Van Lanschot Kempen NV (VLK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Van Lanschot Kempen Analyst Call 2022 Full Year Results. Please note this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. I will now hand you over to Maarten Edixhoven, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Marian, and welcome all and good morning, and thank you for joining this call about the full year results of Van Lanschot Kempen. I'm here today with our CFO, Jeroen Kroes; and our Chief Risk Officer, Wendy Winkelhuijzen. And I would like to start the conversation today with a few remarks about the year in general. Of course, 2022 will tragically enough make into the history books as the Russia invaded Ukraine, with all its devastating consequences. Also, during the year, uncertainty about energy supply and prices as well as inflation left a mark on society in general, and of course, our clients and colleagues as well. In terms of financial markets, every investor was impacted by negative results in virtually any asset class, affecting our clients and, of course, also our house. As our house focused on long-term relations and being there as a steward for our clients, it's in these times that we have the opportunity to really demonstrate our value, and I'm very grateful for our clients' trust and our team's drive and hard work in keeping the momentum going of this firm. We were able to deliver on our strategy, and the feedback we got both quantitative and qualitative from various stakeholders tells me we are on the right track. Before we go into the financials, I would like to zoom in on some of those stakeholders in 2022, and starting with our clients. Clearly, it was a difficult year for any investor. We made sure we stayed very close to them, remained in close contact and keeping a steady course towards their goals. Therefore, I'm especially proud that the Net Promoter Score for Private Clients came in at 36%, well above our target of 20%, and at the same level as last year despite the lower markets across the board. I believe that's a testament to our personal relationship with our clients and our entrepreneurial approach. Both in Belgium and the Netherlands, we took steps to strengthen or expand our offering with bolt-on acquisitions. For our employees, I'm really happy that in a tight labor market, we were able to retain but also attract new talent. We continue to invest in our growth and in our employer brand, and of course in inclusion and diversity, essential to being a good employer. And we managed to reduce the gender pay gap closer to our own target. We are not there yet, so this remains on the agenda. Then turning to our shareholders. In line with our commitments as expressed in the Capital Market Day in May, we were able to return EUR 3.50 per share in 2022, both in 2021 dividend and a capital return in December 2022, keeping with our promises. I'm particularly pleased that we gained a strong anchor shareholder in Belgium as we announced just before Christmas last year, as we agreed with the partners in Mercier Vanderlinden on the accelerated acquisition of their remaining 30% stake. As part of the agreements, they will obtain a significant stake in our company, increasing the visibility of our firm in the important Belgium market. And finally, society or sustainability. Obviously, we continue to focus evolving sustainability regulation and the implementation thereof. At the same time, importantly, we work hard on realizing results, having real impact. We made further progress on our 2050 net zero goals. For instance, we used -- we reduced the CO2 footprint per FTE in our organization since 2019 by 40%, and almost 90% of our investment funds and discretionary portfolios comply with our target of 7% average annual emission intensity reduction. But also here, still work to do. If we move on to the next slides. And of course, Jeroen later on will dive much deeper into them, but some highlights on the financials. In 2022, we show a net profit of EUR 84.3 million, with both commission income and interest income up by 6%. We showed very high net asset under management inflows at 13.7%, plus EUR 1 billion in new savings money, almost EUR 15 billion in net new money entrusted by existing and new clients to our firm. Something I'm particularly proud of, and we really keep the momentum going. In terms of our medium-term financial targets, our CET1 ratio came in at 20.6%, well above our target of 15% plus the 2.5% M&A target as we announced in May last year during our Capital Market Day. Our return on capital came in at 12.3%, a bit higher than our target of 12% through the cycle. And our efficiency ratio came in at 73.1%, just above our target through the cycle of 70%. Also there, some work to do. Finally, I hope -- and I hope this slide is starting to look familiar to all of you. We have been presenting it since our Capital Markets Day in May, and more importantly, continue to deliver on our long-term growth ambitions. Our assets under management decreased, of course, to negative markets as our clients also decreased their assets with us due to the markets. Yet we recorded continued autonomous, profitable AUM net inflows. And once again, I'm very proud of the staff that realized that by being very close to existing and new customers. We were able to announce 2 bolt-on acquisitions in line with our strategy with clear strategic rationale. First of all, in Belgium, by really creating a second home market with the remaining stake in Mercier Vanderlinden. And very recently, earlier this month, we announced our strategic partnership with Robeco, adding their online investment platform to Evi Van Lanschot. Of course, we will look and we will continue to look at M&A opportunities in a disciplined way whilst also focusing on the integrations. As announced, we have designated a 2.5% M&A add-on in our capital position in this regard, and it's still there. And now, I would like to hand over to Jeroen to discuss the full 2022 year results. Jeroen, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Maarten. I'll go through the presentation, and I'll start at Page 6. A lot of things have already been mentioned by Maarten. Well, we -- we end the year with a full year net result of EUR 84.3 million. We're happy with the growth of 6% in both the commission income and the interest income. As mentioned, it was a challenging year for almost all asset classes, and this resulted in a negative market performance. But still, we achieved a good inflow of assets under management, both at Private Clients with EUR 2 billion as well as in Wholesale and Institutional Client segment with EUR 11.6 billion. Also important to say is that our savings money grew by EUR 1 billion, which is proof of clients continuing to entrust their money with us. Our strong capital ratio of 20.6% combined with the solid results give us the opportunity to propose a dividend of EUR 1.75 per share. Page 7 does not give so much extra information, and therefore, I will directly move to the next one, which gives the delta between the results of 2021 and 2022. And it's important to note that the results in 2021 was higher than in 2022. There are a couple of reasons for that, and I will discuss that. Go from left to right. First, again, the commission income and interest income that both grew by 6%. There, you see the other income. This one, the EUR 26.4 million was lower, and that has all to do with the high result on participating interest that we had in 2021. Then moving forward to the next block, we get to operating expenses, they were up partly because of the full year effect of Mercier Vanderlinden in our figures and also because of higher staff costs. Then we get to the pink block, and that's the one-off charge of EUR 18.6 million that we had in 2022, and that relates to the acquisition of the remaining 30% stake in Mercier Vanderlinden. This is -- again, this is a one-off from 2022. It was not there in 2021. And then the block right at the right side of that is a block that contains 2 one-offs, positive one-offs in 2021 relating to the reversal of impairment in 2021 and the sale of a non-strategic investment. So all in all, you see that commission income, interest income were up, that operating expenses were up. And there, you see that there was a lot of one-offs in 2021 that were not in 2022, and at the same time, you have the Mercier impact. Let's move on to the next page where we have the same figures then in the table format. I think it's always nice to see it like this, but there's 1 line that we might focus on now. And that is somewhere, let's say, in the second half of the table, you see the line expenses related to accounting treatment of Mercier Vanderlinden, with minus EUR 29.6 million and minus EUR 8.5 million. This line item has everything to do with the fact that we own only 70% of the share in Mercier Vanderlinden and not 100%. As we will close the transaction, acquiring the remaining 30% in the coming months onward, and we will -- this line will be a lot lower going forward. And this line will be just above EUR 1 million going forward. I think it's important to note. Then, let's move to the segments and start with the Private Clients. It was a very strong year, especially because of the good assets under management inflow. As mentioned, it was EUR 2 billion, but it's important to state that the inflow was achieved in the Netherlands, in Belgium and in Switzerland. Our commission income grew by 11%, and therefore, also the operating profit before tax came in higher than in 2021, and that's including the one-off of Mercier Vanderlinden. So strong figures here. Let's move to the Belgium part of the Private Clients business where you see that of the EUR 2 billion, EUR 700 million of the inflow gain from Belgium. Our commercial momentum in Belgium is good and cooperation between Van Lanschot Belgium and Mercier Vanderlinden already started in 2022. For instance, we were able to offer lowered loans to the clients of Mercier Vanderlinden, and Mercier Vanderlinden clients are now using the custodial services provided by Van Lanschot. Also important to say is that the inflow was achieved both in Van Lanschot Belgium as well as at Mercier Vanderlinden. As mentioned in the acquisition of the 30% stake will be finished as we expect in the first quarter of this year, then the Belgian activities will continue as Mercier Van Lanschot and ambition is to become a top 3 player in the independent private banking market in Belgium. Then we go to the Wholesale and Institutional Clients segment. And as you are all aware of, this business consists of fiduciary management services to pension funds and insurers and of investment strategies, which is the distribution of our own investment funds. Let me discuss it one by one and start with fiduciary management. For fiduciary management, 2022 was a good and successful year. Net inflow was strong, with the EUR 12 billion of net inflow and 2 large, new clients. On the other hand, the investment strategies had a challenging year, so on balance a small outflow. With our operating profit before tax of EUR 2.2 million, you see that markets are still challenging and that we are at a profit that is not where we want it to be, so there's work to do. As mentioned during our Capital Markets Day last year, we will focus on profitable growth for the segment and have a program in place that will take several years to achieve. But we, of course, have started this project and program already in 2022. Then the next page says something about the margins. Our margins have been very stable, and Private Clients margins moved from 62 to 63 basis points, while at the Wholesale and Institutional clients, the margins were stable at 12 basis points. And with these margins and the inflow during the year, we were able to keep our recurring fee level at a good level. Still in the graph on left-hand side, you see the impact of market performance. Then our third segment, it's Investment Banking clients. 2022 was a more challenging year for Investment Banking than 2021. Still, we were able to report stable commission income which is, we believe, very strong. 2021 was a year with a lot of equity capital markets business, and in 2022, we had to shift focus also to M&A and debt advisory. Then let's go to the interest margins. When we discussed the half year figures, we already said that we expect interest margins to increase in the second half of the year. And as shown from this slide, this is exactly what happened. And so you see that we report a net interest income of EUR 93 million in the second half after a weaker first half. So we see in the right hand side that interest margins are again rising. The key question is how NII will develop going forward, and we put in an extra slide on that with some extra information. We believe that the convergence paths of savings rates to the ECB deposit rate is the main driver of interest income in the next years. We have -- we do believe that because -- we believe that the ECB deposit rate is a good proxy for the conversions to long-term rates because the forward rate curve is relatively flat. We developed 3 scenarios. You see them on the left-hand side in the graph, and one is that we will convert to ECB in 1 year, 1 -- and the second scenario is in 3 years, and third scenario is convergence in 5 years. So this has everything to do with developments within the market. And as we are, of course, not setting these developments, we came up with these scenarios. The rest of the assumptions are that the volume of deposits and loans will be stable, but we also feel that 50% to 60% of our current accounts will shift to interest-bearing savings accounts. So the outcome of this analysis is on the right-hand side where you see the outcomes in the 3 scenarios. As you can see, 2023, well in all 3 scenarios, be positive when you compare it to 2022. While 2024, it really depends on the scenario that will materialize. So the longer it takes to converge to the ECB rates, I would say the better it is from an NII perspective. Then let's move to the other income. Other income consists from -- income from securities and associates as well as from results on financial transactions. Let's first start with the income from securities and associates. It's EUR 7.8 million, and last year, it was EUR 65.9 million. There are 2 underlying developments. First, the participating interest. These are the interests that we have through Van Lanschot Participaties and Bolster Investment, so that's the funds we invest in. In 2022, we had solid results, including 1 book profit. However, in 2021, we reported several successful book profits -- sorry, successful sales and book profits, and revaluation gains were higher. The second item in this line item are the co-investments in our own products, so our book where we invest together with our clients. There, you see that in line with the markets, the results on the coal investments were lower, and it's -- you see the difference with 2021. Important to state is that we use futures to manage the risk appetite related to these investments, and these futures reported a positive result. However, this result is in results on financial transactions, on the other line item, and that's exactly where we are going to now on the next slide, where we discuss the results on financial transactions. And in fact, this one was higher in 2022 than last year for reasons -- the first reason I already explained. It's the result of the futures, which was positive in 2022. Then we had some hedge accounting ineffectiveness that turned out positively on this line item. I would also like to shortly touch upon the results on structured products. Most of you know that in March 2020, when COVID hit, we reported a significant loss on the structured products ever since we have been working on derisking this portfolio. And we are happy to say that we finished the derisking, which means that we are now within our risk appetite. Also, as you can see, the results -- the year-end results were EUR 6.2 million negative. It's partly due to the derisking that we did during the year, and important to say that the portfolio withstood the large volatility in the beginning of the year 2022 very well. So it's also a testament to the fact that this portfolio is now running on a lower risk. Then the operating expenses. Our operating expenses developed in line with organic and inorganic growth. In the middle, you see the full year effect for Mercier Vanderlinden, and you also see the increase in staff costs. In line with our plan, we invested in our organization and we recruited new colleagues in different parts of the firm. Amongst others, in IT, in compliance-related assumptions and also the teams responsible for Investment Solutions. With the strengthening of the organization, as mentioned, we are ready for the next steps in our organic and inorganic growth. Going forward, we expect to see increases in staff cost because of agreed upon general increases and also because of the higher average number of employees that we will have this year compared to last year. Then there is inflationary pressure on our other costs, for instance, on IT expenses. Therefore, cost control remains a key point for us also in 2023. The loan portfolio. Part of our Private Banking offering, we offer mortgages and other loans to our Private Clients. Largest part of this portfolio still is Dutch residential mortgages, with more than 70% consisting of these mortgages. Low LTV. Other loans saw some growth, and that was especially with regards to Lombard Lending in Belgium. And we also see that credit quality of the portfolio is really strong. We see that from the impaired ratio, which is only 1.1%. In 2022, we had a release from the loan loss provisions, I would say just like in 2021, and it's related to certain specific client cases. But if we adjust for these specific client cases, we still see that the portfolio is doing well. However, to reflect the current economic circumstances and the potential impact that might have on the portfolio, we have increased our management overlay to EUR 5.2 million. Let's turn to our capital. Maarten already mentioned that the CET1 ratio came in at 20.6%, which is strong. You know that it's lower than what we reported last year partly to do with the DNB mortgage floor that was introduced, but also with the capital return we did in December 2022. Also interesting is that we calculated the impact of Basel IV fully loaded, so should we now move to a fully loaded Basel IV, the CET1 ratio would be somewhere in approximately 21%, which means that it's a base for good, if anything, have a slightly positive effect on us. Then looking forward, with respect to our capital position and how we want to move. At our Capital Markets Day in May, we shared our capital strategy and our targets. Our targets, as stated, is a CET1 ratio of 15% and an M&A add-on of 2.5%. At the time of the Capital Markets Day, we mentioned that we had excess capital amounting to EUR 145 million. As you all know, in December, we returned $61 million of that and the remainder, approximately EUR 85 million, amounting to EUR 2 per share, is still there, and we plan to return that in the second half of this year. Of course, subject to regulatory approval. And going forward, we have the intention to return capital above the level of 17.5% to our shareholders, again, subject to regulatory approval. Then a slide with the financial targets. I think Maarten already showed them, so I'm not going to repeat that one. But I would like to say something about the acquisition of Robeco's online investment platform, the acquisition that we announced at the beginning of this month. This acquisition positions Evi Van Lanschot for further growth. Together, both companies now have EUR 6 billion in assets under management, 150,000 clients and a very strong mass-affluent team. The acquisition is combined with a partnership with Robeco, which also means that Robeco investment funds will remain part of the client offering. We expect the closing of this transaction by the end of June. With that, I would like to give it back to Maarten.

Thank you very much, Jeroen. Let me conclude before opening for questions. In short, I think together with Jeroen and Wendy, we are very happy to present you today with the solid results of 2022. No major surprises. Very importantly, very continued growth momentum in attracting new clients and adding new net assets under management. And as Jeroen just elaborated, a very clear capital story moving forward on the basis of what we shared on the Capital Markets Day in May '22. So with all that, and thank you, once again, Jeroen for the explanation of the numbers. So let's open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Cor Kluis from ABN AMRO ODDO BHF.

Sorry for the sound of the background, I have to call from the lobby of a hotel. A few questions, first of all, on your regulatory cost. It was quite low in the second half of the year, EUR 1 million -- I mean, we all were thinking, it's EUR 5 million. Why was that low, and could you give some guidance for the regulatory costs for 2023? And what is the normal run rate without the leases, et cetera? That was my first question. Second question is on net interest income. Net interest income was, of course, better than we expected, EUR 93 million. The current market or circumstance are quite difficult, of course, to analyze, given the higher -- fast rise of interest rates. Could you help us a little bit on the NII for 2023? Probably H1 will be higher than the EUR 93 million, but whatever -- yes, you could help in that respect to some feeling what we might expect on NII going forward? And [ we ] will get much normalized deposit margin or something like that? Other question is about the [indiscernible] extraordinary payments of [indiscernible] or extraordinary payments of capital in the [indiscernible] year. At this stage, if you here already gave the guidance that you would plan to give that at the end of the year, contribution in the past was always if you might do an acquisition now, [indiscernible]. Could you relate this to [ euro ] to a possible acquisition, that if we find a nice acquisition available, how do you relate? No further questions. Sorry for the sound.

Yes. No, I think we -- thank you for asking the question. I think we heard you well. If we give totally the wrong answer to a question that we didn't understand very well, then it's the sound, but I think we can go there. Let's start with the last question as we -- on the intended capital return that we already indeed wanted to announce today and which is, of course, on the back of regulatory approval. Yes, there is a link with acquisitions to the extent that we have an M&A buffer, and that we would and could use that if we found a decent acquisition. Having said that, the fact that we announced the capital return today, also we do that because we have some confidence that we will realize that in light of the pipeline of M&A opportunities. So I would say that's the answer to your last question, and I'll hand over to Jeroen for your questions on cost and interest margin.

Thanks, Cor. Regulatory costs. I think, again, a sharp observation that they were relatively low in the second half. It has to do with regulatory costs in Belgium that were lower in the second half. This will not happen going forward. So if you would look at the regulatory costs going forward, I think the 2021 level is a level that is -- that would be the one to take as a basis. Then on the NII, the thing is, of course, no one knows exactly what will happen. You see in all 3 of our scenarios, the 2023 is going to be better than 2022. Of course, the current situation is there's still quite a gap between ECB rates and savings rates. We all know that. And that means that margins -- if the conversions will happen, this will happen during the year. And then, of course, margins will be relatively higher at the beginning of the year than at the end of the year. So I fully agree with what you're saying there.

Thank you for joining Cor, and any other questions?

We'll now take the next question from Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux.

So yes, the first question is actually on NII. Sorry to come back on that. Yes, I would like to understand what is the key takeaway from the slide on the NII sensitivity? I'm personally a bit confused because you have a pretty large outcome for 2024 between, let's say, fast and slow convergence rate. That's the first observation. So what is your takeaway? Should we be in the middle, i.e., expect actually zero NII growth in 2024 versus 2022, or it's a very wide range? So that's the first observation. And then the second observation is that you are expecting an ECB -- a long-term savings rate to convert to an ECB deposit rate. From my knowledge, you are the only bank talking that way in terms of pass-through rates, so that will be implying a 100% pass-through rate on savings accounts. So I've not seen any banks doing that assumption. So my question is, what will be then the sensitivity to a kind of maybe more realistic pass-through rate? And I think your main competitors are talking about a 30% to 50% range of pass-through rates, so not a full convergence. And then linked to that, actually, do you think we need to take a 100% pass-through rate? Is that really as far as you can see, a fair assumption? Because if that's the case, then we need to be indeed very cautious on the NII trajectory, especially for 2024 potentially. So, the second question will be on the cost side. I think you mentioned the cost control comments, but you also mentioned like 4% to 5% on wage inflation and 10% on IT. So how is this kind of cost control comment plugging into, yes, the inflation level you currently see for [indiscernible] sort. Is that just a matter of first, plugging a 4% to 5% on wages and 10% on IT, or you do expect maybe cost cutting somewhere else? Or -- just to better understand the cost control comment. The third one will be on the strategies. I think the strategies are going better in H2. I don't think you've seen any outflows after the outflows we've seen in H1. So just wondering if we can actually say that, yes, the outflows have been stabilized in the second part of the year? And then the final question will be on the payout ratio, 67%, which makes sense, which is higher than in the previous years. Also, with the intention to pay the excess capital above the 17.5%. So can we expect again potentially the payout ratio to be on the high end of the range versus the previous levels?

Let me take the last 2, and then hand over to Jeroen again on cost and net interest margin. I think on the -- Benoit, thank you for the questions. On the payout ratio, yes, you're absolutely right. That's on the higher end of our indicated 50% to 70% payout ratio, and we basically established that every year also to get some continuity in our dividend payment, but with that stated range. On the strategy and, let's say, the net inflows. I think as you said, we show very stable net inflows. If you -- both in AUM, EUR 13.7 billion, EUR 1 billion in net savings, savings money as well, so almost EUR 15 billion. I think that gives us a confident view that indeed, we don't show a major outflows, but focus on the net growth. And we can also see that the momentum is working quite well there from a commercial perspective, and we don't have any reasons to believe that, that would change. So with that, I would like to hand over to you, Jeroen, for the net interest margin and cost question.

Sure. So let's first start by the last part, the 100% pass-through. It's not an assumption in a way that we think -- we're convinced that it will happen like this. It's a possible scenario to give you guidance. Also important to say that you know, Benoit, that in different countries, these pass-through rates are behaving quite differently. So this is to give guidance there. There's something else to say. What do we believe, and especially what you say, the 2024. There is a big difference. Yes, there is. Let's say, if you would converge in 1 year and that scenario would occur, that would certainly be a scenario that we do not expect, and it's not the kind of scenario we model. However, should that happen, this would be the case. And what we can say is if we converge at a slower pace, so in 3 to 5 years, you see that this will certainly be more beneficial to us. I'm afraid I cannot say a lot more about this at this moment. Then on the point of the cost control, you're absolutely right. That's the effect of [ life ] that the costs that we mentioned go up by the percentages that I mentioned. And our cost control is not -- not something we can do about the percentages. However, there is control in the sense that we will keep a very close eye on the growth in the number of people. Do we really need the people, can we grow in efficiency, that sort of thing. External hiring, further making our processes more efficient through all value chains. That's the sort of programs that we are running. So it's -- these are cost control programs and not so much cost cutting reorganizations.

Yes. Yes. Just as a comment. I mean, I think the pass-through -- the full convergence of kind of 100%. Again, I think if you look at ABN AMRO, one of your competitor, I think they're absolutely not guiding for 100%. And what is also strange that the market is absolutely also not pricing banks today on the 100% pass-through. Because, all right, I think banks will have a lot of downside to NII somewhere in 2024, 2025, and the sector will probably be [ at sale ]. So it would be useful to get a bit of granularity in terms of also pass-through rate. Even if it's in year 3, so 2025, but a bit of a realistic pass-through rate, I think that will be quite useful.

Right. Thank you, Benoit, for that suggestion. I heard it loud and clear. Any other questions from your side or anybody else on the call?

[Operator Instructions] We'll take the next question from Slotboom from The Idea.

A question about the acquisition strategy. You've been quite active on the acquisition front, Hof Hoorneman, we have Mercier Vanderlinden, the recent deal with Robeco. Question about the manageability of these acquisitions. Perhaps you can update us where you are in terms of the integration of Mercier Vanderlinden? And the last time we saw a press release from your side, it was clear that the integration progressed rather well. Are you ready to make a next step in Belgium? And how much work is involved in the Robeco deal? Because if I look at the transaction, the integration of that process seems a more complicated deal than, for example, the integration of Hof Hoorneman. Could you shed some color on that, please?

Yes, Henk, and thank you for asking that question. That's obviously very high on our management agenda. And first of all, having joined this firm 1.5 years ago, one of the things that I really enjoyed is to see so many staff and talented staff with a -- which were related to past acquisitions. People that work with UBS Netherlands, people that worked with Staalbankiers, as you mentioned, Hof Hoorneman. And that is, I think, one of the examples of that, that we are able to retain the good staff of those acquisitions. And I think we have, in the last 10 years, built up a very good track record of managing, in a disciplined way, those integrations. If we look at Mercier Vanderlinden, which was acquired at the first 70% almost 2 years ago already, then we are indeed well on track. All the clients on Mercier Vanderlinden are already on our banking platform. We have 1 platform for the Netherlands and Belgium, which is also quite unique, which offers also skill. So that transition has been made in a very efficient way whilst continuing to grow very quickly in Belgium, so I think a job well done. At the moment, we are in the phase of also converting the funds towards our own platform of Van Lanschot Kempen Investment Management that is expected to be finished by the end of the first half of this year. And then basically, we have a majority of the integration as originally planned already done whilst focusing on continued growth. And then indeed, the news quite recently of combining Robeco and mass-affluent with Evi and the online platform, that's our next step. Now the good news there is that both Robeco, the online platform as well as Evi are on different IT platform than the private banking activities of the Netherlands and the Belgium. So we can ensure that we will focus on a smooth transition of clients to one of the 2 platforms we have. We still have to make a decision around that, whilst continue to focus on our growth in private wealth management in the Netherlands and Belgium. So that reduces also the risk of the transition enormously, and we can really focus our management attention on that transition of Evi and the Robeco online platform. So -- and we -- like in an earlier question, we continue to look for bolt-on acquisitions, but always from a financial discipline approach, but also a managerial and risk disciplined approach. Maybe Wendy, would you like to add something to that from that perspective?

Yes. Thank you, Maarten. That's, of course, a very important angle to take as well. We should disciplined when we make acquisitions, but we should also look for opportunities. We should look at the merits of each opportunity. And I think over the years, we have been able to integrate in an orderly manner. And for instance, for Robeco, as we also announced, we take our time so we take 2 years to make the integration. And I think that from a risk perspective, it's very important to do it that way.

Yes. Thank you, Wendy. And it continues to be extremely important that the key focus is on serving our existing clients in a very good way. And what I'm extremely pleased to see in 2022 but also before, but especially in 2022, that we added EUR 13.7 billion in net new assets of both existing clients as well as new clients in the Institutional and Private segments in very various markets. So I think that's a testimony that we are able to continue on growth and being close to our clients as well as managing the acquisitions, the bolt-on acquisitions in a very appropriate way. Does that give an answer to your question, Henk?

Yes. more than enough. Thank you very much.

We'll now take the next question from Jason from ING.

Yes. I'm [indiscernible] in case. I'm not sure you can hear me very well. Jason [ Columbus ] from ING. I think the results were very good on the income side, good surprises. So I'm just going to focus and follow up a little bit on the cost side. A couple of things. The one is you have had a strong increase in FTEs. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but that's about 7%, and Mercier Vanderlinden were before that. So I was curious to see where you added people? And the second is a bit of follow-up on this Robeco. I mean, the 2-year integration is quite long. So if you're going -- as you are turning a bit more in a series of acquisitions that are coming through, one would have expected that you will start focusing a lot more on integration and some synergies as you do the acquisitions. Because if not, we will kind of -- there is going to be some concern that the costs are going to be increasing quite a lot on the back of them, rather than seeing also partially the cost benefit as you are doing all these acquisitions.

Yes. Jeroen, will you take the first one on cost and FTE now that works are through?

Absolutely. Yes, Jason, you're right that the strong increase in FTE is -- across the whole company, as I mentioned, it is strengthening the company in several fields. As mentioned, it's in the IT and compliance-related activities, but also in the activities where the investment solutions are made. Also important here to say is that we hired persons that were first external employees. So in fact, that's a cost saving. Although growing your FTE doesn't seem that way, but we managed to get some very good external people into our firm as internal FTEs. So that's also part of this increase.

Thank you, Jeroen. And with regard to the integration of Robeco. Obviously, we -- for us -- and as Wendy just explained for us, it's very important to take a diligent approach here. Keeping the customers combined of Evi and Robeco is extremely important. It brings us to about 150,000 customers in the Mass Mutual segment. And also in the past, Evi had, because of regulatory reasons, a client stop. So we also may have to make sure that -- sorry, Robeco had that. We have to make sure that we really treat the customers in a very good way in that transition. Having said that, of course, also in our business planning, we look for efficiencies across the line. But most important for us is to make sure that we offer good client experience, have the long-term focus there. And on the back of that, and a good client experience also look for efficiencies in the combination, which we, of course, also prepared in our due diligence.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jason, and you were also loud and clear. So thank you for raising the questions. Any other questions?

We will now take a follow-up question from Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Sorry. Actually, I'm fine. Sorry. Sorry for that. Infact, it has been answered, sorry. Sorry.

We were already anticipating another sharp question, Benoit, but that's totally fine.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions in the queue. I will now hand back over to Mr. Edixhoven for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Marian, for supporting us during this call that went very smooth. I also would like to thank our staff here and colleagues, and especially also Wendy and Jeroen. And thank you all for being here with us this morning and discussing our results and strategy. We're looking forward to the next encounters, and have a very nice day. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.