Banco Santander - Chile ADS

Good morning, and welcome to Banco Santander Chile's fourth quarter 2022 results conference call. I will now hand over to Mr. Emiliano Muratore to begin the presentation.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Banco Santander Chile's fourth quarter 2022 results webcast and conference call. This is Emiliano Muratore, CFO, and I'm joined today by Robert Moreno, Head of Investor Relations, Cristian Vicuña, Head of Strategic Planning, and Claudio Soto, Chief Economist. Thank you for attending today's conference call. Today, we will be discussing the trends and results seen in the fourth quarter and give some insight into our expectations for this year. Our successful digital strategy and customer-oriented product offering continues to attract new clients, indicating great growth opportunity going forward. To begin, I invite Claudio Soto to give us an update on the macro scenario beginning on slide four.

Thank you, Emiliano. The economy has continued slowing down, although at a slower pace than expected. According to the latest figure of the central bank, GDP grew 2.7% in 2023, above our previous estimate of 2.25. Consumption has been more resilient than expected, and investment has rebounded, as postponed projects were resumed in the second part of last year. Also, a weak peso has helped the external sector of the economy. Going forward, we forecast the economy will continue slowing down as financial conditions remain tight. While political uncertainty has moderated, it is still relatively high and will continue conditioning investment. On the other hand, the economy will benefit from the reopening of China, which has pushed up copper prices. All in all, we estimate the economy will contract between 1 and 1.5%. In 2024, we would see a recovery back to its trend. The labor market remains relatively weak. Unemployment has been oscillating around 8%, and total employment is still below its pre-pandemic trend. This year, the unemployment rate may increase slightly as the economy moderates. The current account deficit which was widening until the third quarter of last year, should start shrinking during the following month as domestic demand contracts and terms of trade improve. Inflation remains elevated, but has shown some signs of slowing down. December CPI was in line with expectations after a negative surprise in October and a positive one in November, finishing the year with a 12.8% increase year-on-year. During the first quarter, CPI will continue increasing fast, in part due to seasonal factors. But from the second quarter onwards, we will see a moderation due to the slackness of the economy, the appreciation of the currency, and the fall of fewer prices. As a result, we expect the CPI inflation will be running at 4.75% by the year's end. The central bank concluded its hiking cycle with a monetary policy rate at 11.25% in October. We expect the board will begin an easing cycle during the second quarter as inflation moderates. Given the high level of the monetary policy rate, once they begin cutting, the board will proceed at a fast pace. As a result, we expect the monetary policy rate to finish the year between 6 and 6.5%. The government position improved in 2022 amid strong revenues and a sharp fall in expenditure. All in all, the fiscal balance ended with a surplus of 1.1% of GDP, somewhat lower than what we were expecting. Gross debt increased moderately up to 37% of GDP. This year, there will be a mild expenditure expansion with gross debt climbing up to 39% of GDP. As a result, public finance will remain in good shape. On slide five, we have the details of two of the main reforms of the government, a tax reform and a pension reform. So far, progress has been slow. For them to advance in Congress, a political agreement must be done with the opposition, who has a majority in the Senate. Therefore, the discussion on these reforms will require certain compromises by the government. We do not expect they are going to be approved anytime soon. On the 4th of January of 2023, the new FinTech law became officially a law. It updates the relation on the financial industry, recognizing the existence of new business models based on technology. According to the law, new technological players will be under the regulation perimeter of the CMF. the law regulates open finance, establishing that consumers are the owners of their financial information. Although there are pieces of regulation that are still due by the CMF, we consider this new law a step forward that opens different opportunities for the financial industry. On slides six and seven, we have some details about the new constitutional process, which should be finished by the end of this year. This new process entails proposing a new constitution with a defined framework of main ideas. The new text is expected to be ready by November 2023, and there will be a referendum with mandatory participation on December 17th, 2023 to accept or reject this new draft.

Thank you, Claudio. We will now move on to slide nine to begin discussing our positive client and business trends. Year-to-date, the bank's net income totaled $809 billion, an increase of 3.8% compared to the same period last year. With these results, our year-to-date return over average equity reached 21.6%, in line with our guidance. Our net income to shareholders in the fourth quarter reached $102 billion, weaker than previous quarters and mainly due to lower NIAMs in the quarter as inflation decelerated and interest rates continued to rise. As we show on slide 10, this was offset by very strong results from our business segments. The net contribution from our business segments increased 19.7% year to date, with all segments presenting a significant rise in profitability. It is important to note that the results from our client segments exclude the impact of inflation and the cost of our liquidity, and therefore present a clear view of the sustainable and long-term trends of our business. Moving on to slide 11, the results of Santander Corporate and Investment Banking, or CIB, have been impressive during the year. Total net contribution from this segment increased 49.3% year-over-year, driven by an increase in all profit line items. Net interest incomes was 49.1% year-over-year due to the increase in loans and a higher spread earned over deposits. Also noteworthy, was the year-on-year increase in treasury income of 44.4% and 19.8% in fees income, in line with this segment's focus on non-lending income. Net contribution from the middle market increased 30.6% year-over-year, with an increase in total revenues of 20.4% due to a 19% growth in net interest income as a result of a better loan and deposit spread and volume growth. Additionally, commissions increased by 25.7% in line with the greater client activity with the bank. On slide 12, we show the results from our largest segment, which is retail banking, which includes the results from individuals and SMEs. The net contribution from this segment increased 6.2% year over year. The margin increased 9% year-over-year due to a better mix of funding and loan growth. Fees in this segment strongly increased by 15.1% year-over-year, led by card fees due to higher usage and increased customer base, as well as fees generated by GEDNET. Provisions increased 43.9% year-over-year, mainly due to a normalization of asset quality of our retail loans after historically low levels of non-performing loans due to the increasing liquidity of our clients during the pandemic. Operating costs increased in a controlled manner by 3.2% year-over-year as the bank continues its digital transformation, generating greater operating efficiencies. These positive results can be broken down to a single key factor, client growth. As can be observed on the left of this slide, our active individual clients that is clients that have a minimum average balance and interaction levels, are growing 7.2% year over year, and our checking account customers are growing at an impressive 13.5% year over year. Our SME client base is also evolving favorably, with active clients increasing 14.6%, checking account clients are up 29.4%, and loyal clients have grown 7.4% year over year. As we show on slide 13, the success of Santander Life among individuals is now being replicated in the SME market. This clearly demonstrates the versatility of this digital platform. With minimum additional investments, Life has opened a new segment of growth in the SME market that previously was unable to digitally open a checking account. Not only is Life growing quickly, it is also rapidly monetizing, as we show on slide 13. Total life clients increased 22% in 2022, with active clients increasing 13% and loyal clients growing 21% year-over-year. The major innovations in 2022 were the expansion into the SME market and the ability to open a US dollar checking account 100% digitally for an additional fee. Santander's live clients are also rapidly being monetized with gross income from live clients increasing 44% year-over-year. Demand deposit remained high at $931 million, surpassing by many times the amount clients have deposited in similar competing platforms. The other important driver of our SME client base is GetNet, as shown on slide 15. GetNet has already sold some 157,000 POS. 91% of GetNet's clients are SMEs, our target clients, and 99% of the POS are sold through the bank's distribution channels. GetNet is currently processing 580 billion in monthly sales. This product has been quick to monetize, generating 27 billion pesos in fees year-to-date. During 2022, GetNet launched e-commerce, attracting some 8,500 business with some 5 billion pesos in transactions in the month of December. On slide 16, we show how we continue to innovate and evolve our brand solutions. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we launched the WorkFS Startup. This is an initiative that aims to offer an integrated solution to all the entrepreneurial needs, and especially to increase bank penetration, carrying out pilot programs with the bank, and even offering financing. It is directed at companies that have three main characteristics. Firstly, for them to be initiating activities and presenting an accelerating growth. Secondly, that technology is part of the value proposal. And third, that the proposals will be scalable to a real problem. Thanks to all these initiatives, we can see on slide 17 how we consistently continue to lead our main competitors in Net Promoter Score. After a slight dip in our Net Promoter Score at the beginning of the year, following some necessary changes implemented to improve cybersecurity protection, the MPS has rebounded to our digital platforms, app, website, contact center, and work effect continue to be highly valued by our customers. In 2022, we also fulfill all of our banking targets as can be seen on slide 18, and are well on our way to fulfilling all of the goals we set for 2025. On slide 19, we highlight some of our most recent achievements. Once again, we received the top employer certificate for the fifth consecutive year. This positions us as one of the companies with base labor conditions in Chile. Secondly, our ESG rating on behalf of Sustanalytics was significantly upgraded. We improved our rating from 29.9 million risk to 15 low risk, reaching the best score among Chilean banks.

Thank you, Christian, for that excellent highlight of our strategy. We will now move on to the discussion of the balance sheet and results. So moving on to slide 21, we start with loan growth, which grew 5.5% year over year and remained flat in the quarter. During the quarter, loan growth was subdued mainly as a result of the translation loss produced by the 12% quarter-on-quarter appreciation of the Chilean peso against the dollar. Approximately 20% of our commercial loans are denominated in foreign currency, mainly dollars, especially in the middle market segment. The large corporate segment continues to grow by 3.4% Q&Q and 32% year-over-year due to various successful large loan operations and the fact that large companies continue seeking short-term financing through corporate loans because the fixed, local fixed income market remains somewhat illiquid. Retail banking loans grew 1.8% Q and Q and 5.5% since December 2021, with loans to individuals increasing 11% year over year and 3% quarter over quarter. Consumer loans increased almost 5% quarter-to-quarter, and 6% compared to the close of 2021. This was driven by an increase of 23% in the year by Santander Consumer, our subsidiary that sells auto loans, and a 20.6% increase in credit cards. During the pandemic, credit card loans decreased 7% as clients reduced large purchases such as travel and hotels, which fuels credit card loans. At the same time, many clients paid off credit card debt with the liquidity obtained from government transfers and pension fund withdrawals. In fourth quarter 22, as household liquidity levels returned to normal and holiday travel resumed, credit card loans began to grow again, and this trend should continue to be visible in 2023. Origination of new mortgage loans has fallen as inflation and rates remain high. As for SMEs, The demand for new loans remains moderate after a strong increase in 2020 and 2021 for the FOGAPE programs. Given the above, the SME segment loan book decreased 5.7% Q&Q and 20.6% year-over-year as SMEs repaid FOGAPE loans. For 2023, despite negative GDP growth, we expect loans to grow in the mid-single-digit range. Consumer loans will continue to be led by the rebound of credit card loans SMEs will probably benefit from a new Fogate program to be announced soon. At the same time, we expect similar growth rates as the average portfolio in our corporate segment. On slide 22, we show the evolution of our funding. Total deposits decreased 3.4% year-over-year and 4.3% quarter-on-quarter as the bank focuses on reducing funding costs. The central bank continues to raise the monetary policy rate which reached 11.25%, and the yield curve is sharply inverted. In order to control funding costs, we have been maintaining our market share and demand deposits while replacing wholesale time deposits with longer-term funding sources that today are much cheaper than time deposits. Moving on to slide 23, we can see how the movements of volumes, rates, and inflation has been affecting our margins. ZUF variation continued to decrease from the highs of mid-2022 and reached 2.5% in the quarter. This was coupled with an increase in the average monetary policy rate. Both of these factors drove down the bank's NIM to 2.2% in the quarter and 3.3% for the full year. As shown on this slide, this is mainly a phenomenon that affects our non-client NIM or the net interest margin from our ALM activities including the UF gap and our liquidity. The client NIM, which is defined as the NAI from our business segments over interest earning assets, has and will remain stable in 2023. On slide 24, we give further insights into our margins for this year. For every 100 basis points decline in inflation, our NIM falls on average by 20 basis points. And for every 100 basis points rise in the average monetary policy rate, Our NIM falls by 30 basis points. Our base case scenario for 2023 is an average monetary policy rate of 9.2 and a UF inflation for the full year of 5.3. Under this base scenario, the bank's NIM in 2023 should reach 2.8%, starting below this level in the first quarter of 2023 and rising back to levels of 3.6% by the end of this year. Moving on to asset quality on slide 25. The rise in the NPL ratio to 1.8% in the quarter is mainly related to household liquidity levels gradually returning to post-pandemic levels and a softer economy. This has mainly affected clients who are already impaired pre-pandemic. The coverage of NPLs as of December reached 185% and there has been no reversal of the voluntary provisions. As we can see on slide 26, These overall positive asset quality indicators led to a cost of credit of 1% for the full year in line with our guidance for the year. During 2022, our regulator, the CMS, published a draft, a new standardized provisioning model for consumer loans. We expect this new model to be implemented in the second half of 2023. Our initial estimate is an increase in provisions of between 100 and 150 billion pesos. mainly in our auto lending and credit card portfolios. We are permitted to use voluntary provisions to comply with this new regulation. During the fourth quarter, we saw cost of credit picking up, reaching 1.2 percent. This was mainly due to specific clients in the middle market segment and construction sector. Given the trends in our economic outlook for this year, we are updating our guidance for cost of credit for 2023 to 1.1 to 1.2 percent. On slide 27, we move on to non-Net Interest income revenue sources, which continue showing exceptional growth trends. Fee income increased 16% year over year and 1.2% Q over Q, driven by higher client activity, new products such as GetNet, and the growth of our client base as previously described. We expect these trends to continue in 2023. As shown on slide 28, We can also see the bank's efforts to continue increasing productivity and to control costs. Operating expenses increased 6.7% year-over-year and decreased 5.7% year-over-year, well below inflation trends. The bank continues ahead with its $260 million technology investment plan for the years 2022, 2024. And because of these investments, we're expecting costs to grow significantly below inflation levels in 2023. As shown on slide 29, the bank continues with its process of optimizing the branch network. This year, we have closed 12% of our branches and have opened 11 new work cafes that are not only a major improvement in client experience, but are also more efficient. As a result of these initiatives, coupled with our digital strategy, productivity is rising significantly, with volumes per point of sale increasing 16.2%, and volumes per employee increasing 8.5% year-over-year. Moving on to slide 30, we observe an excellent evolution of our capital ratios. At the end of the fourth quarter, the bank reported a core equity, a CET1 ratio of 11.1%, up from 9.2% in December 2021. Our total CET1 increased 20.6% compared to a 0% rise in risk-weighted assets year-over-year. Despite lower net income, falling rate and inflation expectations benefited OCI and equity, and therefore book value growth has outstripped net income, a trend that should be also visible in 2023. With this high capital level, we expect to maintain our historical payout of 60% over 2022 earnings. This still requires final board and shareholder approval in April 2023. With this payout, our current dividend yield is close to 8%. On slide 31, we will conclude with some guidance. Despite 2023 being a somewhat more challenging year on the macro front, we believe our strong client activities will continue expanding. Coupled with this, we will continue with our investment program, which focuses on digitalization and automation. We will continue investing to improve our leading NPS scores as well. We also expect client growth to remain robust as in 2022, led by Santander Life and GetNet. In terms of loan growth, we expect mid-single-digit growth with a focus on all segments and non-NII to expand by at least 15%. NIMS should contract to 2.8, but with solid client NIMS. As the NPR comes down, we expect NIMS to rebound to 3.6 by year-end. Asset quality should deteriorate somewhat, but the cost of risk will remain at a manageable level of 1.1 to 1.2%. Cost control will be a major focus, and we expect low single-digit expansion of costs. Regarding capital, book value growth should continue, and as we mentioned, we currently have an attractive dividend yield. In summary, we will start the year with ROEs in the low teens. As the year progresses, ROEs should improve, And for the full year, we are guiding an ROE of 18%. With this, I finish my presentation, and we will gladly answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. We will now move to the question and answer section. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 2 on your phone and wait to be prompted. So our first question comes from Yuri Fernandez from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thank you for asking questions. I have a first question regarding our ROE guidance, the 18% you're calling for 2023. And Robert, it's very clear the path, right, like a more challenging first half and ROEs improving the second half. But when we look to the margin guidance, that basically implies 50 bit decrease on your needs, right, from 3.3 to 2.8. We have a hard time getting to the 18% for the full year because you have around 50 billion pesos, 50 trillion pesos on interest earning assets. And these pressure on margins, it costs some 200 billion, 250 billion pesos on your NII. And with the other numbers like GNA, the things we have, it's hard to get to those 18%. So my question is, Where is the source here, right? It's lower taxes, maybe higher fees, other things, very good GNA and this NII pressure. What could be the drivers for you to reach those 18%? And I can ask a second question after we reply to this one. Thank you.

Okay, Yuri. So you have the margin picture clear. So the margins were for... 2022 or 3.3. For the full 2023, it will be 2.8. That's a 50 basis point, so NII will probably fall. So that's, let's say, the difficult part. As we said before, the ALM is the main responsible for that. The client name should be relatively stable. Here, the key thing for NII is the velocity at which the central bank lowers monetary policy. On the one hand, we know that for that to happen, inflation comes down. Okay, that's kind of a headwind, but that's only a headwind in the very short term. If that triggers a rapid decline in rates, the faster that goes down, the better. Okay, so today, think of this as more a play on, let's say, on rates falling than inflation's coming down. So the faster rates come down, the better it will be for outlook for NIMS, but given the base scenario, that's 2.8%. Provision should grow a bit, but under control. And then from there on, we should have quite good news. So first of all, it's fees. Fees we're expecting is at 15%, 20% growth. That includes fees and treasury. We continue to see. This is something we try to stress, what we'll get in the beginning of our presentation. Everything that's client-related is doing very, very well. You saw the results of corporate banking, market, retail. So for there, everything that's client growth, everything that's non-lending should continue to be pushed. Just to give you an example, we increased SME checking accounts by 30% last year. We grew individual checking accounts, I believe, by like 20. So everything that's product usage, get net, that's good news. And then there's cost. And when we talk about cost, we're talking about personnel administrative depreciation and other operating expenses and other operating expenses We should have including those items. We should have a very very low growth of cost obviously we talked about 2% it could be even lower, so there's a Probably the difference in your model is other operating income and other very high cost which we're going to see a big improvement Okay there for example we have and a lot of insurance, cyber costs. We did a lot this 2022 to improve that. So a lot of things are going to come down there as well. So that's going to be a big boost to the bottom line to get to the 18. Taxes, no, taxes with lower inflation, we'll be paying like 16, 17. But overall, everything that's not margins is going to leave, we feel confident with the 18% ROE.

No, that's super clear, Robert. So name, and maybe a little bit of cost of risk, the detractors and all the other lines, uh, helping you to, to have a better, um, 2023. I have a second one regarding capital. And by the way, congrats, uh, uh, I guess your capital position was under pressure. We saw 2021, you had a lot of mark to mark and, you know, equity equity shareholders actually suffering a little bit, but this was a good quarter for capital. So if you can explore a little bit more. what drove the rwas down i guess you comment on some derivatives strategy and also the mark to mark so basically uh it's clear the message right you keep the 60 payout on dividends but could we see you know uh ongoing capital improvements and similar levels like what is the again explain a little bit the change and what should we wait uh ahead for your capital position thank you

Hello, Judy. Thank you for your question. So in the quarter, basically, the main source of risk-weighted assets contraction, let's say, that made the overall risk-weighted assets to stay flat for the year was the market-risk risk-weighted assets. As you – maybe as we have discussed in the past with you and the market and then the The children regulation for market risk is the standard model, the more basic approach to Basel III. So basically that penalizes, let's say, the more sophisticated business as the one we have. I mean, we are the leaders in the derivatives market in Chile by far. So the bigger the book, the bigger the the risk weighted assets and that's without considering the real sensitivity or the real risk of the book. So basically what we have started in the fourth quarter and we plan to keep for this year, it's a big program of compression of positions. I mean, basically netting down or netting out balancing positions without risk and leaving both positions out of the books. um and so that's what uh helped raise with us then in terms of uh mark to market of the our inflation on hedges i mean the the fall in the in the inflation in the second part of the of the year and then the recent months also helped the market market of our of our inflation and uh hedges so going forward we are still like uh optimistic about our capital position. We still see some room of efficiency in the risk-weighted asset coming from market risk. So that will be a tailwind for this year. Book value also, like, doing well in this new scenario of inflation moderating and interest rates also going down. So as going forward, we think that we're going to stay I don't know from 10.5 to 11% CD1 with relatively easy even today with our 11.1 after paying the 60% in April in case the board decides to propose it on the AGM to approve it even with that the CD1 should be at 10.5 or higher which would be like the highest CD1 after dividend in the recent years. So we are optimistic going forward in terms of capital book value and risk-weighted assets trend.

That's super clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from Carlos Gomez from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. In the past, you have talked about the update of regulation on provisions for the consumer portfolio and how you would have to provision more for that. Any changes in that and what is your expectation? And second, going back to the initial question about the margin, I mean, you emphasize a lot that rates are going to come down

what the impact is going to have um what if rates stay up and you know it don't decline as you expect would that be positive or negative for you and could you give us an order of magnitude thank you hello carlos thank you for your questions um in terms of the the new voluntary the new provisioning for for consuming our loans uh no change i mean we still are expecting a an impact between 100 and 150 billion pesos in the stock of provisions. Maybe the recent development is that at the beginning it was expected to be in place during second quarter of this year. Now we – there has been like a postponement in the process, so we are seeing it now for second half or maybe last quarter of this year, but no change so far in the in the impact we are foreseeing. And in terms of your question about the sensitivity to interest rates, definitely, if the rates go down at a slower pace, it would be worse for us, and the opposite, if they go down at a faster pace. And that's why we included the heat map, we call it, on slide 24. where there you can have the different impacts of different inflation and monetary policy rates. I mean, there you can see that in case we, the monetary policy, the average monetary policy rate for the year stays like 100 basis points higher than our base case. We have an impact in NIEM of 30 basis points. And well, basically there you have the, it's quite linear, quite linear, the effect, so it's just a matter of you, let's say, putting what you think the average monetary policy rate could be. We include this two-axis chart basically because inflation definitely will also be different if rates are different, so that's why we think that it's important to have both sensitivity in the same chart to play if you are more on a hoggish side. higher inflation and higher rates, what would happen? And if you are more on the dovage side, what would happen with lower inflation and lower rates?

Thank you very much. And this is very clear. Thank you very much for showing this. showing this slide. To what extent can you change this during the year? I mean, this is your structural position presumably as of now. If you change your view, if you think rates are going to evolve in a different way, can you change this in the next two or three months, or is this set for the rest of the year?

No, I mean, I would say that the midpoint, let's say, for the name of the year, it would be like around there. I mean, what we... what we can change, and if you compare this chart to the one we showed last quarter, you will see that the sensitivity to inflation went down because basically we reduced the U.S. gap, so the sensitivity to inflation now basically we kind of secured higher levels of inflation, so now we have like less risk to that, and at the end, Managing this is a matter of what trajectory of interest rates the market has implied in the prices, because basically we can change this by adapting the sensitivity by paying fixed rates or receiving fixed rates. We see that what the market is implying, it's close to our base case scenario in terms of inflation and trajectory for interest rates. So we don't see any significant value in fixing or locking in that scenario. So that might change in the future if basically the market starts discounting a more hawkish or dovish scenario that make us, let's say, take a position there. But so far, we expect to have this position in at least for the first part of the year.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star two. Our next question comes from Tito Labarda from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the call and taking my question. I guess a follow-up to Udi's question on the ROE guidance, and sorry to ask on a little bit more short-term basis, but even getting to that low teens for next quarter, maybe if you can help us think, how do you think the interest rates will evolve? When do you expect rates to start to come down and also even the evolution a little bit on the inflation? Because it seems inflation should probably be lower in one cube, but rates still not coming down, so not even sure how the margin would improve next quarter to get to that low teen ROE, particularly because this quarter you had the negative tax rate. So if you can just help us think about just how that ROE is going to evolve sort of throughout the year with your macro assumptions on a kind of shorter-term basis, I would appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, Tito.

So in the first quarter, as we said like the names in the in the in the fourth quarter or like 2.2 and they should be like 2 2.2 and in the first quarter and At the same time remember there's a lot of seasonality and cost in the first quarter. So that's going to help so but effectively yeah, the the ROE in the fourth quarter was in the in the in the 10% range in the first quarter there's a lot of moving parts, but you know the margin slightly lower and provisions should be stable or lower, fees more or less the same, and costs seasonally be lower as well. So overall, I think the first quarter, and also what I was talking with Judy, I think cost is going to be a big difference. So in the end, you end up having a very similar net income in the first quarter, and then going on, basically what we have is the seasonality of the rates. And here, I think I'll turn it over briefly to Claudio, if he can mention that, and then I'll wrap it up, okay?

Yeah, well, in terms of inflation, in the first quarter, we have two things that are important to have in mind. First of all, there was a change in taxes on services that will impact the CPI in January. that would be transitory. There will be a hike in prices due to these one-offs, and that will help with the AUF. And then in March, we usually have high inflation in Chile because of seasonal factors. So, you know, we will have a first quarter with a relatively high CPI. Then the decision for cutting rate by the central bank will be done, we expect, during the second quarter. There are three meetings in the second quarter, so it could be in any of those meetings. But at that moment, we expect inflation will be going down in a very clear trend. That will help the central bank to cut rates in a very rapid fashion. You have to have in mind that The monetary policy rate in Chile is particularly high. If you compare previous cycles for trades, or if you compare to other countries, the tightening in Chile was very aggressive, and therefore we expect also the cutting phase will be also aggressive.

Yeah, so basically I think also, like, First quarter NIMS around 2, and then as we follow what we expect to be the base scenario in rates and inflation. Second quarter inflation, UF inflation is always a little bit higher, but basically NIMS of like 2.6, 2.7 in the second quarter, third quarter 2.9, fourth quarter 3.6, more or less that. Depends on your interest on asset earning growth as well. So we are seeing some volume growth, as we said, 5%, 6%. Overall, you get a NIM of like 2.8 for the full year. And as we said before, this coupled with very good non-NII, risk rising a bit, but also a lot of things on the cost. So this gives you an idea of the sensitivity we talked about, that it's quite sensitive to the fall in the monetary policy, and there's a big difference between first quarter NIMs and fourth quarter. And the other thing that – this is also a little detail, but something I wanted to mention is that we still have a significant amount of liquidity held in the held to maturity portfolio, and that all comes due in 2024. So basically there we have – remember, that's the collateral against the central bank line. We took cheap funding from the central bank. We had to hold collateral. Some of that is held to collect. It doesn't affect the volatility of equity, but obviously those are a low rate. This is looking forward to 2024, which obviously is far away, but in 2024, we kind of return to normal interest rates, normal inflation. The F-CIC is paid back. A lot of this collateral has exact same maturity. In 2024, we should also have a jump in NIMS, even with with inflation coming down, and given that we finished the F-SIG program, our How to Collect portfolio should be repriced at a higher rate. So basically in 2024, once again, it's quite far away. We're looking back at NIMS of 3.3, 3.5, or at least where we left off in the fourth quarter. So basically we have to kind of travel through this first half, okay? But from then on, as the central bank lowers rates, and obviously in 2024, when the central bank financing comes due, rates should definitely have an upward trend. Sorry, NIMS, an upward trend.

Great, thanks, Robert. Claudia was very clear. Just one quick follow-up, I guess. Should we also expect a negative tax rate in 1Q, like we saw this quarter, or?

Okay, so regarding the negative tax rate, basically that doesn't make a factors are complicated but a simple answer even though the remember that for tax purposes in Chile you still do inflation accounting not in our financial books but in our tax books everyone every company every person used to do tax accounting so our equity continues to grow because of inflation okay so basically that monetary correction of capital is was larger than let's say net income. So that's why you have a reversal of tax in the fourth quarter. In the first quarter, it should be still very low because we're still having some inflation and our book value has been growing. As you saw, as we mentioned before, our book value for different reasons has been expanding at a faster pace and the book value is readjusted for tax purposes by price level restatement. And said that, our tax rate should kind of have a similar trend as ROE in a certain sense. We're starting out low and then paying much higher tax. I don't know if it'll be negative, but the tax rate should be very low, single digits or low teens, and then slowly rising as a year and finishing the year on an average of like 17%. But once again, it should be relatively steep like the ROE.

Okay, perfect. That's very clear, Robert. Thank you.

Thank you. So our next question comes from Anand from White Oak Capital. Please go ahead.

Thank you for the opportunity. Two questions from my end. One, the $260 million CAPEX, can you give us a some details around it, what is it about and in which quarters do you intend to spend this?

Sorry, you're asking about our investments?

Yeah, the $260 million investments that you're talking about, what is that?

Okay, so basically we usually do an investment plan. that expands three years. So we're in the middle of our $260 million investment plan that we announced in 2022. Sorry, for 2022 to 2024, it's roughly equal per year. And that's just digital, okay? Obviously, there's other investments and fixed assets, whatever. But basically, that entails the transformation of the branch work, automation, everything that's the new robots, taking a lot of the systems and products to the cloud. So basically it's a big overhaul in line with the digital transformation that a lot of companies and banks are doing worldwide. And for us it's very important because obviously with margins coming down, we're cost conscious, okay? We're doing a lot to control costs, but the idea here is not to touch the technological part and not to like, cut costs today and then have to reinvest or invest more in the future. Basically, we've been reducing branches, headcount has been coming down a bit, there's other cost initiatives, but the whole investment plan, which is transformation of the branch office, the front end, transformation of the back end operations, which means a lot of automation and digitalization and other technological improvements, is what is covered by that plan, which is 260 million total and roughly one third per year. And then maybe by the end of this year, we'll announce the new plan for the next three years.

Okay. And from the corporate tax perspective, given the current changes in the contribution being contemplated, Is it fair to expect that this corporate tax rate of 17 would not continue and it should rise in the future by a certain percentage point? And if yes, then what is the expectation you have for the increase in corporate tax rate?

Okay. So in China, the corporate tax rate is 27, okay, in your tax book. So we're always paying 27 in our tax accounting. But when you look at it, our financial, and remember that For tax accounting, you have to adjust for inflation account. And basically what happens, that means for banks is that your equity is increased by inflation every year. So if you have equity of 100, 10% inflation at the end of the year, your equity and your tax books goes to 110. That additional 10 is a tax loss in your tax books. So that's why an effective tax rate is lower than the statutory tax. So therefore, as inflation rises, the monetary price level restatement of equity goes up and your effective tax rate goes down. As inflation slowly normalizes, the tax rate will go up. In a normal inflationary environment with inflation around 3% to 4%, our effective tax rate should be around 21%. And that should be the normal in line with the 27% corporate tax rate plus the monetary price level restatement of equity.

And in terms of the discussion about the Constitution or the tax reform, it is not under discussion and increasing the corporate tax rate. I mean, the discussion goes in other direction, more on the personal and the wealth tax and all that, but no discussion so far on increasing the corporate tax rate.

Sure. Thank you and all the best. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. So we have one more question from Mariel Abreu from T. Rowe Price. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for the time. I have two questions. One, if you can remind us what are your refinancing needs for this year and next, and how do you plan to cover for those? And are liquidity conditions still pretty favorable overall? I don't know if you can comment about that. And the second question is on asset quality. I'm looking at your non-performing loans and it almost doubled for consumer. The increase was also pretty meaningful even for commercial mortgages. Is that all explained by the change in liquidity conditions, or is there something else? Perhaps you can give a little bit more color on maybe a specific industry or products that are driving that as well. Thank you.

Okay, so thank you for your question, Amanda. Our funding needs for this year are below the average we usually have on a yearly basis. I would put it in the $1 billion ballpark. So we are comfortable with that and we plan basically to use the same mix we have been using lately between deposits coming from uh clients and institutional uh investors i mean some bilateral funding lines from from banks abroad and i'm i'm i'm very active on the on the capital markets uh domestically and abroad i mean more on the private placement side even though this last few days weeks i mean the the public capital markets abroad have uh improved like dramatically, and so now even public transactions in the U.S. market and other public markets could be an option. So on the funding needs for this year, we are quite comfortable. And about the liquidity conditions, the domestic capital market is in better shape than used to be in the middle of the pension fund withdrawals and all that tension the market had. Now the situation is better, even though the total sizes of the transactions are not the ones we had in the best moment of the market. But the situation is quite favorable. Definitely any potential risk of additional pension fund withdrawals would put pressure on that, but it's not, let's say, our base case for the year. And the good news is that public markets abroad also are improving, and that gives us much more flexibility either to tap the domestic or international markets for our funding needs, which are below the average on a yearly basis. And, Bob, you want to comment on asset quality?

Regarding consumer lending, that's really the rebound post end of excess liquidity. So that's just going to go back to where it was pre-pandemic. It might overshoot a little bit depending on how strong the recession is. But remember last year, I believe NPLs and consumer were like 0.9%. We had never seen it that low. And clearly, this is a direct result of normalizing liquidity and and the levels of last year were extremely low. The good news is that we still have very high coverage. We haven't touched the voluntary provisions, and for good or for worse, we're going to add on $120 billion, $150 billion more of provisions in consumer. Obviously, redirecting voluntary is not going to have an effect on the P&L, but the consumer coverage is going to be on the year at very high. Mortgage, I think it's very similar. Even though I think mortgage, there is some impact of the higher inflation and rates, especially higher inflation. We always talk about the good news on margins, but obviously higher inflation results in higher mortgage payments, and there was a little bit of impact there. Once again, still very low, and we have much higher coverage, and the value of collateral is still quite good, even though it's done very conservatively. In commercial loans, a bit the same, but in commercial loans, there has been some sectors with a little more weakness. And as we said in the presentation and in the management commentary, I would say particularly in the core of the construction sector, without being not even near a crisis, there has been some weakness in the construction sector, and that drove up provisions, especially in the middle market. In the middle market, it's a broad segment, but it includes everything that's That's construction and real estate. The real estate developers have been very, very, I'd say, healthy. But when you have very little construction going on and with high rates, obviously, construction companies of all the sectors are probably the ones that are suffering the most in Chile. We have like 1% of our loan book, I believe, in construction. So that will be a weakness probably for a while until rates go down and until real estate developers begin their projects again. So basically, and then there's the segments like, you know, restaurants, all of that, those are coming out of the pandemic, getting better, but still weak. And then with the recession, you know, it's kind of hard to go through a pandemic and now a recession. So some of those sectors, which once again, they're like, you know, 1% of the loan book, but there should be some weakness as the economy slow down. So therefore, that's why We finished the year with a cost of credit of 1%, but in the last quarter, 1.2. And we think for this year, the average will be 1.1, 1.2, okay? So once again, a rise, but still, we have a lot of coverage. We haven't touched our voluntary provisions. So we think that 1.1, 1.2 is quite realistic.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you. We have a question from Daniel Morardila at Credit Corp Capital. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I have just one question, and it's regarding derivatives. What is the strategy regarding derivatives? For example, if we see the first three quarters of 2022, when you see the accounting hedge of interest rate risk, it represents roughly 48% of the total interest expense without considering their adjustment net interest income. So considering also that derivatives decrease from 17 trillion Chilean pesos to 11 in this quarter, what will be the effect of these on margins going forward? What will be the strategy for derivatives and what will be the effect of the decrease in derivatives for margins going forward? Thank you so much.

Okay, so there's two effects there, and they're kind of unrelated, okay? So first of all, we have, let's say, three big groups of derivatives, okay, that are in the balance sheet. One is the biggest, is what we do with clients, okay? A client needs a forward or an interest rate swap, and that is all managed with advanced, you know, risk metrics, et cetera, okay? And those are basically matched on the asset and liability, okay? But given that we're a big bank where a lot of clients come to ask for protection, especially against FX movements, yeah? So our derivatives, and a little bit what Emiliano said before, in Chile, the accounting for derivatives, basically, you have the asset and liability, okay, and there isn't much netting, okay? So basically, when the Chilean peso depreciated, that inflates the asset and liability of our derivative volumes. But the net doesn't really change. So the big growth you saw in the derivatives as a percentage of assets and liabilities was because as a bank that does a lot of forward derivatives, especially with clients and these type of things, the depreciation of the peso leads to an inflation of that volume absent liability, and then when the peso appreciates, that comes down, okay?

And also the compression we have been performing in order to net that out and to reduce the risk with assets for the capital ratio has also

Sorry, just bear with us a moment.

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Hello?

Can you hear us? Yes. Hello? Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I connected. I was really inspired, but now I don't know where I left off. So basically I was talking about, so when the PESO appreciates the volume, ask them liability of the derivative is false.

Okay. Why don't you ask where the...

do you know if anyone can tell me where i left off i'll just summer up summarize it up so and then we have the uf gap so we control the uf gap using cash flow hedges and those are the asset is in mark to market withdrawn mortgages but the derivative is against equity okay so that explains during 2022 why part of the year we had a loss in oci because as inflation expectations went up that produces a loss. But as inflation expectations go down, even though there's an impact on margins, the book value grows. So there's another reason for book value growth because of these cash flow hedges. So basically, and that's always going to be that way, but as long as long-term inflation expectations remain anchored with the central bank, what the central bank wants, that shouldn't be a noise. This happens when you have big sharp turns in inflation expectations. And then there's a third type of derivative, which is a derivative we use in order, because remember, we always talk about we're long inflation and we're also short liability sensitivity to rates. And part of that sensitivity to short-term rates is also done through hedging. But those type of hedges are not recognized against equity. the cost of those hedges or those swaps are recognized in net interest income, both the cost of that and the mark to market. So when you look at our NII, you're going to see that last year, 2022, we had a big increase in what is valuation, what is inflation, because we increased the inflation gap. But we also, as a policy, we go long inflation, but we don't like to be on both sides of the equation, to go long inflation and long rates, If inflation goes down, rates usually go down, maybe not at the same moment, okay? But our biggest fear here is that if inflation goes down, rates will go down. So basically, through what we have today is a situation where we see that inflation is going down, and therefore, rates should begin to go down, okay? And therefore, this year, if rates begin to go down, not only will you have a decrease in funding costs, but also that increase in the value of those swaps, which is also included in NII, will also start to reverse. So long story short, with inflation and rates coming down, you're going to see an improvement in the book value because of the OCI, and you're going to see an improvement in margins. I don't know if that was clear or not.

Yes, perfect. Very clear. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the explanation.

Thank you. So we have a question from Alonso Aramburu from BTG Pactual. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes. OK, thanks. Yeah, I wanted to follow up on the return on equity. Clearly, it's going to be lower in the first half of the year, increasing in the second half. For you to get to 18%, you probably need to be closer to 20% towards the second half of the year, and you're talking about potentially margins being even higher in 2024. So my question is, when you look at your sustainable ROE potentially in a mid-cycle situation with rates, let's say, around 4 or 5, normalized inflation, should we think that your sustainable ROE is now above 18%? Given this trend and this momentum, 2024 looks like it would be probably closer to 20%.

Okay, yeah, so basically, we've always stated that the long-term ROE is 17, 19% because, you know, there's always, it's hard to tell the future now. But basically, as we said, you know, if we go back to normal rate and inflation with margins going back to their historical standards, you know, what we don't know is things like unexpected legislation or things like that, okay, or risks is going to be, but But if everything goes back to normal and we don't have any surprises, a 19% ROE in the long term is absolutely feasible. We keep the range 17, 19 to take into account of unknowns, but clearly going back to normal levels of inflation and rates and if our strategy continues to be successful, 19% ROEs, the high end of that range is clearly absolutely feasible for the long term.

Thank you, Robert.

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Anand from White Oak Capital. Anand, please go ahead.

Thank you for the opportunity. Three questions. The credit cost for the full year, the guidance is 1.1 to 1.2. In terms of quarterly, do we have any expectation of whether it will be like front-loaded or back-loaded

Okay, it should be front-loaded, maybe second and third, but as I said, this has a lot to do with the involvement of the economy. So, as we're seeing the weaker economy now and then picking up at the end of the year, sometimes there's lags in asset quality, but I would say that it's going to be probably higher in the beginning of the year, coming down towards the end. And obviously the goal of the bank is to reach a cost of credit of 1% in 2024. So our view is that it will be higher in the first half coming down, especially in the fourth quarter probably.

But with not so much a steep slope. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the trend should be like from loaded but not significantly.

Yeah, so basically as we said, 1.2, maybe a little bit higher in the beginning and then going down to 1, 1.1. Okay, so it doesn't change too much like the margins, for example.

Perfect. Secondly, when you were answering the previous question on derivatives, there was an explanation about three different aspects. First was about the client-related derivative. The last one was about our balance sheet via long inflation and short hedge. In the middle, you explained about the U.S. account. If possible, can you explain it once? I couldn't get that.

Okay, so the UF, Chilean banks are very plain vanilla, but we have this special thing called the UF, which is the currency. It's basically an inflation-linked vessel. And the bank, by the nature, most long-term loans in Chile are indexed to inflation. As a result, since banks usually are taking deposits, which in Chile are either non-interest-bearing or time deposits, and time deposits tend to be a stable source of funding but very short contractually. So think of it this way. We're capturing nominal pesos and we're lending US. So we're lending inflation-linked and we're mainly capturing pesos that are not inflation-linked. And this produces the inflation gap. And if we do nothing, the inflation gap goes very, very high. And that would indicate the bank would be taking on too much interest rate risk. And so we have a cap. We put a cap on how large the inflation gap could be. In order to control that gap, you can issue inflation-linked bonds, which we do, but there's not enough in the Chilean market. So the other way to control the inflation gap is through derivatives. And those are the derivatives that we do under cash flow hedging. So what basically you do is you take a bundle of mortgages and you take a derivative and we basically lower or we control the UF gap. So it's very efficient. Basically, it's very well documented. But since that is technically defined as a cash flow hedge, that cash flow hedge by accounting rules everywhere under IFRS has to go against equity. So if we did a bond, you would have the asset and liabilities matched and you would have no mark to market. If you don't use a bond and you have to use derivatives, The accounting forces you not to mark to market the asset, but the derivative. And that's the part that goes under equity. Going a little bit further, remember that under Basel III, those cash flow hedges don't go under CET1. So as we phase in CET1, these cash flow hedges will have no impact on capital. But today in Chile, we're not there yet in terms of the phasing in. So this impacts capital and impacts CET1, even though later on, CET1 will not be impacted by these cash flow edges. So as inflation expectations come down, we should see that impact of these derivatives fall or have less impact on capital. And under Basel III, in the future, this will have zero impact, either positive or negative. I don't know if that makes it more clear or not.

No, that's perfectly clear. Many thanks. And the last question is, this derivative of these three varieties are a reasonable part of overall operations. From the counterparty risk perspective, how do we get confidence that counterparties are good enough to kind of honor this? So can you give us a sense of who are the counterparties? Are these international different banks, central bank in some case, or domestic corporates? So how do we get confidence that these derivatives will be honored if there is excessive volatility.

Yeah, so... Hello? Can you hear me?

Yes. Yeah, I can hear.

So the big chunk of the loan book, because as Robert said, I mean, we have this activity with clients when basically the counterpart is one of our clients, either corporate, sometimes SME, sometimes big corporates, depending on the profile of the client and the sophistication of the client, some of them do have collateral agreements that basically have like a daily revision and posting of collateral for the position. And in that sense, basically we assess the equivalent credit risk of the derivatives as a loan to the client. So that is part of our credit risk management with clients, I mean, some of them use their lines with derivatives, and if we grant a loan, maybe we don't have space for derivatives, and the other way around. I mean, so it's just on the client basis, it's just part of the great exposure management we do with any clients, and derivatives is just another product that we factor in in that exposure. And then when we, let's say, or we go to the market to hedge that exposure to clients, there the counterparts are basically banks. I mean, either domestic or international banks, depending on the product. For a peso swap, sometimes it's a local bank, and for a dollar swap, usually it's an international counterpart. But there, we have all of them with collateral agreements with CSAs on with daily revision and on daily market to market and let's say either cash or very high quality collateral and when you have bilateral trading and then you have a significant part of the operation through clearing houses like LCH or CME and even we have a comp there which is the local CCF here in So from the credit exposure point of view, the derivatives portfolio is quite secure because it's either collateralized on a daily basis or managed as any other exposure to clients within our risk management policies.

Thank you. Just one follow-up. We have in our financial statements when we publish them for the full year. We always include a table that shows the derivatives, the asset and liabilities, which ones have the threshold and the collaterals, and the big majority do daily margin calls. So that's a really good... So basically we put that because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable that this is correctly done.

Sure. I have a follow-up, if I may. Go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So of the overall derivative book, how much is exchange traded versus, you know, bilateral?

Yeah, I don't have the number here in mind.

But I would say that 80% or more has a daily, daily posting of collateral and CSA. That's in that note I was talking about.

okay yeah that's the important thing because because even if it is bilateral with uh with bank uh we have uh also daily market calls i mean the difference is that if you're doing on a on a with a cleaner house or you are doing it on the capital basis but even bilaterals are highly collateral yeah it's threshold zero so basically every day and okay so yeah that that that portfolio especially the client has

No, we have no trouble. There's a lot of moving parts, but basically the client business has been very safe. And as Emiliano said, that's included. For example, we do a big deal with a large Chilean corporate. That's included in their credit and exposure. So, no, that has worked very well.

And the trend is to go to clearinghouses when we can because it's efficient from the capital point of view for us and for the counterpart. So... The trend there is to go to more centrally cleared derivatives.

Sure, sure. And lastly, from a capital consumption perspective, all these derivative assets on the balance sheet, what percentage of capital is consumed by these or what is the restricted assets that come from these derivative assets?

I mean, the total exposure for market risk in our case is around like 15, 17 percent of the risk-weighted asset, which is large, but again, because in Chile we are under the standard approach on the Basel III. So if you look at our market risk exposure under the European Basel III version, which is the one we report to our company, our risk-weighted assets for market risk are like one-fourth of what we see here in Chile. So if you look at our risk-weighted assets on the Chilean version, market risk represents 15-17% of the risk-weighted assets. But if you see that same picture under the European version that allows the use of internal models that are the ones we use to manage our Our derivative business, that goes to one-fourth, basically, you know, four or five percent of the risk-worthy assets.

Thank you very much. You are very patient, and you are very comprehensive. All the best. Okay, all the best to you.

Okay, so, well, yeah, I think we'll conclude here. And so if anyone has more questions or comments, please, you know, contact us. So thank you very much, everyone, and talk to you soon.

That concludes the call for today. Thank you and have a nice day.