Welcome everyone to Shin Kong Financial Holding Company's 2021 Q4 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, 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 Q4 analyst call. Before we start, I would like to introduce my colleagues who are with me today. Here in the meeting room are Hanwei Lin, Chief Actuary of Shin Kong Life; Jingfeng Liao, Head of the Investment Team of Shin Kong Life; Isabella and Christine, members of the IR team. The presentation we are about to go through was sent out two hours ago. You may also download it from our website or participate through this 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 886-9689-29230 for assistance. Now please turn to page one. Shin Kong Financial Holding Company recorded consolidated after-tax profit of TWD 22.73 billion for 2021, up 57.2% year-on-year. Earnings per share was TWD 1.67. Consolidated shareholders' equity increased 9% year-on-year to TWD 263.38 billion. Book value per share at the year-end was TWD 18.21. Facing challenges caused by COVID-19 pandemic, Shin Kong subsidiaries have managed to deliver strong performance, which will be covered later in the presentation. Page ten. Not simply aiming for sales volume or market share, Shin Kong Life has chosen to promote foreign currency policies and value-focused products for stable interest spread, better asset liability matching and CSM. Despite decline in FYP, the sales of foreign currency policies amounted to TWD 42.63 billion, accounting for 80.8% of the total. FYP of health insurance grew 9.7% year-on-year due to strong demand from clients. FYPE reached TWD 18.87 billion and FYPE over FYP was 35.7%, beating the industry average. As for cost of liabilities, it decreased 10 basis points year-on-year to 3.73%, which was in line with our yearly guidance. Going forward in 2022, foreign currency policies and value-focused product will be prioritized as key strategic products. FYP of foreign currency policies is expected to grow by 20% annually. On top of that, Shin Kong Life will increase sales of investment-linked products given clients' growing demand. Total FYP is targeted to exceed TWD 60 billion, and cost of liabilities is expected to fall by 5 basis points to 10 basis points. Page 13 presents the overall view of Shin Kong Life's investment portfolio. Investment return for 2021 was 3.77% as investment income grew 7.8% year-on-year. Breakdown of the investment returns for different asset classes were real estate, 3.7%; mortgage and corporate loans, 1.7%; policy loans, 5.4%; overseas investment, 3.9%; domestic securities, 4.3%; and cash, 0.2%. Page 14 shows a portfolio of overseas fixed income at the end of December. Overseas fixed income topped TWD 2.1 trillion. In the fourth quarter, the funds were mainly deployed in investment-grade corporate bonds. As a result, corporate bonds accounted for the largest share, presenting 48.6% of the total, followed by international bond at 26.6%. Government bonds accounted for 24.4%. About 90% of the overseas fixed income positions was deployed in US dollar-denominated bonds. You may also find a chart of 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 61.5%. Page sixteen. The pie chart on the left-hand side shows the mix of hedging instruments. At the end of fourth quarter, hedging ratio was 81.8%, including CS, NDS, and naturally hedged foreign currency policies. CS and NDS accounted for 51% and 49% respectively of traditional hedges. Lower cost of traditional hedging pushed down hedging cost to 1.53% for the past year. The balance of foreign currency volatility reserve was TWD 2.7 billion at the year-end, but it further increased to TWD 7.5 billion in February as the Taiwan dollar weakened against the U.S. dollar. I repeat, it further increased to TWD 7.5 billion at the end of February. Hedging cost for 2022 is targeted below 150 basis points. I will now hand over to Isabella, who will take you through the results of Shin Kong Bank and Master Link Securities. Hi. Thank you, Stan. Please turn to Page 21. Shin Kong Bank delivered a strong performance in 2021. Net interest income grew 12.1% year-on-year with continued loan growth. Net fee income increased 3.2% year-on-year to TWD 3.47 billion. Pre-provision operating profit reached TWD 8.92 billion, which was 13.8% higher year-on-year. Consolidated net income grew 10.3% year-on-year to TWD 6.55 billion. Page 22, the bank's loan balance grew 10.2% year-on-year to around TWD 720 billion at year-end, which was higher than the original target of 8%. Consumer lending grew 12.5% year on year, representing the largest segment of the loan portfolio as mortgage and other consumer loans increased 12.1% and 21.6% year on year respectively. Going forward in 2022, the bank will promote both corporate lending and consumer lending with an eye to risk control. The full year target for loan growth is 8%. Page 23. Net interest spread for 2021 was 1.65%, which was the same level as the previous year. Net interest margin for 2021 decreased 2 basis points year on year to 1.24% due to market competition and excessive liquidity. In 2022, the bank will increase its demand deposit ratio and loan-to-deposit ratio to maintain growth momentum in net interest income. Page 25. Wealth management income increased 7.2% year-on-year to TWD 2.59 billion, which was boosted by stronger sales momentum in investment products. In 2022, the bank will actively attract new funds and expand its client base to achieve an annual growth target of 87% for AUM. In the meantime, the bank will build a stronger relationship with valued clients and increase the number of high net worth clients, those with AUM exceeding TWD 10 million by double digits. Page 26. Asset quality was benign, with NPL ratio at 0.16% and coverage ratio at 800.93%. Both ratios were better than the industry average. Page 29. Master Link Securities generated brokerage fee income of TWD 5.64 billion for 2021, which was 57.4% higher year-on-year. Proprietary trading income amounted to TWD 3.26 billion, driven by the disposal gain from equity, which was TWD 740 million higher year-over-year. Consolidating net income increased more than 100% year-over-year to TWD 3.92 billion. This is the end of our result 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 a 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. Now, please press zero one to ask the question. Thank you. As a reminder, please press zero one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. Now our first question is coming from Nancy Chung of Cathay Securities. Go ahead, please. Hi. I have two questions. The first one is, Shin Kong's recent dividend payout ratio has been below 30%. Any future plans to raise it to peer levels? The second question is, what's the latest asset and liability duration? Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. Yeah, for the first question, yes, I know that our payout ratio is somehow lower than our peers. However, you also know that we are still under the need for further capital raisings. Again, as I previously mentioned, there will be no kitchen sinking actions. However, there is needs for new capitals. At that time, if we raise capital and pay out significant amounts of dividends to the investors, that in this rationale, it just it's not very legit. As far as we don't have a very clear guidance whether we are going to increase the payout ratio or not, as I previously guided the market, our target is trying to pay out a share at a reasonable stable level. That's my short answer. Your second question, I would like to have Arch actually answer it. Yes. Duration of the liability is about 12 years. Asset duration, mostly bonds are, about 12.5 years. Nancy, have we answered both your question? Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next we have Jemmy Huang of JP Morgan for questions. Go ahead please, Jemmy. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Sorry I joined later, so if I already asked the question being asked, apologize. I think two questions from me. First one, in terms of the loan growth, can you give us a little bit breakdown in terms of the key drivers this year? Because last year, it was purely driven by the consumer loans, and the mortgage is over 10%. Given the tightening measures by the governments, by the regulators, should we expect the loan growth driver to be somewhat different? Then on the corporate side, whether this year will still be largely driven by domestic loans or we should see better growth on the foreign currency side. The second question is on the credit cost. I don't recall you have any big default cases last year. Presumably the credit cost last year was mainly driven by the general provision for the loan growth. If we look into this year, if you are guiding for lower loan growth and then potentially lower mortgage growth, then should we expect credit costs to further decline year on year? Even though your guidance in the training session doesn't sound like that. Thanks. Thank you, Jimmy. For the first question, the loan growth is expected to grow at 7%-8% in various loan book. I would say the difference between 2022 and 2021 will be more balanced growth drivers. If we break the two book by corporate or by personal, I would say both will grow at the same pace at around 7%-8%. The overall growth target is also 8%. However, you are definitely right. That was a great observation and questions that I believe in the segments for foreign growth somewhat will be higher than what we observed in 2021. 2021 is only 5%. I believe the foreign side will support the overall corporate loan book as a target at 7%-8%, right? I believe the foreign book would grow maybe at a pace of double-digit, maybe. For credit cost to be very friendly, we don't give very clear guidance for that because after all, it is very sensitive, directly linked to the yearly earnings. My rough guidance is that given that this year is 16 basis points, I don't expect it to be significantly higher than current level. I think we may have enough confidence to keep it under 20 basis points. That is my rough guidance. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. We are now in question and answer session. Please press zero one if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. Moderator, if there's no further questions, let's close the meeting now. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Lee. 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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