ING Bank Slaski

to our conference where we are going to sum up the fourth quarter, but also make a comment on the whole year. Let me introduce our team, Brunon Bartkiewicz, the President of the Board, Bożena Graczyk, CFO, Rafał Banecki, Chief Economist, Iza Rokiecka, investor relations and ESG reporting. My name is Piotr Utrata and I'm this bank's spokesperson. Let me give the floor to Bruno. Over to you. Microphone, please. Welcome. Let's summarize Q4 on a formal note, but I'm sure you will all be looking at the whole year anyhow and our figures that have not been audited yet. So let me say the following. Yet another time, it's my pleasure to inform you that all is well at the bank and nothing extraordinary is happening, which means nothing wrong is going on at the bank. Quarter four is within the... mainstream of our actions and their outcomes, what we have targeted for this year, what is consistent with our vision of the world and our place in it. Certainly, once we have a lower economic activity, we are more dependent on the macroeconomic outcomes. more the reason for having Rafał here with us. And in part two, just as soon as I am done speaking, Rafał will present to you our assessment of the current economic situation and the vision of our office that Rafał chairs as far as the macroeconomic development is concerned in Poland in the nearest future. And then Bożena's part, that'll be more financial details. And I'm sure that due to the relatively high predictability of our quarter four figures, which we see in the analysts' views, we will perhaps give more room to questions to address your remarks. notes I'm not counting on praise but still that's not part of our job description and now in our activity quarter four is no surprise to you or us we see that in today's in this morning's comments already so it would be an overstatement if I were to guide you through the specific figures and graphs that we talk about page four, for example, in our market share. And due to some of the comments, let me just remark that our market shares are not dropping. They're stable and consistent with our expectation, mainly as regards keeping the balance in a good shape and not under balancing it is with insufficient loan to depot ratios a lot can happen so we're trying to keep the proportion between the basic figures so deposits and loans in adequate terms without excessive focus on debt instruments and an investment which is not the core activity of the bank even though at present time it might be reasonably profitable. And this is not an issue that has enjoyed our full confidence in the past, so therefore we are cautious in the proportion of our balance sheet, which indicates that we are less willing to bet on deposits. the credit or loan dynamics is a picture of the macroeconomic situation and the situation of the sector as such. And here we do have some turbulence. We're seeing some. I don't want this to be interpreted as though we are being vague. on the activity of the whole economy throughout 2024 and our conclusions for 2025, we are still increasingly optimistic. We're very optimistic as far as the missing points in the macroeconomic factors in 2024, but we're thinking that 2025 will be the beginning of a new great era and we all make Poland great again. This is contagious. Do forgive me. But I will leave that to Rafał, who, contrary to his character, will try to put an optimistic hat on. I should say that that's probably all from me. Our outcomes will not be a surprise to you. I can see that the cost of risk in Q4 are a surprise, which is not a surprise to me that it is a surprise to you. But I don't want you to think on the basis of the figures of Q4 in risk department to draw far-reaching conclusions. The situation is dynamic. It is volatile. We are currently exiting a phase which I personally still consider to be relatively low economic activity with the GDP growth of, what, 2.8, 2.9% seems to be an overstatement, but we want more, we wouldn't want more to be happening. I do not envy my colleagues in other countries, especially other EU countries, who have to scratch their foreheads thinking about what's happening in their own economies, but Seeing the excellent outcome of Polish economy, I am very glad because we need more of what we have and what we need is key to this whole setup. So, both the results and the figures probably would not raise much doubt. Reading our presentation, I suspect you would have noticed the recommendations of the Board on the payment of the dividend. That's probably a novelty of some sort, but if you look at the figures and the rationale of our attitude to the dividend policy, Frankly speaking, I believe a lot of you could have expected that kind of recommendation, which is consistent with the financial authority's recommendation of the payment of dividend, giving the lower economic activity, which does not mean that we're going to extend that to the following year. We are quite optimistic. However, the capital surplus that we have today allows us to pay that dividend. because this is the time to do it. And my dream is to have the Polish economy grow at such a rate that I would have to explain why we do not want to pay the dividend. But hopefully the great bright future is ahead of us. our attitude towards dividend is slightly different. I'm sure we would all be very happy if the loan activity were to fire away on the level that we're talking about. Investors would not be complaining upon the results that would ensue. That's all by way of introduction. Now let me give the floor over to Rafał. And I'm hoping... you will be motivated and you will be optimistic looking ahead and that's the future. Hello, if we were to see the optimism, let's look at the region and 2024. In 2024, Polish economy grew by almost 3%, 2.9. Historically speaking, you could say there is perhaps nothing to cheer about, but if we look at the forecast for the region, we have delivered the expected growth, whereas our neighbors had half of that or two-thirds of what was expected, especially Hungary and Romania, a lot weaker than expected, the Czech Republic, half of what was expected. So from that point of view, Poland definitely delivers the expected growth, although, like I said, historically, it is not very strong. And this is the future ahead. We're assuming that in 2025, our growth will be slightly above 3%. We will still be one of the fastest growing EU economies, but that's a new norm. So 3-4 peak rather than 5-6. There are a few reasons. Stagnation in Europe, but also supply in the Polish economy. I will go back to that very shortly. In 2025, we're assuming growth above 3%. Still mostly domestic demand. The second motor of domestic demand is launching. That's investment, because in 2024, practically, it was stagnant. In 2024... the main drive of the growth was consumption. We're hoping, assuming that in 2025, there will be more investment to be seen. We can see that in the following slide. I will not perhaps... surprise you if I say that the EU financing cycle will be the main drive behind it. And we're looking not just at how much money the state will absorb, but also how much money will reach the ultimate beneficiaries. And to simplify it, looking at some potential delays between the inflow of the funds and the disbursements to the final beneficiaries. So taking into account those delays, the forecast that you can see on the lower graph, and that's money that will be paid off over 3% of GDP in 2025, vis-a-vis about 1% in 2024. And that's the main drive that we're waiting for. versus the Polish recovery program, structural funds, and perhaps some Polish recovery plans, loans? An important factor here, from that point of view, Poland is different than our neighboring countries. We have at least three main driving factors of growth, which do not depend on trade policy and customs. So consumption, salaries, the savings buffer, the EU financing cycle, that's another factor, which will drive public investment, and the deleveraging of the economy, which we're hoping will... evolve. In 2024, we're counting on public investment. Private investment should improve perhaps before the end of the year. The rate of private investment is shown at the graph above. Until the end of 2024, they were still slowing down. The plans are not excessively optimistic, but we're hoping to get public funding. And then towards the end of the year, 2025-2026, private investment will probably rise up. Definitely grant-related projects from the Polish recovery plan need to be pre-financed, and that will too generate some demand for loans, perhaps not as big as we'd hoped for, but it's still an element that supports our loan actions. But there are other factors as well. High interest rates are a significant factor. We can see that some of the loan demand is satisfied. by getting financing abroad. This week, there was a lot of issue, a big issue in dollars in one of the biggest Polish companies, but we looked at the payment balance There is an increasing share of financing by mother companies of their subsidiaries. I'm talking about the enterprises. And what we need to conclude is that the banking sector might not necessarily be the beneficiary of that pickup. There is an increasing demand still for external financing. Going on, looking for positive signs, in Q4, in December, we saw some early signs, mostly in Q4. The GDP allows us to make a more sound estimate of Q4. There is an increase in consumption still. And over the last three months, we have seen infrastructural investments launching. You can see on the top left graph, the dark blue line curve is one third of the construction business infrastructure. And here we've seen an improvement for the last three months, which means that the cycle of public investment is being launched, which is quite positive too. On the right-hand side, you see a graph for industrial production. That's a red light we often see. It shows us that the whole region of Central Europe... is right now quite stagnant in terms of industry, which is an important factor because it used to be based on industry and export. You can see German, Czech and Polish production here, which are flat, right? And the latest global data indicates that the global industry is slowly moving on. Germany's structural problems are not really changing. The general news from Germany is that it's there's a slight improvement probably just before the customs duties are enforced. Let's hope something will come out of it. But maybe there is a change of cycle but not a structural improvement. So hence, and not very typical pickup in 2025, mostly driven by domestic demand and the 3% growth of GDP over three rather than five to 6% growth. Now, for interest rates, we can see some room for lowering 50 to 100 points, mainly in semester two.

Poland is still struggling against inflation, not just the regulated prices that we have been hearing about in the commentaries, but also base inflation, which is a core inflation, which is 4%. as of the end of 2024. Now, it should be going down gradually, but the forecasts for Poland and for Hungary, for example, are still quite high. There is some room for improvement, but not much. The central bank's rhetoric is very restrictive, and that translates into the exchange rates And as we look at other channels of influence, we can see that credit shows that these high interests are very restrictive. There is some leeway for 50 to 100 points downwards, but we think it will probably happen in the second half of the year. Now, the trap of medium or high growth is certainly a factor, and supply The supply side is also slowing down economic growth. Some of it comes from Germany. Some of it comes from other economies. It's hard to estimate the proportions between the two. But if you look at the graph at the top, that's GDP per capita after exceeding 25,000. And you can see what happened to those countries. The yellow line is Spain. and starting from the Lehman Brothers crisis, Spain became stagnant as far as this is concerned. Poland dealt with it quite well, nearly as good as Korea, But there is some problems, certainly. The model based on low productivity and low labor costs has to change. And we're hoping for that to happen. As the banking sector, we do hope that private investment will become unblocked. We do not believe that Poland is using the full growth capacity. Our economy is very much deleveraged. And at a moment when we require higher productivity and a new growth model, the diagram at the bottom shows we are very much leveraged, the second one from the bottom in the EU. So there's a lot of headroom there. And we are still a good place to invest both for the Polish and foreign business. But the economy is now kind of stagnant, just surviving. But it's a good idea, we believe, to come back to a higher rate of investment, to come back to the line, the dotted line in the top diagram. That's Korea. We would like to follow that example rather than the path that Spain had taken. In terms of business demand for credit, there is a slight improvement. And given our forecasts that assume a sort of average growth in mortgages and in corporate lending, there will still be deleveraging of the economy. which shows that we are not using the growth possibilities that are in place and the banking sector is not participating in this upcoming brightening up of the situation. Now, people say that a lot has to change in order to make our economic growth stronger, but what we've been paying particular attention to as the banking sector is the financial deepening. This is what we need at this stage of economic growth in Poland, a fully fledged financial and capital market with a banking sector as an important part of it. But in fact, we need all different segments of the financial market to make sure that companies can use different tools. Scalability is needed. We have a very large SME sector, and that's a vast resource. But in order for the economy to keep growing, we need to scale up those companies. We need large international companies, and leveraging is necessary for that. So we do hope that the Polish business will develop in that direction. But right now, these forecasts are not very optimistic. 3% this year, similar. Next year, other forecasts. But we would very much prefer for Polish business to be more open to these growth possibilities. Thank you. Q4 performance and the results for 1.3 billion of net profits. And as we said before, this is a better result than what the market expected, mostly due to lower cost of risk. And I would like to take this opportunity to comment our performance in terms of other types of income, and that's higher. they are similar to q3 but the composition is slightly different in q4 we had a positive profit from leasing and we updated the operational risk and you've been asking about the tax rate in 2024 we saw a reduction of certain differences we had seen before. Namely, just like in the banking sector, as a whole, we received a positive interpretation for the losses from the Swiss franc lending, the Swiss franc credits. And this year, we are also including the positive effects of the R&D break that reduced the effective tax rate. If you look at the analysis we showed you, the 4.4 million is the net profit, and that's only slightly lower to our net profit from 2023. 140 million was the total amount of the repayment vacation, as it was called. If not for that, our profit would have been better. Now, interest, in terms of interest rates, profit, we had 7%, and the commission performance, which is a good idea because that reflects the transaction amounts of our clients, that's 130 million year-on-year. Now, we still have a higher operating cost. 258 million was the growth, which is 7%, and that's the result of price increases and other activities that are due to the inflation adjustment. And the banking tax, which is 96 million zlotys higher, which is a growth of 15%. And this is due to a different asset structure and a lower share of T-bonds, which, as you know, are exempt from the banking tax. When we talk about profitability, our ROE adjusted for MCF age is 20.4%, which is a satisfactory level. And the cost to revenue indicator is at 41.7 in 2024. Now about just a few words about our net interest income. As you can see, it's 8.9 billion, which is a growth of 8% year on year. In Q4, 2.2 billion was the result, and that's similar to the previous quarter. Now, the quarterly interest margin is six basis points lower at 3.55, but this should come as no surprise to you. This is the result of a higher cost of financing, and it's directly related to the promotions we had in Q4. It should also come as no surprise that our loan-to-depot indicator is at 75.8 at the end of the year, which is below our ambition. But it's a good idea to emphasize that it's still better than the sector average, which was even lower than in Q3, namely at 67.8. This is a good moment to say that the segment that ruled in terms of asset growth was retail with over 20 billion new lending. and that's only 1 billion less than in our record year, which was 2021. In terms of mortgage lending, it's also an important factor. New lending share is over 17%, and that's without any support and without the 2% credit effect. So this is a very good trend. We do hope it will continue or indeed speed up in 2025. In terms of commission, this income is 6% higher. That's 2.3%. And that's a very good performance. This is something we're very happy about, and we're happy to see growth in pretty much every type of commission income subsegment. Twenty-three percent growth on payments cards and credit cards, which is the result of a growing number of transactions and the value of transactions, and the very high activity in the first three quarters in particular. 20% growth on the distribution of our brokerage activity and it is of custody. You know that this is near the end of its life cycle as a product in the bank, so this revenue is going down and income from the distribution of participation units has grown. Our assets in investment funds grew by 51% last year. As a result of our higher activity in mortgages, we saw a 6% growth of revenue from insurance products as well. Now, the trend in the last quarter was slightly different. I would like to comment on the slightly worse performance on cards, card commission. This is mostly the result of Q3 being that high and a slightly lower amount of the transactions that we saw that year. But that's just a marginal reduction compared to the previous quarters. In terms of our OPEX, in 2024, our expenses grew by 8%. The total expenses grew by 8% to a level of 4.7 billion. Operating costs and general and administrative costs went up. And as you can see in the analytical data, this is as a result of the higher cost of legal and advisory services and IT services. And I'm sure you'll understand that marketing and promotion also were a more significant cost item. You can also see a 5% growth in terms of salaries. This includes the salary increase from April, which was about 7%. And our banking tax going up. This is plus 15%, but I've commented on that before. Regulatory costs are another item that's worth commenting on. In 2024, the banking sector was not encumbered by the cost of the DGS, and this is going to change next year. The regulatory costs in 2025, as we have been informed, should be about 3 billion zlotys. and the DGS rates, the cost is not something we incurred for three years, so this item will certainly increase the total share of regulatory costs in the total expenses in 2025. Now, as for the cost of risk, we had them at a very high level in Q3 with 432 million zlotys. In Q4, it's 173 million zlotys, and this includes 65 million of the provisions for legal risk for the Swiss franc credits. And after taking this effect into account, the cost of risk for retail was 53 million, And for corporate, there were 55 million zlotys. Now, these lower costs of risk stem from the fact that every quarter we carry out a review And in this Q and Q4, we didn't identify certain items that had existed in Q3, those bigger impairments that we had seen in Q3 impacting the cost of risk. We still maintain a careful or a cautious stance And we hope that 2025 will see a good economic growth and a positive impact on the cost of risk. But we believe that for the next two quarters, we have to remain cautious in terms of how we identify project risk stemming from the previous economic cycle. Now, in terms of the portfolio quality, As you can see, for the corporate sector, we have the same levels as in the previous quarter for the non-performing part and a very low rate or very low amount of irregular loans. Now, as a result of the sales of irregular corporate loans in Q4, we saw a plus 21 million positive impact, which translated into a lower level of coverage, the provisioning rate, because what we are selling are the credits with the worst parameters. And we are down by 13% with the provisioning ratio, which was the result of our credits or lending activity in Q4. We meet all the MREL requirements. And as you know from our communication to the market in October, we received 350 million of senior loan that ensures meeting all the requirements and having the sufficient buffers for this. And finally, the last bit of commentary. It is the intent of the management board to recommend to the supervisory board that a dividend of 75% of the net profit should be paid for 2024. We have a capital surplus which makes it possible to do that.

Thank you. And let's have questions. We will be going to the Q&A session right now. We will respond to questions from the room first, if there are such, and then from the internet. Over to you. Kamień Stolski, Santander. First, the dividend, the basic dividend policy is 50%. I always think about the future 2025, it seems it will be similar to 2024. Is the basic policy up to 50%? And what is the motivation for the higher payout this year? I have two further questions. In our documents, we have 50% policy as the basic one. But what I want to say is that our dividend policy is always one that matches the needs. So the bank wants to have capital independence, it finances itself from its own activity, but the power of being able to predict the growth of loan activity is subject to failure sometimes. If we look further ahead, Right now, we believe that the 75 payout and the baseline assumption for 50% does not in any way breach anything and does not bring us any closer to the buffer period as regards the legal requirements, so optimization of the capital size. So that's how I explain. Typically, it's 50%, assuming there's a growth in loan activity, but the growth of loan activity is lower than 50%. foreseen. So there is a natural element here that exists. And even if we look optimistically forward, we believe that we are able to pay 75%. So hence, we do that. It's the same principle that we go by. And in many times in the past, it has led to a non payment of dividend. But that was in the time when the dynamic predicted and actual of alone activity went into the two digits figures, but those times, as you have heard from Rafa, seem rather distant, but we do not lose hope. Thank you so much. Another question concerns the intervention of the president of the ING group, and that's the appetite for M&A. As far as I remember, A statement was made that M&A would be an interesting option in every country where it makes sense. Three countries were listed. So my question is, when we look at the loan, ING is close to the market tendency. Has something changed in the board's opinion for M&A area as a potential instrument that ING could use? Are you looking at what we think locally? Stephen never listed Poland, as you would have probably noticed. He listed countries where? upon slight turbulence, you can find that ING's market share is relatively low. You can't say that this would be true in ING Bank Śląski. Our growth in market share, looking from the decade's perspective, is highly satisfactory if we compare to where we were 10 years ago and where we are right now. Today's situation and the demand in Poland, we're looking at four years of interesting recession. That does not mean that the credit action was not dynamic as it was in 2021, but that's easily explainable. Rafał explained a lot to that end. So that aside, our standing for M&A, our position on M&A changes in no way. If we want to increase our scale, we have proven over the last 20 years that we don't need M&A for that, because our organic growth is linked to the growth that should be considered appropriate. Now, overheating, excessive growth, triggers some consequences, and it is often demonstrated in analyses over the course of several years. Not all M&As are successful. And to be clear, the same analyses demonstrate that hardly any M&As in Polish banking have been profitable in the long run. So our position remains unchanged. However, as a rule, just I don't want to create a vision that we definitely say a no. We never definitely say a no. Being operational is always commendable. So that intervention, that statement is a confirmation of certain sign that our group's board has been ascending. Our local position remains unchanged. There is a difference though, right? The group may have its own policy and we might not even be aware of it. Perhaps they want to buy an insurance company, but definitely we don't. here locally. Thank you. And my last question. This is what I get asked as an analyst, the demand for corporate loans in the Polish recovery plan context. Dozens of billions will be distributed throughout 2025 and that the recovery plan needs pre-financing. So the question is whether your bank today has a pipeline of smaller or larger financing tools and whether Polish recovery plan will in fact trigger a jumpstart to corporate loans. Let me hand over to Rafał for that. Let me just say the following first. Yes, but that's mostly an announcement, right? The cascading rollout of recovery plans train is getting slightly delayed. We were hoping for this train to move a bit sooner, but it's still more of a wish than a reality. I'm not going to say anything else. Rafa, perhaps you should like to comment on that. Yes, the grant part should speed up in 2025, and that does require pre-financing indeed. We have some banking products for that purpose that are addressed. to that purpose, that have been designed to do that. Grants are paid out at a certain stage. Advance payments are rather small in grant reality, so companies need pre-financing, local governments need pre-financing. Our estimate is that in 2025, there will be over 1% of GDP of those grants to be paid out. That's about 40 billion. So part of that will be pre-financing and I think this will be a catalyst And of course, structural funds are being launched and pre-financing is needed for that. And the third thing, we're hoping that the pickup of public investment dominating 2025 will generate private investment at some point. And that's what we're really counting on most because that's private loans to private businesses and decisions of individual companies. Any further questions in the room? I wanted to ask about the current level of IRS. And what is the level of loans on fixed rate? And another question, the overheads grew by 4% last year. You mentioned about a raise, 7% raise about in April. I think the headcount dropped by 5% year on year. So what are the estimates for this year? I believe that the salary pressure is slightly lower. What is your budget and what is it going to look like? From the point of view of IRS, we do not disclose such information. This is our internal policy on macro cash flow policy and strategy. I can only comment that due to the new measure of risk, SOC-NII, most banks, in fact, all of the banks, should have a decreased sensitivity of the balance sheet to the volatility of interest rates, especially when such a drop of interest rates is expected. So that would be my general comment in that. As far as the salary costs, We also would not disclose forward-looking information. Please feel invited to join us at the conference after the first quarters if salary increases are announced. They're usually publicly announced together with the financials for quarter one. Seven, seven and a half percent was the increase indeed in the year on year dynamic. We took into account the restructuring provision that changes dynamics slightly. That was over 80 million lotties. That's another point. And also from the point of view of Q4, definitely more. It's a component of the internal settlements and estimates for bonuses. And so those are the three components that constitute the nominal dynamic of the whole year and quarter four alike. And the fixed interest rates mortgages, as far as I can recall, that's about 35%, 22 billion zlotys of our overall portfolio, 22 billion. Those are fixed rate interest rates. And about 75% of the 24 production was based on fixed rates. These are details that are not too much different than the whole sector, perhaps in the higher ballpark. You are completely right about salary increases, that it is a lot higher than the cost of remuneration, the cost of employment. That's the restructuring provision that we referred to. The reductions, the redundancies are not totally linear. That needs to be looked at, but the market did in fact pay more. We always benchmark ourselves next to that. There are two in-depth analyses on the remuneration situation in the banking sector. We do that twice over the year in order to be well prepared. That is due to the fact that there are institutions that regularly issue seller increases early in the year, about 1st of April, and some do the adjustment in autumn. So, hence, the analysis is performed twice in the year. You're also right to say that any forecasting for increase in remuneration is for that to be slightly lower than last year. But as Bozena said, our adjustment level, which we are always making sure is market related, so will be communicated after quarter one. Are there any further questions in the room? But the banking sector is not the biggest contributor to salary increase in the economy, as you know. We're no energy, we're not mining. But that was mean of me to say. Okay, questions online. There are two questions. First, what is the morale ratio for the end of Q4 2024? 10.6 vis-à-vis almost 6% of the minimum level that we should be maintaining. However, for us, the reference point from REL was that the most binding one and is basis for our decision. What is your estimate on the legal risk on the free loan sanction and the fact that the VBOR rate is being challenged? For both cases, our estimate is that it is a relatively low risk. But for both cases, those are not threats that we would ignore. Now, in terms of the number of lawsuits against the bank, do we disclose these numbers? We have not been disclosing these numbers, but they're not big numbers and they are not increasing. incrementally, then the increase in lawsuits for VBOR, well, that is not more than 10 per month and usually lower than seven. And we're also observing a decrease in the latest months. Yes, we are. Now, of course, we're hoping that, well, let me say directly, I'm a banker. I'm a simple banker. Let me just be blunt. And that's a modest appeal. It's in fashion. It's time to end with this craziness because it's worth dealing with what's important in life. And that is increasing Poland's competitiveness. And it's time that we understood that. Thank you. That's all for me.

There's one more question. several i think there was one caught in lublin that undermined vibor in its ruling and that's what i'm talking about that's why i said what i said there are things in public life and in economy that should not be given to judges who by the way have a problem deciding what the social compact is in this respect it's a philosophical approach i know But I was brought up in a rational reality, and it's time to put an end to this madness. Fortunately, the state issues its securities based on Vibor. The whole financial system, including T-bonds, is based on Vibor. And this is the definition of reality that has to be used in practice and also to be translated into legal acts. Because we're wasting social energy on talking about these things. We are wasting our energy as a society. And it's the wrong thing to do. Actually, my question was about something else. I wanted to ask you about your exposure to the old indicator. I think you had about 9 billion at your bank. Is that going to be translated into this new indicator somehow? Or what's your idea for this? As you know, there's an old and a new member of our committee, Bożena Starczyk and Graczyk, and I will say that after this new indicator is defined, because we have halted our production in terms of Vienna in order not to confuse everybody, We have exposure as far as corporate clients are concerned and also in mortgages that were based on floating rate and we had the use of a Viron in our fixed rate system as well. So all these elements are there. The corporate part is being extinguished quite fast as is its nature. Some of the floating rates lending, which is about 4% of our portfolio, I think, is based on the floating VIRON. And that's not being extinguished, of course. Five and a half, actually. It's going to be closer to four towards the end of the year. But these are quite significant amounts, certainly. Now, any changes as far as the VDON and its use are concerned should follow decisions from the National Working Group Steering Committee that has the representatives of all the relevant bodies in Poland. So that's why it's so important. And we are still waiting for decisions in this respect. However, this is a process where we have to meet all the administrative and regulatory requirements because we need to lower it to the biggest possible extent, and that's our load star, because we don't want to get the clients confused as far as this is concerned. And this change, which has to happen sooner or later, it's probably better for us if it's slightly later, But we have to do that in order to stop confusing the clients and to do it in a way that doesn't cause any doubt and whilst maintaining full compliance with the administrative and legal requirements. When this is going to happen is a question we are not in a position to answer because it's not our decision to make. is one of the rates, one of the indicators used on the Polish financial markets, and we are far from being the only entity that used WIRON. Now, the transition of the WIBOR and WIRON portfolios, something that the steering committee is working on. And in fact, we are working on a modified roadmap after the decision of the steering committee on selecting a new indicator. and we're waiting for when this benchmark will be ready to publish. The nearest quarter is when this roadmap will probably be accepted. And when it comes to VIRON rates, those portfolios will also be subject to these changes. Can you remind us what the name is going to be? I think it'll take some getting used to. It might not be the most obvious name, but it's in line with how other markets do it. It's PolSTR. Pol Ester, maybe the pronunciation will be Pol Ester for short-term rate, Polish short-term rate, Pol Ester, perhaps we can pronounce it. So from this point of view, the steering committee And the teams on the working group are working very hard on developing the new roadmap. And once the steering committee approves it, it'll be published. However, and we've said this in our public communication, the original objective was for the end date of the roadmap not to change. So when you look at the VDON portfolio, which is a BMR indicator, BMR rates, by the way, and it's got the necessary fallback clauses. So all of this is under control as far as this is concerned. Any last questions? If there are none, thank you very much for this conference. And I'll see you in May. And let me thank you for the 37 past quarterly meetings because this is my last meeting. Thank you very much.