PT Bank Mandiri (Persero) Tbk (BMRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Please send your questions via e-mails afterwards, and we'll try our best to reply to your question as soon as we can. Now to start, I would like to hand the presentation over to Pak Darmawan, our CEO. Please, Darmawan.

Thank you, Lau. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to start by going into the macroeconomic aspects that are shaping our current landscape. Overall, we see a relatively stable economic growth rate of 5.05% in 2023 and expect a similar rate of growth in 2024 as we expect a robust interplay of factors, including increased household spending and government expenditure. Moreover, we still see a relatively stable inflation in first quarter 2024 at 3.05% level, in line with BI target. However, a weakening currency has pushed BI to increase the reference rate by 25 basis points to 6.25% level, which we expect to come back to 6% level towards the end of the year. Moving to banking industry. Tight liquidity environment remains as the key challenge during first quarter 2024, with industry deposit growth being lower than loan growth at 7.44% and 12.4%, respectively. However, Bank Mandiri commitment to grow above industrial level has brought loan and deposit growth at 20.1% and 13.6%, respectively, at bank-only level. Next, we have a slide providing a summary of the bank's consolidated performance in first quarter of 2024, showcasing positive trends in most metrics. Despite the challenges around funding cost, Bank Mandiri was able to maintain a positive growth both in PPOP and net profit level. In first quarter of 2024, our consolidated net profit after-tax and minorities interest grew by 1.13% year-on-year, while the pre-provision operating profit grew by 1.28% year-on-year. These figures were driven by a strong and healthy loan growth of 19.1% year-on-year as well as CASA growth of 13% year-on-year. However, the prolonged tight liquidity in the system have notably put pressures on cost of fund and subsequently, on our net interest margin. Our consolidated NIM is at 5.07% level. That is 33 basis points lower than the first quarter of 2023 level of 5.4%. Furthermore, a solid cost management strategy and well-managed provision expense has maintained our return on equity at around 20%. These figures reflect our commitment to delivering sustainable and healthy financial performance and value to our shareholders. Moving to the strength and challenges. In the first quarter of 2024, loan growth of 19%, which came well above our guidance, was obviously a strength. It is worth noting that our loan growth came with a very stable yield. However, with the pressures in cost of funds due to tight liquidity situation and the recent BI rate hike, our NIM stands at 5.07%, lower than initial guidance of 5.3% to 5.5%. Looking at the trend, we have decided to revise our NIM guidance to 5% to 5.3% level for the full year 2024. Furthermore, our cost of credit is also very much in line with our guidance, closer to the lower range at 1.05%. Another strength during the first quarter was our saving deposit that also grew strongly at 11% year-on-year, meaningfully above the industry levels. Throughout the last few years, we have been consistent with our strategy. Our ecosystem value chain strategy anchors on leveraging Bank Mandiri's core strengths, our corporate relationship. These partnerships drive the value chain execution, capturing our clients, suppliers, distributors, employees and more. This is why our dominance in corporate plays a very important role in this strategy. As such, Bank Mandiri has been developing extensive internal capabilities and competencies to ensure our dominance in corporate remains uninterrupted. To sustain our leading position in corporate, we lean into our strengths, including pivotal wholesale digital enablers and our top talent relationship managers who have become our client partners for decades. From the right-hand chart, we can see the fruits of our hard work. Through our commitments, Bank Mandiri has secured this prominent position with consistent above-industry wholesale loan growth for the last few years, and we ended the last quarter at 25.1% year-on-year compared to the aggregate top banks. We started off strong in the first quarter of 2024, and we will keep this trajectory going in the coming quarters. It is also worth noting that the asset quality for wholesale is top class since the last few years with a net NPL formation of 0.34% in the first quarter of 2024, lower than the bank-only net NPL formation at 1.57%. Next, I would like to go into our strong loan growth performance since the start of 2024. As previously touched upon, our high bank-only loan growth year-on-year in March 2024 was largely driven by our wholesale banking, which grew 25.1% year-on-year. The strong loan growth in wholesale segment is the implication of our commitment to maintain wholesale dominance that is important for our overall value chain ecosystem strategy. Next, some of our retail segment loan growth also accelerated above industry level. Beyond this, our subsidiaries have also been significant in driving our consolidated loan growth. It is important to highlight that our strong loan growth is also followed by good quality pricing reflected in the increase of the loan interest income, resulting in stable yield, as you can see on the top right chart. It is also worth noting that the quality of our wholesale loan growth, as evidenced by both the loan at risk and net NPL formation ratio trending lower over time. Next, on margin. Despite our strong loan growth and stable loan yield, the prolonged tight liquidity environment is an undeniable challenge in the first quarter. This environment has put pressures on our cost of funds, up by 16 basis points since last quarter, increasing to 2.11% in the first quarter of 2024. In particular, the increase was driven by time deposits and demand deposit, with time deposit cost of fund rising to 3.44% and current account cost of fund rising to 2.88%. On the other hand, our saving deposit has done its role well by maintaining a flat cost of fund at mere 47 basis points despite growing by 10.6% year-on-year, meaningfully above industry level. Going forward, we will focus the growth of saving deposit from transaction and digital penetration. The higher cost of fund has resulted in pressures in our NIM, going down to 5.07% on a consolidated basis versus 5.15% in fourth quarter 2023. Following this, we have decided to revise our NIM guidance for 2024 to 5.0% to 5.3% in order to better reflect the current macroeconomic environment. We believe we will see a better quarter in second half as market liquidity improves. To manage our NIM in the tight liquidity situation, Bank Mandiri has continued its strategy on the funding side to focus on growing high-quality deposits. From the left-hand chart, we can see that our saving deposit consistently outgrew the industry time after time. The more interesting message to be highlighted is from the line at the top of the chart, highlighting that the multiplier of Bank Mandiri's savings deposit growth relative to the industry level growth increases more and more with every passing quarter. In the first quarter of 2021, we grew 1.03x higher than industry. Through our digital enabler living, we were able to grow 1.15x higher than industry in the first quarter of 2022. This trend has continued to grow exponentially, whereby in the last quarter, we grew 4.51x above industry. With our saving deposits growth above industry, we continue to gain saving deposit market share. Moreover, this market share gain was done while keeping our saving deposits cost of funds flow, indicating strong evidence of our solid saving deposit franchise. On asset side, we have also recalibrated our interest-earning asset compositions to manage our NIM. Prior to COVID-19, our loan to interest earning asset ratio was at 75.6%. With the low loan demand between 2020 and 2022, we focused on optimizing our liquidity by increasing our placement in bonds, resulting in our loan to interest earning asset ratio to decrease to 63.4% in 2022. From 2023 onwards, our loan to interest earning assets ratio starts to increase again as we save our composition back to loans, which have higher yield [ than ] bonds than other interest-earning assets. In 2024, we have continued this strategy and increased our ratio to 72.5%. From the right-hand chart, we can see that this has resulted in our loan growth outpacing the growth of interest earning assets since 2022. As a result, we are able to maximize the yield of interest-earning assets to offset the increase in cost of deposit. As we are a wholesale bank with a large treasury portfolio, another important liquidity ratio besides ILDR that must be considered as macroprudential intermediary ratio, or MIR, which takes into account all the other IEAs, not only loans, which is in line with BI approach. Currently, our MIR is stable at 86.3% level, in line with BI MIR range at 84% to 94%, providing ample room for growth. Next, I would like to address the topic of asset quality. Over the past couple of years, we have achieved consistent improvement in our loan address ratio, which now stands at 8.43% as of March 2024, lower than pre-profit level. Similarly, our credit costs have been well maintained reaching 1.05% in March 2024. Even more importantly, we have maintained a healthy level of coverage through our loan loss reserve against our assets. As shown in the right-hand chart, our nonperforming loan coverage remained high at 318% for consolidated level and 368% for bank-only level, indicating a strong buffer against potential losses. Additionally, our consolidated loans at risk coverage stands at robust 45%, further underlining our prudent approach to risk management. These positive indicators reflect our commitment to maintaining a sound and resilient asset quality, which is essential for sustainable growth and mitigating potential risk. Our continuous effort to monitor and strengthen our asset quality will remain a top priority to ensure the stability and long-term success of the business. Finally, I would like to recap on our consolidated guidance for 2024. First, we maintain our loan growth guidance at the range of 13% to 15%. This conservative outlook takes into account tight liquidity situation. Second, our NIM guidance that was initially 5.3% to 5.5% is revised to 5% to 5.3%. We expect liquidity to remain challenging and, therefore, a conservative approach would be needed. Lastly, we maintain our cost of credit guidance at 1.0% to 1.2%. Now, I would like to pass on the presentation to Pak Sigit, our CFO. Please, Pak Sigit?

Thank you, Pak Darmawan. Ladies and gentlemen, now allow me to run through our financial highlights. In first quarter of 2024, our loan grew by 19.1% year-on-year, while our bonds and other assets declined by minus 5.2% and minus 17%, respectively. This shows our effort to optimize the composition of interest-earning assets to get higher yield, as mentioned by Pak Darmawan. As a result, total asset increased by 13.4% year-on-year. On the liability side, demand deposits grew by 16.3% year-on-year and savings grew by 10.6% year-on-year for a combined CASA growth of 13.3% year-on-year. With this, consolidated CASA ratio stands at 74.4% as of March 2024. On the P&L side, net interest income still grew by 5.11% year-on-year despite challenges in liquidity and also cost of funds. Noninterest income was down by minus 1.56% year-on-year driven mainly by nonrecurring income from cash recoveries normalized after the large one-off in 2023. Total revenue grew by 3.32% year-on-year to IDR 34.3 trillion, along with a manageable growth in operational costs of 6.81% year-on-year, resulting consolidated cost-to-income ratio maintained in 38.2%. PPOP was 1.28% higher as of March 2024 compared to the same period last year, which helped net profit to grow by 1.13% year-on-year to IDR 12.7 trillion as of March 2024. Next, on ratios. As previously mentioned, our net interest margin is under pressure due to a tight liquidity environment, reaching 5.07% in first quarter of 2024. Our consolidated cost-to-income ratio improved on a Q-on-Q basis due to seasonality, whereby the first quarter OpEx is normally the lowest in the year. Our return on equity stands at 19.7%, within our target of around 20%. We expect return on equity to pick up in the upcoming quarters to be above 20% level. With regard to liquidity, our consolidated loan-to-deposit ratio is at 88%, providing room for growth. Asset quality-wise, our NPL and loan at risk saw an improvement at 1.17% and 8.43%, respectively. The next slide saw the group's loan and deposit breakdown. Loan growth in March 2024 was led by corporate segment at 27.9% year-on-year; commercial segment at 19.8% year-on-year; SME, 12.6% year-on-year; consumer, 10.8%; and micro, 10.4%. Our subsidiaries also contributed meaningfully to loan growth with 15.6% year-on-year growth, leading to the total loan growth of 19.1% year-on-year for the group. On deposit, growth focused largely on the [ chip ] funding, such as saving deposits and demand deposits, as you can see on the right-hand chart. Next, on net interest margin analysis. The bank-only loan yield remained steady in the first quarter 2024, while the increase in the cost of fund brings pressure to the net interest margin by product, both CASA, by product. Cost of time deposits and the demand deposit increase as the bank is optimizing market liquidity to achieve above industry loan growth. However, it is worth to note that our cost of savings remains stable at 47 basis points, bringing total cost of deposits around 2.11%. Moving to the yield of loan. It can be seen that corporate yield has increased since last quarter, while commercial and retail yield remained flat. The bottom right chart shows the NIM of the bank-only as well as the key subsidiaries, BSI and Bank Mantap. Overall, due to the rising cost of fund, our consolidated net interest margin stand at 5.07% as of March 2024. As we continue repricing wholesale loan while focusing on saving account growth and reducing the portion of specialty deposit when liquidity improve, we expect our net interest margin to improve in the coming quarters. On the cost side, we were able to maintain healthy low single-digit growth on the operational expense at 5.33% year-on-year at the bank-only level. On the consolidated level, OpEx grew by 6.81% year-on-year. Overall, our consolidated cost to asset ratio improved to 2.42% with cost-to-income ratio at 38.2%. Now allow me to run through some update on the asset quality trend in the first quarter 2024. Overall, the indicator that you can see on this slide are showing positive progress for the group. Our loan at risk ratio is already below pre-COVID level at 8.43% with consolidated loan at risk coverage ratio at 44.5%. Our consolidated NPL ratio stands at 1.17% and is well covered with 318% NPL coverage ratio. Furthermore, our consolidated credit costs remained healthy at 1.05%. Next, on this slide, I would like to update regarding our capital position. In general, Bank Mandiri CAR level was stable at 19% in March 2024 and [ well kept ] with optimal level. On a yearly context, we intend to maintain CAR and Tier 1 capital ratio at around 18% to 20% range in the near to medium term. I would like now to pass on the presentation to Pak Tim, our IT Director, to continue the presentation on our digital initiative. Please, Pak Tim.

Thank you, Pak Sigit. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'll be covering three topics: the first one, Livin'; second, Kopra; and then the third one, in our data. So I think as you can see, Livin' has become our premier gateway for retail transactions. And into our third year, we continue to provide great impact to the market on the capabilities of complete digital account opening and completion of all transactions that is happening in our super app. For Bank Mandiri, now 84% of all new accounts are already opened through Livin'. And of all the addressable customers that we have, 90% is already linked to it. And encouragingly, we see 93% of retail transactions already flowed through the app. Next, with all the strength of premier gateway for retail transactions, we continue to see growth in terms of users and transactions, as you can see on the chart. So the quality of growth has been enormous. In terms of users, we have grown 40% to 24.4 million. In terms of frequency of transactions, we've grown 42%, including also followed by strong value growth and fee-based income that is contributing to the retail segment. Next, I just want to cover very quickly that the reason Livin' has become center stage is our capability to continue to innovate to support the growth to become the transactional app for our retail clients. So to sustain the growth, as you've seen, we have developed more than 110 features anchored on the use cases that you see on the chart on the left. But I'd just like to highlight there are 3 new items that has been positively received by the market. The first one is pay later. Admittedly, we were not the first one to launch. But when we launch, we make sure that we are fully differentiated. And our pay later has got the capability not just being on e-commerce platforms but actually now has become the source of funds for our QR payment. So that would enable us to become the pay later used offline and online. Equally, we linked that. We have a Livin' tap-to-pay. The Livin' tap-to-pay basically allows people not to bring cards and that can be used locally or internationally. And that tap-to-pay can be linked to multicurrency accounts where there are 12 currencies that can be linked to tap-to-pay. So when you're overseas, there will be no need for foreign exchange involved. Next, I think equally, what we are doing in terms of UI/UX, we will continue to elevate the payment experience that we have, and Livin' will continue to be pioneer for innovation in both domestic and international payments for seamless transactions. You can see in our QR, the transaction has grown significantly by 230%, which is 3.3x more than what it was in first quarter 2023. The value has gone up 240%, which is 3.4x more than the first quarter last year. So this equally for the overseas payment transfers, we see significant growth, it's even higher, which is 6.1x more, with transaction value growing astronomically high to 9.2% compared to previous quarter last year. Now moving on, we're going to say that Livin' not only is going to be addressing on the liability side, but we will look into becoming the retail loan hub where the credit has been a standout. And Livin' has been used actively for our credit card installments, for example, that has grown very encouragingly, as you can see on the chart, and steadily increase from 1.7x in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 2022 and then now 2.4x in first quarter 2024. The contribution of, for example, credit card installment, today, we see 86% of all credit card installments are done through Livin' now. So we will continue to move with the loan products from personal loan, credit cards, cash advances, I mentioned about pay later, what's going to be exciting is the continuous innovation where new loan products is going to be featuring next. So we now move on. Basically, what we like to highlight on this slide is, from borrowing to growing, basically, Livin' offers diverse investment options that is going to be extremely important in terms of wealth. So we've got 2 main products there. What I'd like to highlight is 90% of retail customer investments is now done through Livin', 90%. From the bond side, the growth has been phenomenal, 150%, where it's actually 2.5x from the first quarter 2023, with transaction value even more encouraging, 3.4x, which is about 240% from the same period. So mutual funds, equally, has grown very strong. It's 2.3x in terms of frequency and value, again, higher 2.7x, which is about 170%. So I think what's next, as I mentioned before, we will continue with the innovation, and we will come up with exciting new loan products, also with the engagement and loyalty platform. I'd like to just quickly mention, we have actually introduced before the next slide, where we have launched Livin' Merchant in June 2023. Now since launch, we have actually obtained 1.9 million users that have been registered there where the transaction, since the third quarter to now, because only short period, has grown 3x more, which is about 200%. And value, 3.2x more, which is about 220%. What I'd like to focus is this Livin' merchant is differentiated by the fact that it's completely digital where onboarding can be done within 5 minutes, settlement is 3x a day. And for QR, we don't charge MDR. And this is where it's giving us the transaction on. So in this year, we will launch Livin' Merchant with new features, including supply chain and financing services for merchant loans, F&B merchant solutions as well as all payments capability where we can accept all cards. So with that, I think the Livin' Merchant will be reasonably complete. I'm going to move next very fast to cover Kopra. Kopra has become the leading transaction banking platform. And I think as you have followed us, we continue to be the dominant transactional banking for our wholesale clients where we consistently reinforce our position as market leader. And you can see from the gross transaction value where we are vis-a-vis the major banks. So we are easily twice as large. But I'd like to say here where domestically, I think we are confident that we are the largest and the leading bank. But what I would like to underline is we will continue to innovate where we benchmark now with the global players, and we are coming up to make sure that the proposition that we have for Kopra from wholesale digital treasurer, digital working capital, business intelligence and ecosystem partner becomes on par with major player as a global wholesale bank. So next, I would like to just underline the importance of transaction that has been done through the platform where you can see the excitement that we have, it's actually the highly engaged clients give a lot more account balances. So you can see the different lines there. The top are the highly engaged clients where the balances is 65x more than the less active, if you like, or minimal users' activities. So this is why we will continue to drive the utilization and using the right use cases where today, we are happy to report that we have been able to increase the linkages of all current accounts into Kopra up to 93% of our current account. Next, I'd just like to say, as I mentioned before, whilst domestically, we are the leading, we are the largest, we are upfront, but we will assure you that we continue to benchmark to global players. So very coming soon, we will come up with all new transactional experience where Kopra is going to be benchmarked with the global players. I would like to touch my last section very fast on data. [ I can't be talking ] with all these things that we have, actually, the biggest engine behind is data where we continually will be exploring data analytics and AI. What I'd like to highlight to you, I think, is not just a buzz, but we have been running data and analytics in a serious manner. So we will continue. There are two things there we do. Number one is decision-making will be data-driven where that decision-making is going to be based on the core foundation that will continue to improve. And second bit is the people that we have in the digital in terms of data analytics and AI. So you can see that for us, we are reasonably the leading bank with the size of data that we have running all the way with the large client base that we have. For AI, I think, we are leading in terms of as much as GPU is [ various cars ], but we are already securing a number of them with the top NVIDIA H100 and also with the big data of 7 petabytes that we [ land ] and then the cloud capacity infrastructure that we run internally. So last, but not least, is the people that we have will grow by 25% this year. That is where the real sauce, the secret sauce that we have, not just technology but the scientists on the back. Now when we talk about AI, I just want to highlight to you because this can be so broad-based, and we are really focused with three key areas. One is AI we use for business acceleration. For example, the 3,000 contents that we run for hyper-personalization is now done through AI. Two is risk mitigation and operational enhancement. So this is about productivity with an efficiency that we push. And the third one is the booster for productivity. For example, we use AI now for speed to market improved for coding assistant to making sure that our quality is top-notch. So I would like to end here and would like to pass for the next presentation to Ibu Alexandra. Ibu Alexandra, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Pak Tim. Ladies and gentlemen, Bank Mandiri recognizes the importance of integrating ESG into our business and operation. We are committed to lead Indonesia towards a brighter future as a sustainability champion through three strategic pillars: sustainable banking, sustainable operation and sustainability beyond banking. Our ESG journey has been long in the making, and we have achieved several monumental milestones, as shown in the right side of this slide. In 2024, our immediate focus is to establish a robust sustainable financing framework, which falls under our sustainable banking pillar. Furthermore, in the second semester, we will disclose the results of our climate risk stress tests. We will also evaluate our existing sector policies and consistently enhance our environmental and social risk management, or ESRM, in accordance with relevant regulations and best practices. Our sustainable portfolio encompasses two main categories: green financing and social financing. In terms of green financing, Bank Mandiri has notably increased its investment in renewable energy, experiencing a 13% year-on-year growth. Additionally, our portfolio in the palm oil sector has expanded by 16% year-on-year, particularly supported by the micro segment, which includes plasma farmers. As of March 2024, we have provided loans to offer 96,000 farmers. In the area of social financing, Mandiri agents play a crucial role in facilitating the distribution of retail banking products across Indonesia. We are dedicated to enhancing the competitive capacity of micro and small, medium entrepreneurs with a particular focus on empowering women who represent 60% of our total MSME debtors. Our primary aim is to enable them to actively contribute to economic growth. In our operations, we aim to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. In line with this target, we are pleased to report a 17.6% emission reduction since 2019, in particular Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. For Scope 3, we have calculated our finance emissions from our debtors' carbon footprint. This calculation was done using Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financial, or PCAF, standards. Our total finance emission in 2023 is 18.07 million ton on CO2 equivalent, whereby the largest contributors are the energy, steel and oil and gas sectors. This calculation will become a baseline to develop our portfolio mix strategy that aligns with our environmental objectives. Lastly, we are also aiming to empower communities through financial inclusion. We have expanded and facilitated access to finance through digitalization. Livin', Merchant and Kopra serve as our digital enablers to realize this goal. Through digitalization, we believe we can reduce economic disparities driving the economic growth. We are also supporting communities through empowerment programs. For example, we aim to develop young entrepreneurs, migrant workers, MSMEs, farmers and students through programs like Wirausaha Muda Mandiri, Mandiri Sahabatku, Rumah BUMN and Rice Milling Unit and Tabungan Simpanan Pelajar. Diversity is also a main focus for us. We are committed to promote diversity within our office through various initiatives. As of March 2024, our female employees constitute 52% of our total employee, with more than 46% occupying growth above managerial level. This is all for the presentation. I will pass the presentation to Lau for the Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ibu Alexandra, and to all our speakers. Ladies and gentlemen, now we open the section for questions and answers. The first question comes from the line of [ Jishuan Shantil ].

I just have two questions. The 6 percentage point between loan growth and deposit growth, how are we going to increase like that? Are we going to be small on loan growth? Are we going to be [ big ] in deposits or we have more loans which can [ facilitate ] LDR issuance? I just want to understand that.

Thank you, [ Jishuan ]. So I think, if I understand your question correctly, is that there's a 6 percentage point difference between the growth of deposits and the growth of loans, right? And so what's the strategy there? And what is the plan of the bank. So I think there are a couple of things here. The first one is exactly because of that reason, we are actually not revising the loan guidance up. So, if you look at the loan guidance that we have, we're still keeping it at 13% to 15%, which is a lower level compared to the 19% that we have today. The concern that we have is not so much on the demand side of the environment or not so much on the ability of the banks to book loans essentially. But it's more about the idea behind balancing the deposit side of the equation and the loan growth that we are running at. And so, ultimately, everything will depend on the industry growth of deposits. As you see, if we look at the trend of the deposit growth, although today, the growth is still behind that of the loans, but if you look at the growth over the last few months, it has actually been improving, following the liquidity in the market. The M2 growth in the system went from 3% year-on-year in December and then 5% in January and February, and then the March number was 7% year-on-year. And we have a strong belief that the overall liquidity environment will continue to improve, especially in the second half of the year. And so, if we are to end the year with a better loan deposit growth environment in the system then obviously, Mandiri will be able to gain more market share of the deposits. And so the 13% to 14% deposit growth that we are running at today, who knows, might be closing the gap to the high-teens growth in the loan side, right? So ultimately, it's a balance of both. But at this point, we are conservative on the loan growth side, putting 13% to 15%, because of that liquidity environment reason, but if liquidity improves eventually, then obviously, there will be an upside to our loan growth target.

Got it. That's very clear. And second question is on Slide 38, which is the net NPL formation slide. So first quarter this year was robust. The NPL formation increased by about 15% in terms of the percentage. I just want to understand, should we be worried? What's going on there? And how should we [ bring back ] the higher NPL formation year-on-year.

Sorry, [ Jishuan ], we could not hear the voice very clearly. Which segment were you referring to?

I'm referring to Slide 38, which is the table on net NPL formation.

I'm sorry. Sorry, Jishuan, I think we have a technical error from either our side. Let us address your second question separately after the meeting, if that's okay. So we'll move on to the next question coming from the line of [ Ryan Fu ]. So I think there is a technical error as well with Ryan. Maybe we can try Liny Halim from Schroders.

Can I ask to the corporate loan, very strong corporate loan? Where are you in the high loan demand? And how is the loan [ repricing ] going forward? And also, is there any opportunity to reprice up the loans going forward?

Thank you, Ibu Liny. I'll let Pak Sigit address that question.

Thank you, Ibu Liny. Yes, in the first quarter 2024, we see the strong loan growth in wholesale of around 25% year-on-year. And if we see by type, working capital is our driver with 32% growth year-on-year, while investment loan grew by around 14%. We also focus growth on the private sector because in the private sector, our growth in the corporate segment is around 29% year-on-year. And we do not only utilize our limit but also we believe we're gaining market share from other banks. Sector-wise, loan growth is driven by mining, CPO, financial services and also manufacturing, and rupiah is higher than U.S. dollar in the first quarter of 2024. Thank you.

As regard to the repricing, Ibu Liny, the answer is we are revisiting the attempt on repricing. We are analyzing our corporate loans, the reference, and the one that is non-reference. And obviously, with the 25 basis point of rate hike that we just had in the last few days or last week, there is also room there that we might. But I think although repricing is obviously the one thing that we are attempting and we are revisiting here, it is not the base case that we put in to our NIM guidance, so on and so forth. And so the focus on NIM is more on managing the cost of fund through high-quality deposit growth and the recalibration of loan mix from loans versus other interest-earning assets. To give you context on how that could be also meaningful, the recalibration of asset mix, is for instance, if you look at the loan yield right now, we are at around 7% to 7.5% versus other interest-earning assets such as bonds or both corporate and government bonds, which are at 4%, if not 5% yield, and obviously, the placement NPI is just 1%. So we believe that, that strategy will also help the bank to sort of mitigate the impact on NIM from the rising cost of fund environment. The next question comes from the line of Selvie Jusman, Morgan Stanley.

Can you hear me?

Yes. But your voice, the volume is very low, if you could please speak a bit closer to the microphone.

Okay. I can hear myself actually.

Yes, better now.

Okay. Maybe I'll just have like a question. In terms of the savings deposits, they grew about 3% Q-on-Q. I think it looks pretty good. But could you give a little bit more details how much of it come from the bank-only and how much of it come from like the subsidiaries? And also, if you were to look at the trajectory, what kind of like CASA growth do you think you could achieve this year? I think that's my question.

Sure. I'll probably pass on to Pak Tim later on in the context of how we think that our digital initiatives and all that can actually drive this and continue to drive this onward. But before that, I'll just give you some data, which you asked, which is what is the bank-only and what is the subsidiaries, so the bank-only savings deposit growth. Okay. So the bank only savings deposit growth is 10.9% year-on-year in the month of March, 10.9% year-on-year. And the Q-on-Q is 4.1%. So the bank-only is as good as the consolidated, if not better, on a Q-on-Q term. So consolidated is around 3% on Q-on-Q and bank-only is 4.1%. I have to double-check on the subsidiaries bonds, Selvie, but I guess overall, that's how the trend is. So the bank-only is quite strong. Maybe I'll just pass on to Pak Tim as well to talk a bit more on the initiatives that we have on the digital side and the effort that we have in securing this growth momentum of savings deposits and so on. Go on, Pak Tim.

Yes. I think Selvie, as I alluded in my presentation earlier, the key to a successful CASA growth is the bank becoming the transactional bank for our retail clients, hence, all the focus that we have in terms of ensuring that, that happens on the platform, Livin'. So what we've done there, we continue with two things. One is acquiring new clients. So this is the effort to onboard new clients. And you see that today, 84% of acquisition is already done through Livin'. The other one is for the existing clients to continue to transact at a high level. As you can see, the transaction frequency has moved up. The transaction value has moved up. And therefore, it gives you the quality of the CASA that we want because that correlates directly, GTV-wise, transaction-wise, into balances that we run. So the features that we have today has enabled us to gain or get 93% of all transactions now that is retail, excluding cash, obviously, it's only done through the app. So with that, I think we are confident enough that we continue to be able to support the CASA growth, in particular for this context, savings growth, where our CASA ratio continued to move up. And more importantly, the cost of funds that is linked to savings account is reasonably stable when rate hikes was quite imminent. So maybe that would just give you a feel of how we run in terms of strategy for gaining savings account balances and new accounts. Thank you. Thank you, Lau.

Thank you, Pak Tim. I will take one last question from [ Bearwin ].

A question on your guidance. So you said that you are slowing down loan growth and you expect your NIM to improve. Is it sequential? So 5% is a low for the year and we will get better Q-on-Q for rest of year, too. Is that what you're expecting, just to clarify? That's my first question. The second question, I want to ask on your pricing of your loans since you have a chart there that shows that your pricing of loans hasn't changed for all segments for the past 1 or 2 years. But if you are slowing down your loan growth so much, and with this rate hike, will you be more aggressive in raising your loan pricing?

[ Bearwin ], again, we're very sorry. We missed your first question. I think there's a lot of technical difficulties we're experiencing.

Okay. NIM on Q1, you said you expect NIM to improve. Does that mean Q1 is a low for the year?

I see. Okay. So I think on the NIM side, that is our expectation, right? Basically, if you look at the NIM in the first Q, there is a lot of that, that actually came as a residual impact of the rising cost of funds in the month of December last year. So basically, for instance, if you look at the cost of funds, although the first quarter is actually seeing the Q-on-Q increase in cost of funds, it is actually worth noting that the peak in the first quarter was in the month of January, right? So basically, the peak was in the month of January and then the month of February improved, and then the subsequent month of February, which is March, also improved. So obviously, it's too soon for us to assume that cost of fund will trend lower even more towards the end of the year, but this is a good indication. Not only the cost of funds on a sequential way, which is an Jan, Feb and March, is improving, we're also seeing that the overall deposit growth and environment is also improving. As we see, this is not only Bank Mandiri but the system deposit growth continues to accelerate from December, January, February and March. So I think this is a very good combination and to actually suggest and expect that basically cost of fund should actually be more manageable. But again, we want to be conservative, and we don't want to be aggressive by assuming that cost of fund pressure and liquidity pressure is already out of the woods and hence, the decision we make on the NIM guidance and all that, but it is a fair assumption if we would assume that the first quarter will be the lowest.

Okay. And my second question is on your pricing of your loans. In your chart you show your various loan pricing and that hasn't changed, I think, for the past year.

So I think this is a very interesting question, [ Bearwin ]. There are two aspects to it, right? Aspect number one is, ultimately, what we want is, we want to grow very healthily in the context of how much we grow in the loan side and how much margins we earn out of it, right? So that's why we have this balance of loan growth and also the NIM guidance. And the upside to our loan growth, if liquidity happens, we improve sooner than expected or improve better than expected. So that's the first thing. The second point is also something that we also consider, it is the fact that we have to also secure our positioning in the corporate segment. That's why if you look at the corporate growth of the bank, it's actually the strongest. We're actually growing 25.7%. But the good news is that we're growing 25.7% with a flat yield. And so if you look at the interest income from loans, it is growing at about 20%, as high as the loan growth itself. So it's a high-quality loan growth in that context. You're right about the fact that we are going to revisit and reattempt the pricing. So not only that we are balancing from the cost of fund side of the equation in order to calibrate the loan growth, we are also trying to balance that with the yield side of the equation. So the answer is yes, we are going to basically put repricing into consideration. This marks the end of the meeting. So thank you very much to all speakers. Thank you to all investors and analysts that joined the meeting. If you have any further questions, feel free to e-mail to the IR team, and we will respond as soon as we can. Thank you.