Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (publ) (SEB_A) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everyone and welcome to SEB's financial results presentation for the full year of 2025 and Q4. I'll take this opportunity before we go into the material just to mention a few highlights of 2025 that we are particularly proud about. First, it is the very strong position in customer satisfaction surveys not at least within financial institutions and corporate and investment banking. Even though we're not at the very top of private banking, we still made a meaningful improvement. Secondly, the employee engagement hit a new all-time high compared to our peers. We are now solidly placed in the top decile of happy employees within the financial industry. Also very constructive is to see our market position within CIB when it comes to league tables that we record a top level, particularly now as we've seen an activity pick up within this area. A meaningful symbolic event is that we've also established and opened our Amsterdam office. And lastly, after more than 10 years in the making, We achieved an upgrade by S&P to a weak AA rating, and we now join a very small group of banks in the world that has this formidable position when it comes to credit quality. Now flicking to page two and the highlights for Q4. First, we saw a pickup in fees and commission across all divisions, offsetting the continuation of net interest income headwinds. As I mentioned, we got an upgrade by S&P. We are meeting our annual cost target and AirPlus is in line with plan. We have set the new cost target for 2026 to 33.4 billion plus minus 250 million, particularly to have some room for variable compensation and other unforeseen events. The board has proposed an ordinary dividend for 2025 of 8.50 per share, plus a special dividend of 2.50 per share. In addition to this, the board has pro...