Julius Bär Gruppe AG (BAER) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Julius Baer 2021 Full Year Results for Media and Analyst Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Philipp Rickenbacher, CEO of Julius Baer Group; and Mr. Dieter Enkelmann, CFO of Julius Baer Group. Please go ahead, gentlemen. You will now be joined into the conference room.

A very warm welcome to all of you to this presentation of the Julius Baer Group's full year results 2021. I'm hosting today's meeting together with Dieter Enkelmann, our CFO, near our offices in Central Zurich. Once again, this year we are presenting the results virtually, but we hope to return to our customary physical event next time as the pandemic situation eases. Let me open with a brief recap of the year. 2021 was the best year in Julius Baer's history. We achieved the company's highest ever full year profit and surpassed CHF 1 billion in adjusted net profit for the first time. This was also a strong result in terms of net new money inflows in our core markets from a variety of sources, demonstrating clients' trust in Julius Baer. Our financial performance showcases the value we create for our clients, visible in the quality of our earnings and our results also reaffirm the strong capital generation of our business model and the solidity and strength of our balance sheet. The quantitative achievements were enabled by strategic and operational progress in line with the direction we defined in 2020. I want to emphasize not only what we achieved, but how we have achieved it. We have firmly positioned our wealth management business from primarily asset gathering towards sustainable profit growth. We have used our broader range of capabilities to generate impact and value for clients, and we have significantly invested in 2021 in modernizing our technology and our organization. 2021 offered many challenges and the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic kept us on our toes. I want to congratulate our employees on their efforts and thank them for their ongoing commitment. We went a long way in delivering our strategy and on building a thriving, resilient and purpose-driven business that is ready to face future challenges. Our priorities in '22 will be to execute stringently on the last leg of the 3-year strategic plan that we began in 2020 and once again accelerate our investments in talent and further extend the scope of our digital capabilities. And for the medium term, you can look forward to a strategy update on the 19th of May '22, at which we will set our ambitions and our key thrusts for the next growth cycle of the bank. I'll speak more about that later on. For now, I'm delighted to give the floor to Dieter for a detailed look at the financial results.

Thank you, Philipp, and good morning from my side. I start on Page 6, on the market environment. In the first graph, it's interesting to note the divergence in performance between stock markets last year. In the first half of the year, most relevant markets moved more or less in the same direction. But in the second half, certain key markets, like, for example, Hong Kong and Brazil, started to underperform when compared to the global index or the U.S. market. Julius Baer has a relatively strong client presence in some of these markets and no presence in the U.S. at all. This underperformance effect had a slightly negative impact on our AUM development in the second half of 2021. In the second graph, we see that stock market volatility rose to exceptionally high level in March of 2020, after which volatility started gradually grinding down towards pre-2020 levels in or during 2021. The third graph shows that while the short-term U.S. rates are still substantially below the level of 2 years ago, the U.S. yield curve has deepened in 2021. And finally, in the last graph, we see that in 2021, the U.S. dollar recovered by 3% versus the Swiss francs after the 8% fall in 2020. However, the euro declined quite significantly in the second half of 2021, ending the year 4% lower against the franc. Slide 7. Moving on to the results. AUM grew to CHF 482 billion, an increase of CHF 48 billion or 11%, up since the start of the year, but down slightly by 1% in the second half, also for the reasons explained just on the last slide. This strong year-on-year increase came on the back of continued positive net new money of almost CHF 20 billion, a positive market performance of CHF 26 billion and a small positive currency impact of just over CHF 3 billion. Monthly average AUM, important for the margin calculations, rose to CHF 471 billion, an increase of 15% versus 2020. Moving on to Slide 8. Net new money grew by 30% to almost CHF 20 billion, which represents a net new money pace of 4.5%. It was pleasing to see that all regions contributed positively with particular strong inflows from clients domiciled in Western Europe, especially in the U.K., Ireland and in Germany, but also Switzerland and Luxembourg; in Asia, Singapore, Japan and India, foremost here, and also in the UAE and Brazil. Over 2/3 of net new money in 2021 came from RMs who joined before 2019, which partly confirms a further improvement in the clients' share of wallet. Operating income on Slide 9. Revenues grew by 8% to CHF 3.9 billion, mainly driven by a strong rise in recurring fee income. Commission fee income grew by 14% to CHF 2.3 billion on the back of the strong rise in recurring fee income, which grew by 22%, well ahead of the 15% increase in average assets under management. This implies a substantially higher recurring fee gross margin, which we will indeed see confirmed on the next slide. This was helped by an increase in penetration of higher value mandates and an improvement in investment fund fees. Transaction-driven commission income was somewhat higher year-on-year, but lower in H2 than in H1, as client activity slowed down, particularly when compared to the very active first quarter of 2021. Net interest income grew by 1% year-on-year to CHF 627 million. Net interest income stabilized after the significant year-on-year decline in U.S. interest rates back in Q1 2020. The resulting CHF 50 million decrease in interest income on loans was more than offset by a CHF 78 million decrease in the net cost of deposits, as interest expense on deposits fell by CHF 66 million to just CHF 8 million in total and negative interest charged on deposits rose by CHF 12 million to a total of CHF 39 million. Lower rates and yields also impacted interest income from the treasury portfolio, which declined by CHF 20 million. There is a lot of talk about potential rate rise in the U.S. and Julius Baer is well positioned to benefit from higher U.S. rates. Net income from financial instruments, which was used to be before called trading income, declined by 6% to CHF 884 million. But this is compared to a period of extraordinary activity in the first half of 2020, when market volatility reached exceptionally high levels. In the first half of this year, but typically in the first quarter, overall trading volumes actually remained relatively elevated when looked at in a longer-term historical context. However, client activity in FX and precious metals came down after Q1 following the decline in volatility. Other income increased by CHF 48 million to a total of CHF 51 million, mainly as a result of a CHF 34 million year-on-year decrease in credit provisioning to just CHF 2 million, which underlines our continued excellent long-term credit risk track record. Over to the gross margin. The analysis shows clearly the effect of the lower client activity year-on-year and in H2 versus H1, with the trading income margin falling by 4 basis points year-on-year to 19 basis points and by 6 bps from H1 to H2. And in the graph on the right-hand side, the transaction-driven component within commission and fee income dropping by 2 basis points year-on-year to 12 basis points and by 4 bps from the first half to the second half. However, the graph on the right-hand side also shows that the recurring fee component went up by 2 basis points to 37% for the full year and to 38 basis points in the second half. The NII contribution to the gross margin fell by 2 basis points year-on-year, but stabilized at 13 basis points into the second half of 2021. In terms of the exit gross margin in the last 2 months of 2021, the gross margin was approximately 80 basis points, of which 13 basis points from NII. Moving on to the expenses. While the revenues rose by 8%, total operating expenses went up by just 2%. Personnel expenses were up 4% on the back of an increase in performance-based remuneration. Excluding that increase, personnel expenses were flat year-on-year. Personnel expenses included CHF 21 million of severance costs related to the cost reduction program, slightly lower than the CHF 31 million booked in 2020. Just a quick note for those looking at the H1 to H2 decline of 5% in personnel expenses, which you can see in the table in the appendix. As was the case in 2020, the H1 to H2 development was somewhat distorted by the COVID situations and the related measures as staff took a lot more holidays in H2 than H1. This meant that unusual high holiday accruals hit H1 with the consequent relief in H2 and when excluding this effect, the personnel expenses would have been a little bit lower in H1 and a little bit higher in H2, and the decline would only be 1% instead of the 5%. General expenses fell by 3% to CHF 674 million, which was helped by a CHF 22 million decline in provision and losses. And even when excluding provision losses, general expenses were still slightly lower as the benefits of the cost reduction program more than offset the impact of strategic investments in technology. And again, for those looking at the H2 versus H1 development, there was some acceleration in the booking of certain project costs towards the end of the year, which are not truly reflective of the underlying cost development. Depreciation and amortization went up by 9%, reflecting the rise in IT investments in recent years. And as a result, the cost-to-income ratio improved to 63.8% and is now 7 percent points lower than the level of 2019. And the expense margin improved by 6 basis points to 52 basis points. On Slide 12. As a result, adjusted profit before tax improved by 19% to more than CHF 1.3 billion, and the pretax margin by 1 basis point to 28. Adjusted net profit grew by 20% to almost CHF 1.15 billion, and IFRS net profit by 55% to almost CHF 1.1 billion. And the difference between the 2 profit measures is indeed quite small these days. In the table on the lower left-hand side, you see that the return on CET1 capital improved from 32% to 34%. For our usual guidance for the adjusted tax rate, it should be noted that this has become a bit more difficult to provide a very precise guidance. This is mainly the result of the impending implementation of the OECD minimum tax rate in 2024 and the uncertainty around how it's implemented in the different countries. Our current best ever guidance for tax rate is around 14% for the coming 2 years, increasing to at least 15% in 2024 and beyond. Slide 13, update on the 3-year revenue and cost plan. In the 2020 strategy update, we laid out a 3-year plan to enhance revenues in order to offset the ongoing margin pressure in the industry and to improve the cost efficiency. We made excellent progress again last year, and it is very pleasing to be able to report that on the revenue side, we achieved a target of CHF 150 million in gross revenue improvements on a run rate basis, of which CHF 130 million are in the 2021 P&L and around CHF 20 million are still to come through in 2022. And also on the cost side, the targeted gross cost savings of CHF 200 million has been realized with about CHF 165 million in the 2021 P&L and around CHF 35 million still to come through in 2022. The restructuring costs for the new now completed program amounted to CHF 52 million, as I mentioned, CHF 31 million in 2020 and the CHF 21 million in 2021. Moving on to the balance sheet. The loan book grew by 7%, mainly on Lombard releveraging with the Lombard loan book growing by 10%, which more than offset the 7% reduction in the mortgage book, which was mainly driven by the repayment of some mortgages in London and in the South of France. At the same time, deposits went up by 7%. And as a result, the loan-to-deposit ratio remained at a healthy 61%. Moving on to capital. Since the end of 2020, the CET1 ratio increased by 1.5 percent points to 16.4%. CET1 capital went up by CHF 0.2 billion or 5% following the strong increase in profit, despite a significantly higher dividend accrual of CHF 575 million and the CHF 450 million spent on the accelerated share buyback in 2021. Risk-weighted assets declined by CHF 800 million, mainly on the back of the decrease in credit risk positions. And just to be clear, if we had continued to accrue dividend at 40% payout ratio, other than the higher 50% payout ratio, the CET1 capital ratio would have been 16.9% at the end of 2021. At these levels, Julius Baer continues to enjoy a very strong capital position with a very comfortable cushion above the minimum regulatory requirements. Capital and dividend framework. Given the ongoing strong capital generation of the business, we updated our capital and dividend framework, which was introduced 6 years ago. The capital floors. And as a reminder, these are floors and not targets, remain unchanged that are at 11% for the CET1 capital ratio and at 15% for the total capital ratio. The targeted ordinary dividend payout ratio is increased from 40% to 50%, with a targeted dividend per share at least equal to the previous year's dividend, assuming, of course, no very significant adverse event. And normally, at the start of the year, the Board of Directors will consider the group's capital position in the context of the audited result, the regulatory environment, the business outlook, the investment plans, and the return on CET1 target, and we'll then decide on the potential launch of a share buyback program, if appropriate. Which brings me to the new proposed dividend, which increases by almost 50% to CHF 2.60 per share, representing an almost 50% payout ratio. Based on the shares entitled to dividend, the CHF 2.6 dividend per share represents a total amount of CHF 556 million that was accrued in 2021. And together with the CHF 450 million buyback executed in 2021, the total amount returned to shareholders exceeds CHF 1 billion. For 2022, the Board of Directors has approved a new buyback program of up to CHF 400 million, which is expected to be launched in March and to run for 12 months until the end of February 2023. And with this, I have come to the end of my part and hand back to Philipp.

Thank you very much indeed, Dieter, for the update on the financial results. Let me now spend some time looking together with you at the qualitative aspects of our results, the strategic achievements we've made throughout '21 and our priorities for 2022. The strategic plan that we set out in February 2020 addressed the challenges of our industry and was based on our strengths as a leading focused global wealth manager. The 3 key directions were a shift in leadership focus from primarily asset gathering to sustainable profit growth, the sharpening of our value proposition, being very clear about what we offer to ultra-high net worth to high net worth clients and through the intermediary segment and accelerating investments in people and technology to 2 core levers of our industry. We have made great progress along those 3 dimensions. We've positioned our wealth management business for sustainable profit growth, we generated impact for our clients by adding distinctive capabilities, and we modernized our technology and our organization. In our wealth management business model, generating sustainable profit hinges on 4 pillars. Our primary focus as a bank has to be to generate high-quality earnings and revenue is the lifeblood for doing that for our business and control over revenue generation over the cycle is key. You cannot generate sustainable profit growth through cost savings alone. And we achieved this, firstly, by ensuring our clients have a maximum number of touch points with Julius Baer, with our relationship managers, with our experts, with senior management, but also through digital channels to maximize the opportunities and the value of our relationships. This also means systematically assessing client needs, something we've done intensively throughout 2021. The high quality of our earnings is reflected in our strong recurring revenue base, in particular from discretionary mandates, where we have managed to increase our penetration from slightly below 16% at year-end 2020 to above 17% at year-end '21 and from the continued success of our advisory service models. In parallel, we have created higher penetration of value-added services. For example, we further increased the reach of wealth planning, resulting in an overall penetration of above 23% at the end of last year, and roughly every second ultra-high net worth client now is using our wealth planning services, which include the family office services that we launched a year ago. Importantly, we've also systematically enhanced our structural ability over the last 2 years to price our services, pressing ahead with value-based pricing that enables us to ask the right price for the services we provide. At the same level, managing costs is important, and we have worked over the last 2 years on a major strategic program to rebase our cost structure, which also gives us the leeway now for further innovation and for selective reinvestments. And as Dieter said, the program has resulted in an overall run rate cost saving of CHF 200 million, CHF 60 million of which we delivered in this year and last year, according to our original plan. And we've also invested continuously in process efficiency. Today, you would find more than 110 robots in use at Julius Baer across the back office, operations and the mid and front office. We have also increased the structural efficiency of our business by continuously optimizing our geographic footprint and operations. In '21, we further simplified the Julius Baer franchise, for example, by continuing the stabilization of Kairos, by announcing the sale of Wergen & Partner in Switzerland, and by closing selected offices like Cairo or Beirut. The third element in achieving sustainable profitability is smart asset growth. Assets are the raw material with which we generate value for and with clients. We've grown our asset base via multiple sources, increasing our share of wallet with clients, making full use of client referrals, but also adding new clients to expand our presence in core markets. The results of our global client survey held for the first time in '21 showed that 59% of our clients would recommend Julius Baer to family, friends or business partners, and 44% actually plan to increase their assets with the bank in the next 12 months. We already saw some of those results and referrals throughout '21. And I'm very confident we'll see more of that as we go through '22 and beyond. Compensation and incentives are another contributing factor to our smart asset growth strategy and our overall path to sustainable profitability. The new compensation model introduced over the last 2 years now covers more than 90% of our front personnel. And this allows us to balance the factors of earnings, cost and asset growth as well as risk in a more intelligent and in a more consistent way. When it comes to capital usage, we have expanded our business under an unchanged risk profile. And with controlled use of capital, we believe that the fact that our risk-weighted assets decreased in '21 makes a very strong statement about the quality of our growth. The above elements of our strategy only work if they're founded on very strong risk management. Over the last few years, we have fundamentally revamped all aspects of Julius Baer's risk management, starting at the top with risk management and tolerance framework of the group, working our way down through the organization covering AML and KYC standards and processes, management and disciplinary elements and embedding all of this in a new code of ethics and business conduct. We have invested heavily in risk management, more than CHF 200 million since 2017 in change projects and remediation, as well as growing our risk management resources across both the first and the second line of defense. And it is also a testament to our strong risk management that we operate with very low credit losses, Dieter showed it before. Our loan book grew 7% last year to over CHF 50 billion, while our credit losses decreased from CHF 36 million to just CHF 2 million in 2021. Lastly, we've made again substantial progress in solving our remaining legacy cases. And this is reflected also in FINMA's lifting off the M&A ban it had imposed in early 2020 already in Q1 of 2021. Turning to our footprint. Our strategy is to strengthen our critical mass in our core markets, while creating broader growth opportunities across the globe. Last year, we continued to focus on our top 15 markets, as highlighted on this slide. And let me give you just a few selected examples of where we stand and what we have achieved. '21 saw the 10th anniversary of our presence in Brazil. Today, we are the largest independent wealth manager and the largest independent multifamily office in the country. Our onshore operation, Julius Baer Family Office, is the successful union of GPS and Reliance over time that we both acquired. And we stepped up our investments in Brazil in '21 with several new hires, and the launch of an advisory office in Sao Paulo that provides full access to our international services via a local presence. Today, we serve the Brazilian market by a dedicated team of more than 50 relationship managers globally, and we look forward to investing further in Brazil as an important pillar for our growth. In this part of the world, Julius Baer is building an exceptionally strong position in Continental Europe. And let me just pick 2 examples of the way how we generate high-quality growth in Europe today. Firstly, Iberia, with our offices in Madrid and Barcelona and their outreach to the Portuguese market, following the positive dynamics in '21, we have upgraded our local operations in Madrid, among others, with a dedicated team for the intermediaries market, headed by a senior manager that we were able to transfer from Switzerland. We are determined to fully capitalize on the market opportunity in Spain and in Iberia in a market opportunity that arises from the wealth management needs of local entrepreneurs and ultra-high net worth individuals. In Germany, a much more mature market, Julius Baer enjoys an outstanding position to build from. Germany onshore has been a profitable growth market for us, and we are among the very few foreign players to achieve true economic profitability after all allocations and cost of capital in our domestic business. And we continue to develop footprint and offering. Going forward, our capabilities in M&A and in real estate will help to expand our position further among German entrepreneurs and Mittelstand. As mentioned, last year we set out a new strategy for our core market in Switzerland with a strong focus on segment-specific solutions, adding a real estate offer to which I'm coming later. In '21, we have already seen positive growth momentum with Swiss domiciled clients. And with the appointment of Gilles Stuck as new Market Head Switzerland, we have put the development in our home market strategies firmly under one single leadership. Looking east towards the United Arab Emirates, we've experienced very dynamic growth in transaction income and in credit growth in this region. That is an important driver for growth of our group. After closing our Beirut and Abu Dhabi offices, we further consolidated those businesses in our Dubai hub, where we are also now based in a brand new premise adding to its importance. We also relocated our recently appointed Global Head of India and developed markets to Dubai, Rahul Malhotra. It's a little known fact that Julius Baer is the largest foreign wealth management player onshore in India. Our local setup domestically, combined with our global India franchise, is a truly unique setup, which was recognized in 2021 with the Best Private Bank Award for global Indians by Asian private banker. We've been serving the Indian community since 2007 and under Rahul's leadership, we will continue to invest in strengthening our Indian franchise, both domestically and abroad. Let me finish these geographic examples with a look further east at Asia with our home offices in Hong Kong and Singapore and our rep office in Shanghai. And Asia is truly our second home market today. It continues to be an important growth driver for us. Around 1/3 of our net new money inflows last year came from Asian clients. Singapore is our second largest location globally with more than 1,200 employees. It's both our operational hub for Asia and the base from which we serve the fast-expanding Southeast Asian market. With our strong ultra-high net worth client base, we received the Asian Private Bankers Best Private Bank for Southeast Asia award last year and look forward to leveraging our strong presence even more. Our solutions are at the heart of how we add value to clients, helping them to protect and grow their wealth and transfer it to future generations. With that in mind, we are focused to constantly evolving our solution range to address client needs, be that financial, business or personal needs. Let me give you just 3 examples of these, starting with private markets. Private markets are a key growth area in our industry and the growing area of demand for wealthy clients. We provide access to them through 2 routes. One is the fiduciary route. For the first time, we placed more than USD 1 billion of fiduciary private market investments in our network last year. Our flagship vintage program closed sooner than expected and it has been substantially oversubscribed. And we've also established an impact offering, raising more than $100 million for 2 initiatives focused on climate change and on plant-based food, and we are increasing our co-investments. In late 2020, we launched, in parallel, the second route of nonfiduciary direct investment access to private markets for sophisticated investors. The capability came to operational readiness in 2021, and we originated a substantial number of 13 deals already in this first year of operation, giving our clients access to great opportunities to invest in prestigious companies globally and allowing us to fund strong innovation in their respective fields of activity. We're looking forward to increasing those activities substantially in the coming years. Financing is an important pillar of Julius Baer's offering. It encompasses mortgage and Lombard lending, but also specialized solutions such as structured lending or M&A advisory. In structured finance, we have been able to provide highly tailored bespoke solutions for large private clients at quasi institutional level. We achieved credit volumes of more than CHF 6 billion in this area in 2021 and we made full use of our tailoring facilities all across the globe. In the past, M&A advisory was an area in which we supported our clients on a largely ad hoc basis. As many of our clients are entrepreneurs, we have now formalized this capability by building a dedicated M&A advisory team. There has already been substantial demand and we want to scale up these activities further as we go into 2022. Real estate, the third example shown here, has long been a core element of our offering on both the mortgage and investment side of our business. So it was a logical step for us to expand the dedicated offering for our clients in this area. The acquisition of Kuoni Mueller & Partner will allow us to deepen the access we give clients to services along the real estate value chain in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. And this is just 1 step and the first step on our ongoing journey to grow our real estate services with a broader range of solutions. And these have just been 3 examples of how we continue to evolve our offering. Sustainability is a very important topic for Julius Baer. If anything, the pandemic has shown us our vulnerability and only accelerated its importance for society, but also our need to address environmental, social and governance challenges. Julius Baer's sustainability strategy is based on 2 pillars: responsible wealth management, that is our offering and value-add to clients; and our own footprint as responsible corporate citizens. In 2021, we made substantial progress along both dimensions. It's been an exciting time in responsible wealth management. We achieved an almost 50% increase in client assets in sustainability discretionary mandates to close to CHF 4 billion. We've launched several new products and solutions as well as a sustainability circle, bringing together clients in a dedicated community and enabling them to cocreate content. What's more, we've doubled the number of our philanthropy advisory mandates throughout the year. In terms of responsible corporate citizenships, we start with our employees as key stakeholders and ambassadors, and we've regularly been measuring the pulse of our staff to uphold our status as a caring employer. Both the engagement score and the Net Promoter Score of our employees were clearly above industry benchmarks in '21, a result that I'm very proud of. We have also continued to train all employees and are certifying our investment advisors in sustainability, and we have strengthened the ESG dimension in our risk management. Our sustainability mantra at Julius Baer is, do good, don't just feel good. We live this not only with strong long-term commitments, but by taking clear and pragmatic actions in the short term. One example of how we are putting this into practice is our climate strategy. You can read more about this when our sustainability report is published in March, but it hinges on the following points: first, we are targeting net zero carbon emissions for our own operations by 2030. We will lead the industry by introducing an internal carbon price of CHF 100 per tonne of CO2 on air travel of our staff using a market-like mechanism to drive change. At the same time, we are shifting our energy footprint in the firm further towards renewable sources. And these commitments reflect how we are laying the groundwork as a corporation to address the issue of direct carbon emissions. An indirect lever to reduce carbon emissions is through the money under our direct control in treasury, lending and our mortgage book. Here, we want to achieve net zero by 2050, and we are already moving towards a 20% reduction by 2030, making this a very tangible target. In this, we believe that engagement is absolutely key. Many climate strategies are based on divestment on not doing certain things or selling certain financial instruments. Academic research indicates very clearly that this approach is not effective. Therefore, we believe that engaging is the only way to truly drive decarbonization programs. We translate this by incentivizing behaviors and decisions among our stakeholders, and ultimately, we want to empower our clients by supporting them to vote on the shares they hold with Julius Baer. You can look forward to hearing more about sustainability initiatives from Julius Baer in the years to come, and it's going to be a very important part of our business strategy moving forward. Technological innovation is at the core of our efforts to modernize our value chain and to add value to our clients and to create the wealth management of the future with investments totaling approximately CHF 0.5 billion just over the past 2 years. We have continued to improve the digital access to our clients, the first dimension of technological innovation. We have made drastic upgrades to our mobile and e-banking solutions in Switzerland and in Asia, and with new features around client interaction, covering everything from onboarding and e-signature to chat, we've been generating more volume and touch points with our clients. And recently, we also rolled out a new state-of-the-art digital platform for our intermediaries clients in Asia. The second dimension of today's experience is scalable tailoring and advice that is supporting the human interaction with strong digital tools. Our proprietary solutions for our front office, such as the digital advisory suite and the mandate solution designer are industry-leading and award-winning tools, crucial to drive our business. The third element on our technology agenda is new business opportunities and innovation. Julius Baer has been a pioneer in addressing our clients' emerging needs in the crypto space. After having been among the early anchor investors in SEBA Bank in Switzerland, we also begun to make our own value chain digital asset ready. In 2021, we extended our crypto offering by providing access to additional coins and by enhancing the digital asset experience we make available to our clients. I'm sure you're going to hear more about that in the future. We have decided also to extend our own capabilities and efforts in cybersecurity and started to make them available to our clients. This not only helps clients identify cyber vulnerabilities and reduce risks end-to-end, but also creates a new interaction channel with them and strengthens our relationship and increases our share of wallet. We will make this cybersecurity advisory offering available to clients even more in the coming months. And a final example of the innovation is the inauguration of our launchpad innovation hub in Singapore. We are very proud to have built an active driver of innovative solutions in Asia to identify, to conceptualize and to incubate new business models, new services and new technologies that can be used across the entire bank. Many of our staff are involved in this, supporting our position as employer of choice now and in the coming years. Talking about people. While technology is key, our business will always be a people business. In 2021, Julius Baer continued to invest in being the employer of choice for the best talent in the market along the entire value chain. I'd like to cite 2 important initiatives in this broader context. A strong employer brand is key to recruiting and retaining top talent. And we reinforced this in '21 with the launch of our employer value proposition. It's rooted on empowerment, on personal development and human connections, that distinguish Julius Baer. It expresses a unique combination of entrepreneurial freedom, but also of genuine respect that enables our people to make a meaningful difference and create lasting value. Our outreach in the talent market is already having an impact, moving us up 12 places to 18th in the ranking of employers of choice for business school graduates in Switzerland in 2021. The second element in the broader people context is Agile. Agile ways of working are widely used in the financial services industry already, but we have decided to adopt them in a Julius Baer way by zooming in on how they can create specific impact for our organization and our staff as an enabler of our employer value proposition. The basic objectives are: first, that we take a true front-to-back perspective in our solution development, that we involve the client and the front office even more when we design solutions. And secondly, that we dramatically shorten the development cycles and so ultimately generate more value and economic output for a given input. With these objectives in mind, we have been running large-scale Agile pilots involving roughly 600 employees in the operations and the investments and wealth management solutions areas of our bank. These pilots have given us valuable insights into how to implement Agile, and we will now refine further the approach how Julius Baer implements Agile throughout '22. Our increasing agility will also feedback in our value proposition, which will be key to winning the war for technology talent in the next decade. Let's shift our focus to '22 and the last leg of our 3-year strategic plan. In line with our strategy shift, sharp and accelerate, we will focus on the following priorities. In terms of shifting our leadership focus towards sustainable profit growth, we will further drive revenues and continue to innovate our offering with new capabilities that generate impact and value for our clients and by setting the right prices for our services to match the value we offer to our clients. We will also conclude the upgrade of our compensation model by mid of this year. Today, 90% or more of our relationship managers are already operating under the new model. And in a few months, we will finalize the rollout for our front management roles and to our intermediary segment. We will invest strongly in further sharpening our value proposition. In the ultra-high net worth space, we have designed a very clear value proposition built around our resourcefulness, our ability to deliver bespoke solutions, our short time to market, and our connectivity across generations. Once fully implemented in our processes, this value proposition will ensure we serve our ultra-high net worth clients consistently across the globe. We will apply the same logic to our value proposition for high net worth individuals. The aim is to serve all our clients in line with their expectations in a highly personalized manner, yet delivering the full capabilities of Julius Baer in a consistent and replicable way. We will be pressing ahead with our sustainability agenda and the objectives as laid out before. And last but not least, we will also continue to accelerate our investments. We will extend the scope of our digital tools and upgrade platform technologies, for example, in Luxembourg and in Asia, but also accelerate the investments in our brand. Our recently concluded partnership with Le Montreux Jazz Festival is an excellent example of how we can further drive our brand through partnerships that will continue to evolve in the coming years. Let me summarize my presentation with a look on how we have performed against our medium targets. With a cost-income ratio of 63.8%, a pretax margin of 28.2 basis points, profit growth 19% year-on-year and the return on CET1 of 34%, we are well on track to deliver on our commitments for 2022, provided, of course, the absence of significant negative events. As said, all of this is the result of a diligent execution of the plan we laid out 2 years ago, a plan built on our strengths and designed to address the industry challenges. And with this, let us shift to what's further ahead. We will publish our annual report and the sustainability report on 21st of March and hold our Annual General Meeting on the 12th of April, where shareholders will vote on the proposed dividend increase presented by Dieter before. Together with the publication of our interim management statement on 19th of May, we invite you to a strategy update at which we will provide a broader perspective on our strategic plans for the next medium-term cycle. We will share with you our views on the market, on the industry and on the operating environment. We will discuss with you the key thrusts to further develop our business in the coming years, and we will give you an update on our medium-term financial targets that will guide us beyond '22. Please put this date into your calendar. And finally, on 25th of July, we will present our half year results for 2022. The results will be presented for the first time by our designated Chief Financial Officer, Evie Kostakis, who will take over from our long-standing CFO, Dieter Enkelmann, in July. And on this note, I'd like to give Dieter the opportunity to just say a few words before we open up for Q&A.

Thank you, Philipp. As you mentioned, this is my last result presentation before I retire by the end of June. Investor Relations was always a key focus of my activity and I actually started in 1997 with Swiss Re. I always liked the dialogue with the sell side, the buy side and, of course, also the media. And I appreciated very much the many insightful and great discussions and also good friendship with all of you to get a good outside-in view from the capital markets, but also from the shareholders and use this insight the company, to the Board, to the Executive Board, and also in the discussions with the other employees. So thank you very much for all of this. Thank you for your trust through all the years, and I wish you all the best.

Thank you very much, Dieter, for these words, for having been on stage so many times and for being on stage today with me again. And with this, let's move now to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Jon Peace from Credit Suisse.

Thank you, Dieter, for your help through the years. I have 2 questions, please. So the first one is, could you just remind us of your revenue sensitivity to higher rates? And also maybe just make a comment about whether you might have seen any slowdown in transaction activity in January, given some of the market volatility? And then secondly, how should we think about sizing the buyback annually as we look forward? I mean given that you enjoy quite an excess capital position, should we think about 100% payout as being a reasonable base assumption provided there's not any obvious M&A in the pipeline or significant market events?

So let me take the first one, and I'll start on the interest rate, which is, I think, of high interest. So if the U.S. dollar rates would be apparently shift up 100 basis points, this would add around 4.5 basis points between net interest and on the trading income on the swaps side. And by saying this, I assume that everything stays equal, except that 1/3, we assume that in this situation, 1/3 of the U.S. dollar current account deposits would switch either to term or call money. If there is a steepening of the U.S. dollar yield curve, let's assume 100 basis points, if it goes fast, it would add on the treasury side around CHF 20 million or less than 1 basis points, about 0.5 basis point. If, of course, it goes gradually, slow, then there would be almost no impact from that side. A quick one just on the euro, because that's a big potential. If the euro also would enjoy a positive shift upwards by 100 basis points, that would add 4 basis points to the net interest income, gross margin, whereas on the Swiss franc side, as you know lending starts from 0 on the Lombard lending on the mortgage side. So a shift of 100 basis points up would only add around 0.5 basis points to the gross margin.

Maybe a word from my side on the transaction pattern. We have seen a slowdown, obviously, of transactions in the second half of last year. But as we said, already a recovery in the last 2 months of last year. If we look at the environment right now, with all the eyes on the central banks and what especially the Fed will be doing and with the speculations around the number of rate hikes going to incredible heights, but also looking at the political uncertainty that there is around, but also looking at the diverging recovery path that economies will take this year and the next year, I think there's plenty to go around to create volatility and to create activity. And if the environment is indicative for client activity, I think this environment is clearly positive at the beginning of this year. Maybe last word in terms of buybacks, I would give a general answer that we have always said we want to consciously manage our capital position. And I think returning capital to the market through dividends and through buybacks obviously are our means of doing that. As we said, the Board will assess the situation in a broader market context, but also in a broader strategic context at the beginning of every year and take the respective decisions.

The next question comes from Izabel Dobreva from Morgan Stanley.

Thank you, Dieter, for all of your guidance over the years. I have 3 questions. So my first question is on costs. If we look at the growth in costs over the second half, personnel was up about 9% year-on-year. Could you comment a little bit on how you expect the costs to develop over 2022? And would a mid-single-digit growth rate be a fair assumption given the wage inflation and given the IT investments? So any comments you have here and on the hiring environment would be very helpful. Then I had a question on capital return, which is a little bit of a follow-up. I've seen the payouts ratio increase and the progressive dividend backstop, which are great. But I wanted to ask you about the buybacks. Given that the capital ratio is as high as it is, what held you back from doing more buybacks? And should we interpret that to mean that you're saving capital to do M&A in the near term? So that's my second question. And then the final one is quick. It's just on the treasury book. I was surprised to see that the treasury book came down a little bit, because from earlier discussions, I was under the impression that there was quite a bit of dry powder. So how are you thinking about deployment here in line with higher U.S. dollar rates?

Let me take the second question on capital returns and leave the cost and the treasury book to Dieter. I think we have not held back to finance any future M&A activities. We always said that the 2 elements are independent. On the one side, we manage our capital position so as not to hurt excess capital and we'll return capital to the markets. Obviously, while being a strongly capitalized bank is an asset in wealth management, on the other side, we have always had the conviction that if and when we find the right M&A activities, we can return to the market to finance those. So consider these 2 things completely decoupled.

Yes. On the cost side, H2 versus H1, as I mentioned, there were some accelerated bookings on certain projects in the second half, actually towards the end of the year. If you take them away, then the operating expenses are slightly up in the second half, which mainly comes from the trend increase on depreciation and amortization following the higher investments on the Change the Bank projects since a couple of years. So of course, in 2022, as Philipp said, we want to invest more on growth, especially for growth in core markets. So on the RM hiring, so you should see some cost increase versus the relatively flat line of costs from '19 to '21. So that's all I can say on absolute terms to the cost development. Then on the treasury book, you're right, we were a bit lower than end of 2020. There's also the details on the different part of the treasury portfolio. We had the view that the credit spends were too narrow. So we deinvested more on the credit side, credit on the bond side. And also, we weren't expecting of higher rates on the U.S. dollar side, rather keeping the money at the Swiss National Bank and not reinvesting before the beginning of the year, which proved to be, in hindsight, the right strategy.

The next question comes from Daniele Brupbacher from UBS.

Can I ask about headcount trends in the year? I mean, I see that, just trying to get the right number, sorry -- headcount overall went up more than 100 for the whole year, but the number of client advisors still went down to 120. Can you just give us a bit more details of the moving parts within that and how we should now think about going forward that there's going to be a net positive hiring number that would be useful? And then secondly, you mentioned the 38 basis points from recurring fee income. Do you link that increase directly to what you call value-based pricing? And do you think there is more potential coming from that side? And then Dieter, all the best for your future. I truly enjoyed working with you over the past, I think it's 15 years. So all the best from my side as well.

Thank you.

Happy to take the headcount trends. I think that we've seen an overall increase in headcounts, but these obviously have many gross components behind. On the relationship manager side, I think we had a relatively small gross hiring, but we have, over the last 2 years, in the context of the cost program but also the refocusing of our operations, let go of a relevant number of relationship managers, which resulted in a net decrease for 2021. This trend should revert as we go into 2022. I do believe that we will see a net hiring of RMs, even though we do not give a specific target for that. You've seen other increases of headcounts. You have seen increases on internalizations where we have internalized a substantial number of external employees, so shifting general expenses into personnel expenses. And you would see that also in the reduction of GE. And we've also substantially increased our graduate program, hiring young talent of universities, and this together has led to this increased number, but with an underproportionate reflection on the cost side.

Then we acquired KMP, adding almost 40 employees. So at the end, the real new jobs, including the temporary staff, were around 50. That's a real increase.

Then on the recurring income, I mean the 2 main contributing factors was the mentioned increase of the discretionary mandates, where the penetration went up. And of course, the absolute level went up also to the market performance, and on pricing. I would say, these are the 2 main components. And on pricing, there is more to come. I mean, we are very well positioned, and that's very active area. And on discretionary mandates, we are rolling out new mandates, and we feel very comfortable that we can increase that even on a relative basis further.

And also in terms of broader value-added services. And I think with wealth planning, we're very glad to see that half of our ultra-high net worth clients are using the services. One half, therefore, is not using it yet and we have a substantial upside across the entire network also in this area.

The next question comes from Anke Reingen from Royal Bank of Canada.

The first is on the gross margin. If my math is right, your exit margin was quite a bit stronger. So I just wondered what the drivers have been and that you should see this as a good starting base into 2022? And then just a follow-up question on the recurring fees. I just wonder, in terms of your split of high net worth individuals versus ultra-high net worth individuals, has there been a shift over time that has helped as well? And then also from me, thank you very much, Dieter, and all the best.

I'll take the first one. I mean, as I said, the outgoing gross margin between November and December was around 80, October was quite weak month in terms of activity levels. And there is, as Philipp says, I mean, no doubt that this is also the incoming gross margin. Of the 80, 13 were coming from the net interest income, and as we discussed before, there is some potential for it going up. And on the rest, on the activity levels going out into the quarter, it's difficult to make a guess. Then on the recurring fee, I would say this comes across the Board. Also a lot of ultra-high net worth clients are invested in discretionary mandate. We have built it up under the guidance of [indiscernible] in the last few years. And of course, there, the gross margins are somewhat lower, because the sizes are higher, but I would say the contribution comes from all different clients. And the fundamental balance between ultra and high net worth clients have not substantially shifted over the last years.

The next question comes from Nicolas Payen from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have 2, please. The first one would be on the competition front you face for hiring RM. Could you comment maybe on the competition you are witnessing in the markets? And perhaps also on the compensation front and in the broader context of you wanting to maybe hire more in 2022, what will be the impact on the compensation line? And the second one would be on your NII, if I read you well, you said that you have a lower contribution from income on loans. So I wanted to know what are the trends you are witnessing on margin on the Lombard loan side?

I'll take the first one. And let me start with the compensation model. I believe the new compensation model that we've established from front personnel has given us now a fantastic tool also for hiring in difficult and competitive markets in the coming years. And it allows us to really remunerate relationship managers and front talent for the value they create, but also to create an alignment of that remuneration with the economic value that is being created. And so I would expect the full alignment of front-pay with generated economic performance over the coming years, also if we go back into hiring mode. Obviously, this is a competitive space, and there are many players who are or want to be active in wealth management. We may have seen a bit of subdued hiring activity in the last years, maybe also still in this year with the pandemic going on. But obviously, this is something that we are prepared for and where we're properly positioned in all the growth markets and in all the core markets to make use of the available talent out there, combining this also with internal talent development. I think that's going to be an important element of front development that we combine, the hiring of experienced talent in the market with the buildup of internal talent over time.

Yes, then on the NII coming from the Lombard lending. If we back out the refinancing rate impact and just look at the margin, then it went both in absolute terms and in relative terms, up. It's partially also a matter of the mix of the Lombard lending. As Philipp explained, we do more structured lending to entrepreneurial clients in Europe. But on the other side, on the larger market, on the Lombard side, we do not see much pressure on the rates so far.

The next question comes from Jeremy Sigee from Exane BNP Paribas.

Specifically, thank you to Dieter for everything over the years and best wishes for the future. Two questions from me, please, both on costs. Firstly, a specific one. Could you give us a rough idea of the cost impact that you would see from T&E costs and other costs normalizing after the pandemic, including things like marketing and events and all the other things that have been below normal? If all of those went back to a full run rate, what sort of rough impact would that have on your cost base? And then the second question is a similar one on costs around technology. You've done a lot of work on technology and systems replacement in recent years. but you're putting a lot of emphasis here on further investments in technology, including digital and platform technologies. So could you just talk about where you are with your IT? Is the investment need more or less than it has been? Or is this just a continuous ongoing process that you always will have to spend money on technology?

Let me start with the second half. I think technology is obviously a key driver for wealth management business moving forward. And I'm very glad that what we have done so far has led us to a very stable position, but we see further investment opportunities at the previous run rate and maybe even at higher run rates moving forward. I think that will depend on the projects that we will pursue. I think, again, our focus has been, in the last year, especially on client-facing interfaces, on the visible part of our tech stack. And we've greatly upgraded our last mile to clients. I think that was an important step that may need a bit less investments moving forward. Then we have the middle part, where we continue to drive scalability of human advice, I think which is also something that ultimately translates into the efficiency of the business, where we will constantly continue to invest. And then there's the back end, where I think we brought ourselves to a very good status in Asia, in Europe and we've constantly rejuvenated also our infrastructure here in Switzerland. I believe there is an ongoing element, but obviously, some future projects may require bigger investments as we go.

Yes, then on the T&D side, surprisingly, the cost for T&D in 2021 compared to 2020 were flattish, not going up despite more activities. But of course, they were still muted and they were substantially lower than what we experienced in '18 and '19. So the delta, if it would go up to the '19 level, is around CHF 25 million. But as Philipp explained, we do put measures in place that the travel activity, for example, will not go back to the same level as we had, relatively speaking, in '19 and before. So it's not clear whether the full CHF 25 million would come back if the situation normalizes on a run rate basis.

Is there anything else like sort of conferences or events that would also step up to a normal level or is the CHF 25 million everything?

The CHF 25 million is everything. It's from travel, hospitality, client events, conferences, internal and external, everything included.

The next question comes from Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I've got 3 questions. I'd first like to thank Dieter for all his help and all the best in the future, Dieter. So 3 questions. Firstly, on recurring margin. I think it was mentioned several times already on the call, but I was impressed that 38 basis points. Do you think it could be maintained at the same level or do you see potential downside from perhaps competition? I think initially when you had started the revenue initiatives, you expected the revenue initiatives to offset any competitive pressures, but the recurring margin has actually gone up from there. Where do you see the outlook for the recurring margin? That's the first question. Second question is on loan growth expectations. What's your outlook for loan growth on both the Lombard lending side as well as mortgages? And last question is on M&A. Do you see opportunities this year? I guess there haven't been many M&A deals just in the market over the last couple of years. Do you see this changing? And what type of companies would you be looking at? Would you be focused more on private banking or you would consider digital companies or asset management companies?

Let me take the first and the third. I think on the recurring margin side, we still enjoy additional upside potential for the future and especially from ongoing mandate penetration. I don't see that much here a challenge of competitive pressures in this space. I think there are competitive pressures that come in other areas, but a little bit less in this space. It's just a question how fast can we progress essentially with extending our recurring revenue sources. In terms of M&A, I would give an answer that on a 2- to 3-year horizon, I definitely see opportunities. I think we're today still in a phase, as you're saying, with subdued the M&A activity, where on the one side, the pandemic is maybe hindering consolidation, on the other side, the tide keeps all the boats afloat. I do believe that the structural challenges in this industry and the margin pressures you talked about will not go away and that we will see them come through again in the next few years, which will definitely again open up the opportunity set. We always said we want to grow in our core business through different sources, including M&A. And so you should expect us to create additional critical mass in our core markets. And obviously, as the KMP acquisition in real estate in last year has shown we're also willing to selectively invest through M&A in capabilities and in solutions. But the balance is clearly on the business growth.

Yes. And then the third question on loan growth. I mean, you're right. If you do the calculation, the penetration overall Lombard lending and mortgages was a bit down, to 10.5. So I think there is no reason why this should not normalize to 11%, which would come, for instance, from Switzerland, where we're working on the turnaround on the volumes together with KPMG with a higher focus on real estate to grow that book again in Switzerland, which has come down quite a few years. But also on the Lombard lending, where we see good demand for structured finance, but also for the floor business. So that means that in our category there is 1 where there is good demand across the board from the different jurisdictions. So I guess it will normalize over time again up to the 11%.

The next question comes from Andrew Lim from Societe Generale.

So the first question is on the CET1 leverage ratio. So it looks like versus the CET1 ratio and the Tier 1 leverage ratio, you have a lot of excess capital, but the CET1 leverage ratio has fallen to 2.8%, which is quite low by historic standards. And I was wondering how that plays into your thinking about how you consider excess capital? Is there a floor for this ratio despite the fact that there's no regulatory minimum? And are you willing to see that fall to a lower level if you want to maintain your capital return at high levels? And then my second question is if you could provide a bit of color, please, on your performance in the past half year or so in terms of how high net worth clients have contributed to your performance versus ultra-high net worth clients? Do you see greater momentum in the latter, for example? And also how things are stacked up geographically in terms of like Asia, Europe and emerging markets? And then finally, thank you very much, Dieter, best wishes for your retirement. I hope you enjoy it very much.

Let me start with the second one, and then I'll leave the floor to Dieter. I think in the last half year, we have seen a contribution of all markets and of all segments as a result. Obviously, the drivers have been slightly differently. I think in ultra-high net worth, we see that our efforts to drive solution adoption with our ultra-high net worth clients to review client situation in a very specific manner and to see ways how we can add value have borne fruit, and we've been able to add new solutions to our ultra-high net worth clients over time. Some selected elements on repricing, I think where we've also been able to realize a better shared value. I think on the high net worth clients, again, we've seen good progress. There, the drivers have been more among the adoption of solutions, the general advancement, I think, of the margins, but also higher pricing discipline, in general. But again, I think both segments have contributed to our results, and again, across all geographies.

Yes. And then on the leverage ratio. When we look at capital management and excess capital, we look clearly at Tier 1 leverage ratio, that's the level the KPI regulator is asking us to keep a minimum of 3%, and we're running at 4% with 1% point cushion. So that's the ratio. We do not look additionally at the CET1 ratio.

Can I follow up on that question? I mean, obviously, if you're running down your capital ratios by another 100 basis points, then your CET1 leverage ratio goes down quite materially. Is that not a concern? I mean, obviously, having a thin buffer of equity capital to leverage exposure is maybe not so desirable?

Yes. I mean on the CET1 ratio, we look at the ratio. And this is a whole building of different limiting factors. And we really look at the leverage ratio, at the measure the regulator looks at, which is including the AT1. So the core capital plus AT1. And we believe that's the right measure to look at.

You'll have to look at this in a broader context of a fairly unchanged risk profile of the group over the last years. And I think just in very general terms, I think we've been driving our growth with a very constant risk profile. You see that also in sort of the antagonism of the one-side loan growth and on the other side decreasing risk-weighted assets. I think all our operations are geared towards, in that sense, a constant risk profile. But as Dieter said, I think the different components have to play together in the end. And we surely look at all...

The next question comes from Stefan Stalmann from Autonomous Research.

I will also start with a big thank you to you, Dieter, for all interaction over the years and all the best for your future plans. I have only 2 small questions left. The first one is on structured finance. You mentioned CHF 6 billion of credit volume in the presentation. Can you give us a rough sense of where that number was maybe in 2019 and 2020, to get a sense of how that has developed? And the second one is, you used to give us a steer about the contribution of treasury swaps to your trading results. Can you give us a rough sense of where that contribution was in 2021?

On the second one, despite higher swap volumes with the lower interest rates that declined further, and it was, again, like in 2020, below CHF 100 million revenues. That's still declining. And as I said, of course, if U.S. dollar landscape would change, that would be certainly one of the contribution factor to a higher income not only on NII, but also on the trading side. On structured finance, the figure we showed, CHF 6 billion, that includes the single stock lending we do in Asia, which you can argue whether it's structured finance or structured credit or not. And compared to a few years ago, that figure was probably at CHF 4 billion. So over the last 2, 2.5, 3 years, we increased that by about CHF 2 billion.

The next question comes from Piers Brown from HSBC.

Just a couple of final follow-ups on IT spend for me. So you've mentioned that some of the projects in the pipeline might start to accrue slightly higher spend than what you've seen in the last couple of years. I'm just wondering when we think about that plus the cost save program, which you've now completed, the CHF 200 million, do you think looking forward there is the capacity to find further growth saves, which might be able to cushion some of the future IT spend? And just on a related question, in terms of the mix of IT spend between what's flowing through the P&L and what's getting capitalized, has there been any change there? Are you seeing a greater proportion of the IT spend in expense and finding its way into the P&L?

Yes, roughly, on the increased spend on IT projects, we capitalize around 65% to 70%, depending on the project. I would say we capitalized a little bit more in 2021 compared to 2020, but it's always around the 65% to 70% and the rest goes obviously to the P&L.

And in terms of the overall trajectory, I think many of the things that we have done should create the prerequisites for us to keep pace or to accelerate the IT spending should we see the opportunity moving forward. I think the cost program clearly creates strategically ways for further spending, even though we said we do not want to spend all the benefits; on the very contrary, we want to spend selectively a part of the savings moving forward. I think all our efforts in terms of Agile should move to creating even more bang for the buck, also in terms of IT spending. And we see already first results in this area from our pilots from 2021, and therefore, we will continue to extend that. And then obviously, I think our efforts on the revenue side are absolutely critical to create the prerequisite for further future spending. And so all we do strategically should enable us to make the right investments moving forward.

The next question comes from Adam Terelak from Mediobanca.

Most have been answered, but I wanted to follow up on the fee margin. Can you highlight kind of what the contribution was from Kairos, particularly on performance fees. I think it's quite important when we think about fee margin development? And then you've also highlighted the volumes in kind of the private markets sales. I'm just wondering what kind of margin in this business is coming on at? How material that could be to the fee dynamic? And what the outlook is for that business as well?

Yes. On the first one, Kairos' gross margin, including from performance fees, was a bit lower, so it was below 100 basis points in more or less the same average assets under management of about CHF 5.5 billion compared to 2020. And on the fees, I mean this really depends on some, let's say, on co-investments. It's an upfront fee, one-off fee on other funds, we have a recurring fee income, but really depends on what is the content. Is it private equity? Is it real estate? Is it credit? It can vary, but it's on normal terms, I would say, higher than the group average.

Yes. I would also categorize it as sort of higher fee business, especially on the fiduciary side, but also not to neglect our sort of the knock-on effects of this if there's a financing link to it or if there is a broader buildup of a client relationship. I think many of those activities, we can also use them to further extend our footprint with clients beyond the private markets and then the uplift is even higher.

So it's materially margin accretive even on small volumes.

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

The last question for today's conference call comes from Andreas Venditti from Vontobel.

Most questions have also been answered. I would have one left. In terms of mortgages, the number keeps on coming down. Maybe you can provide a bit more of color there? And in this context, also maybe an outlook for risk-weighted assets, what we should see there? And also from my side, [Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language] So on the mortgage, as I said, I mean, Switzerland has bottomed out after quite a few years of declining volumes. And with KMP and the focus of building of this real estate class 3 in Switzerland, there we will do more marketing activity to grow the book. It has already started, we have a very good pipeline here in Switzerland. And the decline that we experienced in 2021 was from the cooling off in the London property market, where we had repayments of mortgages. These are normally ultra clients, who have these properties in that market and the same in South of France. So I would say probably outside of Switzerland, we will have a flat development. And in Switzerland, I really expect that we should be able to grow the book. And of course, that has the impact on the risk-weighted assets where we do not run a model and where the intensity is relatively high at around 40%, 45% depending on the underlying.

Excellent. If there are no more further questions, let me thank you very much indeed for having joined today's conference. Let me thank Dieter once again for having been with us here on stage today. I'm looking forward to '22, to a very dynamic year, and I'm looking forward to that with a lot of confidence for Julius Baer. I'm also looking forward to seeing you at more occasions and latest hopefully at the strategy update in May. Thank you all very much indeed.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.