our new initiatives on securities lending, out FX, ETFs and systematic internalizers. Average revenues in the year are around 10% higher versus 2020, with much healthier underlying dynamics. This is driven by the structural increase in clients' interest to be more active on the financial market and building on a clear bridge between the brokerage and the investing world.

The brokerage business represents the best sign of how fast the structure of financial market is evolving as technology is driving a swift change in clients' behaviors, thanks to higher transparency. For these reasons, we consider the brokerage Italian market still very underpenetrated, and we see a strong opportunity to grow despite already being the market leader.

Let's now move to Slide 12 for a focus on our capital ratios. Fineco confirmed once again a capital position well above requirements on the wave of a safe balance sheet. Common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.3% and leverage ratio at a very sound 5.07% while risk-weighted assets were equal to EUR 6.2 billion, total capital ratio at 31.37%. As for liquidity ratios, the coverage ratio is over 950% and net stable funding ratio over 400%, while the ratio of high-quality liquid assets and deposits is at 80%. Going forward, we confirm that we will continue to generate capital structurally and organically, thanks to our capital-light business model. Given the strong acceleration in our growth, we are taking more time to have a clear view on deposit net sales going forward as the underlying dynamics are strongly improving. If despite the strong acceleration of our growth, there will remain excess capital, we will decide on the best way to return it back to the market.

Let's now move to Slide 18. Fineco enjoys a unique market positioning to catch the long-term growth opportunity resulting by the huge Italian household wealth and the fast-changing client behaviors. The graph that we are now representing our market share on the addressable market on the stock of financial wealth of Italia households. As you can see, our market share is still small and the room to grow is huge. We are very positive on our future outlook as we have no competition on our market positioning. Fineco is the only big player with a service model truly based on efficiency, transparency and convenience.

Moving now to Slide 19. The step-up of our growth trajectory is clearly materializing as you can easily see in our recent clients' acquisition. On top of the slide, you can see the impressive acceleration of new clients, which in 2025 recorded a third record year in a row and saw a record month in January just before the launch of our most recent marketing campaign. This acceleration is very sound because it's based on the quality of our offer and not on aggressive marketing campaign with short-term rates remuneration. As a result, all our new clients are improving the metrics of the bank by bringing more deposits or more business for brokerage and investing. This value is recognized by our clients as shown by our client satisfaction of 96% and on our Net Promoter Score way above the industry average.

Let's now move to Slide 22. Let's now focus on our assets under custody, a component of our business that is sometimes undervalued by the market, but that is the real cornerstone of our fee-driven growth. This is true for investing as assets under custody remains the main source fueling our assets under management net sales. As you know, around 90% of our growth is organically driven. As a consequence, new clients tends to show in asset allocation more skewed towards assets under custody and the job of our financial adviser is to improve the mix into assets under management. For brokerage, the expansion of assets under custody and the growing base of active investors are key factors leading to a structurally higher flow in our revenues, which we expect to grow as we roll out our new initiatives on securities lending, out FX, ETFs and systematic internalizers.

Finally, the fast-growing ETF space, we are exploring new revenues opportunity, which we explain moving on the Slide 23. Fineco is uniquely positioned to capture the strong client-driven shift towards more efficient investment solutions such as ETFs. The stock is quickly on the rise and now exceeds EUR 16 billion with ETFs accounting for half of the assets under custody fees. Thanks to our focus on efficiency, transparency and convenience, we are the only player capable of fully recognizing and monetize the structural trends with no harm on our profitability. First of all, the growing interest in ETFs is generating a positive volume effect for our investing business. Thanks to our advanced advisory wrappers made of ETFs, we can move in the investing world clients that are not interested in traditional mutual funds with no cannibalization risk on the existing fund business.

At the same time, our leadership in ETF retail flows make us the main gateway for issuers in the Italian retail market. While we currently manage all costs to handle clients without recurring fees -- recurring revenue for ETFs, talks are underway with our partners to find a fair balance.

Finally, Fineco's management is going to play a big role in ETFs world. Our Irish firm already launched active ETFs and more are going to be introduced. Thank you for your time.

We can now open the call to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Enrico Bolzoni with JPMorgan.

I wanted to start with Private Banking, if possible. You're clearly growing very nicely. I noticed, however, that the average asset per private banking client is at EUR 1 million, which is roughly the same level it was 1 year ago, even if clearly 2025 was a period of very strong market rally. So in a way, I would have expected maybe a growth in the average asset balance per private banking client. Can you please maybe explain a bit the dynamics there? There's a bit of dilution, maybe new private banking clients that are coming in that are a bit less wealthy offsetting the growth in assets of the others or anything else that would be helpful. And also related to Private Banking, would you be able to give us an indication of how much of the growth is coming from recruiting. So the new adviser you're bringing in, how many of them are particularly strong in the Private Banking segment.

And then if I may go on the other end of the spectrum. So can you just give us an update on the trading-only platform, how many clients you have? And perhaps if you can attribute the very strong growth in customer this month to this feature, to this offering?

So let me start by the Private Banking average assets per clients. This is clearly -- it's perfectly current with the distribution of the Italian wealth because Italy is characterized by a significantly high median wealth. So this means that the most part of the wealth is extremely -- is much more broadly distributed than with respect to what we have in other regions. And so this is absolutely consistent with that. So there is no dilution, it's absolutely [indiscernible]. So this is the main reason. And so we don't expect any significant change in the short term in terms of average assets per client exactly driven by this because this is -- the juice of the Private Banking business is in an area of probably between EUR 0.5 million up to, let me say, EUR 5 million, EUR 10 million, but clearly, this is bringing to an average portfolio for clients that is this.

And as probably is very well known, our growth is mostly organically driven. So for us, recruiting is playing a small role because during 2025, recruiting in terms of gathering new assets has accounted for not more than 10% overall and this is absolutely current with our long-term strategy. So our strategy is to keep on getting more clients that are interested in our services instead of buying clients throughout recruiting. We think that is a much more healthy approach. And so this is going to continue. On the trading-only clients, the growth is keeping on accelerating, is extremely robust. I don't know if Paolo wants to make a few comments on this point.

Yes. Brokerage-only account is a great product. So we have a large amount of clients that are entering. And so it gives us a good contribution to the revenues of the brokerage. We don't give usually the number of brokerage-only account, but it's a very strong inflow of new clients.

And sorry, if I might go back once again to the private banking aspect in terms of the recruiting because recruiting is growing nicely 88%, I think, adviser experience over this year. Do you see any change in the quality of advisers that are coming to Fineco? I appreciate that you don't pay them to join, they join because they like the proposition. I was just keen to know if you see maybe more private banking adviser that are joining Fineco or if the mix remains roughly the same?

So in terms of -- which are the financial -- the new financial planners joining Fineco, we have 2 clusters. There is a cluster -- so the cluster for which we have preference is, number one is regarding the senior financial planner is represented by experienced financial planners, but characterized by an evident and significant room for keeping on increasing their productivity. So we are not interested in taking on board financial planners that are not giving any interesting future evolution in terms of growing productivity. So we -- because, again, we don't need to recruit the financial planners just for sustaining the net sales because the net sales are building up incredibly strongly, thanks to the positioning of the bank.

And so clearly, the reason -- the senior financial planners has to be clearly senior financial planners that they are truly interested in the business model of Fineco. And so this means that they are really interested -- that they are interested in keeping on their business for still many years to come and also they have the ambition to grow. So this is the driver. If there is a large big financial planner that is only interested in getting an upfront premium and moving, we are not interested in hiring that kind of financial planner.

The second cluster is represented by the young people that we are onboarding in the bank. We are preparing for the future activity. This is an investment initially because before any young person becomes productive, it takes usually 4, 5 years, but it's paying off because the new generation of financial planners that we brought in the bank in the past years is now performing incredibly well. Also because these young people are incredibly perfectly aligned with the values of the bank that, again, characterized by efficiency, transparency and convenience.

The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo.

The first question is about your leverage ratio because, yes, it is well above the 3% requirement, but it is slightly down versus previous periods. So I would like you to elaborate a bit more on it. And then I have another question about your direct deposit outflow in January. Probably it is linked to negative month seasonality, which is quite common at the beginning of the year. But I would like just you to confirm it. And if you can say something about your expectations for direct deposits trend this year? And finally, a question on systemic charges. Would you expect an increase in systemic charges probably relating to some specific case within the banking sector?

Yes. Thank you. On the leverage ratio, clearly, this has gone slightly down, driven by the increase of deposits because the increase of deposits by the year-end has been very strong. And so this is the reason why we are maintaining the same wording on the evolution of our capital position because on one hand, we are expected to keep on generating additional organic capital, thanks to this incredibly capital-light business model. At the same time, clearly, the bank is more and more entering a new dimension of growth.

We are more and more moving throughout, let me say, very positive unchartered waters, thanks to the positioning. And so clearly, we prefer to keep on waiting in order to look how it's going to evolve the growth that we expect as we were reiterating during the guidance, we expect to keep on accelerating. And so we prefer to take our time. So it's -- so this is our thought on that. So it's -- regarding the deposit outflows in January, this is absolutely perfectly aligned with the seasonality of the month because just consider that during the month of January, you have all the expenses made by the clients through the credit cards during the month of December, it is a month of expenditures, are clearly charged on January.

So we are not -- it is even better with respect, for example, last year because last year, the seasonality has been definitely stronger than this year. So we are not absolutely surprised by this. It's perfectly aligned with the seasonality. And our expectation for deposits during the full year is clearly they are going to keep on growing. This is going to be clearly driven by the continuous client acquisitions because as we explained during the presentation, the clients that are entering the bank are clients that are not attracted throughout aggressive campaign and short-term proposal are clients that they are truly interested in using the platform.

So this means that every single additional client we are adding to the platform, also a small client is contributing and increasing the transactional liquidity of the bank. So the liquidity that is there for functional reasons. And so for this reason, deposits are going to keep on growing throughout 2026, clearly, according with the usual seasonality that I characterized. And clearly, you can have also temporary effect caused by the activity of clients on the brokerage platforms. So this is -- but overall, the trend is up. On the systemic charges, I'm leaving the floor to Lorena, our CFO, for a little bit more color there.

Thank you, Alessandro. Good morning to everybody. So on 2026, our expectation regarding the systemic charges that we are estimating a contribution around in the region of EUR 10 million, EUR 15 million because we have to consider possible additional contribution in case of the increase of guaranteed protected deposits or in the event of bank's failure. We have to take into consideration that based on the most recent news flow regarding one small Italian bank under special administration, we have to take a prudent approach on that.

Just a follow-up on this. We expect this to occur only in 2026 or to go on in the next years, too?

We have to expect the final decision elaborated by the [indiscernible], but we expect a distribution along 5 years, distribution of the contribution in 5 years.

The next question is from Luigi De Bellis with Equita.

Just one question for me. On the AI that is rapidly reshaping operating models across the financial sector. So from your point of view, what do you see as the most material opportunities AI will create for models like Fineco in terms of productivity, client engagement, advisory and risk management? And what are the key risks you are monitoring? And how do you expect the AI to reshape the competitive scenario in Italian wealth management and brokerage over the next 3, 5 years?

AI is going to be an absolutely game changer in what's going on in our industry. Fineco, as we explained, is by far the best positioned player for exploiting the huge advantage by artificial intelligence for a very simple reason because I don't want to spend too much time because this is going to be a section that is going to be extremely very well in-depth treated during the Capital Market Day because this is a very important chapter. But Fineco is -- because in AI world, what is key are 2 components.

One, you have to be able to get easily access to a high-quality base of data. Second, you have to be in the position to really build up your hedges in order to create something that makes sense. And clearly, this is much, much easier for -- and less and less expensive for an organization that is a tech company in full control of the technology. It's a different story, for example, if you are relying on outsourced services or your processes managed by external system integrators. But we are asking you to be a little bit patient because on the AI space, we are going to bring something very interesting presentation during the Capital Market Day.

Mr. Foti, there are no further questions registered at this time. Back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for attending to our financial presentation. So as usual, if you have some more interest or you want to deep dive in some numbers and concepts, please call us any time for a follow-up. Thank you again, and see you on March 4 for the Capital Market Day. Thank you again.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.

Good morning. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Fineco Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Foti, CEO and General Manager of Fineco. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 results conference call. In the first 9 months of 2025, net profit at EUR 480.5 million and revenues at EUR 969.6 million, supported by our nonfinancial income, investing up by 10% year-on-year, thanks to the volume effect and the higher control of the value chain by Fineco Asset Management, and brokerage is up by 16.5% year-on-year, thanks to the enlargement of our active investors.

Importantly, if we zoom on our quarterly dynamics, net profit and revenues were back to the sequential quarter-on-quarter growth. Our net financial income has already bottomed out and fully absorbed the decreasing interest rates and was up around 2% versus the second quarter on the back of positive deposit net sales and positive reinvestment yield.

Operating costs well under control at EUR 259.9 million, increasing by around 6% year-on-year by excluding costs related to the growth of the business. Cost income ratio was equal to 26.8%, confirming operating leverage as a key strength of the bank.

Moving to our commercial results. The underlying step-up in our growth dynamics gets crystal clear month by month. This is underpinned by the positive tailwinds from structural trends, and we are leveraging on this solid momentum through a more efficient marketing. The result of this acceleration has been clearly visible in the first 9 months of 2025.

First of all, we added around 145,000 new clients, up by 33% year-on-year. In October, new clients are around 19,000, the second best month on record, up more than 25% year-on-year. Second, our net sales were EUR 9.4 billion in the 9 months up by strong 36% year-on-year. In October, estimated total net sales saw a further continuation of this trend at around EUR 1.3 billion, up by more than 30% year-on-year.

The mix was very positive with assets under management at around EUR 0.5 billion net sales, up by more than 20% year-on-year. Deposits at around minus EUR 0.1 billion, and assets under custody at around EUR 0.9 billion, leading to the best month ever for brokerage revenues at around EUR 31.5 million.

Our capital position continued to be strong and safe with a net common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.9%, and a leverage ratio of 5.11%. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can find the summary of our guidance. Our outlook for 2025 has improved, thanks to the acceleration of the structural growth and under it, our business model. More in detail, our net financial income bottomed earlier than expected in the second quarter, thanks to the positive deposit net sales and reinvestment yields. On investing, we are experiencing the solid year-on-year increase of our assets under management net sales currently with the lower interest rates. Brokerage revenues for 2025, we expect a record year, thanks to the continuously growing floor driven by the higher asset under custody and enlargement of our active investors.

October revenues are just the latest evidence of the higher floor of the business. Banking fees are expecting a slight decrease in 2025 versus 2024 due to new regulation on instant payment. On operating costs, we expect a growth around 6% year-on-year, not including a few millions of additional costs for growth initiatives in a range between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million, mainly for marketing and Fineco Asset Management and AI.

Finally, in 2025, we expect a payout ratio in the range between 70% and 80%.

On 2026, we expect all the business areas to contribute positively in terms of growth to our revenue growth. Net interest income is expected to grow year-on-year on the back of positive deposits, net sales and reinvestment yields. On investing, we expect a solid growth on our asset under management net sales. Banking fees expected to grow on the back of a higher number of clients. Brokerage revenue expected to grow, thanks to the increase of the asset under custody and active investors.

On 2026 guidance, more details will be provided during the next year, Capital Market Day on March 4. Let's now move to Slide 5. Before moving into the details of the presentation, let me stress that month after month, Fineco is recording a continuous acceleration of its growth dynamics supported by a very healthy underlying quality. As you know, our business model relies on diversified and quality revenue stream, allowing the bank to deal with any market environment.

On the banking revenues, our net financial income is a capital-light one with lending being only in an ancillary business, and it's driven by how our clients valuable and sticky transactional liquidity. Let me stress that deposits are joining our platform for the quality of our banking services and not due to aggressive commercial campaign on short-term rates. That's why our deposits are so valuable and our cost of funding is practically close to 0.

Our investing revenues are recording and healthy and future-proof expansion as they are already aligned with clients' rising demand for transparency, efficiency and convenience. This approach is mirrored in the quality of our revenue mix, which is almost entirely recurring with a very low percentage of upfront fees and no performance fees at all.

Finally, our brokerage is clearly experiencing a further step up on the floor of the business, thanks to the capability of our platform to have a structurally higher number of active investors, leading to a structurally higher stock of assets under custody. This is driven by the structural increase in client interest to be more active on the financial market, and this is building a bridge between the brokerage and investing world, which we are the only one able to scoop given our market position. Let's now move to Slide 7 and start commenting on the most recent plan. Net financial income fully absorbed the decreasing market rates, thanks to the organic growth and our valuable deposit base.

This net financial income was up by 1.9% quarter-on-quarter, led by the positive deposit, net fees in the higher reinvestment yield of our bonds running off. This despite the still declining average 3-month Euribor. Let me quickly remind you the quality of our net interest income, which is capital light and driven by our clients' valuable and sticky transactional liquidity. That's why our deposits are so valuable and will be the driver going forward for the growth of our net financial income.

Let's now move on to Slide 8. Investing revenues reached EUR 295.6 million in the first 9 months of 2025, increasing by a solid 10% year-on-year on the back both of growing volumes, thanks to our best-in-class market positioning and of the higher efficiency of the value chain through Fineco Asset Management. Let me remind you the great quality of our investing revenues mirroring our transparent and fair approach towards clients. Our revenues are mostly driven by recurring management fees with very low upfront and no performance fees at all.

Let's move on to Slide 9. In this slide, we are representing the 2 main sources of growth for our investing business going forward. On one hand, the Fineco Asset Management is progressively increasing the control of the investing value chain, its contribution to the group net sales has been consistent over the cycle, thanks to its incredible time to market in delivering new investment solutions aligned with clients' needs. The contribution of Fineco Asset Management, assets under management after the total stock of assets under management has been steadily growing, and it's now equal to 39%.

On the other hand, being a platform, Fineco is the best place to catch the latest trends in terms of client investment behaviors. There is a clear change underway in the structure of the market with clients increasingly looking for transparent, efficient and convenient solutions. All of this is channeling a strong demand towards advanced advisory services and with an explicit fee where Fineco is by far the best positioned in Italy, as you can see down in the slide.

Let's now move to Slide 10 for a focus on brokerage. Brokerage registered a very strong first 9 months with EUR 187 million revenues driven by our larger active investment base and growing stock of assets under custody. October further built on this, delivering a record month with EUR 31.5 million estimated revenues. Let me stress that the revenues to our assets under custody are expected to grow as we roll out our new initiatives on stock lending, auto forex, ETFs and systematic internalizer. Average revenues in the 9 months are around 7.3% higher versus 2020 with much healthier underlying dynamics. This is driven by the structural increase in client interest to be more active on the financial markets and building a clear bridge between the brokers and investing world. The brokerage business represents the best sign of how fast the structural financial market is evolving as technology is driving a swift change in clients' behaviors, thanks to higher transparency.

For this reason, we consider the brokers Italian market very underpenetrated, and we see a strong opportunity to grow despite already being the market leader. And again, October numbers are a clear sign of this opportunity.

Let's now move on the Slide 12 for a focus on our capital ratio. Fineco confirmed once again capital position well above requirement on the wave of a safe balance sheet. Common equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.93%, and the leverage ratio at a very sound 5.11%, while risk-weighted assets were equal to EUR 5.81 billion, total capital ratio at 32.53%. As for the liquidity ratios, liquidity coverage ratios is over 900% and net stable funding ratio is over 400%, while the ratio, high-quality liquid assets on deposits is at 80%, well above the average of the industry.

Going forward, we confirm that we will continue to generate capital structure and organically, thanks to our capital light business model. Given the strong acceleration of our growth, we are taking more time to have a clear view on deposit net sales going forward and the underlying dynamics are strongly improving. If despite the strong acceleration in our growth, there will remain excess capital, we will decide on the best way to return it back to the market.

Now let's move to Slide 18. Let's now focus on our guidance. Our outlook for 2025 has improved thanks to the acceleration of the structural trends behind our business. More in details, our net financial income bottomed earlier than expected, thanks to the positive deposit net sales and reinvestment yields. On investing, we are experiencing the solid year-on-year increase of our assets under management net sales currently with lower interest rates. Brokerage revenues are expected to remain strong with a continuously growing floor, thanks to the higher asset under custody and the enlargement of our active investor base.

For 2025, we expect record revenues with October number being just the latest evidence of the higher floor. Banking fees are expected with a slight decrease compared to 2024 due to the new regulation on instant payments. For 2026, we expect all the business hires to contribute positively to our revenue growth. The net interest income is expected to grow year-on-year on the back of deposits, net sales and reinvestment yields. On investing, we expected solid growth of our assets under management net sales. Banking fees are expected to grow on the back of higher clients. Brokerage revenues are expected to grow, thanks to the higher asset under custody and the enlargement of active investors.

On 2026 guidance, more details will be provided during the next year Capital Market Day on March 4.

On operating cost for 2025, we expect to grow at around 6% year-on-year, not including few millions of additional costs for growth initiatives in a range between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million mainly for marketing, Fineco asset management and AI initiatives. Cost/income, we expect it comfortably below 30% in 2025, thanks to the scalability of our platform and the strong operating gearing we have.

On the payout ratio, we expect that for 2025 in a range between 70% and 80%. On leverage ratio, our goal is to remain above 4.5%. Cost of risk was equal to 7 basis points, thanks to the quality of our lending portfolio. And for 2025, we expect it in the range between 5 and 10 basis points.

Finally, we expect a robust and high-quality net sales and the continued strong growth expected for our client acquisition as we are in the sweet spot to keep on adding new market shares.

Let now move on to Slide 19 for a deep dive on our growth opportunities. Fineco enjoy a unique market positioning to catch the long-term growth opportunity, resulting by the huge Italian households whilst in the fast-changing clients' behaviors. In the graph, you can see the strong potential of our growth given the stock of financial wealth on the Italian families. Our market share is still small, and the room to grow is huge. We are very positive on our future outlook as we have no competition on our market positioning. As a matter of fact, Fineco is the only big player with a service model truly based on transparency, efficiency and convenience.

Moving now to Slide 20. The step-up of our growth trajectory is clearly materializing, as you can easily see in our recent client acquisition. On top of the slide, you can see the impressive acceleration of new clients, which is further building up in the first 9 months of 2025. This acceleration is very healthy because it's based on the quality of our offer and not on an aggressive marketing campaign with short-term rate remuneration.

As a result, all our new clients are improving the metrics of the bank by bringing more deposits or more business for brokerage and investing. This value is recognized by our clients, as shown by our customer satisfaction of 94% and our Net Promoter Score way above the industry average.

Let's now move to Slide 21. The cumulative growth on high-quality new clients is translating into better net sales dynamics shown by the 36% increase of our total net sales year-on-year. Let me share that the mix of our net sales mirrors our positioning as the reference partner for all clients' financial needs, with asset under management is driven by client interest for transparent, efficient and convenient investment solution. Our banking platform is attracting valuable transaction liquidity. Finally, asset under custody are clearly sign of the increasing clients' engagement on our brokerage platform, thus contributing to our revenue generation. On top of this, we see a sizable mix shift opportunity coming from the huge stock of Govies of our clients, both over the last couple of years.

Let me now hand it to Paolo, our Deputy General Manager and Head of Global Business, to comment on Slide 22.

Thank you, Alessandro. Good morning, everybody. As you know, the financial industry is quickly heading into an inflection point and it's going to be heavily reshaped by technology. Thanks to our deep internal know-how and data control, Fineco is the only real player able to take massive advantage from it and to further accelerate our growth journey. This will be reached with our usual cost effective approach.

We are planning to launch an efficient and pervasive AI implementation in 2 directions. First, focusing on productivity of our network of personal financial adviser; and second, playing attention to the cost efficiency and the bank -- of the bank by reshaping the internal processes. While on the latter, we will update the market in the next month. We have already started to reengineer our financial adviser platform with the integration of an AI assistant. This is a key enabler to boost our network productivity and deliver a better quality service to clients, and ultimately improving our revenues growth via stronger net sales and assets under management.

Our very first initiatives are already live and widely used by our network. Our financial planners have in their hands a powerful AI assistant, which is going to be a game changer for wealth management. In the slide, you can see the main features of the AI assistant, among which is worth underlying, one, the portfolio builder, a powerful tool to immediately create quality portfolio fed with Fineco financial logic and optimize on client goals. And the portfolio builder is also a content creator, a communication tool able to create professional and customizable reports, proposals, portfolio reviews and brochures automatically generating narratives, content to support the financial planners. It's also a powerful marketing tool, allowing for comparison of existing portfolio of prospect clients.

The AI system is also a search tool, a faster info-search process for internal memo and communication. The next wave of AI implementation will focus on CRM for our financial advisers, fully integrated with client data. It will empower our financial adviser to manage their agenda more efficiently, enabling a structured approach to client engagement and cross-selling by streamlining customer management and unlocking new commercial opportunities. This will represent a further step in enhancing productivity across our network and driving for an even stronger growth.

Finally, we are working to bring an AI powered search tool also to our brokerage client, our finance clients, allowing for an even easier experience to our state-of-the-art platform.

I will hand it back to Alessandro to move on Slide 23.

Thank you, Paolo. Let me now focus on our assets under custody, a component to our business that is sometimes undervalued by the market, but that is the real cornerstone of our fee-driven growth. This is true for investing as assets under custody remains the main source fueling our asset under management sales. As you know, around 90% of our growth is organically driven. As a consequence, new clients tend to show an asset allocation more skewed towards assets under custody, and the job of our financial advisers is to improve their mix into asset under management.

For brokerage, the expansion of assets under custody and the growing base of active investors are key factors leading to a structurally higher floor in our revenues, which we expect to grow as we roll out our new initiatives on the stock lending, after-tax, ETFs and systematic internalizers. Finally, in the fast-growing ETF space, we are exploring new revenue opportunities, which we expand moving into Slide 24. Fineco is uniquely positioned to capture the strong client-driven shift towards more efficient investment solutions such as ETFs. The stock is quickly on the rise and now exceed EUR 15 billion. And ETFs now accounting for half of the asset under custody net sales. Thanks to our focus on transparency, efficiency and convenience, we are the only player capable of fully recognizing and monetize the structural trend with no harm on our profitability.

First of all, the growing interest on ETFs is generating a positive volume effect for our investing business, thanks to our advanced advisory wrappers made of ETFs, we can move in the investing world of clients that are not interested in traditional mutual funds, thus we have no cannibalization risk on the existing fund business. At the same time, our leadership in ETFs retail flows makes us the main gateway for issues into the Italian retail market, while we currently manage all cost to handle clients without recurring fees from ETFs, talks are underway with our partners to find a fair balance.

Finally, Fineco Asset Management is going to be playing a big role in the ETFs world, our Irish firm already launched its first active ETFs, and more are going to be introduced.

Thank you for your time. We can now open the call to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Marco Nicolai of Jefferies.

First question is on the brokerage number for October. So almost EUR 32 million in a month. It's a record number. Just wanted to know if there is some -- so what's the impact from the BTP Valore issuance? And if you can comment on the underlying trend x the BTP Valore revenues?

Then another question on the crypto front. I think you didn't mention it in the various projects in the presentation, you mentioned AI and other projects but not crypto. Just wanted to know if you had any updates there on the talks with Bank of Italy? One of your peers got recently the MiCA license from Cyprus in the past days. I don't know, my perception is that there could be other geographies that are quicker than Italy in granting these licenses and if that could slow down your projects here and the growth you could have in brokerage coming from the crypto side?

And then another question on the payout. You mentioned 70% to 80% for 2025. I guess your leverage ratio will be well above your minimum targets for '25. And if that's the case, shall we consider 80% for 2025? Or you think there are other moving parts in the leverage ratio that could negatively affect it? So these are my questions.

Let me start by commenting on the October brokerage numbers. The impact of the -- from the BTP Valore has been more or less in the region of EUR 5 million. So this means that in any case is remaining so excluding the contribution of the BTP Valore, the numbers are EUR 26 million revenues in the month of October, that is quite significantly above the average of the revenues generated in the previous month.

And this clearly is clear, perfectly current with the underlying trends that we are commenting by some time. So there is a continuous quite significant growth of the base of clients whereas continuously adding new active investor to the platform.

Second, the continuous building up of assets under custody is clearly contributing in that direction because clients are not trading -- are trading stocks and trading bonds and they are trading ETFs as well. And so we remain extremely positive on the future evolution of brokerage exactly for the reasons we commented during the presentation.

So structural changes underway and a continuously growing quite significantly the important growth in terms of number of clients and the Fineco emerging as the clear winning platform here in Italy.

On crypto, I leave the floor to Paolo for giving the latest update on what's going on there.

So the crypto is still a project. We're still in talks with the regulator. We have no news for now from the last call that we had. We are very aware that we have plenty of competitors that are getting the MiCA license. Unfortunately, in Italy, there is nobody yet, I guess, that has MiCA license, but we keep on talking and explaining our view to the regulators, and we hope we will come with a solution in the next few months.

On the payout, we clearly, what we want to make very clear that Fineco is a growth story, it's a unique growth story because the uniqueness is represented by the fact that we are combining together an incredibly pool of growth together with a quite generous payments of dividends. But we are not a dividend stock. So clearly, our goal is not to give the market the highest possible dividend. So our main goal is to keep on accelerating as much as we can in directional growth. At the same time, remaining in a very compelling story from a dividend point of view.

So clearly, we will see. So now, we are at year-end, we are going to take the final decision, which is going to be the final dividend payout. But so there's that. Again, my opinion there, the most important takeaway that again, Fineco is a quite unique case in the financial industry, strong growth and at the same time, very generous deal.

The next question is from Luigi De Bellis of Equita.

I have 3 questions. The first one, so in the recent months, Fineco has seen an acceleration in new client growth. What has changed to drive this momentum? And if do you expect this trend to continue at the same speed in terms of client acquisition? And can you comment also on the quality profile of this newly acquired client and also the acceleration that we are seeing in the net bank transfer that you mentioned in the Slide #7, that is above plus 20%.

The second question on the asset under custody so a huge amount reaching EUR 52 billion. You mentioned the revenues on assets under custody expected to grow. Can you elaborate on this and the speed of this acceleration expected?

And the last question on the Germany project. So could you provide an update on the initiatives? What are the current development and expected time lines for the rollout?

Yes. Regarding the acceleration of new clients, what is driving this growth is clearly structural tailwinds because as we explaining continuously that Fineco is the only one large established significant bank in Italy that is really offering efficiency, transparency and convenience. And this kind of demand is rapidly growing, driven by the completely different technological landscape, which I think is much easier to make comparison.

It's -- everything is the information is spreading out incredibly rapidly. And then there is quite significantly accelerating process of generational passage. So Fineco is the -- so now that there is the x generation that is mostly entering into the game. And this generation is characterized by significantly different habits and behaviors by the previous generations, where again, sorry if I'm repeating myself, the request for efficiency, transparency and convenience is emerging as a clear need. And Fineco is the only one player that is fully satisfied this -- for this reason, we think that really, the strong growth is going to continue, probably is going to keep on accelerating even more going forward because all these tailwinds are going to keep on gaining strength and momentum.

And the acceleration of the net bank transfer has an immediate consequence of this because -- and this also is giving to me the opportunity to answer to the other questions on the quality of new clients. The quality is remaining extremely high and robust. We are not observing any kind of dilution in the quality of clients we are taking on board. And this clearly is mainly driven by the approach by the business model of the bank. Very importantly, Fineco is not attracting clients because it's taking shortcuts. We are not putting in place aggressive short-term initiatives for taking on board new clients. So we are not, for example, overpaying clients with high rates on the projects.

By the way, in this moment, we have -- there are plenty of banks that they are making continuously very, very high offer on rates. But we're not -- and so the results that the clients that are opening an account in Fineco, they are opening an account just exclusively because they are interested in using our platforms, our services. And this really is very positive for the -- in terms of quality of clients, and is incredibly positive for the evolution of the revenue generation that is going to every single additional client we are adding to the platform is to some extent, contributing in increasing the revenues of the bank.

And on the speed of growth in brokerage revenues, as we are saying. So the more clients we are taking on board, the more assets under custody we are keeping on building up and the more you can expect that the floor of the business is continuously going up. We are driving on the concept of floor because we are interested in seeing -- on seeing how brokerage is performing without considering the theoretically short-term impact caused by volatility. By the way, until so far, the volatility this year has not been particularly relevant, has been a level of volatility that has been, let me say, average. So this is clear. And so yes, brokerage to remain on the fast lane growth. On the time line and what's going on, on the Germany rollout, again, I'm leaving the floor to Paolo to give a little bit more flavor.

Yes, we have the plan. We finalized all the information we needed. And we still miss some internal approval, but we have the idea of rolling out by the end of 2026 in the friends and family mode. So this is pretty much the time horizon we have.

The next question is from Enrico Bolzoni of JPMorgan.

So I have a few million brokerage given the very strong print. So you mentioned about the possibility of monetizing that you see in different ways. One of your European competitors recently announced the decision to offer securities lending on AUC, and they were quite specific so they disclosed that they think they'd be able to generate about 20 basis point margin on the AUC that are eligible for securities lending.

So I wanted to ask you, first of all, where do you stand in that process? I think it's something in the past you mentioned you wanted to pursue yourself?

Second question, what proportion of your AUC is eligible?

And thirdly, if you can confirm that 20 basis point might be reasonable number to expect in terms of revenue that you could generate out of that? So that's my first question.

And then my second question, I was looking at your AUM flows. So in the quarter, you had over EUR 900 million. You also disclosed that a good chunk of that, so roughly EUR 600 million came from Advanced Advisory Solutions, which is positive. But could you please disclose what was the margin on average on this EUR 600 million of AUM that actually related to what you see after. That would be helpful for us to understand whether indeed there is no margin dilution from these type of contracts.

Okay. Thank you. So regarding on the -- let me start by brokerage. Possibility to monetize assets under custody, yes, as we explained during the presentation. The way we have quite a very interesting additional evolution there in terms of increasing the margins generated by assets under custody. Let me remind, one is, for sure, represented by the stock lending. The bank is in the process of deploying a much an extremely structured platform for taking advantage by the stock lending and some. On the margins, clearly, 20 basis points we think that overall is a conservative number. So it probably can be even more. And on the proportion of assets under custody eligible, this is a moving picture because exactly one of the rationale behind the platform is going to expand as much as we can the eligible amount of assets under custody we have, and so particularly. Another clear direction is the -- as we were mentioning, is represented by the AutoFX and some of them, I will leave to Paolo and some -- if you want to make some technical comments on the AutoFX.

Yes. We have a growing number of orders that are going to the American, the United States market, NASDAQ and NYSE. So there is a lot of flows going there. And of course, there is big revenues attached because our clients, they have euros on their accounts and they trade on the USD. So the AutoFX is a new service that allows the client to be much more -- it's a faster mode of executing an order. So the exchange is made automatically by the platform. So this is something that is giving us a simpler order for the clients. So it's easier for the client to place the order. And for us, there is a slightly higher margin compared to the fact that before the client had to change every time the FX, the AutoFX is better for the client, but also better for us.

Then we have exactly, what we are continuously now -- is the other announcement in terms of revenues represented by ETFs. So what's going on there? We think -- we confirm that by year-end, we are going to finalize the first arrangement that you get by the ETFs were the recurring fees. Overall, at the European level, the industry is moving exactly in that direction. So the largest issues are progressively moving in the direction to close arrangements with the largest European players in terms of control of retail flows on ETFs, and Fineco is going to be one of them. And so this clearly, again, is confirming the importance to play big, to be really the reference platform there.

On the asset under management flows. So on the margin, so we are not making any specific distinction. So for us, the margins, on the -- so for us, it's indifferent if the clients are putting in the advisory platforms, actively managed funds, ETFs, assets under custody because what the clients paying is an advisory fee that is totally different. It's totally not correlated with -- is independent by the -- what is put in the portfolio.

So theoretically, the clients can ask of having a portfolio that is made exclusive by asset under custody. And for us, the margins are going to be exactly the same if the client is putting -- is having a portfolio represented 100% by actively managed parts. So this exactly is something that is the great advantage that Fineco has. Fineco is extremely advanced in making clients paying an advisory fee. And so being completely detached by the inducement based model. And so again, this is going to be another big trend that is emerging.

If I maybe, just a very quick follow-up. It's very helpful when you commented the 20 bps is perhaps low. I think that the idea behind that 20 bps is that a portion of the revenues will be shared with clients. So the underlying return could be actually higher than 20 bps. Is this what you are also thinking of? So 20 bps, could it be a number that you internalize so net what you pay to clients from securities lending? Or you think it could be generally an even bigger number?

So it's clear that when we are showing the margins, we are considering that we have to pay the clients because this is clearly by law. And so clearly, there is a gain so we can confirm that we think that also including what we have to pay to clients, probably this 20 basis point margin is on the conservative side.

The next question is from Hugo Cruz of KBW.

I just had a question around your comment on brokerage revenues and how that converts into P&L, particularly trading profit because when I look at consensus, it is trading flat, flattish going forward. So that doesn't seem to make sense to me in light of your comments that brokerage revenue should continue to go up. So if you could give a bit more color on how the brokerage revenues and trading profit, how we convert into trading profit?

First of all, let me remind you that for us, trading profit is not something that is driven by the bank taking some kind of risk, it's a kind of free of risk market making. So we are -- when we were mentioning among the components that they are -- we expect are going to keep on contributing in making the brokerage revenues growing, also the systematic internalization of orders of clients. And so we expect that the more we are going to keep on building up the volumes and business, and as well, we expect also the opportunity offered by the systematic internalizing -- internalization of orders is going to keep on growing as well.

We are not surprised by the fact that the market tends to be a little bit always in a step behind what's going on in brokerage because as we said during the presentation, probably everything that is in the region of assets under custody and brokerage, brokerage has been probably a little bit the most misunderstood component of our business because clearly, as we are seeing assets, typically until the recent past, big growth in asset under custody has been not very well welcomed by the market. But the asset under custody clearly is the fuel for brokerage going forward and for the asset under management as well.

So we think that brokerage is by definition on the fast lane of growth in the future exactly for a combination of structural reason, big growth of clients and a significant shift in the client's views and the increasing level of participation of clients, and the growing interest by clients for solutions like represented by ETFs, what is important to remind that when we're talking about brokerage, clients are trading on everything on the platforms. They're trading on stocks, they're trading on ETFs, but their trading on bonds as well. And so this is the reason why the brokerage is going to keep on doing very well.

The next question is from Christiane Holstein of Bank of America.

My first one is on the CMD next year. So I know you flagged that you'll be announcing 2026 guidance. But just because there has been a CMD before, I was just wondering what else we can expect? Are you looking to also give a multiyear target, for example?

Secondly, you previously highlighted the introduction of private markets in September. I didn't hear any update on this. So I was wondering if you could better say how that's been going and then how the interest has been from clients so far?

And then thirdly, on investing management fee margin. So this has seemed to be relatively stable more recently. I know you also flagged the benefits from ETP on investing and obviously, FAM is higher margin. So as the uptake here improves, we should hopefully expect the margin to strengthen. But I was just wondering what your expectations are here.

So on the -- what you can expect by the Capital Market Day on the next March 2026. From Capital Markets Day, we are going to give a much further and much more important and relevant details regarding what you can expect in terms of our strategy, evolution, also the rationale behind the entering more in depth, also in the initiatives, what we are going, what we can expect we are going to deliver to the market. And yes, finally we are going to give to the market that something that is going to help you in better modeling on the longer term, the projections of the bank.

Yes. We think that this is the right moment because as we are saying, the bank is technically entering in a significantly different -- it's moving throughout in a relevant inflection point because this is exactly what's going on in the market. And so we think that we -- is the right moment to share with the market more details regarding the extremely exciting future that we see ahead for this bank.

Private market, this is going to be -- the placement is going to start within the next few days. So probably let me say, by the next week, the product is going to be launched and is going to be up and running, and we will see. We confirm that we remain quite positive because there is an evident demand by clients. And so yes, in the next few days, this is going to be deployed.

And commenting on investment management fee markets. As you know, we don't like to drive the market on the fee margins because clearly, for us, what is important is the direct -- is the evolution of revenues because revenues is a combination of volumes and margins. And these are much more important because this tends to clearly to -- tends to better represent the evolution of the market. It's a matter of fact that Fineco is by definition in a much better position than the industry in order also of having more stable margins because we are definitely less under pressure. But for 2 main reasons.

The first one that Fineco is historically positioned on the lower side in terms of commissions we are charging to clients. And so by definition, this is making us less exposed to the building up pressure on margins. Second, that the journey in terms of increasing penetration of the asset under -- Fineco Asset Management solution is still underway. And this is different by other participants of the industry that now has been where the percentage represented by the whole internal products has been -- everything has been almost done. And this, in any case, with Fineco remaining and the only one large and truly open platform because this continuously growing percentage of Fineco Asset Management products is not driven by the fact that we are expected to close down the platform. The platform is going to remain an open platform. It's driven by the fact that Fineco is incredibly great in delivering continuously extremely innovative solutions and incredibly fast on bringing this to the market and so being able to remain always a step ahead of the market.

The next question is from Gian Luca Ferrari of Mediobanca.

Three for me, please. First, on the AI project that Paolo described, can you share with us some KPIs of the business case here? So how much you invested in this project? And if you calculate any IRR you expect from the project itself.

Second question is on the EUR 22 billion bonds. How much is expiring in 2026? And if you can remind us what is the conversion rate you expect to have on those bonds?

The final one is on your lending and particularly on the fact that the stock has remained flat at EUR 5.1 billion in the context of declining interest rates. So I was wondering if your clients have any appetite for a bit of re-leverage considering your very strong capital ratios and lower interest rates.

So on the AI project. So first of all, let me make few comments there. So Fineco, is in a great position in order to leverage on AI because thanks to the kind of bank we are, that Fineco is a tech company. So with AI, what is the most important element is not exactly how much you spend. But how much you are able to transform what you are investing in something that makes sense.

So in the AI project, what is really -- so because everybody theoretically, there is no -- it's a commodity, the AI agents are commodities. And so the real difference is made by your capability of leveraging on high-quality, easily accessible base of data because if you don't have that, artificial intelligence is not going to work. And second, you had to be in the position to train your system, your products and so on.

And again, you were back again to the point. So Fineco is -- being a tech company because Fineco is not just using technology, but is in control of the most part of the technology we are using. So this means that, for example, our data warehousing system has been by many years, a key strength of the bank. So for us, it's extremely easy to extract high-quality, easily accessible data. This make what you need in terms of investments much less than is presently requested by someone that sit on a much more complex infrastructure. So for example, if you are mostly leveraging on outsourced platforms or you sit on different layers of software, and so clearly, this is going to be to extract easily accessible and high-quality data is going to be really very difficult and incredibly expensive.

The same way for the training the programs. So the more you are in control of your processes, the more you are in control of your platforms, and the easier it's going to be to go throughout the training process. You don't need to have, for example, external system integrator, taking care of you for training the process. And so this means that again, I think this is going to be much better in terms of results and much, much less expensive. And so honestly speaking, so our AI projects are what we expect to invest considering what to expect to get for this project. Honestly speaking, this is a completely meaningless point because we expect quite an important increase in the productivity of network. We expect a significant improvement in the process of the bank. But on top of that, what we expect to spend is going to be really fraction of the positive impact caused by the...

And on the increased productivity, any quantitative indication?

I think that -- so let me say. So also assuming, let me say, staying on the conservative side, and assuming, I don't know, a 10% increase in the productivity, this is going to be a huge number. So -- but Paolo can give you a little bit more color on this point.

Yes. On the KPI, we are really on unchartered waters because it's -- there is no -- there are some studies in the U.S. that they are saying that the productivity of the financial tech can improve up to 20%. And I think it's something that can be reasonable in my opinion. But again, still we are in unchartered waters. So we -- for now, we're just focused on deploying the service, on improving the service, on hiring the people inside the bank that are part of the AI team that is growing. And as usual, we focus and we put effort on having our own resources, our own people that develop the technology. And I think we're doing a great job, and we are very happy with the fact that we are very fast in developing new tools and delivering to the -- for now to the financial planner, to our financial planner platform.

On the expiring bonds, next year, EUR 4.2 billion in terms of reinvestment. So what we can expect in terms of transformation, for example, in asset under management solution. This clearly depends on the market conditions. So as much as we stay in an environment with short-term rates, low and the yield curve keeping or remaining positively shaped, if not even steeper. And this clearly is going to be -- is going to bode well for a continuously increasing transformation rate. But again, it's difficult to give you a precise number right now because -- but what we can say that the conversion rate is mostly driven by the combination of short-term rates staying low and the yield curve remaining. And the steeper it is, the yield curve and the better it is for the transformation process.

On lending, yes, the stock is flat, but we are observing some interesting transformation because, again, we confirm that we don't have any particular appetite for the residential mortgage business that we consider by far the lowest profitable product that a bank can have on the shelf. For these reasons, we don't have any appetite for residential. We are providing residential mortgages just to our interesting clients. And so we expect that the overall stock on there is going to keep on declining. At the same time, there is a quite significant growing interest by clients for the Lombard loans. And Lombard loans are expected to keep on building up. We have in the pipeline a very interesting future developments there that we think are going to keep on making quite even more interested in using our Lombard loan solutions.

The next question is from Ian White of Autonomous Research.

Just a few from my side as well, please. Firstly, just going back to the net management fee margin. It is about flat year-over-year by my calculations at 69 bps. Can you just help us understand the moving parts there? I'm looking at the details. The insurance products have declined, equity markets are higher, FAM penetration is higher. So are you able just to complete that bridge for me, why aren't we seeing more margin accretion there year-over-year, please? That's question one.

Secondly, on Slide 23, you mentioned that the adviser network is focused on improving client mix from AUC into AUM. Can you just talk us through a little bit of what those efforts actually look like in practice. I'm wondering if it mostly requires convincing your clients to switch from being an execution-only customer to an advised customer? And also if you can share any figures there to help us better understand the flow of client assets from AUC into AUM, please? And that's question two.

And just lastly, you mentioned in your prepared remarks the systematic internalizer as a forward-looking driver of growth in brokerage. Can I just clarify, is something likely to change there in the coming months that would increase revenue capture? Are there certain products where you might begin internalizing that you're not currently, for example? And that's my third question.

Let me start by the net fee margins. So the net fee margins remained relatively stable. And so exactly for the reasons we were describing. So the bank is definitely in a more comfortable position with respect to the industry because it's been always characterized by not overcharging clients with very high commissions. And so by definition, we are definitely less vulnerable than the industry on the building up pressure on margins.

And second, the driver are mostly -- so yes, insurance is lower. So because -- and the equity markets are not growing particularly big. So still, we are not seeing any significant growth in terms of appetite by clients for the equity market. And for sure, Fineco Asset Management is continuously growing and is contributing on the margins because we had a better control of the value chain. And this despite the mix of the products, both by the client is remaining on the cautious side, mostly represented by fixed income solutions, in any cases, the better control on the exchange contributing.

But again, we are not particularly -- for us, the main focus is on the evolution of the revenues because it's clear that overall, we are living in an environment so the huge difference between the, for example, the brokerage world and the investing world that, generally speaking, the investing world as an industry is, by definition, is expected to keep on facing pressure on margins. This is not the key, for example, for the brokerage business. So that's where the pressure on margin is going to be much, much lower.

On the other hand, the more you are becoming sophisticated in managing the flows, the infrastructures and the more you are going to have room for increasing your margins, and this is exactly the key when we're talking about the systematic internalizer. Yes, Europe is progressively moving more and more in the direction of being more similar to the U.S. market where a growing component, large component of the profitability is represented by the management of flows. And this is exactly what's going on in Europe as well. So Europe has been lagging behind in a big way, but now, the situation is changing.

The example is Germany. Germany is a market in which the percentage represented by the management of flows is quite high there. And yes, clearly, this business is a volume business. The more you are keeping on growing in terms of sites, the more you're keeping on hedging assets on the platform, the more you are going to have high-quality clients using the platform. And the more -- let me say, instead of using systematic internalizing, the management of flows is going to become an important driver in increasing the margins on the brokerage business. And as we are saying, we have plenty of initiatives on the pipeline that's exactly moving in that direction and that are going to deploy in the coming months.

And internalizing something that's now you don't -- no, internalizing more that we are doing now that -- because really, we are practically internalizing everything. So ranging from stocks, ETFs. ETFs is emerging as a growing and important component of the -- internally in terms of internalization of flows and so on.

So the direction is not internalizing, it's something that now we don't know, but internalizing more and more because clearly, this is -- because we are going to become more sophisticated, the growth on the volumes are going to help, yes, this is a big trend.

The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM.

Two very quick questions from my side. One is back on the new client acquisition, impressive trend there. I was wondering, how much they are contributing to the net sales in the first 9 months of 2025, let's say, the new clients you get -- you got in the last 12 months? And I was wondering what the average assets you get from a new client after 12 months, if that is already comparable to the average customer you have in-house or there is any, let's say, timing from the acquisition of the client to getting this -- moving the asset to Fineco?

And the second question is on the advisory -- advanced advisory stock that has grown now to above EUR 37 billion. I understood that you have the same margin, whatever is the underlying assets the client has. I was wondering what has been the contribution in terms of revenues in the first 9 months of the year from the advanced advisory assets.

So in terms of what is the contribution of the new client acquisition, more or less, we can say that in terms of new total financial assets, 65% is brought by the new clients. So the 65% is driven by the new client acquisition, and the remaining part is the continuously growing share of wallet on the existing clients. Yes, this is more or less is the split.

And after 12 months, so clearly, we have to make a distinction because there is a kind of polarization in the clients we're acquiring because one is that we have the relatively young clients, they're going big. And the other company that is growing big is represented by the rich clients or other banking clients. These are the 2 segments in which we are growing the most because this, by definition, are the 2 segments that are the most sensible to the concept of getting delivered efficiency, transparency and convenience.

And typically, so we -- so yes, after 12 months, we can say that a large part of the -- on the assets of the clients have transferred into the bank. But still, we have a significant room for growing on our existing base of clients because we are making estimates on -- in order to understand which is the potential represented by clients that are theoretically perceived as more clients on the platform and then putting together the significant amount of information we have because having all clients using the transaction banking platforms, we know everything of the clients. So where they're living, how much they're making in terms of salary, the amount of taxes they are paying, where they are spending, how much they're spending. And so at the moment, our so-called still small clients that has an upside of the bank and average potential of another EUR 50 billion, more or less. I'm not saying that we're going to get all of that. But clearly, the more the trends, the new trends are building up in terms of strength and the more also we're going to be able to get even more share of wallet by our clients.

The advanced advisory stock, no, we are not giving the split of these revenues.

The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo.

I've got only one last question. It is to ask you if you have already made some calculations about the potential impact of the Italian Budget Law for next year?

Not yet because everything is still so unclear that it's probably, yes, we are making some time, some simulation, taking -- considering the rumors that are on the market. But honestly speaking, it's a little bit -- I think that the risk is to -- is a waste of time because everything is still underway. But honestly speaking, we are completely not concerned by this because this is not -- for us, what is important is the structural trajectory of the bank. So this can be, okay, fine. It's part of the game, but it's not going to change anything.

So we are not, honestly speaking, particularly neither concerned nor particularly interested in what's going on there.

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Foti, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Thank you to everybody for the extremely interesting questions we got. As usual, we are absolutely at your disposal for entering in additional follow-up. And so thank you again for taking the time to participate to our financial results conference call.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.