Summary
Management framed recovery as U-shaped but contingent on SMB conditions and credit-enhancement negotiations, prioritizing asset quality and margin sustainability over near-term growth.
- 46,000 sales staff remained at year-end after Q4 restructuring, with retained employees averaging over twice departing workers’ productivity.
- 15 of 81 funding partners agreed to move to the guarantee subsidiary’s full credit-enhancement model.
- Management said notable recovery timing remains too early to quantify, while targeting a medium-term return to historical margins.
Guidance
- Q1 2023 profitability: return expected, at a subdued level
- 19.7%2023 unsecured-loan pricing: about 19.7%, expected to remain largely stable
- 3%Pre-tax margin: 3% to 4% targeted over the medium term, more likely a 2024 event
- Loan growth: quality-over-volume stance through Q1 and into Q2; broader growth may improve in the second half if indicators improve
What analysts pressed on
- 01Recovery timing and sequence: new loan expansion and credit-loss improvement should arrive around similar times, with credit performance lagging.
- 02Borrower repayment: failures reflected damaged ability to repay, not unwillingness; SMB recovery will take more time.
- 03Self-guarantee mix: management wants to move from 30% to about 50% or higher, but gave no timeline.
- 04Loan-broker regulation: management said its licensed guarantee model differs from brokers and anticipated no major impact, while monitoring reviews through September.
- 05Pricing and margins: pricing should stay near 19.7%; restoring 3% to 4% pre-tax margins depends on better customer mix and less credit insurance.
- 06Loan growth and costs: broader growth depends on improved indicators; some cost cuts continue into Q1 and Q2, but funding costs have limited near-term scope to improve.
Notable disclosures
- 15 of 81 funding partners had agreed to the guarantee subsidiary providing full credit enhancement, with discussions underway with most others.
- 30%Self-guarantee share could rise from 30% to about 50% or higher, though management supplied no schedule.
- The retained sales force averaged more than twice the productivity of Q4 departures.
- 3%The historical 3% to 4% pre-tax margin target was reaffirmed, but described as more likely a 2024 outcome for the portfolio.
Risks raised
- Q4 C-to-M3 reached 1.0%, up 21 basis points quarter over quarter, and credit impairment losses rose to $6.3 billion.
- Elevated credit-insurance premiums were pressuring new-business margins, with no clear negotiation progress so far.
- A notable SMB recovery remains uncertain and may take longer because borrowers’ repayment capacity was damaged.
- Broader loan growth depends on improvement in credit indicators, while management maintained a quality-over-volume stance through Q1 and Q2.
- Funding costs were not expected to offer substantial near-term optimization.
Tone: Negative -0.45
Management emphasized deteriorating credit metrics and uncertain recovery timing, offset by cost actions, capital capacity, and a path to restore margins.
Who spoke
Company
- Xinyan LiuHead of Board Office and Capital Markets
- YongSuk ChoChairman and CEO
- GregCo-CEO
- Unidentified Management
Analysts
- Richard XuAnalyst, Morgan Stanley
- Alex EAnalyst, UBS
- MSUAnalyst, Bank of America
- Unidentified AnalystAnalyst, CICC
Full transcript
Analyst questions are marked with a bar. Timestamps are into the recording.
Prepared remarks
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for saying bye and welcome to the Lufax Holding Ltd's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, we'll have a Q&A session. Please note this event is being recorded.
Xinyan LiuHead of Board Office and Capital Markets
Now, I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Ms. Liu Xin-Yan, the company's head of Ford Office and Gabriel Marquez. Please go ahead, ma'am. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Our quarterly financial and operating results were released by our Newswire services earlier today and are currently available online. Today, you will hear from our chairman and CEO, Mr. Y. S. Cho, who will provide an update of our business performance, the macroeconomic impact, and our business strategies. Our co-CEO, Mr. Fred Gibb, will then go through our fourth quarter results and provide more details on our business priorities. Afterwards, our CFO, Mr. David Choi, will offer a closer look into our financials before we open up the call for questions.
Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our Safe Harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call as we will be making forward-looking statements. Please also note that we may discuss non-IFRS measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under the International Financial Reporting Standards in our earnings release and findings with the SEC.
With that, I am now pleased to turn over the call to Mr. Y. S. Cho, Chairman and CEO of Lufax, please.
YongSuk ChoChairman and CEO
Thank you for joining. I would like to start by providing some perspective on where we are and on our business performance in Q4. While the fourth quarter was undoubtedly challenging, we are confident in our strategy to achieve a U-shaped recovery. At present, we must be patient, prudent, and prepared. We need to be patient for the macroeconomic tailwinds to flow through to the SMB segment, be prudent in implementing new risk strategies and embedding lessons learned from the pandemic period, and be prepared to gear up new business when the improved environment arrives. Recently, we have made the hard decisions on right-sizing risk and resources with many related execution work streams to be completed in the first quarter.
In the first half of 2023, our focus will continue to be on asset quality overgrowth and depth over breadth in terms of upgrading our direct sales capabilities In prioritize geographies and within SBO customer segments. Our focus will also include optimizing credit enhancement approaches to provide further support to our operating margins and business sustainability in the mid-term. We believe these strategies will lead to a U-shaped recovery, and we remain patient in terms of preparing ourselves for this recovery and delivering sound operating and financial results. Now, I would like to share some updates for the fourth quarter. On the macro environment, we saw that the operating environment for SMBs remains challenging during Q4. Although there have been signs of recovery in the midterm since the change of zero COVID policy on December 7, 2022, the composite PMI was 49 in October, decreased to 47.1 in November, and further decreased to 42.6 in December.
The last 15 years is the year in December. Nominal GDP in the fourth quarter grew at only 2.9 percent year over year. Our SEO segment was cheap particularly hard as a result. With adjustment of the policy, we believe China's economy will recover over the next several quarters. We have already seen signs of robust tourism activity and witnessed consumption boom during the spring festival. Non-manufacturing PMI returned to expansion after six consecutive months of contraction in January. And manufacturing sector PMI hit 52.6 in February, the highest Since April 2012, the IMEC has also raised its forecast for China's economic growth in 2023. Meanwhile, the government has called for more efforts to implement policy package for shoring up the economy.
The Chinese government has stressed enhancing the law of finance in stabilizing the macroeconomy and improving financial services for the real economy. As SMBs are highly dependent on the macro environment and operating continuity, it is expected that SMBs operations will gradually return to normal post reopening. While it is too early to say when a notable recovery in performance will arrive, the indicators that we are monitoring closely include Our C2M3 net flow ratio and the asset quality of Neuron vintages compared with older ones. For new business volumes, due to challenging macroeconomic environment in 2022, we have prioritized asset quality over course by tightening our customer selection standards and focusing new customer acquisition in more economically resilient regions.
As we have seen a better credit performance from customers in these regions, and we have turned away potential customers who do not meet our credit standards. For example, for our general secured loans, we rank the quality of our borrowers using our R1 to R6 risk rating system, which is based on the customer's credit risk score and their available assets. The column represents customers with the highest quality and I6 with the lowest quality. Currently we only enable loans for borrowers that are ranked at four or better. We have also optimized our risk rating system by factoring in the differences in economic resilience and underlying credit performance by region and industry. Meanwhile, we have been optimizing our direct sales force to be more nimble, productive, and effective in customer targeting as we focus on higher quality borrowers.
We reduced the size of our direct sales force from over 58,000 as of the end of Q3 to approximately We have managed to retain the most productive members of our sales force to target more economically resilient regions. During Q4, we made many difficult decisions, including adjustments to customer selection and the operational optimization of the sales force. The above factors coupled with seasonality caused our neurons enabled in Q4 to drop by 37 percent, quarter over quarter, to Lufax Holding Ltd 77.8 billion. We believe that seasonality accounts for approximately 10 percent of the decrease between Q3 and Q4, based on the data of the As a result of the aforementioned factors in Q4, our revenue declined by 6.6% quarter over quarter.
However, the neurons that we enabled should generate better results as compared to loan vintages as a whole from a loan lifecycle point of view. At the same time, while our core SEO customers were impacted by the deteriorating macro environment, we observed that our consumer finance sector was less affected, allowing us to continuously develop and grow our consumer finance business. The outstanding balance of consumer finance The consumer finance loans has grown substantially from LB3.6 billion as of December 31, 2020 to LB29.7 billion as of December 31, 2022, representing 188% compound annual growth over the two years. Similarly, our borrowers with outstanding consumer finance loans increased from $168,000 as of December 31, 2020 to $1.3 million as of December 31, 2022, representing 179% compound annual growth.
We are in the process of optimizing our risk-bearing model. CGI premiums charged by our insurance partners remained elevated in fourth quarter, as they typically price the risk based on historical loan vintages that were impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment. While we continue to work closely with our credit enhancement partners, we cannot ensure that the outcome of the CGI premium pricing negotiations will align with our expectation. In circumstances and to the extent where we no longer find these partnerships to be commercially As we are looking to increase our risk-bearing portion on the loans that we enable through our licensed financing guarantee subsidiary, and reduce the size of cooperation with the external credit enhancement partners. We are now in discussions with our funding partners regarding potential adjustments to our model, where we reduce usage of external credit enhancement partners.
We target to complete these adjustments with the majority of our funding partners over the next few quarters to increase our operating flexibility. As of the end of Q4, we had net assets of Lufax Holding LB 94.8 billion on a consolidated basis, and our financing guarantee subsidiary had net assets of Lufax Holding LB 48 billion. The strong capital position provides a solid foundation for us to increase the percentage of risk we bear and support the optimization of our risk-bearing model. On regulation, we have largely completed our rectifications and the industry will enter into a stage of normalized supervision. In January 2023 the regulators confirmed that rectifications on the financial business of the 14 platform companies have largely been completed with only a few pending issues currently in progress to be resolved The regulatory authorities will maintain normalized provision in general going forward according to guidance provided by the regulatory authorities Finally, I am pleased to share that we are pursuing a Hong Kong listing.
We submitted the A1 filing for dual primary listing by introduction on the main board of Hong Kong Exchange on February 1, 2023. Greg, thank you, YS.
Unidentified Management
I will now provide more details on our Q4 full year 2022 results and our operational focus for this year. Please note, all figures are in REMEB unless otherwise stated. The challenging macro environment has adversely affected our top-line and bottom-line financial performance in the fourth quarter and full-year 2022. Our revenue in Q4 declined slightly to $12.3 billion, down 6.6% compared with Q3.
In aggregate, 2022 full-year revenue was $58.1 billion, a 6% decline compared with 2021. Due to a further spike in our credit impairment loss in the fourth quarter, which reflected the impact of a challenging macroeconomic environment For both our customers and operations, we made a net loss of 0.8 billion RMB in Q4, while the full year net income declined 47.5% year over year to 8.8 billion RMB. Similarly, asset quality metrics in Q4 worsened across the board, with GBT30-plus and GBT90-plus reaching 4.6% and 2.6% respectively, increasing from 3.6% and 2.1% compared with Q3. Our credit impairment loss increased from $4 billion in Q3 to $6.3 billion in Q4, reaching an aggregate of $16.6 billion for the full year of 2022.
We have also seen continued deterioration in our C to M3 ratio, which worsened by 21 basis points compared to Q3 and reached 1.0% in Q4 as compared to 0.5% in Q4 2021.
In spite of the challenges we faced in Q4, there were some bright spots in our performance. For instance, our funding costs in Q4 declined by 33 basis points compared with a year ago as we were able to tap public trust funding. As YS mentioned, our consumer finance business saw steady growth in 2022, and credit performance for consumer finance was healthy and in line with the industry. As part of our business strategy, we continue to focus on regions, demonstrating more economic resilience given divergence in performance between different regions while further enhancing our operating efficiency and optimizing our channels. As we mentioned in last quarter's earnings release, we have seen variations in performance We have also seen the Q4.
Last quarter, we saw a clear divergence between the top, average, and less desirable performing regions that we had categorized in Q3. We have therefore adopted and applied differentiated strategies in different regions as we strive to grow in regions that demonstrate more resilience in credit performance. Although we witnessed credit deterioration across the board in Q4, our asset quality metrics For example, the C to M3 ratio of general unsecured loans for top and average performing regions worsened by 14 basis points and 19 basis points respectively in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, while the C to M3 ratio for less desirable performing regions deteriorated by more than 28 basis points during the same period. On new loan sales, we achieved stronger contribution in new loan volumes from top performing regions due to our differentiated strategy targeting such regions.
Compared with Q3, contribution of new loans enabled from top performing regions increased from 43% in Q3 to 46% in Q4. Average performing regions remained stable at 30%, while less desirable performing regions declined from 27% to 24%. In Q4, we continued our efforts to enhance efficiency and optimize our channels for new loans enabled in the full year of 2022, including consumer finance. Contribution from direct sales increased by 4.7% from 49.5% in 2021 to 54.2% in 2022. And contributions from online and telemarketing channels also increased from 12.8% in 2021 to 19.6% in 2022. Meanwhile, contributions from other channels declined from 37.7% in 2021 to 26.6% for the full year of 2022. We optimized our direct sales force during the fourth quarter to make our operations limer and more efficient.
The overall size of our direct sales force downsized from about 58,000 employees at the end of Q3 to about 46,000 as of the end of Q4. We have retained the more productive direct sales workforce in the top performing region whose average productivity is more than twice those of the less productive sales members who departed in Q4. In addition to our differentiated strategies mentioned above, we have enacted prudent cost control measures to enhance operating efficiency. As a result, our cost to income ratio decreased from 48.8% in 2021 to 46.3% in the full year 2022. At the end of Q4, we bore 23.5% of credit risk on the outstanding loan balance and an increase from 22.5% as of the end of Q3.
As YS just mentioned, we are making progress in implementing an optimized risk-bearing model with our funding partners, underpinned by our strong capital position to address the challenges brought about by elevated insurance premium charge by credit enhancement providers. We have already engaged most of our funding partners to discuss the model under which our guarantee subsidiary provides full provision of credit enhancement. We aim to complete these discussions with the majority of our funding partners in the next few quarters. Among our 81 funding partners, 15 funding partners have already agreed to the model where our guarantee company provides full provision of credit enhancement, gradually alleviating future margin pressure from the elevated fees currently sought by insurance partners. As mentioned before, our strong capital position provides us with a solid foundation to transform to an optimized risk-bearing model.
As of December 31, 2022, our net assets stood at $94.8 billion with $43.9 billion of cash at bank. Our financing guarantees Siderate had net assets of $47.9 billion and a leverage ratio of two times as of the same date. At the same time, we have continued to make progress on our new SBO ecosystem. We launched our new small business owner value added services driven platform in November 22. This value added services platform branded is an open platform design populated with digital operating tools and industry content to support businesses development for the small businesses themselves. We intend to use this platform to engage potential customers at an earlier stage, deepen our interaction We will now turn the call over to management for the Lufax Holding Ltd. Growth of the new ecosystem has continued to accelerate quickly into 2023, with the total number of registered customers expanding roughly five-fold in the first two months of 2023.
Although we are not able to provide detailed guidance for 2023 at the moment due to the uncertainty as to the speed of the U-shaped recovery, which largely depends on the speed of recovery of the Chinese economy and the outcome of negotiation with credit enhancement providers, I'd like to provide some directional guidance on our outlook for 2023. We project a return to profitability in Q1, albeit at a more subdued level given the challenging operating environment we described earlier.
Challenging as the macro and operating environment for SBOs are, we do see signs of recovery in the medium term, resulting from zero COVID policy changes, and we are confident that we will achieve our U-shaped recovery, And we must remain patient, prudent, and prepared for this recovery, as YS said earlier. As far as we can see, there are three stages in this U-shaped recovery process. Stage one, broader credit policy adjustment we have made during the course of 2022, featured by tightening up of credit standards and focusing on regions and industries showing more economic resilience. Stage two, business adjustment and operating efficiency improvement, which we initiated in Q4 2022, The next slide we do expect to complete within the next several months, including optimization of direct sales, streamlining of management layers, and optimization of the risk-bearing model.
And then stage three, back to sustaining growth and profitability as the economy is returning to normal. During the process, we need to be patient for the macroeconomic tailwinds to flow through to the SBO segment, be prudent in implementing new risk strategies and embedding lessons learned from the pandemic period, Be prepared to gear up new business when the improved environment arrives.
Finally, we would like to thank our shareholders for their continued support. To deliver greater value to our shareholders, our board has approved the distribution of a 40% of our 2022 net profit on a full-year basis as cash dividends. In October, we paid our first half of 2022 dividends of USD 17 cents per ADF, representing We will distribute an additional cash dividend of US $0.05 per ADS for the second half of 2022, bringing the full-year dividend to $0.22 per ADS. I will now turn it over to David for more details on our financial performance.
Thank you, Greg. I will now provide a close look into our fourth quarter results. Please note all numbers are in remedy terms and all comparisons are on a year-on-year basis unless otherwise stated. In the fourth quarter, our total income decreased to $12.3 billion and the total expenses grew to $12.9 billion. The increase in total expenses were primarily driven by the increase in credit impairment costs, while our operating related expenses actually decreased by 20.8% to $6.6 billion. For the full year of 2022, we recorded $58.1 billion in total income and $8.8 billion in net profit.
Next, let's have a close look at our total income. First, as Wise and Grant mentioned before, our performance took a hit from the sluggish macro conditions in China, resulting in a 22.2% decrease in our top-line performance in this quarter. As we are dedicated to building up a more sustainable business model, the total income mix of our credit and enablement business continues to evolve. During this quarter, while platform service fees decreased by 33.5% to 5.9 billion, our net interest income grew 3.2% to 4.4 billion, and our guarantee income grew by 2.2% to 1.7 billion. As a result our technology platform income service fees as a percentage of total income decreased to 47 from 55 a year ago In addition due to the increase in the consumer finance loans our net interest income as a percentage of total income actually increased to 35 from 26 a year ago Furthermore, as we continue to better utilize our guaranteed companies' abundance capital to bear more credit risk by ourselves instead of by our P&C insurance partners, we generated more guaranteed income, reaching 13.6% of our total income, compared with 10.3% a year ago.
Our other income, which mainly includes account management fees, collections fees, and other value added service fees charged our credit enhancement partners as part of the retail credit enablement process was $131 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to $769 million in the same period of 2021. The decrease was mainly due to the change of fee structure that we charged to our primary credit enhancement partners.
Turning to our expenses, we continue to prudently manage our operating expenses. Our total expenses, excluding credit and asset impairment losses, finance courses and other losses, decreased by 20.8% year over year to $6.6 billion this quarter As we further improve our operating efficiency. In the fourth quarter, our expense grew to $12.9 billion from $11.5 billion a year ago. This increase was primarily driven by an increase in credit impairment losses of $3.7 billion year over year. Our total sales and marketing expenses, which mainly include expenses for borrowers and investor acquisition causes, as well as general sales and marketing expenses, decreased by 23.4% to 3.7 billion in the fourth quarter. This decrease was driven by three factors.
First, The decrease in new loan sales and reductions in commissions. Second, the decrease in faster acquisition and retention expenses and referral expenses for platform service driven by decreased transaction volume. And the last, the decreased general sales and market expenses driven by the decrease in new loan sales. Our general and administrative expenses decreased by 22.8% We will now turn the call over to management for the Lufax Holding Ltd. to 750 million in the fourth quarter from 971 million in the same period of 2021 because of decreased personnel expenses. Our operation and services expenses decreased by 12.7% to 1.7 billion in the fourth quarter from 1.9 billion a year ago, mainly due to our expense-controlling measures A decrease of loan balance and new loan sales.
Credit impairment losses increased by 147.1% to 6.3 billion in the fourth quarter from 2.5 billion a year ago. Many driven by an increase of proficient and indemnity losses as a result of the increased credit risk exposure and worsening credit performance due in large part to the accumulated impact of challenging macroeconomic environment. Our asset impairment losses decreased to 7 million in the fourth quarter from 689 million a year ago, mainly due to the large higher phases of impairment losses in fourth quarter of 2021 driven by impairment losses of intangible assets. Our finance cost increased by 87.6% to $501 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 from $267 million in the same period of 2021, mainly due to non-referring interest costs due to early repayments of good convertible notes.
Other gains were 419 million in the fourth quarter compared to 300 million a year ago, mainly due to the increase in government subsidies. As a result, net loss for the fourth quarter was 806 million compared to net profit of 2.9 billion in the same quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, our basic and diluted losses per ABS during the fourth quarter were both going to be 3.36 yuan or US dollar 3.05 dollar. Our basic and diluted earnings per share during the year of 2022 will be 3.8 yuan or US dollar 0.55 dollar.
On the balance sheet side, our balance sheet remains strong and solid as our cash at bank balance increased. As of December 31st, 2022, we have a cash balance of $43.9 billion in cash at bank as compared with $34.7 billion as of December 31st, 2021. In addition, liquid assets maturing in 90 days The company's earnings are less amounted to $49.9 billion as of the end of December 2022. As of the end of December 2022, our guaranteed company's leverage is only at two times, whilst registry requirements allow us to leverage up to ten times. All these provide strong support for the company to remain resilient in the face of economic downturn We will continue with our dividend payout.
That concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are ready to take questions.
Questions and answers
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star forward by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star forward by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. In addition, I would like to remind you to please mute yourself after stating your question. Thank you. Our first question comes from Yada Lee of CICC. Please go ahead.
Unidentified AnalystAnalyst, CICC
Hello, management. This is Yada from CICC, and thanks for taking my question. I have two questions for today. First, I was wondering when will the market see the U-shaped recovery And among the expansion of new loan sales and the improvement of credit impairment losses, which one shall the market expect first? And my second question is, in regards to the improvement in credit risk after the COVID pandemic, are there any positive signs of loan recovery collection and customer management?
And is there any improvement in borrowers' willingness to repay after reopening? And what are the main causes if we still find some of the borrowers fail to repay? That's all. Thank you.
YongSuk ChoChairman and CEO
Thank you, Ada. Let me ask you a question. When to see USAT recovery, and then you are asking, among new loan sales or credit impairment loss income, which one we expect to see first? And then you also ask that whether we are seeing any signs of recovery in collection, and there are some reasons for our borrowers failing in the repayment. So over recovery, it depends on still our U-shaped curve. It depends on the recovery of over economy, or in particular our SVO economy. And the outcome of negotiation with credit investment partners as Greg said, because that largely affects our net margin. Although we see that in some industries like travel, accommodation, restaurants, we see the signal of the initial improvement.
But in overall, it's too early to say when a notable recovery will arrive with supporting numbers. New-on-state expansion and improved improvement of credit increment loss. I think they will come at a similar time, but New-on-state expansion will proceed. We are monitoring the early indicators of loan credit performance like net flow rate and early MOB delinquency rate. And for each segment, region, and industry, when you see the improvement signal, then we will expand, we will start expanding long volume growth, while credit performance improvement will follow as it carries a lag effect. And for your second question, yeah, we see some positive signs of consumption and travel boom, But knowing that STBO sector got the biggest hit during the last year, it will take more time to show obvious recovery.
And then it's not because, I mean the reason our customers failing in repayment is not because they are unwilling to repay, but their ability to repay the loan got damaged last year the most. So their ability to repay, we believe, will gradually turn to normal post reopening. So it will take a few time, but trends, I think, are reassured about that.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Richard Xu of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Richard XuAnalyst, Morgan Stanley
Thank you, YS. Thank you, Greg, for the detailed explanation. I got two questions. So I understand basically the company is trying to use more guarantees rather than insurance, CGI, insurance guarantees. So any long-term target in terms of the split between guaranteed by your guaranteed company versus insurance? Any timeline target on that as well? Second question is recently there's some news on CBIRC or a crackdown on some of the loan brokers. I don't know if there's any impact on our business, and how do we separate the typical loan brokers essentially targeted by the new regulatory scrutiny at the moment versus our agents on the ground? Yep, two questions. Thank you.
YongSuk ChoChairman and CEO
Let me address our first question, and then Greg can take the second. I think we are aware that our CGI premium level remains high till now. That affects our new business net margin. We have been negotiating with our credit investment partners, but we have not made clear progress in lowering CGI premium rate so far. And as they price the rate based on the historical long vintage performance right and then that was affected by the macro environment last year So if we do not make good progress, meaning that if we do not find the CDI price in the future is not commercially attractive for us, then we can increase our risk-bearing portion and reduce our cooperation scale with CDI partners.
Now we are discussing with funding partners, and as Greg mentioned, already a large number of our funding partners here agreed to switch to no CGI model in which we provide full product of credit enhancement. And then if you see how much net assets we have under our guaranteed company, we already have almost 50 billion net assets under our guaranteed company which And provide 10 times leverage support. So in other words about 500 billion new sales. So I believe over direction is clear. We want to have less dependence on CDI partners because of the price issue. We want to take more self-guarantee portion from 30% to about 50% or going forward even higher. That's possible. But we don't have any timeline that we provide today.
But I can reiterate it today.
GregCo-CEO
Richard, on your second question, I think you are reflecting an announcement that came out with the CBRC this past Friday with regards to loan brokers. I think two points to make. The first is our core business itself is operated under the guarantee license. Our sales force Is able to find clients, introduce those to the banks, and the banks then make their judgment on providing a loan. So as such, we are really not acting as a broker with our funding partners. I think that is really the most critical point. The second point is if you look at the apparent reasons for the CBRC to raise this, is there have been examples where there have been third-party agents without a license who have basically been either packaging customer information to make a loan look like it's to be used for business purposes, but then is used for other purposes, And or external brokers working with banks to charge customers other intransparent fees, therefore increasing total cost.
So that is an area that we really don't touch. We do operate through our guarantee company, and when we do our business, at the end of the day, the banks are able to collect and see all information they need to determine the use of funds for the loan, be that secure, So this is something that we will nonetheless keep a close eye on. The banks, the funding partners themselves will be going through a process which goes from March until September to review. And certainly if there's any higher standards or anything in our process that we would need to uplift, we would do so. But we don't anticipate a major issue there, Richard.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Alex E of UBS. Please go ahead.
Alex EAnalyst, UBS
Okay, thanks for taking my question. My question is on pricing and tech rate, so I will separate them into two parts. First is on the short-term outlook. So how should we expect the pricing trend going forward? And if we take into account the pricing and CGI cost, how does the tech rate outlook look like for the rest of 2023 and in terms of the trajectory of that tech rate recovery? And second, from a medium term perspective, say in the next one to two years and after your U-shaped recovery, do materialize. So after that, what is a sustainable level of takeaway that we should target at? And in the past, I remember management used to give high level guidance of targeting a pre-tax margin of 3.5 to 4.0%.
I'm wondering if that's still a reasonable target. Thank you.
GregCo-CEO
Thank you, Alex. I think the view on pricing, which today for new unsecured loans is just below 20%. I think it's about 19.7%. This pricing will largely remain stable in 2023. If you look at that headline pricing over the last couple of quarters, it's come down a little bit. But the reason for it coming down is really because of the way we've prioritized our business focus. So we are prioritizing, as Wyatt said, serving customers who rate R1 to R4 in the better performing regions. And those rated customers have traditionally had slightly better pricing. So what you see in our pricing on the APR side as it comes down a bit, it continues to represent the improvement in our overall customer mix.
So we will not, even though CGI pricing remains elevated, that really is reflecting the history of the macro economy over the last 12 months. But because of that, we're not going to change our customer focus to then try and drive up higher pricing, We really want to stay focused on those higher quality customers. The key for us to return to the historical level of net margin of pre-tax 3% to 4% is really doing two things. One is making sure that the new customers that we're acquiring and building out in the R1 to R4 rated group achieve what we believe to be the reasonable and targeted performance. And that is something that we've seen over the last couple of quarters to be largely intact.
It's now a matter of continuing to build up that business in line with the speed of the economic recovery. That's point one. Point two, to achieve that historical level of three to four percent is indeed, as YS just laid out, optimizing the mix of our credit guarantee versus credit insurance. Because if the credit insurance partners continue to charge a high amount, that reduces the net margin in the business model. So the transition to a higher percentage of our self-guarantee is the key to us achieving that historical level, which we do intend to achieve over the medium term.
I think if you were to press on the number, you asked medium term, the answer to that question is yes. Is that a 2023 or 2024 event? We would see that more as likely as a 2024 event for the portfolio as a whole because we need to need that new business buildup and replace the legacy business as it matures.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from MSU of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
MSUAnalyst, Bank of America
Thank you for taking my questions. I have three. The first one is about your loan growth. What's your loan growth planned in the coming quarters, and what are the assumptions underpinning the current growth plan? The second one is about your cost. Are there room for you to continue optimizing costs, including founding costs, sales and marketing costs, and other operating costs? And the third one is about your dividend policy. We note that you changed your dividend policy, so could management comment on the change and its impact to the shareholders? Thanks.
GregCo-CEO
Sure. So on the first two, and I'll ask David to also elaborate on the third point. On loan growth, what we're really looking at is the overall improvement of the key lead indicator C to M3. What we've seen is that being elevated through Q4, not increasing as fast as what we've seen in some of the other previous quarters, but nonetheless remaining at a higher level.
While we continue to prioritize new loan growth at the moment to the best customer segments in the best regions, broader loan growth will depend upon us seeing a more across-the-board improvement in some of those league indicators. So we hope that that improvement will be something that we see in the next one to two quarters. As we see that improvement, we will then uptick in our overall loan growth. But as Wyatt said, our bias at the moment is to go for quality over volume. And so that's something that we will probably have that stance, I think, through Q1 and into Q2. But indeed, if we see that improvement, then in the second half, there will be more opportunities to enhance that relative loan growth.
On the cost side, we have been optimizing starting in Q4. It goes through into Q1 in terms of optimizing lower productivity sales force, reducing some management layering, and indeed optimizing mid and back office costs. All of the execution of this is happening really mostly in Q1, a little bit into Q2. There's a little bit of room to optimize. I think it's something that really is in line with our overall business growth. But in terms of funding costs, we're probably not going to see a huge optimization in the near term on that front, even though we have seen improvement there over the last couple quarters. On dividend, just a high-level comment, which is that for the last two years, we basically have announced a dividend policy of 20 to 40 percent.
This time, we basically kept it in that range. The cash dividend for the full year of 2022 is 40 percent, so the overall range hasn't changed. What we did modify slightly is that for 2021, our dividend was paid out David, I will now turn the call over to management for the full year of 2022. We will take it to a total of 40%. The dividend that was paid out in the first half of 2022 was really based at 32%. And so we had basically brought it at par across the entire year at 40%. I don't know if David, do you want to add any other comments on the dividend policy?
Unidentified Management
I have a pretty comprehensive comment on the different. Yeah, it is. Nothing changed that the frequency of our different payment is not changed. The range, the dividend payout ratio that approved by the board is a change, 20 to 40 percent. The second change is really on how to calculate on a semiannual basis or on a full year basis. That is the change. This subtle change, we believe, relieves management more flexibility, and we are able to deserve great support to our shareholders, so I believe it is positive to all shareholders.
Thank you.
There are no further questions. That concludes our Q&A session for today. I will now hand the call back over to our management team for closing remarks.
YongSuk ChoChairman and CEO
Thank you. So this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining the conference call. If you have more questions, please do not hesitate to contact the company's IR team. Thanks again.
Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you everyone for attending. You may now disconnect.
Other Lufax Holding earnings calls
- Q2 2026 earnings call
Management framed the call as a return to regular reporting, with strategy centered on compliance, selective growth, and a path back to profitability.
Aug 19, 2026Cautious-0.15 - Q3 2024 earnings call
Management framed recovery as gradual, prioritizing asset quality in weak SME lending while shifting growth toward consumer finance and smaller-ticket loans.
Oct 22, 2024Cautious-0.25 - Q2 2023 earnings call
Management framed recovery as slower than expected, prioritizing credit quality, cost control and a shift toward guarantees and consumer finance.
Date n/aCautious-0.15 - Q1 2023 earnings call
Management framed recovery as a gradual, U-shaped process, with profits not expected to recover notably until 2024. 82% of Q1 new unsecured loans were in the top three credit tiers, versus 41% a year earlier.
Date n/aMildly positive0.10 - Q3 2022 earnings call
Management framed the quarter as a prolonged reset: prioritize resilient small-business borrowers and accept lower volumes while legacy credit costs unwind.
Nov 24, 2022Negative-0.65 - Q2 2022 earnings call
Management framed the quarter as a deliberate trade-off: protect credit quality now while preserving capacity to resume growth when conditions improve.
Date n/aCautious-0.25 - Q1 2022 earnings call
Management framed the quarter as resilient but stressed that 2022 lockdowns pose a deeper, less predictable operating shock than 2020.
Date n/aMildly positive0.10 - Q4 2021 earnings call
Management framed 2022 as a deliberate reset, prioritizing channel quality and transformation before expecting growth to resume in the second half.
Date n/aMildly positive0.10
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