Welcome everyone to Shin Kong Financial Holding Company’s 2024 fourth 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 a question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcast live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference has finished. Please visit www.skfh.com.tw under the Investor Relations section. I would now like to introduce Ms. Isabella Wang, IR Team from Shin Kong Financial Holding Company. Ms. Wang, please begin. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome again for joining Shin Kong Financial Holding 2024 Quarter Result Conference Call. Before we begin, please allow me to introduce the management team who are here with me this afternoon. Here in the meeting room are Stephen Chen, President of Shin Kong Financial Holding; Judy Lin, CFO of Shin Kong Financial Holding; Vicky Lu, Senior Vice President; Emily Lu, Vice President; Stephen Wang, Executive Vice President; Stacy Chen, Senior Vice President; Yen Hsin-tang, Vice President of Shin Kong Life; and Monica, Member of our IR Team. Now please turn to page 4. Shin Kong Financial Holding recorded consolidated after tax profits of NTD 20.5 billion for 2024. Consolidated shareholders' equity increased 15.4% year on year to NTD 283.9 billion, with value per share at the end of last year was NTD 15.76. Our subsidiaries maintained positive business momentum for the past year, which will be covered later on in my presentation. I would like to highlight that Shin Kong was selected as a constituent stock of the DJSI World Index for four years in a row, ranking first globally in the insurance industry group. The company also included again in the DJSI Emerging Markets Index, demonstrating wide recognition of its ESG efforts. Page 10, first-year premium for last year increased 65.1% year- on- year to NTD 64.2 billion, representing a market share of 7.6%. Shin Kong Life focused on foreign currency policies and high CSM products in 2024. The sales of foreign currency policies grew more than 100% to NTD 43.6 billion, accounting for 68% of the total, and securing Shin Kong Life's position as the industry leader. FYPE grew 13.2% year on year to NTD 22.7 billion, and FYPE over FYP was 35.3%. Page 11, Shin Kong Life has been selling protection products, health insurance, and riders, those high CSM products, to accumulate its CSM balance. CSM from new business for 2024 increased 23% year on year to NTD 38.5 billion, which outperformed the annual target of NTD 30 billion. The CSM contribution from protection type, health insurance, and riders was 90%, remaining at a high level. The CSM from new business is expected to grow significantly in 2025. Page 14 presents the overall view of Shin Kong Life's investment portfolio. Total investment was around NTD 3.5 trillion at the end of 2024. Investment return after hedging for last year increased 91 basis points year on year to 3.71%, mainly contributed by higher realized gains from equities compared to the year 2023. The breakdown of investment returns for different asset classes were real estate 3.7%, mortgage and consumer loans 2.5%, policy loans 5.3%, overseas investment 2.5%, domestic securities 8.4%, and cash 1.8%. Page 15 shows the portfolio of overseas fixed income. At the end of 2024, overseas fixed income position was around TWD 2.4 trillion. The funds were mainly deployed in investment-grade corporate bonds, and the portfolio remained similar to that of the previous quarter. Around 95% of the overseas fixed income position was deployed in US dollar-denominated bonds. As for the bond portfolio by region, North America and Europe were Shin Kong Life's investment focus, accounting for a combined share of 65.1%, similar to the level of the previous quarter. Page 17, at the end of 2024, the hedging ratio, which included CS and NDFs, and naturally hedged foreign currency policies, went down from 82.7% in the third quarter to 84.2%, reflecting the adoption of the new FX volatility reserve mechanism. Under the new rules, traditional hedging costs have gradually decreased, and all of these FX gains must be deposited to the reserve pool. The balance of FX volatility reserve reached NTD 45.1 billion at the end of last year, and the balance surpassed NTD 50 billion as of now. Page 22, let's move on to Shin Kong Bank. The bank sustained its growth momentum in 2024. Net interest income grew 8.2% year on year to NTD 14 billion on the back of net interest margin expansion and decent loan growth. Net fee income grew 29.3% year on year to NTD 4.6 billion, mostly boosted by the increase in wealth management fee income. The bank's pre-provision operating profits reached NTD 10.2 billion, showing an increase of 8.4%. Consolidated net income grew 6.3% year on year to NTD 7.2 billion. Page 23, the bank's loan balance grew 6% year on year to NTD 866 billion at the end of 2024, which was in line with our guidance. Consumer loan book rose 7.6% year on year to NTD 534 billion, representing around 62% of the loan book. Corporate loans increased 4.9% year on year to NTD 322 billion, mostly driven by SME loans, which grew 12% year on year. Looking into 2025, Shin Kong Bank will promote SME and overseas loans and expand consumer loans to increase interest rate and related fee income. Page 24, driven by higher loan-to-deposit ratio and improved fund utilization, full-year net interest margin increased 3 basis points year on year to 1.23%. Net interest rate decreased 4 basis points year on year to 1.57%, as the rising funding costs offset the benefits from higher average loan yields. Page 26, wealth management income increased 31.7% year on year to NTD 3.7 billion, thanks to surging sales of mutual funds and bank insurance products. Going forward, the bank will focus on selling long-term regular paid insurance products and mutual funds to optimize clients' asset allocation and bring double-digit growth in the wealth management income. Page 27, asset quality remained stable. NPL ratio and coverage ratio were 0.12% and over 1,000%, respectively. Both ratios surpassed the industry average. New NPL generated in the fourth quarter was NTD 904 million, mainly due to a single corporate loan. As the case is fully collateralized, we do not expect to see any significant losses. Page 30, in 2024, MasterLink Securities operating revenue surged 33% year on year to NTD 11.7 billion, and consolidated after tax profits gained 36.1% year on year to NTD 3.4 billion, its second-highest profit recorded to date. Driven by the turnover rates in stock prices and trading volume, brokerage income grew 34.7% year on year to NTD 6.99 billion. Furthermore, MasterLink Securities capitalized on market trends, boosting its proprietary trading income to NTD 4.2 billion, which was 31.7% higher year on year. That pretty much concludes the presentation for today. Now I would like to proceed with the Q&A session. Thank you, Ms. Wang. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 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 star two. Thank you. Now please press star key number one on your keypad if you would like to ask the question. Thank you. Please press star one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. Our first question will be coming from Jemmy Huang, JP Morgan. Go ahead, please. Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. Just two questions from me. I think on the bank side, the delinquent case, as you mentioned, if it's fully collateralized, does it mean you didn't set aside any provision against the delinquent case? Could you also provide a little bit more color on the delinquent case? Is that in the property-related sector or other sector? How should we look at the credit cost outlook for this year? Should we expect a flat-ish year on year, or is it likely it could be lower? For insurance, could we get some sensitivity on the ICS ratio for either equity market or the interest rate? For example, if equity market declined 10%, how should that reflect into the ICS ratio? Also, the interest rate, the yield curve for US dollar and Taiwan dollar. Thanks. The credit cost, I think this year largely will maintain the same credit cost of last year. Last year, we had a credit cost of about 19 basis points, and this year we expect maybe two or three basis point reduction. Okay. For the second question, the ICS sensitivity of interest rate. If the USD interest rate up 1% and the NTD interest rate up 0.3%, our ICS ratio about decreased about 10%. How about equity market sensitivity? Hi, Jemmy. Perhaps we can get back to you after the call because we do not have the details at hand. No problem. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, please press star key number one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please press star key number one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. We are now in question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star key number one on your keypad. Thank you. Okay. Is there no more questions on the table? I think maybe we can conclude today's conference call. Yes. Thank you, President Chen. 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 do not hesitate to contact the IR team of SKFH by phone or by email. You may now disconnect. Thank you and goodbye.
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