Welcome everyone to Shin Kong Financial Holding Company's 2021 second quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. Please follow the instructions given at that time if you would like to ask the question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the internet. Webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference is finished. Please visit www.skfh.com.tw under the investor relations section. Now I would like to introduce Mr. Stan Lee, the Senior Vice President of Shin Kong Financial Holding Company. Mr. Lee, please begin. Thank you, moderator. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome again for joining the Shin Kong Financial Holding 2021 second quarter analyst call. Before we start, I would like to introduce my colleagues who are with me today. Here in the meeting room are Han-Wei Lin, Chief Actuary of Shin Kong Life, En-Fon Liao, Head of the investment team of... w as sent out two hours ago. You may also download it from our website or participate through webcast. If you do not have the presentation, please let us know now. Your lines will be muted when we are presenting. If you are cut off, please dial back in or call Christine at 886-968-929-230 for assistance. Now, please turn to page four. SKFH recorded consolidated after-tax profits of TWD 13.62 billion for the first half of 2021, up 74% year-on-year. Earnings per share was TWD 1.04. Consolidated shareholders' equity increased 7.2% quarter-on-quarter to TWD 248.04 billion. Book value per share at the end of the first half was TWD 18.6. The subsidiaries also posted strong results for the first half, which will be covered later in the presentation. I would like to highlight that the company completed a capital raising of TWD 8.2 billion through the issuance of common shares last week. The fund will be injected into Shin Kong Life by the end of September to strengthen its capital position and enhance our RBC ratio by around 11%. Page 10. Not simply aiming for sales volume or market share, Shin Kong Life choose to promote foreign currency policies and value-focused products for stable interest spreads and asset liability matching and CSM. Despite the decline in total FYP, the sales of foreign currency policies for the first half amounted to TWD 16.87 billion, accounting for 77% of the total. FYPE reached TWD 8.53 billion, and FYPE over FYP increased from 36.7% in the first half of 2020 to 39% in the first half of 2021. Cost of liabilities decreased 4 basis points year-to-date to 3.79%. For full- year 2021, cost of liabilities is expected to fall by 10 basis points. Page 13 presents the overall view of Shin Kong Life's investment portfolio. Annualized investment return for the first half was 3.84%. As investment income grew 8.4% year-on-year, breakdown of investment returns for different asset classes were real estate 4.9%, mortgage and corporate loans 1.7%, policy loans 5.5%, overseas investment 3.8%, domestic securities 4.5%, and cash 0.2%. Page 14 shows the portfolio of overseas fixed incomes. At the end of the first half, overseas fixed incomes topped TWD 2 trillion. Corporate bonds accounted for the largest share, representing 47.7% of the total, followed by international bonds at 27.1%. Emerging market government bonds accounted for 24.7%. About 90% of the overseas fixed incomes position was deployed in U.S. dollar-denominated bonds. You may also find the chart of the overseas fixed income portfolio by region in the upper right corner. North America and Europe accounted for the majority of overseas fixed income, showing a combined share of 61.8%. Page 16. The pie chart on the left-hand side shows the mix of hedging instruments. At the end of the first half, the hedging ratio was 77.5%, including CS, NDF, and it naturally hedged foreign currency policies. CS and NDF accounted for 53% and 47%, respectively, of traditional hedges. Annualized hedging cost was 2.05%, and foreign currency volatility reserve was TWD 1 billion. In order to better contain hedging cost, Shin Kong Life will flexibly adjust hedging ratio through the proxy basket and continue to build out the foreign currency volatility reserve. The full-year target for hedge cost is 2%. However, the Taiwan dollar strengthened again in August, and the company will watch closely on hedging cost. I will now hand over to Isabella, who will take you through the results of Shin Kong Bank and MasterLink Securities. Thank you, Stan. Please turn to page 20. Shin Kong Bank delivered a strong quarter on many fronts. Net interest income grew 9.9% year-on-year, with improved deposit structure and stable loan growth. Net fee income increased 2.1% year-on-year to TWD 1.7 billion. Pre-provision operating profit reached TWD 4.11 billion, which was 3.7% higher from a year earlier. Consolidated net income grew 3.4% year-on-year to TWD 3.06 billion. Page 21. The bank's loan balance rose 5.5% year-to-date to around TWD 689 billion. Consumer lending grew 7.6% year-to-date and represented the largest segment of the loan portfolio as mortgage and other consumer loans increased 8.3% and 9.3% year-to-date respectively. The full-year target for loan growth remains 8%. Page 22. As the deposits continued to reprice downward and the ratio of demand deposits increased, net interest spread for the second quarter increased 2.69% in the second quarter- ... all business units, causing the loan-to-deposit ratio to fall from 69.7%. Due to the lower loan-to-deposit ratio and bond yields, net interest margin for the second quarter decreased 1 basis point quarter-on-quarter to 1.24%. Page 24. Wealth management income for the first half increased 5.4% year-on-year to TWD 1.29 billion, which was boosted by stronger sales momentum in investment products. Investment products will be sales-focused in the second half of the year. Meanwhile, Shin Kong Bank will also promote regular premium and foreign currency policies to increase wealth management income. Page 25. Asset quality was stable, with NPL ratio at 0.18% and coverage ratio at 732.24%. Both ratios were better than the industry average. Page 27. MasterLink Securities generated brokerage fee income of TWD 2.88 billion for the first half, which was 8 2.5% higher year-on-year. Proprietary trading income amounted to TWD 1.98 billion, driven by the disposal gain from equities, which was TWD 1.01 billion higher year-on-year. Consolidated net income increased more than 200% to TWD 2.22 billion. This is the end of our results presentation. Moderator, please start the Q&A session. Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask the question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad and you will enter the queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. Should you wish to cancel your question, you may press zero two. Thank you. It seems that there's no question raised for the presentation. Let me ask again. If you have any questions, please let us know now. Otherwise, we're going to close the meeting. It's okay. We have one question, the first question is coming from [Jennifer] of Nan Shan Life. Go ahead please, Jennifer. I have two questions. First- I have two questions. The first one is, NIM declined 1 basis point in the second quarter. How do you look at the trend for NIM in the second half year? The second one is on Shin Kong Life. Your internal guidance for CSM is to accumulate more than TWD 30 billion every year. Given the decline in FYP in the first half year, how do you look at CSM going forward? Thank you. Thank you, [Jennifer]. Let me answer your first question about NIM first, and I'll let our Chief Actuary answer about the CSMs and others. I think we also have a very good discussion in the Chinese session as well on this issue. In the presentation, I mentioned that there are two reasons why we have seen the NIS has been improved by 2 basis points, while I have seen NIM decrease by 1 basis point. The two reasons includes, first, we have seen a slight decline loan-to-deposit ratio. It was almost 70%, 69.7%. In the past quarter, it went down to 69%, so it has some marginal effect on that. Also because we have roughly about 31% that has to be utilized otherwise than loans. The bond yield is declining or is remaining low, also have negative impact on the NIM, which was the case in the past quarter. That two drivers makes the NIM slightly lower. Our expectation is that as the overall benchmark interest rate remains the same, not even hiked, we think the whole year number for NIM and NIS respectively, were both being quite similar to what we have seen in the first half of 2021. That was the guidance. It should be quite similar to the first half, not the second, but the first half of 2021. Han-Wei, can you answer [Jennifer]'s question? Although we have lower FYP in the first half, our CSM is about the same as what we had in the first half last year. Because we are focusing on the protection products, the foreign currency products, and the loan payment products that we're going to produce. Our goal remains and accumulate about TWD 30 billion CSM every year. I think that will remain, has not been changed. [Jennifer], did we answer your questions? Yes. Thank you for the information. Thank you, [Jennifer], for your question. Ladies and gentlemen, we're now in question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask your question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. There appears to be no further questions at this point. Mr. Lee, can we close the conference call now? Yes, please. Let's close the meeting now. Yes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your participation in Shin Kong Financial Holding Company's conference call. There will be a webcast replay within an hour. Please visit www.skfh.com.tw under the investor relations section. Should you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact the IR team of SKFH by phone or by email. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.
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