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

Hello, and welcome to Van Lanschot Kempen Analyst Call for 2024 Half Year Results. My name is George, and I'll be the coordinator for today's event. Please note that this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Maarten Edixhoven, Chairman of the Management Board. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, George, and a very warm welcome to this update call on our earnings in the first half of 2024. I'm here with our CFO, Jeroen Kroes; and our Head of Investor Relations, Jan-Willem Plomp is also with us. So a warm welcome on behalf of all of us. As usual, Jeroen and I will talk you through the highlights of the first half of the year, and then we will open the floor to your questions, and thanks for your interest. We spoke to each other, of course, shortly before the summer break on our Investor Day in June, when we set out our ambitious yet also realistic financial targets for the next years. So I'm happy to share that the strong results we reported over the first 6 months clearly demonstrates we are off to an excellent start of 2024. We are seeing continued momentum with a strong growth in assets under management, especially via autonomous growth and also commission income, but also a very strong net result with positive contributions, and I'm especially pleased also with that fact from each of our 4 client segments. And let me elaborate a bit more on that. In the segment, Private Banking Netherlands, we recorded another consecutive period of net inflows, thanks to both existing and new clients. We see growth across all types of clients and entrepreneurs in particular. That's also why I'm very happy that we continue to be able to attract new private bankers and specialists to maintain our personal approach and to be relevant in the moments that matter for our clients. In Belgium, growth at Mercier Van Lanschot accelerated even further since the start of the year. More clients joined and existing clients entrusted us with a larger part of their wealth. We're also excited to have the new colleagues from Accuro that we acquired recently on board, and further strengthen our advisory management offering in Belgium next to our discretionary services. So solid momentum in Belgium as well. Investment Management clients recorded a pretax profit, demonstrating our focus on cost and commercial strength are paying off. We were able to attract several new clients in fiduciary management in the Netherlands as well as in the U.K. resulting in healthy AUM inflows whilst keeping our margins. It's great to see our efforts were appreciated as well. We were named Fiduciary Manager of the Year in the U.K. Finally, Investment Banking clients also returned to profit after a challenging 2023 with a difficult M&A market. We advised clients on a range of high-profile transactions and intensified the cooperation with the Private Bank resulting in additional inflows in terms of assets under management. These results confirm our growing further together strategy, as we shared with you on the investor update in June. It's our ambition to be a leading wealth manager in Western Europe with a solid foundation in the Netherlands and Belgium. We will achieve this by further capitalizing on the momentum we are seeing in private banking in the Netherlands while unlocking additional growth engines in the near future. In Belgium, as the results also show, we are well placed to reap the significant potential for growth and adding market share in the market. And investment management clients and investment banking clients are positioned for renewed profitability, and hence support to our private banking franchise in the conversations we have with our clients. We have translated these ambitions into our new financial targets for 2027. All our client segments are well positioned and have their own clear USPs and the focus on how to contribute or drive scalable growth whilst achieving our targets. Private clients is the foundation of our business and it's where we differentiate with our personal approach as well as distinctive investment solutions. We are able to maintain that as our single state-of-the-art IT platform ensures we can grow in a scalable way, small enough to care, large enough to cope as we say. In the Netherlands, we continue to see strong momentum and winning market share with clear growth opportunities in a growing market, as well as a unique position in Switzerland as an additional driver for growth. In Belgium, as we said, we launched Mercier Van Lanschot brand in January, following a successful integration of our 2 businesses there, and we have the ambition to be a leading player and the results of the first half are a testimony to that. Investment management clients is our in-house investment engine offering distinctive solutions to our clients, both in the institutional and the private market, with growth also coming from our alternatives and specialist strategies and pension fund consolidation. In this segment, we focused on scalable and profitable growth, and we are reaping in the first half of the year, some of the benefits from the work done in the past 2 years by our colleagues. Finally, investment banking clients, this where we support our clients with specialist investment banking capabilities. We have a very clear focus on specific sectors in which we have built a strong track record. Following a difficult year, we see momentum is returning also showing through in the first half results. If we then look back to our results. As you will have seen, we had a very strong start of the year, and Jeroen will go through all the details shortly with you. I want to call out just a few of the key numbers. Net profit rose strongly with 44% to EUR 74.5 million, which is a great result. Operating expenses rose 6%, resulting in a cost/income ratio of 69%, demonstrating our ability to achieve scalable growth and the result of cost control being top of mind among all of our employees. Also, our net inflows were strong. We added EUR 5.7 billion in assets under management from new and existing clients, both in private and institutional markets and our total assets under management has reached over EUR 139 billion, almost EUR 140 billion. Finally, our capital ratio remains strong and well above our target. And as mentioned during our Investor Day, we aim to return the proportion of capital in excess of our target of 17.5% by year-end 2024 to our shareholders, together with the 2024 dividend. With these results, we are on track to deliver on our targets as shared in June. Zooming in on our 10% assets under management growth target, you will see that our current momentum is very strong, and we have full confidence on delivering on those targets. Jeroen will elaborate more on those other targets later. Before handing over to him, a few words on our nonfinancial targets. We continue to work towards our carbon reduction targets. Our aim is to lower the annual weighted average carbon intensity of our discretionary assets under management were 7% from our 2009 baseline. In the first half of 2024, we recorded an average annual reduction of 18%. So well on track there, but still also a lot of work ahead of us. A lot of focus is also going into measuring and reporting on sustainability and I want to call that out. This enables us to navigate the transitions with more visibility, for example, and for instance, on biodiversity, but also data quality is a very important aspect here. Also, we are well on track to implement new legislative requirements as SFDR, CSRD and the new AFM guidelines on sustainability. Then a couple of words on our client satisfaction, as that is the bread and butter of our franchise. Our results, the progress we continue to make on our targets, our ability to report and analyze. They are, of course, all driven by our talented teams. That's why I'm very pleased with our continued high engagement score, which I'm fully convinced also leads to high client satisfaction scores. We will continue to focus on attracting and retaining talent by offering development opportunities to our staff. This is key to our strategy as our people are very close to our clients. With that, I would like to hand over for our CFO -- to our CFO, Jeroen Kroes, for more details on our first half numbers. Jeroen?

Thank you, Maarten, and good morning. Let's go through the slides, start with #9. We had a strong first half of 2024. Net result increased by 44% to EUR 74.5 million, on the back of growth in commission revenues and good performance in all of our client segments. We show good growth with assets under management that rose over 9% compared to the end of 2023. And that is thanks to the strong inflow of EUR 5.7 billion, a positive market performance and the acquisition of Accuro. As mentioned, all segments are -- were profitable, all client segments, and we saw very good inflows at both Private Clients Netherlands as well as Mercier Van Lanschot in Belgium. The results at Investment Management and Investment Banking improved substantially with the investment bank returning to profitability. And our capital and liquidity position is robust with high CET1 ratio and an LCR of above 200%. If we compare the results to the one of the first half of 2023, it is clear that the main driver behind the increase is the commission income. We started the year with a higher base of assets under management than the year before. We had a good and continuous inflow. We were helped by positive markets and by the better results of the investment bank. And all of this together contributed to this good increase of EUR 47.8 million. And as guided earlier, interest income was lower than last year, but it is in line with the second half of 2023. Good to note on this page is that the 2024 figures include the acquisition of the online investment platform of Robeco, which was not yet part of the figures of the first half of 2023. And this means that in 2024, we have EUR 9.5 million higher income from Robeco Retail as well as higher cost of EUR 9.5 million, of which EUR 8.5 million are in operating expenses. Let's now zoom in on the client segment. Starting with Private Clients, Netherlands. Commercial momentum is good at all parts of this segment, including the Swiss part of the business. On the back of a positive market, clients invested more and we saw a shift of savings and deposits to investments. In addition, we welcomed many new clients. This all led to an inflow of EUR 1.8 billion, which is a very strong number. The operating result before tax amounts to EUR 71.6 million, a small decrease compared to the first half of 2023. And this is due to the normalization of interest income after the very first -- very strong half of 2023. Then a few words on Robeco Retail, which is also part of this segment. We are making good progress in integrating Robeco Retail into Evi. In December of last year, we introduced a savings product to the former Robeco clients, and we saw the level of savings at our Evi clients grow this year by approximately EUR 500 million to a level of EUR 1.1 billion. In Belgium, Mercier Van Lanschot continued to gain market share. And in fact, growth accelerated in the first half of 2024. Net inflow of assets under management amounted to EUR 1.1 billion. And combined with market performance and the inflow from the acquisition of Accuro, we stood at EUR 13.7 billion of assets under management at the end of June, an increase of 25%. And as you know, the loan book in Belgium is smaller than in the Netherlands as we do not provide mortgages. For this reason, the lower interest income had a limited impact on the operating result before tax, which came in at EUR 16.7 million, which is a good increase compared to 2023. Then investment management clients. The last 2 years, we worked on restructuring this part of the business, increasing commercial strength, improving processes and working on better scalability. These efforts led to a sharp improvement in operating result before tax to EUR 13.5 million from EUR 3.9 million last year. And also, if you would look at the segmentation of last year, and you know that last year we still worked with the old segments, when we had the wholesome institutional client segment, but also if you would look at this segment, which was loss-making last year, that part of the business reported a profit in the first half of this year. So inflow at investment management clients amounted to EUR 2.8 billion, mostly in fiduciary management, where we welcomed several new clients in both the U.K. as well as in the Netherlands. We also saw inflow in our funds and mainly at credit and small caps. The investment bank. In 2023, we had a historically weak market for investment banking, and this was also visible in our results. This year, we see the momentum return. And on the back of this, our investment bank made a positive operating result before tax of EUR 3 million. Beside a number of high-profile transactions, we also see the cooperation between the investment bank and the private Bank make good progress. In the first half of 2024, the collaboration led to an inflow of assets under management at the private bank of over EUR 100 million. Then looking at the margins. We report stable margins and especially at Private Clients Belgium and investment management clients margins are virtually the same as last year. We see a movement at Private Clients Netherlands from 60 basis points to 55 basis points and let me explain that. This is caused for a large part by the activities of Robeco Retail that were added against a lower margin of approximately 30 basis points. So they were not there in the first half of last year. And as of the second half of last year, they are part of the business of Private Clients Netherlands. In addition, growth at Private Clients Netherlands [ persisted ] for 77% from growth in advisory asset management and 23% from discretionary asset management. And the margin on advisory is lower than discretionary, so this also had an effect. Then the graph on the left-hand side, showed that -- every time it shows the run rate of our recurring fees. And you see that it grew in line with the strong growth in assets under management and now amounts to EUR 468 million. And this, of course, gives us a good starting point for the second half of the year. The first quarter or the first half of 2024 shows resilient interest income. So the graph on the left shows that the NII peaked in the first half of 2023. In the first half of 2024, interest income was slightly above the second half of 2023. And as you can recall from what we said during the Investor Day, we guided that interest income would be in line with the second half of 2023, and this is also what we report now. Looking a bit at the balance sheet. Our total savings and deposits declined from EUR 12.6 billion to EUR 12.2 billion. And looking a bit further we saw that our savings grew by EUR 0.2 billion. Deposits also grew EUR 0.1 billion, but current accounts decreased by 0.7%. So those are the underlying movements. And we saw the interest income, if we also would look at Q2 versus Q1, we saw a slight decline in Q2 versus Q1. And this is because a modest decline in savings, which occurred in Q1 and had an effect on Q2. And a small part was also due to some declining margins. However, if we look forward and we run the models, we expect interest income both for H2 and for 2025 to be in line with the level of the first half of 2024. Then the Other income. The Other income consists of income from our investments in participating interest and co-investments in own funds and the result on financial transactions. Here, you see a good increase from EUR 4.1 million to EUR 16 million. And in fact, the reason for this is that across the board, results are better. And so almost on all lines, you see better results. The biggest delta is in the line Other results. And there, you see that we benefited from good results from our structured products activities and a positive result from hedge accounting. Then with respect to our cost, we operated with a positive jaw. Maarten already explained it with income growing 14% and costs up 6%. Staff costs were up by EUR 9.6 million, and the increase is due to a larger number of employees of FTEs which is, amongst others, due to the acquisition of Robeco and Accuro. You're looking at the changes of the last 6 months, you see the growth of 33 FTEs and 10 from Accuro and 23 are because of strengthening of our front end and from a shift from contractors to internal staff at our data management teams. The increase in other costs is fairly limited, but it was also due to lower regulatory fees. The increase in cost -- of Other costs, we mentioned that it's from higher consultancy, marketing and IT expenses. To give you some more idea on the IT expenses, a large part of that has to do with the acquisition of Robeco Retail and IT expenses that came with that acquisition. Looking at our loan portfolio, it is stable. We see a small decline in the mortgage portfolio, while the average LTV remains very good and even improved to 61%. And at the other hand, we saw some growth in the portfolio of other loans, especially Lombard loans and current accounts increasing across Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Our loan portfolio is a good quality with good coverage from collateral. Therefore, additions to provisions were limited with EUR 1.7 million. And as discussed before, we believe the time of releases from this provision is behind us. We believe that the levels seen in the second half of '23 -- in the first half of 2024, are a good indicator of loan loss provisions going forward. Our CET1 ratio, you see on this page that we presented both the 18.8% with the Basel III figure as well as the 18.5% Basel IV. For the ones that also recall, the Investor Day there, you see that the 18.5% Basel IV that we present now is very much in line with the figures that we presented before. On the other hand, you see that the Basel III number for CET1 came down from the end of 2023, 19.6% to 18.8% in June. Let me shortly explain the delta between those figures. Large or half of it is due to the Accuro acquisition and the other changes have to do with the expansion of our portfolio of other loans, which I just explained. And the finalization of a share buyback program that was completed in May. At our Investor Day in June, we presented our target for CET1 ratio, which is a ratio of 17.5% based on Basel IV fully loaded. The target allows for a temporary undershoot of 2.5% for M&A. At the end of June, as I just mentioned, our CET1 level at Basel IV fully loaded stands at approximately 18.5%, and we aim to return to shareholders the proportion of capital, which by year-end 2024 is in excess of 17.5%, of course, subject to regulatory approval. Then the view on our targets. These are all the targets that we presented during the Investor Day, and these are targets for 2027. However, you can see that we are making good steps in the first half of 2024. Maarten already alluded to the very strong growth in assets under management, which stands for the first half year and more than 9% already. Our cost/income ratio is within the target range at 69%, demonstrating that we can grow in a scalable way, and our CET1 ratio is above our target of 17.5%. Then our profitability improved significantly, resulting in a return on CET1 of 17%, which is a step towards the more than 18% target that we have. So all in all, we are pleased with the results of the first half of 2024. And with that, I give it to Maarten.

Thank you very much, Jeroen. Now summarizing, I think, a very strong set of results with continued growth momentum across all our client segments. And I think also showing our growing further strategy that we launched 2 months ago in action. Now let's open the floor to your questions, important part of this morning as well. Thank you for your patience listening to both Jeroen and my view on the first half results of Van Lanschot Kempen. So who's first, George.

[Operator Instructions] Our first person this morning or today will be Cor Kluis calling from ABN AMRO, ODDO BHF.

Congratulations with the good results. Couple of questions. Maybe first on commission income. High commission income in Private Banking was better than expected. Could you give some qualitative comments why that is. There was a little bit of a mix effect, of course, which makes it a little bit more difficult for us to analyze, but is there something one-off in it? Have you seen some extra security trading by clients? Or is it just the normal run rate, if you take commission income versus AUM per line? So that's on why the better commission income in private banking. Then the inflow, the net inflow was, of course, quite strong 10.5% annualized net inflow in the private bank. Last year, we saw the same that H1 was also extremely strong, but then we saw in H2 certainly on low -- almost no inflows in private banking. Could you give a little bit comments on why that was low last year and why that might be similar or different in the second half of this year for net inflow in Private Banking? And my last question is about Private Banking Netherlands. You had EUR 1.8 billion net inflow, which part of it was Evi? Which part was the non-Evi and Evi operations? That were my questions.

Thank you very much, Cor. Let me take the first one and then over to Jeroen. In terms of the commission income, of course, we are happy with the increase of the annualized commission income, and also by the increase in general of 23% compared to last year. To your question, the mix is basically as it was. So it's regular. The only change that we also explained in one of the slides presented by Jeroen, is that we now also fully account for Robeco adding to Evi, which lowers the margin for the Netherlands. So it's noted under the Private Clients Netherlands margin. That's the only change for the rest, it is a regular division between institutional, private and within prices between discretionary and advisory core. So the only change is the full Robeco lower margins which are part of Private Clients Netherlands.

Okay. So there was nothing exceptional positive for commission income. It was just -- this is a normal run rate?

Normal run rate, yes. Jeroen, to you for the inflow?

Yes. So yes, Cor, inflow was strong, both at Private Clients Netherlands as well as in Belgium. Last year, we saw the effect in the Netherlands of a shift from -- especially in the second half of the year from investments to savings. And that shift returned a bit in the first half of this year for a part. So -- and this has had to do last year with specific situations with our clients, but you also could -- could look at tax regulations, et cetera. So that -- at that time, our clients felt that it makes sense to shift from investments to savings. And we saw a bit of a return in the first half of this year. So in the Netherlands, there is no reason to expect that this will be fully different this year. So that effect might again be visible this year. But that being said, apart from this effect, we do not see any reason for momentum to change or for inflow figures to be very different going forward. Especially in Belgium, you see that -- such an effect is totally not visible at all. And you see that, that momentum remains and remains strong. Then going to your question on what about Evi, we do not discuss the specific figures for Evi.

But could it be a material part of the EUR 1.8 billion or...

Let me say that is not a material part of the EUR 1.8 billion. And that the material part of the EUR 1.8 billion is within the what you could call the private banking part of PC NL.

Our next question coming from Benoit Petrarque of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. Yes, a few questions on my side. Just to come back on the sustainability of the net new money actually in both the Netherlands and Belgium. So, yes, just to start with Belgium, maybe I was wondering if the very strong inflow is linked to some of the consolidation, we have seen not to mention it, the Robeco account, for example. I mean, is there a bit of exceptional maybe activity in the first part of the year linked to this acquisition? Or will you consider the current momentum sustainable into H2? And actually, some question in Netherlands, just to refer to the tax effect we have seen last year. So we might see that again a bit this year, but -- do you expect the momentum to continue into H2 in the Netherlands? That's the first question. The second question is on the NII guidance. So flat in H2 and '25 at the level we've seen in H1 '24. I was wondering here because market expect quite a drop of interest rates in '25. I think the market is pricing something like less than 2.5% by mid-'25. So are you still confident despite the ECB rate cut that you will be able to maintain this level of NII? And what type of assumptions are you kind of making here on pass-through rate and deposit pricing because it seems that there must be a lower deposit pricing assumed in your assumptions? That's the number two. Number three, just to the -- on the margins in PC Netherlands. So just wondering if the 55-bps is the new normal, I guess so, but I just wanted to get your view on that? Or are we going to get back to the 60-bps level? And then maybe just the final one will be on the annualized recurring fees. You have a slide on that. It was EUR 468 million based on market at the end of June. And just wondering if you've done the math at the end -- well, at the end of August now or mid of August to try to get a bit of a feeling where we stand as the market has been volatile?

Let me take the first one and the last one. And then Jeroen, the middle two. With regard to Belgium, and good morning, Benoit, thank you for joining. With regard to Belgium, actually, what we see is that we are clearly gaining market share in Belgium following last year's integration and early this year's launch of Mercier Van Lanschot. I think our story is exciting in Belgium. That's also we see. We see both new clients coming from competitors, but we also see that we get a bigger share of the wallet of existing clients. So where we, in the past, both at the Mercier side and the Van Lanschot side would get, let's say, 10% or 20% of the wealth. Now with our bigger franchise and our 300-year history behind us in combination with our market presence in Belgium, we see that we get a much larger part of the wealth to manage. Also, we see that with our approach in Belgium that bankers like to work with us. They like to be part of this story. And that's not only related to the consolidation you're mentioning, but it's basically, in general, compared to our competition. So making sure that our bankers and relationship managers are in a place where we have an exciting story, a growth story close to our clients, good solutions. In combination with the good performance of our discretionary funds in Belgium, that's actually how we win market share, and we see that momentum continuing. Now the -- to your last question, that's addressed as well. Of course, we saw a dip in the market, but then we also saw the market coming back. So for us, that's, I would say, and you can do the calculations yourself, of course. But in general, changes within the month don't affect our numbers. And so yes, you could calculate that we're still on a regular run rate, and we don't have reasons to see that change.

In addition to that, we're still, of course, seeing the momentum of inflows and market being equal, that means that the number will grow every month. Then as Maarten is saying, of course, we are impacted by market developments. But if you look at where we are now, it all seems to be quite stable in markets as well. Then going to your question on the momentum in the Netherlands and net new money and it's a bit in line with what Cor just asked. The momentum in the Netherlands is good. We do not see any reason why that would change. And as I explained before, you have that effect at the end of the year in the Netherlands that some of our clients decide to change from investments to savings, that might well happen again this year. And next to that, and the underlying momentum is good, and we do not expect a change in that. Then your question on the guidance of NII. How do we get to that? Yes, of course, we factor in the ECB rate cuts that are factored in by the market. But next day, you also look at other things. A large part of our savings money is in term deposits. With the term deposits, I explained it last time as well, we have term deposits with our client base and we price them at a certain level towards the market. These term deposits move together with market movements. And therefore, we believe that especially there, we -- that margins that we can keep our margins. We also looked at margin expectations on our loan book, on our treasury book and we -- so we take that all together and then come to the guidance that we said that we should be able to keep it at a stable level that's all taking into account. Then the margins of PC NL, the 55 bps is that the new normal. I don't really like to talk about the new normal, but I think the 55 bps is a level that you can calculate with given the current proposition of our portfolio. So I think it's a fair margin to use in your calculations.

Our next question is coming from Jason Kalamboussis of ING.

The first is a follow-up on the question that Benoit had. I mean, do you find that -- you say it's a fair margin. But do you see any potential in the next 12 months or 18 months to have some expansion either on the Robeco side or on the Netherlands? The second question is on the Netherlands, again, a bit of a follow-up, the EUR 1.8 billion inflows. If you look at it at the second half, basically, you say I feel comfortable that this could be the inflows in the second half. But at the end of the day, you keep in mind that in fourth quarter, we do have a bit of a seasonal thing with taxes. But at the end of the day, you also will not have that big shift that we saw due to the interest rate. So essentially, is -- above EUR 1.5 billion net inflows, something that we could see in the Netherlands. The other thing is that -- yes, for the cost, you had the CLA now, but is there any -- just remind me, is it for 1 year or 2 years? I mean general for the cost, should we expect a holistic effect in the second half? And the final question is on the Netherlands, you had your net inflows that were split 77% in advisory, 23% is discretionary. Is it something that is the usual kind of like split ballpark or that can vary significantly?

Yes. Let me start with answering the questions, and Maarten will jump in where he can add. I think your first and last question, I can combine those. The 55 basis points is a margin -- that's a good basis. And you say is there an expansion possible. Yes, one of the things is that relates to your last question, the 77% versus 23%, advisory versus discretionary. If the percentage discretionary increases that will, of course, help in the margin. And we do not set a target for that because it's, of course, up to our clients to decide which product they want to have. However, we are working on a lot of interesting and good, let's say, our product offering in discretionary. We're working on that. We also have a couple of good new initiatives in the price investment space. And those initiatives are certainly initiatives that could help this margin. So yes, we're working on a couple of interesting new products that could lead to some expansion in margin. Then the question, is inflow going to be above EUR 1.5 billion in the second half in PC NL? Of course, I'm not going to give you any forward-looking statements there. So I'm not commenting on that. And just repeating the fact that momentum is good and the effect of Q4 is expected again. That's it for now. Then on the cost side, yes, we were helped by not having to pay for the single resolution fund in the first half of the year. Important to say that this cost always incurs in the first half of the year. So now it is not there. So it's a plus -- if you compare the first half of this year towards last year. But in the second half, this cost element is not part of our P&L. So it will not occur in the second half and it did not occur last year. So there is not a specific effect to be expected in the second half.

If I may, have just a quick follow up. So just so that I'm clear, though, that the effect in the Netherlands in the fourth quarter, it will come again, but it's not going to be as pronounced as we saw it last year, correct?

Yes. We don't know, Jason, of course. But it could well be the case. Last year, it was pretty pronounced. This year might level more out across the year because last year, was the first year with the new tax legislation in the Netherlands. And this year is new. So people have more time basically to prepare. So it might be less pronounced than the next year. But of course, we will have to see.

Okay. Very helpful, thank you.

Yes, Jeroen explained, there will be some effect for sure.

Our next question now will be coming from Henk Slotboom of the IDEA!.

Congrats also from this side for the impressive results. I've got 2 questions. One is, it is still on the margin developments and the inflow of assets under management in the Netherlands? And Maarten, in the press release, you say that research conducted by the Nyenrode University and the Rotterdam School of Management revealed that nearly 30% of the family-owned companies in the Netherlands are in the process of transferring ownership. Now obviously, the current owners of these family-owned enterprises are a very important part of your core client group. Is it -- listening to what you say about momentum and that sort of things, is it -- the kind of -- yes, do not sell the skin before the bear has been shot, a type of conservatism because obviously, if this pool of, yes, additional incremental assets comes -- becomes available and knowing your position in this market, it should help you going forward to improve the inflow of assets under management and improve the mix as well. And the second question perhaps is, well, an old one from my side and that has to do with the manageability of integrations. Is it -- how is the acquisition or the M&A pipeline, let me put it in those phrases. Do you first emphasize the integration of Robeco and Accuro? Or do you have sufficient resources in place to handle more deals as well? That were my questions.

Thank you very much, and thank you for the congratulations with the result, Henk. We will split the work evenly between me and Jeroen on your question. So he will address your M&A question shortly. And your important remarks/question on the Dutch family-owned businesses and clients. And yes, you actually already stated the point often those are our long-term relationships, sometimes even across generations for our firm, and there are in 2 ways, extremely important for us. One is that, indeed, like you're saying, of course, the part of the wealth that is in the family-owned business is obviously not managed by us. So we also don't charge a fee earned money on that. And if that changes, and there is what we call a liquidity moment for a family then we are there to help. And we see that indeed increasing, and it explains like we also said in our press release, the entrepreneurial families, we see that the momentum being there with a lot of transactions, private equity, strategic buyers and families making choices not to bring the family-owned business to the next generation. So for us, that is really a source growth. And it's also, let's say, paying off on the long relationship we have with often with those families, but sometimes also really new families that come into a new situation and are looking for a wealth manager. By the way, that's both in the Netherlands and Belgium as well as in Switzerland, which is part of our growth story, and we expect that to continue in the future. So that is one part. The other part is that also -- and we work increasingly on that on our investment banking side, our corporate advisory, of course, is also there to support those families in terms of the transaction, which also leads to fee income with us. And sometimes -- that's also the way how via a transaction, we get to know the family and actually in the first half of the year, we had such a transaction where the family business was sold and next, so that was a corporate advisory fee. And next, we were able to manage the assets under management for that family. So that also deepens the relationship with the entrepreneur. So that's indeed how it works and gives us also confidence for the future and fits also with our own partly family-owned type of organization in terms of DNA. So Jeroen, for you, the M&A...

Yes. The integrations of M&A. And you're absolutely right that good integration is as important as a good acquisition as such. So we spend a lot of time and effort on that. Currently, it's Robeco and Accuro. First, Robeco, as I mentioned, I said we are well on track in that integration and even in some parts of it a bit before the planning. So it's really going well. So that we plan to be up and running by next year. And that looks good. Then Accuro, of course, we're there in the early days of the integration, but Accuro is a relatively small organization, meaning that the integration is, let's say, it's a doable integration. That being said, the answer is, yes, we have room for bolt-on M&A. And we also keep a close eye on the opportunities that are in the market. So that's...

Perhaps I -- a brief follow-up. The focus for the time being will remain on the Netherlands and Belgium? Or could -- we also expect something because you were defining it as your territory of operations a bit wider than the, call it, the Benelux countries alone? But I assume for the time being, it would be more rational to do acquisitions in the areas where -- in the geographies where you are active already?

Yes, you said it absolutely correctly. We focus on the geographies where we are already present.

[Operator Instructions] We do not appears to have any further questions at this time. Mr. Maarten Edixhoven, I'd like to turn the call back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you very much, George, for your support this morning. And thank you all for listening in and thank you for the questions, Benoit, Cor, Henk and Jason as well, which is a good interaction and always keeps us sharp as well. So appreciate that. And -- let's close that -- the call with the statement once again that we're happy with the very strong results over the first half of 2024 as well as the momentum we see both with our clients as well as the energy or vibe in the firm. So let's continue to focus on that. And thank you very much for today.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's conference. Thank you for your attendance. You may now disconnect. Have a good day, and goodbye.