Operator
Operator
Good morning. This is Anita Ogulin welcoming you to ING's first quarter 2020 conference call. Before handing this conference call over to Ralph Hamers, Chief Executive Officer of ING Group, let me first say that today's comments may include forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding future developments in our business, expectations for our future financial performance and any statement not involving an historical fact. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that may cause actual results to differ from those in any forward-looking statements is contained in our public filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and our earnings press release as posted on our website today. Furthermore, nothing in today's comments constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Good morning, Ralph. Over to you. Ralph Hamers;Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first quarter 2020 results call. And for many of you, I thank you specifically because I do know that for many of you it's actually a public holiday today. So thanks for joining us. I truly hope you're all in good shape, healthy in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As always, I'll take you through today's presentation, which is a bit longer than usual because we are trying to give you as much information as possible. And for the Q&A session, as usual, our CFO, Tanate Phutrakul, and our CRO, Steven van Rijswijk, are here with me as well. So let's go through the presentation here. On the key points, the first quarter is not what I would call a standard quarter. For me personally, it's not, as it is the last quarter I'll be presenting as the CEO of ING, but even more so given the extraordinary times that we're living in, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is having a profound impact on the entire world. It's our priority to support our customers, and it's our priority to support our employees and societies, as a whole, during this time and to help them cope with the impact of the pandemic, and at the same time to keep our operations going. And I'm proud to see that our digital and agile business model is actually supporting this, while at the same time maintaining strong operational results, as you can see. So our support for customers was visible in core lending growth for the quarter, where growth in the wholesale banking was mainly driven by providing liquidity in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. And at the same time, we also saw continued growth in our retail book. Now combined with a very strong fee growth, this largely countered the margin pressure that we have on customer deposits and negative impacts from mark-to-market valuation adjustments driven by the market dislocation as we observed at the end of March. And then on the risk costs, we -- they are a clear focal point for this quarter. While stage 3 provisioning was more or less stable, stage 2 provisionings are elevated, reflecting a collective stage 2 provisioning, mainly driven by the worsened economic -- macroeconomic indicators and, to a lesser extent, also as to reflecting a drop in the oil price. All of this resulted in risk costs coming in above our through-the-cycle average, and we have time to take you through some of that there. The CET1 ratio was also impacted by market volatility, overall coming in at 14%, so around 60 basis points lower than last quarter. Around 40% -- 40 basis points of this is caused by foreign exchange impact and valuation adjustments on capital, some of which has reversed already as we speak. Also market risk-weighted assets were inflated because of the volatility in March. At the same time, we also absorbed EUR 9.9 billion or 43 basis points of risk-weighted assets as an impact related to the new Definition of Default. Going forward, we can clearly expect further impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. There are, however, many unknowns, which play a role in determining how large this impact will be, and we're not going to speculate on this. There's many things we simply don't know. What we can say though is that we're very well positioned to face these headwinds. The change in customer behavior towards digital channels is really a wind in our back in order to continue a good operational result. But -- and we have a good capital position, a strong funding base and low Stage 3 ratio going into this. Those are the key points. Now, over to Slide 2 (sic) [ Slide 3 ]. As I said, our priority is to provide support to our employees, customers and society. We made a very smooth transition to around 80% of our employees now working from home, helping them to adapt to the new situation and at the same time, stay available for our customers. We kept the branch network opened. Clearly, we had to tweak things here and there in order to ensure safety for our employees and our clients as well. Talking about clients, we help both our private and smaller business customers with payment holidays. And to support safe payment behavior, we've also increased limits for contactless payments, also playing to our strategy, by the way. We're in close contact with our business customers to see how they are impacted and how we can support them through this. For smaller business customers, we provide credit facilities under local government guarantee schemes. For larger corporates, we look for tailored solutions, as you can expect, providing them with liquidity when needed. We have long-term longstanding relationships with many of them. We've worked with them through previous cycles, and therefore, we will continue to support them as well in this cycle. All this has, today, resulted in about 100,000 payment holidays, EUR 120 million in loans extended to SMEs and mid-corporate customers under government guarantee systems schemes, and EUR 5.6 billion liquidity provided to larger customers, as we have seen, part of these drawdowns already reversing. Furthermore, we can't be detached from the societies in which we're active, and these societies have been under major pressure, given the COVID crisis. So we've been running collections in order to make donations to charities matching employee donations; we're working with UNICEF, with the Red Cross; we have donated laptops to enable homeschooling, many of those things that we can help to support the societies as well. Now on the next slide, what you will see is that our digital and agile abilities are great assets under these circumstances. We see actually a revolutionary change in the behavior of our clients rather than an evolutionary one. So we're very well positioned, given our business model in order to support these clients because they all go for digital banking. It's a safe choice, and we have experienced a smooth adoption to working from home in order to support this. The systems and channels have been available all the time. So our IT investments over the last couple of years are really paying off in order to support a business that is increasingly digital. The share of mobile interactions further increased to 86%, with the number of interactions, again, increasing if you look at this on an annual basis. So EUR 1.3 billion of interactions just for the quarter. And as the last graph shows as well, on an annualized basis, we are more successful in our mobile -- in using our mobile channel offering new products and actually conclude sales, and that has increased to 84 sales per 1,000 customers and continues to increase. Our operations also continued uninterrupted, whereas the volumes that went through were very high. For example, in March and April alone, we opened 170,000 investment accounts globally, of which 100,000 in Germany. Up until now, we also processed and approved over 100,000 payment holidays and credit facilities under government guarantee schemes. So happy to be digital and being able to support all these customer demands, but also the new account openings that we see. The next slide is one that we wanted to show you that although we are in uncertain times, we're in a very good starting position, having built a very resilient bank by focusing on primary customers, increasing about 5 million over the last couple of years since we launched the Think Forward strategy. Today, we have over 13 million of them, representing 1/3 of our total customer base. That has resulted not only in higher income but also in more diversified income. In retail, we saw the highest growth in fees, reflecting our focus on increasing fee income. The share of fee income and total retail income has increased from 11% in 2014 to more than 16% in 2019. So digital primary banking does work. Our total income also diversified geographically. And with the main growth realizing other challengers and growth markets, which is in line with our strategy, as you know, their contribution to income increased from 30% in 2014 to 40% today with income coming from non-Eurozone countries increasing from 13% to 17%. And specifically, the non-Eurozone countries, as you know, they still have healthy yield curves, so that helps us also weather some of the pressure there. The increased share of both fee income and income from non-Eurozone countries is also helping us to better cope with the pressure of the lower interest environment, as mentioned. The next slide shows that with all this growth coming through and with the number of clients rapidly increasing, over this period, we've actually been able to control our cost. The regulatory costs have clearly had an impact. But if you look at the real underlying operational cost, they have only increased by 1.7%. And so basically, most of the salary increases, most of the investments in ATF most of the KYC costs have been absorbed by being far more efficient and getting more volume through the system, and with that more -- generate more income. If you now look at the cost/income ratio over the time, we were already more efficient at the beginning of Think Forward than our peers in 2014. And although we have been coping with a low rate environment and increasing KYC-related expenses, and that certainly has had an impact on our cost/income ratio. But as you know, we continue to absorb those over time. We actually see that our advance to Eurozone peers in terms of cost/income ratio over the time has actually increased from 5.3% to 7.9%. Then to the way we do credit risk management. You see that also through the cycle, and that's why we go back a little bit longer to 2008, that we have a strong track record in credit risk management. Both our risk costs over average customer lending and our Stage 3 ratios are low compared to our Eurozone peers and also compared to equally or higher-rated peers. And that reflects the strong risk management framework that we have in place. We operate with a strict risk appetite, including exposure caps, to manage concentration risk, with extensive sector knowledge on the wholesale banking side and knowing how to work with our clients through the cycle. Our loan book with 42% in mortgages at 60% LTV is for more than 99% senior secured -- senior and secured, to a large extent, with a focus on structures and collateral. All our efforts result in a good quality loan book with a low Stage 3 ratio, which puts us in a very good position to deal with the challenges of the current cycle. Turning to capital, that's been quite a journey over the last couple of years. Since 2015, we are looking at that, given the fact that at that moment, we deconsolidated the insurance activities. So over that period, the CET1 ratio has increased to well above the ambition despite paying over 50% of our net profit to our shareholders and absorbing substantial risk-weighted assets impact from our model, methodology and policy changes. We've also maintained our strong funding structure, as you can see, with the majority coming from a sticky deposit base. And while in the low rate environment, I've had to explain often why this is the strength. In the present time with volatile and even dislocated financial markets, the stable source of funding again proves its value. It's been always our strength and it will continue to be our strength going forward as well. And this also sets the time -- sets the frame going into the cycle. A strong capital position, a solid and diversified senior secured asset book, a solid funding structure and a proven digital operating model. Now turning to the first quarter results. If you look at the first quarter results, we saw a strong increase in fee income combined with higher treasury income and disciplined lending margins on one side. On the other side, we saw, clearly, at the end of March, market volatility, resulting in higher negative value adjustments. So that is basically what makes the income as we see it. But if you compare it year-on-year, in 2019, the first quarter '19 actually had a one-off gain of EUR 119 million, which you probably still remember, which was related to the sale of our stake in Kotak Mahindra. And so if you take the literal year-on-year comparison, it resulted in a EUR 65 million lower income year-on-year. But if you correct it for the EUR 119 million, we actually see a bit of an increase in income there. Sequentially, income has also improved by EUR 72 million, and that reflects higher treasury-related income and higher fees. While NII was lower, with the fourth quarter '19 NII including some one-offs, reflecting higher prepayments of some fixed loan rates. As you may remember, in the wholesale bank, there were a couple of large loans repaid at that moment. Pre-provision results, excluding volatile items and regulatory costs, show an increase in operating results. And that's by more than 5% year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. So the pre-provision result, excluding these volatile items and regulatory costs, shows a more than 5% improvement year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. It's a reflection of the higher income, excluding the volatile items, and it's obviously also a reflection of a quarter with lower cost. Turning to Slide 11. If you look at the NII development, excluding financial markets, it was 0.2% higher year-on-year, slightly up despite continuing margin pressure on deposits; versus the previous quarter, it was 2.3% lower. While NII and mortgages improved, margin pressure on customer deposits actually continued. The fourth quarter also included some one-offs in Wholesale Banking, as I just referred to, the prepayments, as you remember. Overall, we continue to see the effect of pricing discipline coming through. Volume growth continuing. And as mentioned in previous quarters, we do benefit also in this from our activities in non-Eurozone countries as well as the negative rates that we have started to charge on deposits. Now mainly versus the first quarter last year, we benefited from the deposit tiering, which came into effect in the fourth quarter, which largely cancels out the negative rates on our deposits held at the ECB. Our net interest margin decreased by 6 basis points, as you can see. It's actually been remarkably stable on a four-quarter rolling average at 154. But quarter-on-quarter, it decreased 6 basis points, and that's explained by an increase of the average balance sheet, it's around 2 basis points; some market volatility -- some lower result in financial markets by 1 basis points; and then a 3 basis points impact from the combination of lower margins on savings and on non-mortgage lending. The increased balance sheet was -- for the quarter was driven by Wholesale Banking in order to provide liquidity facilities, on one side, but also institutional clients trusting ING with a considerable increase in deposits. Although we do discuss the NIM all the time with you, and it is certainly a factor that we look at how to manage it, we do think it is better to look at NII development and as part of the P&L. And how did the lending develop? And that's in Slide 12. First quarter, we saw EUR 12.3 billion of net core lending increase. Main growth was visible in Wholesale Banking, as you can see, that increased by EUR 9.4 billion, and that has basically 2 components: it has EUR 11.2 billion in extra financing largely because of liquidity facilities. To date, we've already seen part of these drawings reversing; and we saw a decrease on the trade finance, on the Trade & Commodity Finance, and that is basically caused by the lower oil price and therefore, the value of the contracts and the value, therefore, of the underlying activity is lower, whereas the volume is the same. Retail core lending grew by EUR 2.9 billion, as you can see. The increase in Belgium was fully due to the increase in business lending by one large client. Retail challengers and growth markets continue to grow as well, largely driven by mortgages in those fields. And the net deposits also increased by EUR 9.2 billion for the quarter. And that was mainly driven by a EUR 6 billion increase in Wholesale Banking. That's partly reflecting some of the funds drawn under revolving credit facilities, but also partly explained by institutions trusting us with their money, and it's kind of a show of confidence in these times. Retail banking deposits were EUR 3.2 billion higher. Now over to fee growth. And we had a particularly strong quarter in fees this quarter. Fee income increased by 16% year-on-year by EUR 108 million. And EUR 72 million of the EUR 108 million was actually in retail banking, 17% up year-on-year, and that was mainly driven by Germany, with higher fees on investment products as the number of trades more than doubled in a volatile market. But also in Belgium, we saw fees and investment products increase, following a very successful marketing campaign. We also saw increased daily banking packages fees increased there. In the Wholesale Bank, we saw the fees increased by 13.4%, and that reflects increased syndicated deals in the first 2 months of the year and higher fees in financial markets. Now compared to the last -- to the previous quarter, so sequentially, fees were up 6.5%, and that's fully due to retail banking. In Wholesale Banking, fees were slightly lower, and that's because of a lower activity in Corporate Finance in the first quarter versus last quarter and the low oil price affected the fee income in Trade & Commodity Finance, I already referred to that on the lending side. Over to financial markets. The results of financial markets were impacted this quarter by the market volatility at the end of the quarter. The first 2 quarters -- the first 2 months of the quarter were really good. On the client side, you actually see that the business was holding up quite well. The -- it was lower by EUR 8 million, but it was -- we also had some losses in credit trading, given the abrupt downward movement in the market at the end of the quarter because of the crisis. If you correct for that, the client income actually was substantially higher so that's a good sign of underlying business and a recovery of this activity. Sequentially, client income rose by EUR 25 million, and that's benefiting from volatile markets. Now the negative value adjustments impacted FM income by EUR 92 million, as you can see. That was partly caused by the dislocation of the bonds versus CDS prices at the end of March. It's clearly visible in the lower table on the slide there as well, you see the drop there. Mark-to-market valuation on our derivatives portfolio also had a negative impact while increasing bid-offer spreads required for higher fair value adjustments as well. Now part of these negative value adjustments were offset by positive movements, and that's mainly because of our own hedges that we have in place. And as the market volatility that we saw at the end of the first quarter has somewhat subsided already, some of these negative impacts have, in the meantime, reversed, as you can expect with the normalization of the market. Over to cost, expenses excluding KYC, and this is kind of additional information for you this quarter because you asked for it to have a little bit more transparency around the KYC costs. So now basically, we have dissected it here for you. So if you exclude KYC costs and regulatory costs, the costs were actually down EUR 29 million year-on-year, and that's a 1.3% decrease of costs year-on-year. So you see that the cost control is actually working on the operational side. Also some positive one-offs, but they countered some of the CLA salary increases. If you look at the quarter-on-quarter development, expenses, excluding the KYC and regulatory costs, were lower as well by EUR 52 million, and that's a 2.3% decrease. Then you also see that this quarter has a lower KYC cost than the fourth quarter. But if you really look through, we do expect and we already guided that we would expect KYC costs to plateau around these levels, so we do expect them to come out around EUR 600 million for the year. But as you can expect that in these times, we are very focused on cost going forward and very precise as to what we want to do, where we want to invest. So we will continue our cost discipline going forward, and it has resulted in the first quarter already in lower expenses in almost all segments. So from that perspective, also a good quarter. Then the regulatory cost, as you can see, are seasonally higher, and in the first quarter were EUR 11 million higher than the same quarter last year, and that is mainly driven by a higher SRF contribution and higher bank taxes in Belgium and Poland. Over to risk cost. We're basically disclosing quite a lot of additional information today to all of you to analyze. And I'm sure it's a lot to cope with for the day, but we'll have a lot to work with going forward. So turning to Slide 16, here, you see that the risk costs came out at EUR 661 million, and that's 42 basis points over of average customer lending. That's above the through-the-cycle average of around 25 basis points and up from EUR 428 million in the previous quarter. Now if you look at the increase, it is mainly driven by higher collective Stage 2 provisions, and that reflects the worsened macroeconomic indicators as well as the historically low oil prices. In the next slide, you will see some more detail as to how the Stage 2 provision has been per segment. So the -- if you look at how the Stage 3 ratio then has developed, I'm still on Slide 16, not to confuse you, you see that in Wholesale Banking, the Stage 2 ratio has increased to 5.9%. In Retail Netherlands, higher risk costs were driven by Stage 2 provisions as well. Retail Belgium, we also had Stage 3 risk cost increasing, and that's mainly due to some larger additions to individual files in mid-corporates. Retail Germany, risk cost on consumer lending were slightly higher as well. The increase in other challengers and growth was driven by the allocated Stage 2 provisions, while Stage 3 risk costs were stable and mainly visible in countries like Poland, a bit in Romania, Italy and Australia. If you look at this picture and you take a different perspective, the risk costs were up by EUR 119 million in Wholesale Banking, again fully reflecting allocated Stage 2 provisions. The Stage 3 risk cost in Wholesale Banking stayed almost the same level, they remain elevated and they reflect some larger individual clients and split between additions to existing files and also some new files. The Stage 3 ratio increased from 1.4% to 1.6%, and that's driven by the implementation of the new definition of default in retail banking. For the Wholesale Bank, the Stage 3 ratio remained flat. Then turning to Slide 17. Here, you see basically how the Stage 2 provisioning is affecting the retail banking risk costs versus the wholesale banking risk cost. You see that the majority of the collective 2 provisions are actually allocated to wholesale banking, with about EUR 114 million reflecting the worsened macroeconomic indicators due to COVID-19 pandemic, and another EUR 41 million was allocated to wholesale banking reflecting the potential impact of low oil prices on our reserve base lending book. So EUR 114 million more COVID-related and EUR 41 million more oil and gas price-related and related to the reserve-based lending book in the U.S. EUR 92 million of the collective Stage 2 provisions was allocated to retail banking; EUR 25 million in the Netherlands, EUR 20 million in Belgium and EUR 1 million in Germany and EUR 46 million divided over the different markets in other challengers and growth. Now overall, for 2020, we can expect risk costs to come in above through-the-cycle average as a result of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. I don't think that will be a surprise to you. But that impact and how it really pans out, depends on several factors, as to how long the lockdown measures will last, how effective government support schemes will work, how quickly the economy can start to recover. And we do recognize that since closing the books, macroeconomic indicators have worsened. Turning over to the book and why we feel comfortable with the risk management framework. This slide provides you a brief over overview of that book, highlights some of the segments. Let me focus on a couple of sectors here. So residential mortgages is EUR 298 billion at 60% average LTV, low Stage 3 ratio. If you look at the consumer lending there, limited book as well; business lending, limited book as well. And we have basically given you some more color on the more sectors at risk as agriculture and retail and hospitality in that as well. And the percentage of total book, very manageable. Then turning over to the Wholesale Bank. Oil and gas clearly received a lot of attention in the past weeks. I would like to stress again that it was only EUR 4.6 billion of this book directly exposed to oil price risk, which is 0.6% of our total loan book. And that covers reserve-based lending and the offshore businesses. As mentioned, our main focus here is on the EUR 1.4 billion U.S. book in reserve-based lending. If you look at the hospitality sector, also the exposure there is limited to 0.6% of our book. We've always been very restrictive on this sector, very selective and you also see that we have a low Stage 3 ratio in that sector. Same goes for aviation, a very small exposure to aviation, only 0.4% of our total loan book. Also there, we have been really, really selective, and our exposure in Stage 3 is basically nonexistent in that one. As you know, we were ahead of the curve about capping certain businesses, like the leverage finance book. We're closely monitoring development of this portfolio. It's well diversified, and we follow a strict risk policy, as you know only taking senior debt with maximum leverage -- with limited leverage and a maximum EUR 25 million hold and no single underwrites. And then turning to commercial real estate, that's where we are, so a larger player, with a capped exposure also since the third or fourth quarter of 2018 in order to avoid concentration risk. We're very experienced in this from previous cycle as well. We have a very strict risk policy. Retail-related assets are limited to 18% of that book, and generally financing of hotels is not allowed in that book. So clearly, the current circumstances will have an impact on our customers. We'll have to closely monitor that and also as to how our book develops. But the risk framework that we have in place is strict and has been strict, and so we remain confident on the asset quality. The next slide shows you the CET1 development. We're at a healthy 14% with clear impact from market volatility, and I'll take you through. So on the capital, we had a EUR 1.4 billion negative impact from the revaluation reserve as well as foreign exchange movements and Bank of Beijing. So combined, this lowered the CET1 ratio by around 40 basis points. To date, we have already seen some of this negative impact reverse. Then, we added EUR 0.7 billion of profit. Basically, first quarter profit was added to the capital. In risk-weighted assets, we absorbed EUR 9.9 billion impact from the implementation of the new definition of default. We also saw some positive impact on this side with the release of EUR 6.6 billion of the expected supervisory risk-weighted assets impact taken in the fourth quarter 2019. That was mostly ready to TRIM. And that release follows the announced delay in TRIM as announced by the ECB. Though we have remained part of the impact in risk-weighted assets, reflecting the model changes as we would need to implement them regardless of the TRIM implementation anyway. Market risk-weighted assets were also inflated clearly because of the volatility in the markets, and they were at -- they increased by EUR 4.5 billion. Overall, with the announced performance of Basel IV, TRIM and also the floor on Dutch mortgages, further risk-weighted assets impact coming from the banking regulations and model reviews will be delayed. With the new definition of default and part of the TRIM now included, we feel comfortable with our current capital position and remain -- and the remaining future expected risk-weighted assets impact of all of that. Although delayed, they may still come, and we do feel that we've already taken quite some, so we are very comfortable there. You know that the COVID-19 pandemic also resulted in several supervisory measures, which have lowered our SREP requirement. You can see that in this slide. It has decreased to 10.5%. So our buffer at MDA level now stands at 3.5% versus where we are right now. As you can see on Slide 20 then, the CET1 ratio, leverage ratio remained ahead of our ambitions. For return on equity, it's below our ambition, that's certainly true. But I believe we continue to produce an attractive total return despite higher capital requirements, a low interest rate environment and increasing regulatory cost. The current crisis, the current pandemic, could clearly have impact on the metric. However, we don't want to speculate on this, and the ambition that we have on this remains unchanged. As mentioned also in the previous quarter, our cost/income ratio was impacted by factors such as the low rate environment, regulatory cost. And I want to reiterate that the cost/income ratio is not how we run our business, but it remains a very important input for our return on equity. And we have an ambition to reach around 50% to 52% as we digitize further. As for our dividends, nothing new for you. You know that following the ECB recommendations, we have suspended any dividend payment until the first of October, then we'll see what the situation is. The EUR 1.7 billion that we reserved last year for the final dividend payment over 2019 is kept outside of regulatory capital. So to summarize, the first quarter has not been a standard quarter, given the pandemic leaving a mark on our customers, our employees and our society. It's our first priority to support our customers, our employees and our society. We also saw the impact of the pandemic on the market and market volatility on our financials. Loan growth, combined with very strong fee growth and cost control largely countered the margin pressure on customer deposits and negative impact from mark-to-market value adjustments. Risk costs were impacted by collective Stage 2 provisions, reflecting the worsened economic indicators and, to a lesser extent, the drop in oil prices, all resulting in risk costs coming in above our through-the-cycle average. The CET1 ratio was also impacted by market volatility coming in at 14%. However, just to remind you, we had 43 basis points risk-weighted impact already related to new definition of default. Clearly, the pandemic, as it continues, will give some -- will continue to generate uncertainty and stress to some of our clients. We recognize that since closing the books on the quarter, the economic indicators have worsened. There's many unknowns on this one. And as I said before, then the only thing you can look at is how strongly you feel about your capital position, and we're very confident around our capital position. We have a very solid and diversified asset book. We have a very strong funding position and we have a proven digital operating model that will give us some tailwind to help us also here. With that, and I know it has been a little bit more elaborate than normal, but I do think that there is reasons to give you more information. I'll give the floor to you to raise some questions for us to answer. Thank you.