Arion banki hf. (ARION_SDB) Q3 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to Ariane Bank's presentation for the third quarter and nine months results. My name is Benedikt Gislason. I'm the CEO of Ariane. Today's agenda is as follows. I'll start by walking you through the key highlights from the quarter, our outlook going forward, and a deeper dive into some of the highlights. Then our chief economist will provide a brief update on the Icelandic economy before we go to a Q&A. So expect a slightly shorter presentation than in previous quarters. For the Q&A, I would like to remind the participants online that you can submit questions throughout the presentation via a message board located below the video feed. We will provide answers to your questions in the Q&A session at the end of the webcast. First of all, we are very happy with the solid results in the quarter and positive nine months of the year, which is a collective success of all our employees. that have worked tirelessly to deliver good services to our clients. The return on equity in the quarter was 16%, the same as for the nine months, which is well above our medium-term targets of 13%. We saw good momentum in core earnings, mostly due to higher net interest income, which grew 6.9% year over year, resulting in core operating income against risk exposure amount, of 7.4% and well above our financial target there. There has been a moderate insurance premium growth in a highly competitive market driven by increase in bank assurance ratios during the first nine months. Our focus here is on profitable growth and Werder had a strong first nine months with combined ratio of 88.2%, which is below the 95% medium term financial target. Development in expenses has been within expectations, with expenses increasing 2.9% in the quarter, well below the ...