BNP Paribas Bank Polska S.A. (82MA.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everybody. We'll do it in English, and thanks for the applause, although I haven't said anything yet. So I'm not sure it's been well deserved. Thanks for being here physically with us. And thank you all of you, who have joined us on an online basis. Today, it's a very important day for the bank. We'll be announcing our new 5-year strategy. The name of the strategy accelerate 2030 indicates what the strategy is all about. And we'll be telling you the story over the next 1.5 hours, and then we'll be happy to take your questions and have a more interactive way of discussing it. The agenda of this afternoon is as follows: I'll do the introduction. I'll mention priorities and ambitions. Then we'll talk about our financial trajectory. And then heads of the lines of business will present our strategic direction. I'll do the summary at the very end. And then Q&A is as the tradition requires. You will see the team -- the core team of the bank here on stage. It's not a one-man show. Banking is a teamwork. It's a discipline requiring cooperation. The whole team is pretty much behind the strategy. We've prepared it together also with a number of our people, who've contributed to the final output to our strategic plan, to our ambitions. So I will not introduce everybody now, but we'll do so when colleagues appear on stage as we go further. Now let me set the scene a bit. First, our strategic shareholder, BNP Paribas. It's the largest bank in the Eurozone. It's the one of the biggest banks in the world, present in 64 different countries powerful, stable, reputable. And the group has demonstrated significant commitment to the Polish market, and I believe the group believes in Poland on a longer-term basis. Except for the bank, which is the central entity, there are 10 other companies operating in Poland, some holding very strong position, some growing. Also, there are platforms utilizing skilled, intelligent, well-educated labor force in Poland for overall group purposes. Now about us. We are a solid bank with a sixth position on the market in terms of assets. We've grown over the last years initially through a series of mergers and acquisitions and then on an organic basis. We hold uneven market shares in retail and corporate and SME business. We are relatively smaller on the retail front and significantly larger on the corporate banking side. Though if you look at the split of revenue, we stand on 2 firm legs. In some of the business areas, we hold a market leadership position. I'll name a few. You see them all. Traditionally, we are the market leader in farmer financing, which is the set of competencies that we cultivate and further develop. Our wealth management private banking platform is the largest in Poland. We are by far the market leader in corporate treasury business, holding around 18% market share. And in some other categories, we are simply very strong, not everywhere, and that gives us room to grow. What I'd like to underline, and I believe this is important for this community is the fact that we have been paying dividends. Our initial strategic plan assumed that the first time we will pay out dividends in '25. We actually did it a year before. So we have 2 years of dividend payouts, and our clear-cut intention is to be a dividend-paying company, and I'll come back to that at a later stage. Over the last years, we've grown those areas which we believe are the most attractive for us when it comes to client segments. As you may see, we noted a considerable growth in the number of wealthy affluent clients. And on the corporate banking front, we have increased the number of MNCs, so multinational corporations, which is our strategic area also for further future growth that we'll discuss a bit later on. We have been digitalizing the bank, investing heavily in technology. So you see that on one hand, the percentage of digital sales has gone up significantly. But at the same time, we're working on our internal processes. So for instance, and that's quite an important example, the corporate credit process now is 4x faster than it was a few years back. Perhaps finally, let me mention AI. We'll have a section on AI. We believe in this technology. We've been embracing and adopting it in various aspects, various parts of the bank, and that's also one of the elements of our future growth and efficiency improvement. Again, looking historically, over the last years, since 2021, we have been improving our efficiency through a combination of increase of revenue, but also very tight cost management. The improvement accounts for 11 percentage points, and we shortened the distance to the best to the peer group by 6%, which I believe is a considerable effort. We've done it also optimizing the employment in the bank a bit more than other market players. We don't believe this is it. We'll continue optimizing the employment, thus the cost base on the personnel side, together with investments in technology and deployment of automated solutions that can improve our efficiency overall. Nevertheless, the eNPS, measuring the willingness of our people to recommend the bank as a workplace has considerably improved, so has the engagement score. Our people are engaged. They want to work here, and they are happy to recommend BNP Paribas Bank Polska as a place for talented, ambitious individuals. And then finally, on this slide, sustainability. We are the green bank. We have always said that except for focusing on business, we also want to act in a responsible way. One of the strategic targets that we've set ourselves is the volume of sustainable financing. And as you see, it's grown almost 3x in the period, exceeding our strategic ambitions. Growth. Our profitability has been steadily improving. If we go back to 2021, it was technically marginal, big impact of Swiss franc-related provisions. And then year after year, it's been going up, reaching the level of PLN 2.2 billion for the first 9 months, and the year is not over. That allows us to generate return on capital measured either by ROE or ROTE, well above the cost of equity. I mentioned the cost/income ratio being in a downward trend, and that shall continue. And finally, our DNA is about being very rational, yet highly professional in risk management. Our cost of risk has been the lowest in the marketplace for a number of consecutive quarters. We know how to do that. We have built a very prudent loan portfolio. We'll talk about cost of risk and our openness to accept somewhat higher level thereof at a later stage. But clearly, managing risks is one of our core competence that we are not going to say goodbye to ever. Now this is the last year of the existing go beyond strategy. We built it in 2021. We announced it to the market in early 2022, shortly after the war in Ukraine broke. And I'm happy to say that we have met or exceeded most of the key strategic KPIs. You see 3 that we have always been communicating, and it's clear that we've done considerably better than the assumptions set out back then. A few words about the Polish economy. We believe in it. We believe in the strength of Polish economy. We assume that in the strategy horizon, the GDP will grow north of 3% per annum on average. We believe that inflation is now already under control. It's been coming down, and it will stabilize within the goal of the Central Bank. The consequence thereof is that the interest rates have been coming down as well. We've seen 6 cuts this year alone. We assume that there will be further cuts and then the base rate of the Central Bank will stabilize at the level of 3.5% and stay there for quite some time. Of course, drop in interest rates is not very favorable for the banking sector. We realize that, of course, but we believe we know how to compensate that loss of revenue of NBI through other measures. Poland will grow. Poland has big investment needs. Those needs are related to energy transformation, further digitalization, infrastructure, public services. And the numbers that we are putting here like PLN 3.6 trillion of investments needed in the area of energy transformation up to 2040 are very impressive. The new power plants, nuclear power plant, the first one to be built, you know it as well as I do, will require PLN 140 billion of external funding alone. So the needs are big, and they should stimulate an increased demand for credits and overall growth of credit volumes throughout the banking market. And we are absolutely certain we'll take a big chunk of that growth, anticipating that will grow faster than the market rate, which we will come back to in a minute. Now there are various trends and various peculiarities of the current situation. I will not go through all the 5 of those that you see behind me. Let me mention a couple. First, the technological revolution. AI. AI is expanding. AI produces more and more use cases that make our life easier, help companies generate more revenue, help companies, including banks, becoming more efficient, and we are absolutely committed and determined to embrace this technology and use it for both revenue growth as well as cost management. The next important thing is the energy transformation, the energy transition. I mentioned that already. It's unavoidable. Poland in order to remain a competitive economy needs to reduce the cost of energy currently at a very high level and also reduce the CO2 emission. And that will require lots of investments. Similarly, the efforts of companies of different industries aimed at the decarbonization, the overall GHG reduction over the years. It's not only because of regulatory pressure, it's also because that's the responsible way of living in the current reality. And the last thing I'd like to mention is related to the war in Ukraine. We all feel extremely sad that this war has continued for already many years. And we all would like the war to end. And one day, it will. All wars end at some stage. I very much hope that the peace that will be reached by negotiations by Diplomats will be a fair and sustainable situation. When that happens, Polish companies will have a big chance of taking an active role in the reconstruction of Ukraine, and we see our chance in that, too. We want to support Polish companies going there. And given the fact that we have a sister bank, one of the biggest banks in Ukraine called UKRSIBBANK, operating despite the war on an uninterrupted basis, we believe that we'll be able to support Polish companies in here, Ukrainian companies there and create a bridge, giving us additional business opportunities. Let me slowly move towards the future. [Presentation]

The future is already here. It's interesting that none of you looked in the middle looking for the train. It's only for those who see us on an online basis, small gift. And I like this train very much. We've selected that out of many different ideas because it's fast, it's reliable, it's ecological, and it goes into the future. Now our strategy, if I were to summarize it in about 30 seconds, giving an elevator speech, it's about accelerated growth and further efficiency improvements. We build it around 3 pillars. First pillar, expand. It represents growth, growth of the number of clients wanting to bank with us. It represents growth of credit volumes and increase in market shares. It also represents focus on customers, customer satisfaction and quality in all services that we provide across the whole organization. The pillar streamline is very much about efficiency and technology. We believe we know how to further improve the way we operate by deployment of technology, including but not limited to AI-related solutions. And we are absolutely committed to become more and more efficient. And finally, impact, it's about being a good citizen in everything that we do in terms of our approach to the society, our approach to the environment and our approach to governance, where we want to be a role model also in terms of embracing diversity. We have set ourselves very ambitious targets. First, about the number of clients. We want to increase the number of clients who really want to bank with us by 1 million net during the strategy horizon. Secondly, we want to grow our market share in corporate business from the current level of around 8% to 10% by the year 2030. Our efficiency will be improving gradually, ultimately reaching the level below 38% in 2030. And finally, we want to inject into the country, PLN 25 billion of new sustainable loans, not only for corporates of all kinds and sizes, but also to individuals for energy efficiency projects or individual renewable energy producing installations. Those are very ambitious targets, yet we are absolutely committed and convinced that's something we will deliver. Soon we'll go more into the details, but let me give you the flavor of what we are planning on doing in the various parts of the bank, starting with retail. 1 million clients plus on a net basis, I've already mentioned. We want to prepare and improve our offer targeting specifically Gen Z, young people, who have specific needs when it comes to absorption of banking services, somewhat different than people slightly older at least by PESTLE, not necessarily by energy. We want to create an offer for families that are multigenerational. And oftentimes, we know how that goes. My mother is over 80, and I need to help her with banking services. But it's separate accounts. It's totally different ecosystem. We need to -- we want to create something that will embrace family in terms of banking services and make it easy and smooth to use. On the corporate banking front, we are among the leaders in MNCs and want to build upon it. The ambition is very simple. We want to -- we have to be #1 when it comes to MNCs in Poland. And there is no excuse with the scale of BNP Paribas in Europe and on a worldwide basis. We've got all the ingredients to grow that part of the business further. We know how to do that. We've done it already very well, and the growth is absolutely unavoidable. And the second component is a more bold entry into Polish corporates, supporting them in their transitioning towards more sustainable models, supporting them in international expansion, addressing their needs using the whole set of expertise and products that BNP Paribas as a group has to offer. Efficiency through investments. We've been investing heavily in technology. We've covered most of the debt that we inherited given our complex history. Now it's the time to use the investment for efficiency improvement, for digitalization -- further digitalization, for automation, for AI absorption. And certainly, what's very important and will remain so is safety. We are safe. From the cybersecurity perspective, we've been investing in people, in technology. We've been monitoring our resilience, and we believe that, that's something that needs to be continued given the threats also related to our geopolitical situation, the location of Poland. And finally, sustainable financing. I mentioned the scale. I will talk about it later, but that's the area where we really want to be the role model. A few numbers that express our ambitions. First, lending. We assume a 4% market growth on average per annum during the period. We want to grow faster than the market. Revenue plus 6% CAGR on an annual basis. Cost income, I already mentioned, we want to drop to the level below 38%. Currently, we're around 42%. And this will require an effort. Revenue will need to grow tangibly faster than our cost base. Cost of risk, we've been the master. And in the new reality, we are prepared to accept a somewhat higher cost of risk related to increased production of assets across the various client segments in which we operate. Capital management, we want to be safe and prudent with at least 2 percentage points above the regulatory minimum when it comes to Tier 1 capital. And finally, RoTE at the level of 22%, which corresponds to the current level. Of course, given the drop in interest rates and the increased corporate income tax, it will come down on a temporary basis to go up again to the level of 22% in 2030, well covering the cost of equity. I will be back. But on this note, I'd like to invite Piotr Konieczny, the CFO of the bank, to take over and guide you through the financial trajectory. Thanks for now.

Our strategy is about the growth. We will be growing our lending book faster than the market at a CAGR of 7%. And we will be splitting this growth equally into 2 portfolios, corporate portfolio and the retail portfolio. Within the retail portfolio, we'll be focusing on growing our market share with respect to the consumer financing, while we will be rebuilding our market position with respect to the mortgage financing. On the corporate sector, we will focus on the Polish corporates and multinational customers, leveraging the accelerated investments in the energy transformation, in the infrastructure and in the defense spending. Alongside the buildup of our lending activities, we will grow our funding sources proportionally. The key objective on our funding side is to change the funding mix, emphasizing the retail portfolios. We strongly believe that this change will lead to the net improvement in the net interest margin, which is essential for our financial trajectory. We also believe that the change of the funding structure is possible due to the supporting macroeconomic environment, which will ensure the ample market liquidity. Summing up, the accelerated growth of the business will be done on the back of the strong fundamentals of the Polish economy as well as our strong balance sheet at the inception of the strategy period. The accelerated growth strategy would allow us to grow the revenue, the top line of the bank at the CAGR of 6% on the back of the strong net interest income, which will stay north of 3% over the strategy period. It is also worth to mention that we will be growing our net commissions and fees much faster than the net interest income. As we will be rebuilding and growing our revenues, we'll continue our disciplined and cost-cautious approach to the cost management. We plan to grow our cost base of 4% annually, which is essential to sustain the growth of the business which we plan. At the same time, while growing the business and controlling the cost, we will deploy the digitalization efforts. We will use the process streamlining as well as advanced AI technology in order to strengthen the cost controls and enable the FTE reductions at the same time. That should lead to the increased productivity, which is a must in order to deliver the growth strategy and allow us to bring the cost/income ratio below 38% in 2030. Let us have a look at the other 2 important dimensions of the accelerated growth strategy, the capital and the cost of risk. The accelerated growth of the lending portfolio will trigger the growth of the risk-weighted assets and demand for capital. We plan to meet this demand by tapping into the securitization market as well as using our dividend policy to increase our capital base by retention of the portion of the net profits that will come. We are a prudent lender, and we will continue our disciplined approach to the lending business. However, the sheer increase in the lending volumes will drive the cost of risk, and we expect that the normalized cost of risk over the horizon would be around 40 basis points. At the same time, the share of the net -- of the NPLs in the balance sheet should stay safely below 5%. We're pretty happy with our risk appetite and the risk policies, and we see that within those parameters, there is sufficient space to absorb the accelerated growth strategy. Finally, let's have a look at the bottom line performance. One note here, all the numbers which I'm presenting already takes into account the changes in the corporate income tax that took part recently. Coming back to the net profits. The accelerated growth will allow us to grow our net profit after tax at the double digit over the planning horizon, which in turn, allow us to deliver the positive jaws and would allow us to land the RoTE number at 22% in 2030. That, in consequence, would generate the stream of profits, which will fuel our dividend policy, which, on the one hand side, will be used in order to beef up our capital, which I already mentioned, and on the other hand side, to continue our process of payout the dividends to our shareholders. We plan to maintain the dividend payout ratio of 50% and increase it further to 75% in 2030. In this way, in 2030, our dividend per share should double. Having said that, let me pass my voice to Volo Radin, who will take you on a trip to the retail strategy. Zoom.

Retail business is an important element of this strategy. Before going inside of the strategic priorities, a few words about the trends which we see on the market and which we take into account creating this strategy. First trend is -- next slide. First trend is multi-banking. There is a clear redefinition of the loyalty of our customers, especially speaking about the young generation and young families. More than 50% of Poles have relationship with more than one bank. The competition is shifting from the competition of general relationship to the competition on each product. That's why we aspire to create products, which are used by our customers actively. The second trend is increase of wealth of Polish population. There are already more than 2 million Poles who are earning more than PLN 120,000 per year. 60% of population is already saving. And we consider that these numbers will only increase. That's why in our strategy, we want to create the best offer of saving and investment products. Digitalization. Digitalization is accelerating. The acceleration is driven by the implementation of AI technology. We want to be a leader of this shift, combining innovation with the highest standards of the customer trust and security. Since a few years, we reached leadership in wealth management, in the affluent segment, we are a leader in agro and mobility segment for business customers. We built quite strong partnerships in retail and mobility. We created technologically advanced mobile application. And the group is present on the Polish market with not only the bank, but also the subsidiaries, which are taking leading position in their various domains like mobility, insurance, leasing or factoring. That's why we think that we are prepared for the increase of scale, for increase of profitability, supported by the technology. Speaking about the scale. We want to increase the number of customers by 1 million net. Please note -- now it's okay. Please note that the number of the customer base, which you see on the slide is different from what you may see on our previous presentations. We are starting the strategy with 2.6 million of customers. The difference is in the number of customers which are not -- who are not banking with us actively and who are not generating revenues or balances. We were communicating already through many months that we are in the process of cleaning of our database. We do that on the base of the efficiency reasons, and we want to finish this process this year. At the end, we will have customer base, which is generating almost 100% of our revenues and 100% of our balances. And the dynamics of the customer base will be much more aligned with our key performance indicators. How we will do, how we will organize this growth. We will focus on 2 key segments and one wide need where we want to excel. We selected Generation Z, the young customers. For them, we want to provide digital intuitive, simple solution, which will engage them and develop our relationship with this segment. Families. It was already said, we want to provide a value proposition for the families taking into account the needs of all the generations of the families, starting with kids, adults and then seniors as well. And as was said, we want to be the best bank in savings. This all will support our relationship with affluent segment. We want to continue development of the business with this segment, and it will be very much supported by our expertise in wealth management. We will organize this growth through usage of the traditional bank channels, making focus on digital relationship and digital acquisition. We will do that through partnerships and through with improved retention. At the end, we want to increase our market share in current accounts from 4% to 5%. All of that will be supported by the step-up in marketing expenses in order to improve brand recognition and brand consideration. We will build efficiency and profitability of our relationship with customers through focus on savings, investments, insurance and loans. We will provide to our customers simple, intuitive solutions, engaging them banking with us. We want to increase and we will increase our deposit base 10% CAGR in the strategic perspective. We will help our customers to protect and diversify their assets. That's why we want to give them possibility to do investments in a simple, digitalized way. It will be supported by AI solutions, and we will give to the customers wider spectrum of the insurance product to protect their assets. We will focus also on financing of the needs of our customers. Our cash loan will be more digitalized, more accessible, more simple. We will take care of the customers whom we are acquiring through installment loan, cross-selling them cash loan, but also other products. We'll provide to our customers online solution, which will help them the energy transition as well. Mortgage. We started active production of mortgage 1.5 years ago. We reached already quite a good level of production. Our market share today is around 5%. In this strategic perspective, we want to keep and protect this position. At the same time, cash loan market share will grow from 4% to 8%. It will be very much supported also by the increase of the customer base. We will work on the improvement of the efficiency, and we will develop our distribution model. We will develop it with the mobile application in its heart and humans at reach. We already built technologically advanced application, which is very well perceived by the customers. We are in top rankings, speaking about the Apple Store and Google Play. Already more than 50% of our revenues are generated -- new revenues are generated with the participation of this mobile application. We are committed to develop -- to continue the development of this application, implementing elements of hyper-personalization on the base of artificial intelligence. We will create a new communication layer with the customers, the virtual agents on the base of AI as well, which will support us in improvement of the efficiency of the relationship with the customers. We will evolve the role of our physical channels going into the direction of remote sales in -- or servicing in these channels as well. Answering the trend of increasing wealth of population, we want to keep our position of the leader in wealth management segment. This position was reached with the help of 200 years of experience of BNP Paribas Group in several markets. We reached it through application of the One Bank approach, and we want to strengthen this position through focus on the most wealthy population in Poland. We will do that through our expertise and through delivery of solutions, which will help our customers to invest their assets in Poland and abroad. So the retail strategy is about growth, profitability supported by technology. Now I'm inviting to the stage, Agnieszka Wolska, who will share with you the strategy in corporate banking.

Ladies and gentlemen, a lot has been said already by Przemek and Piotr on SME and corporate banking. So let me add some few practical notes. But before we enter into strategy, I will also focus on trends shaping the playground because they are very important. One thing that has been already said and is obvious to you is that the GDP will grow above 3% in the projected period. The second thing is that the growth will be mainly backed on the investment, and this is a novelty. But the fact is that the 3% growth is a benchmark growth on both European and global scale. And this, combined with investment, makes Poland a very interesting and attractive place to be by not only local but also global business. And why am I saying this? Well, this is simple. Our participants of this market evolve. And what we see is actually a steady rise of foreign-owned entities dominating the corporate market. Among the large corporate, we have already 46% of companies being owned by foreign entities. This is the one trend. And the second one is the consolidation of our local players in order to be able to compete and to find its way. And this is actually a very important thing because you cannot talk about corporate banking in the isolation of its international angle. So corporate banking in Poland is no longer local. And that actually creates a very good space for BNP Paribas Bank Polska, who is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas Group, the biggest EU banking group to play its role and grow in the years to come. So how we are going to do this? And why am I confident? Let's talk business. In BNP Paribas, we are dividing our clients into 3 main segments. One is MNC, meaning international clients. The second one are Polish corporates, so starting from mid-corporates to large corporates and CIB entities. And the third group of clients is actually SME. Let me focus first on the first 2 group of clients, meaning MNC and Polish corporates. Our goal is very simple. We want to grow market share from 8.3% to 10%. The second one is that we want to be #1 in terms of international companies. Why we are confident that we will get there? Well, corporate banking is actually quite easy. So you have to have 3 elements: One, the access, the access to decision-makers. Secondly, you have to create the value added because these companies are very often bigger and smarter than you are. And the third thing that you have to have is the balance sheet. I'll not talk about balance sheet. Balance sheet is a commodity, and we see it everywhere. So I'll focus on access and value added. On the access side, as I mentioned, we are part of BNP Paribas Group. And what does it mean? Our mother actually banks with over 60% of large corporates in Europe. It effectively means that if somebody is or comes to Poland, we are most probably already banking with them somewhere else. And this, in conjunction with MNC franchise, which we created here, so full dedicated network designed to service international clients. We are able to establish both local and global relationship. And this is unique. When it comes to Polish corporate, here, the route is a little bit different. So what you actually have to have is the access to UBO -- to the owner. Volo just mentioned that we have been building our wealth management services, and we are #1 in Poland. And what does it mean? It means actually that we have a very good access to UBO. If you combine this with the fact that our M&A services have just been named the best CEE M&A house for the third time in a row, that somehow passes the message that we can talk to whoever we want to at the level we want to. Now the access is there. How about the value added? So first thing, and that goes without saying, we have full access to all BNP Paribas Group instruments. So we can really service the most sophisticated cash management solutions, including international cash pool. We are the best -- we have the best treasury services. We are #1 in terms of factoring. We are #1 in terms of Arval, and we have also established a very good area of value-added specialized financing, structured finance, real estate. And I guess not all of you know that we have also equity inside. So we are investing into equity tickets of Polish corporates. Now -- so that's the story on MNC and Polish Corporate. Let's move further to SME. I bet some of you still think that we do have a huge legacy of budget. Well, you are somehow wrong. We have a big heritage of budget by having a leading position in farmers, and that's true because we have 25% market share, but the legacy is gone. And this is actually the work of the last few years. So what I want you to remember about SME franchise in BNP Paribas Bank Polska is the following. First thing is that it's very efficient. Secondly, it's very profitable. And the third thing is that we want to continue it this way. And we know how to boost revenues because here with farmers, we will bet of regenerative agriculture, we will decarbonize the value chain, and we have unique insight into what is happening from field to fork. So we are working with farmers and integrators. When it comes to traditional SME, we are able right now to compete on loans, cash management. And by the way, we are probably the strongest in host -- to host for SMEs, plus our treasury services goals are unmatched. And here, our biggest goal and the reflection of our ambition is actually to create SME self-service index. Why this one? Well, we believe that SME wants to handle their banking services on their own and leave only the value-added, the big things to relationship managers. And this is actually our ambition to ensure this is happening. Now let's move to the last piece of the puzzle, meaning operational excellence. A few years ago, you would probably not hear a lot of corporate bankers talking about operational excellence because everything is based on relation. It's not anymore. It has to be effective. It has to be frictionless. It has to be stable and it has to ensure a good quality of customer journey. So when you look on SME and corporate market, there are 4 main pieces of the puzzle that you have to have correct. First one is e-banking solution. The second one is remote onboarding KYC recertification process. The third one is credit process and the fourth one is advanced CRM ecosystem. I'm glad and to be quite honest -- quite proud to say that we have the 3 first puzzles in place. So we did the new credit workflow, we did the e-banking system, and we did the KYC onboarding recertification process. All are simplified, streamlined, new one with the loan processes with decision engine. And by the way, we have probably the first one on the market decision engine for farmers, which is unique. And what we will be investing in further. It's not the end of our journey. We right now are focusing on advanced CRM, which we are actually finalizing right now. So we'll be having both operational and analytical AI-based CRM. We believe that boosting RM capacity is a key in this market simply. And then we will continue our journey with -- on the lending side with adding instant lending because we see how the market is evolving. And last but not least, and also in view on our important role for MNC, we are rebuilding totally our payment and transactional banking solutions. So starting from the backbone, and Magda will talk about it a little bit more in the future. So payment factory to the front end when we did the e-banking almost 100%, and we will supplement it further with mobile in the projected period. So this is the end of the story for SME and corporate banking. The message is clear. We know who we want to bank with. We want -- we know what kind of a value added we can offer, and we are ready to grow. Thank you very much. Malgorzata Dabrowska.

We're aiming to grow in customer numbers in loan volumes in -- with better NBI and cost management under strict control. There is no growth possible, no efficiency possible without technology. We will -- we aim to invest in it further. With great progress that we've already made with digitalization, in automation, in robotization, in process management, we will continue our journey with AI solution adoptions. At the moment, we already have this journey through a few years -- since a few years ago. At the moment, we are ready to test and train AI models. AI technology is developing -- is evolving at unprecedented pace. That's why predicting the speed of direction of its development is quite challenging or even impossible. During our strategic horizon of 2026 and 2030, we are absolutely sure that new potential will emerge. We will leverage on it. Testing and discovering the potential of AI is, at the moment, the most important part. Here, we are presenting just a few examples of the ideas that we are exploring at the moment. They are in the different stage. Some of them are already on production. Some are at the proof-of-concept stage and some are in the, let's say, conceptual phase. And please bear in mind that the situation is really changing from quarter-to-quarter. My colleagues already mentioned a few examples of the AI solution, which can boost the better relation with the customer to, let's say, increase the customer experience. They are related to certain tailored offering or better advisers that we can give to the customers. I will then mention on 2 examples which are more invisible to the customer. One is related to financial security. We are developing the AI-powered solution to process anti-money laundering alerts with greater accuracy faster to enable us focus on the cases which truly matters, both for us and for customers. Another key example would be document -- intelligent document processing. Here, we are building the smart engine, which is capable of rapidly accessing and processing and analyzing vast amount of customer document data and delivering the comprehensive insight within the second. What client will see? Client will see the faster, smoother customer journey with no delays and no friction. I would like to underline, however, that it's less about having the absolute best use case today. It is more about having the organization that is well integrated and agile and capable of onboarding the new technologies quickly whenever we believe that it can bring value to the customer and to our shareholders. I'm sure that our technological and structural ability to absorb and enhance new technology is one of our core enablers to deliver the strategy with customer in mind. Of course, AI implementation depends on data and our ability to process it quickly, therefore -- and efficiently, of course. Therefore, the robust, scalable technology infrastructure is of an essence. Having said that, I will invite to the stage, Magdalena Nowicka.

Technology was mentioned so many times today. So I hope that there is no doubt that this train will not move without technology. And yes, indeed, technology is critical important for the new strategy delivery. But passengers traveling by these high-speed trains, do not think about technology, which is installed within the train. They simply believe that this is secure, reliable and they have extremely pleasant customers' experience. And we've got the same ambition. In this era of this rapid changes everywhere, we think that technology should be resilient first and relevant always. What it means. Let's start with relevant. Relevant this is the proper usage of data and hyperpersonalization experience. It was mentioned many times by my colleagues. Vova said, for example, that we'll prepare the best offer for retail customers, and the first distribution model will be mobile by usage our Gomobile application. We will develop it further, but it will be our main channel to contact with the clients. For example, we are planning also to install new systems, very model based on cloud powered by AI for contact center. For SME and corporate clients to help them navigate comfortable through this very complex banking services we'll develop, for example, new CRM, best-in-class very model also from cloud and also powered by AI. I'd like to stress here that for the last few years, we changed very much our technological ecosystem, delivering a lot of new features and functionalities. And what Agnieszka mentioned, for example, we are having for corporate clients best-in-class e-banking solution. But what about the engine within the train, the main one, which our passengers do not see. This is the core technology. And here, 3 priorities for coming strategy period. First one, digital ecosystem fortification. We improved a lot stability of our systems and maturity of the ecosystem in total. For example, we decreased number of serious incidents by 90%. Stability is very, very good, and we will continue this trend to secure even more with resilient service to the clients. Second, cybersecurity. We are very well recognized on the market. Maturity is very high. Let me stress here that we are part of BNP Paribas Group, which is very major as well, and we are creating the one ecosystem. This maturity in the cybersecurity respect is well recognized in the market. Even this year, we received a few rewards. We'll continue this trend to maintain it even higher level and our clients can be sure that everything is well managed and controlled. And the third one, core banking transformation. This is also the continuation from the previous strategy when we built ecosystem in the modular architecture. The first 2 elements are already on production, very modern payment factor and Customer 360 system. We'll continue this, and by this we will achieve efficiency and speed. And yes, this resilience and being relevant to the clients, this is the most important. So we are promising this to the clients, that traveling with us, being with us, you will have a secure journey, very pleasant one, even if we have 1 million customers more. So we are prepared. And by the way, have you noticed that our train is green. Why is that? Przemek Gdanski will elaborate.

Thank you, Magda. We talked already quite a bit about sustainability, about ESG. And this is in the core of our values in the core of our beliefs. But it's not only about believing in something, it's very much about being able to convert those beliefs into business opportunities. And there are 2 primary areas where we see growth and additional volume of business as well as revenue. First, energy transition, which I have elaborated upon quite extensively before. Connected to that is decarbonization of the economy of different branches of economy and then individual projects and initiatives aimed at energy efficiency at producing energy from renewable sources. And that's where we believe big investments will be required, and we are ready to support those. The second element is related to our core specialty, which is agriculture, 25% market share, a significant share with food producers. We embrace the whole value chain, and we are determined to support our agriculture clients in their transformation towards more regenerative models. Those models, ways of operating farms guarantee higher and more stable output but also require initial investments. And oftentimes, farmers require banking support, not only in terms of money, which we have plenty of, but also in terms of professional advice with the usage of model technology through cooperation with start-ups with whom we cooperate and we have actually invested. So on one hand, the whole industry with a special emphasis on the energy sector, on the other hand, agriculture. Next to that, we'll be exploring 2 additional areas. One is biodiversity. The other one is water management. Those are not well-defined areas for business, but we believe that with our conviction and with our expertise, we'll manage to define additional growth pockets also in those 2 areas that I've just mentioned. Moving on, people. People, I don't like this term, but it's often said that people represent the most important asset of the bank -- of our bank. We believe that we have a great team already. We believe that our people are engaged. We believe that our people are committed, together with the management team to realize the strategy and to reach an overwhelming success. We'll continue strengthening the culture that we've been building over the last years, the culture very much based on inclusiveness, on diversity on empowerment and fundamental teamwork. We have defined 5 core values together with our people. We've been promoting those values that guide us in our everyday life. I used to say that empowerment is my favorite value. In the context of the new strategy, I'm changing that a little bit towards cooperation. We need to do it together, and we are determined that we will do it together. We are creating a performance-driven environment. We are training people in technology adoption. We'll intensify that with a special emphasis on AI technologies, want everyone working for us to be skilled and confident how technology can help them in daily work, how it can improve our results, how it can improve our efficiency. So we'll be investing in training of people, in reskilling, in strengthening the technological competencies. At the same time, our workplace is flexible, will remain flexible. We view that as a competitive advantage. We believe that hybrid work works even though we like people coming to our lovely offices and spending time together, but we are not very dogmatic on that front, and that's what many of our colleagues pretty much appreciate. And then finally, we'll invest in various technological tools, including self-service applications for employees as to make their experience as colleagues smooth, pleasant and free of any problems and challenges. So in the strategy, which is very much business orientated, people are pretty much in the center and only with people we can make it happen. Now we are slowly yet surely moving towards the end of the formal presentation. I have the privilege of summarizing what we have said so far and what we are going to do in the next 5 years, starting January 1, 2026. Briefly, on the retail banking front, we will increase our market share in current accounts, i.e., with clients who want to transact with us actively about 5%. We'll increase our market share in lending aiming at the share in new production of cash loans at the level of 8%. We will acquire -- well, we'll increase the number of our clients, those who want to bank with us by 1 million on a net basis through a number of measures that were well explained by Vova not that long ago. On the corporate banking front, where we are strong already, we'll get stronger in terms of MNCs, reaching #1 position, there's no question about it, utilizing the solutions, products, skills, competencies and finally, the vast network of BNP Paribas Group to a greater extent and will maintain an efficient SME platform with lots of automation, technology and self-service. On the efficiency, we'll continue investments. We'll deploy AI through a number of use cases, leading to very tight cost management, which we have already proven, we are pretty good at and will not get any worse. Hopefully, we'll get even better. And we will continue working on our core banking system as to ensure that it becomes a modern ecosystem yet at any point in time, very resilient, very safe and operating on an uninterrupted basis. And finally, values are important, combining impact with income gives us opportunities to further expand in the broad ESG context, which will, on one hand, strengthen our position as a very responsible market participant, but at the same time, providing new volume of business. Numbers that you've seen, you saw them at the beginning, you'll see them -- you are seeing them at the end of the presentation. We'll keep them on the screen during the Q&A session. Briefly, plus 7% growth of our loan book above the market, 7% in total, which is above the market level anticipated by us, plus 6% CAGR on NBI or revenue, further efficiency improvement with cost income falling below 38%, ROTE, 22%, well above the cost of equity and dividends to be paid every single year with a goal of a 75% dividend payout ratio in 2030. To get there, we need more retail clients, we need to expand our market share, and we need to support the Polish economy and Polish individual clients with additional sustainable lending. We, as the team, and I personally are confident we can do that. We know it's ambitious. We know it's aspirational. I would like you to believe in us, keep your fingers crossed and in a minute, we'll be ready for all questions that you may have. For now, thank you very much. Thank you for your attention. That was, say, a bit more passive part of the meeting. Now let's move to the more active exchange of ideas. So the floor is yours. We are getting questions from online. [indiscernible] will help us with those. But let's have the preference for the questions straight from the audience here.

Do we have questions from audience?

If not, let's warm up with questions from...

Thank you for your very interesting presentation. I really appreciate the clear way in which you explained it. What is the starting point? How you understand environment, drivers of your business and what is your plan what to do? I have actually only one question on assumptions because I don't understand why you assume loan growth to be below nominal growth in GDP. And at the same time, you talk about investment boom. So -- only this one question on assumptions.

Okay. Thanks for the question, Jay. I will start, but I may use the opportunity of having Michal Dybula here, our Chief Economist, who may want to supplement my response. Our assumption for the whole period of the new strategy, i.e., 2026, 2030 is an average loan volume growth of 4%. We don't think it will be even throughout the period. We expect it to be somewhat higher in the first years of the strategy, somewhat lower towards the end. And on average, 4% stands above our anticipation when it comes to GDP. Is it conservative? Well, is that -- we can debate that. It's actually in line with at least one other bank that not that long ago published and presented its 5-year strategy. Actually, interestingly enough, their loan growth assumption for the same period was identical to ours. Michal, would you like to supplement my response?

Yes. Thank you very much, and thank you for the question, Michal Dybula, hello. I guess we have to take into account a lot of things. First of all, we are talking here about other residents, which is -- well, not only including the corporates and households in the form of PLN housing loans and consumer loans. Please bear in mind that the housing stock portfolio and denominated in Swiss is still coming down. That is depressing the overall dynamics in terms of the overall volume growth of credit. Second thing is -- well, it's a micro segment there where you look and that also goes into the part of other residents is contracting. I do not personally see any reason to see a turnaround there, right? I mean the best case would be to see a stabilization in this loan volumes but probably the more realistic view is that we're going to see the extrapolation of this declining trend moving forward. And the last thing -- and maybe not the last thing. Another thing is -- and I probably mentioned that or you have seen that during the presentation. Please bear in mind, the next couple of years will also bring us a relatively huge fiscal deficit, of which part of that is related to investment spending of the overall government sector. That's also credit. It's not private sector credit, it's public sector credit, but that doesn't necessarily pertain into the private sector growth numbers for credit that we have shown here on this slide. And the last element, which is important is a bit structural about market in Poland here. So relatively fragmented banking sector. That effectively means that the ability of single institutions to fund large investment projects is relatively limited. Therefore, you see that to a good degree, funding of large investment projects is carried out by banks, but unfortunately, not domestic banks, but foreign banks. So even if the deals are being set up here locally by various institutions, they ultimately, for capital adequacy reasons, for instance, are booked somewhere else, and that is in the numbers here as well. I hope that gets the answer to your question, right?

Perhaps a small remark from my side. Our conviction is that we'll grow faster than the market. So if the market is growing faster than the anticipated level of 4%, we'll also grow faster than what we put in the current version of strategy.

Do we have any other questions from the audience? If not, let's move to...there is, okay.

Hello. My name is [indiscernible]. And I would like to ask about 2 things. First one is what's your approach to the growing fintech market and digital banking. So we are talking about Zen, Revolut. And how do you plan to win the battle for the customer with those institutions? And my second question is, is there any space in your strategy for acquiring another financial institution, of course, smaller to scale the growth?

Thank you for the 2 questions. I'll take them. First, neobanks. I wouldn't call them even fintechs, Revolut, which is the neobank of the 21st century has actually more retail clients than any other bank in Europe. It's 49 million, unless I'm slightly mistaken. It's a powerhouse in terms of the number of clients. But the question is, what is the nature of those relationships? Are they complete? Are they multiproduct? Do people feel confident to put their lifetime savings with a digital bank based on a Lithuanian license. That's a question mark. We do observe Revolut very carefully. We've had a few workshops totally dedicated to their model. We'll not copy that. This is the most successful neo financial institution in history, and they will have their place in the landscape. But I believe there is also a sufficient place for banks that combine new technology with, shall we say, human touch. We want to deploy people, technology and multichannel approach for the benefit of our clients, plus with the scale, the brand name. We believe that we are better positioned to attract savings and investments of clients who shall not be afraid that anything wrong may happen to us. On the second question, please note that our strategy is entirely built around organic growth. We are not planning to acquire another bank, that's not foreseen. We believe that we have built sufficient scale to accelerate and grow even faster. We would not exclude investments into new business models, fintechs, start-ups, new technologies, as we've done with a couple of start-ups that we have then adopted into the way we operate. But I don't think it is likely that we would enter the M&A market with other financial institutions.

Okay. Thank you. So I understand no more questions from audience. So we move to questions from online. S&P Global Market Intelligence. What will be the main headwinds and risk for the Polish banking sector and other banking sectors in Central Europe in 2026?

That's a very good question, headwinds. There are areas where I don't see headwinds, especially when it comes to the economic growth and the investment needs. Certainly, I would mention 2 aspects. One is the geopolitical situation as much. As we see opportunities when the war ends, we do not know when and how it's going to happen. And as long as the situation remains unclear, many entrepreneurs or companies are postponing their investments, are building cash cushions, play it more conservatively, and that may impact the growth opportunities, especially when it comes to the lending market and the lending growth. So it's, on one hand, a headwind with which we've been already living for almost 4 years. On the other hand, when it ends, it represents a tangible opportunity. Another thing I want to mention is related to politics and regulations. We've just got the decision of the parliament signed by the President to pay much higher corporate income tax. And what's very unfortunate about it and very unfair in my opinion, is that this decision refers to the banking sector exclusively. We understand the budget deficit. We understand the needs of the country to invest, to spend more on defense, but we do not understand why only one industry, the critical one needs to contribute directly from their earnings, otherwise attributable to the shareholders. It's a wrong solution, but it shows that the Polish government as well as the parliament, look at banks in a certain specific way, which does not give us much of optimism when it comes to the future. Having said that, I'd like to assume that since it's done already, nothing else will happen. But let's face it. Throughout Europe, the scale of budgetary deficits has been growing. The defense requires greater spending. Poland with close to 5% of GDPs among market leaders. But in many other countries, they need to spend more and they need to find the money. So one way would be to somehow get inspired by the Polish case. I do not wish our neighbors and other sea countries to follow the path. But that's certainly a risk that cannot be totally excluded. And if we combine it with the growing trend towards populism throughout Europe, well, I would say that political/regulatory/fiscal risk in its totality is one of the possible headwinds.

Okay. Next question, [indiscernible] Securities. You want not interest revenues to grow faster than NII. Which business areas do you see are most promising, bancassurance, capital market, FX?

I'll start, but I will look at my colleagues. Certainly, honestly, it's not a big challenge to grow noninterest revenue faster in an interest rate falling environment. We are the leader in treasury products. We call it global markets where we hope to continue growth, and we have delivered that growth over the last several years on a very consistent basis. So that's definitely the area. We have a very interesting project, an investment project together with our sister company, Cardif, that is aimed at increasing insurance or bancassurance-related revenue. We will not talk more about it at this stage, but it's a project which we have pretty significant hopes for. Greater lending activity, focus on transactionality should also generate fee-related income connected with credits, but also with cash management, trade finance, the overall payment. Magda mentioned payment factor, which was a very considerable investment into the platform, allowing us to process in a smooth, totally automated and reliable way, a large number of transactions, but also to set up complex cash management solutions. So that's yet another area where I expect fee and commission income to go up. Have I missed anything?

Banking, investments.

Investments. That's important. Thank you, Vova. We are -- the Polish population is getting richer. There's more money in the system. This money will be invested in TFIs, in asset management, in other structured instruments. We've noted a very high growth in that category, and that's very likely to continue. That's pure interest revenue with an infinitive return on equity deployed.

And on corporate side?

I mentioned the lending activity by Agnieszka will take over, sorry.

That's okay. So much you covered, so I have not much to add. Apart from the fact that we have really installed a very good specialized financing area in which we are having structured finance, real estate M&A, which is very growing and capital investments. So despite the fact that this -- the last one, meaning capital investment is not a big one, that's very profitable one, and has a lot of fees. Plus it's the way how we manage the customer. We manage the overall kind of profitability and relation and looking for overall kind of product and return on the customer.

Maybe one element which is an important one. We were talking about the increase of 1 million customers. A major part of these customers will be with current account with daily banking relationship, and this directly means more fees.

I think that is a very team-driven answer to that question.

Yes. So we go to the last question, [indiscernible]. Is the bank planning to introduce digital mortgage like other Polish banks?

Vova, you or me? I'm happy to answer that.

Your wish.

Okay. I'll try and you help. We are currently not working on introducing the digital mortgage. We believe that for our customers, for mortgage borrowers, it's not the issue whether it's digital or whether it requires sending some papers. It's about the speed of the decision-making process and financial parameters. We fine-tuned the process. We stay at an attractive level, carefully monitoring the market on a daily basis. And we have a whole list of priority technological investments. For now, we don't believe that digital mortgage should be somewhere near the top of that list.

The market is driven actually by the brokers right now. So we have set of them partnering with us. We think that it will be continued like that. And of course, we will continue to work on the processes related to the mortgage. We'll improve the efficiency, but in the setup, which we actually have right now, we consider that it is quite efficient.

It was the last question from the online. Question whether the last questions from audience?

Our esteemed guests. Not every one of you was at the event last night, where many questions were asked and answers provided. You will still have a chance because after this, we can share a cup of coffee and continue in a less formal setting. So if there are no further questions, I'd like to ask you sincerely for being here with us, for listening to our story. As I said before, keep your fingers crossed and will be updating you how we are doing vis-a-vis the strategic targets and trajectory on a very transparent and very regular basis. Thank you very much and have a Merry Christmas and all the best in New Year. Thank you.