Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. As usual, I'm pleased to present First Abu Dhabi Bank financial results, this time for the third quarter and the first nine months of 2025. If we start with slide four, which looks at our highlights, we've delivered a record group net profit of AED 16.02 billion, and this is up 24% year-on-year, reflecting strong underlying operating momentum across all of our business segments. The return on tangible equity reached 20%, demonstrating robust returns which are done at scale, and this is well above our medium-term guidance of over 16%. Our group revenue reached AED 27.65 billion, which is an increase of 16% year-on-year, and this is supported by diversified growth across all divisions, as well as resilient margins and an improved revenue mix.
Our balance sheet continues to grow at scale with total assets at AED 1.38 trillion, and this is up 14% year to date, also supported by double-digit growth in loans, as well as a healthy deposit inflow across the franchise. We maintained robust balance sheet fundamentals with strong liquidity, as well as asset quality and a solid capital base, which was underpinned by our AA-minus credit rating. These strong results are really a testament to the disciplined execution of our strategy. As we enter the final quarter of the year, we are well positioned to sustain this momentum and remain well on track with our full-year guidance. Turning to slide five, we can look at some of the drivers of this performance and how the group continues to execute strategically across key priorities. Firstly, we're achieving broad-based franchise growth.
We've seen strong expansion in lending, in deposits, and client acquisitions, and this is supported by deeper engagement across investment banking and markets, our wholesale bank, and our personal business wealth and privilege client banking group. Revenues grew at double-digit levels across all of these divisions, supported by strong business volumes, including assets under management, which are up by 49%. Secondly, our international franchise delivered double-digit growth in loans and deposits, contributing 17% to group revenue. This performance reflects the strength of our network across more than 20 markets, as well as our role as a regional anchor for cross-border liquidity, trade, and investment flows. We're also advancing our strategic expansion into key markets through the upcoming launch of representative offices in Nigeria, as well as in Turkey. This is alongside a new branch in GIFT City in India.
In addition, the planned subsidiarization of our French operations will mark a significant milestone, further enhancing FAB's footprint across Europe. Third, we're scaling up AI with a measurable impact, and this is delivering gains in both speed, as well as productivity and decision-making. With multiple agents now live and quite a few in the pipeline, AI is becoming an integral part of how we serve our clients, how we run our operations, and how we collaborate and drive growth. Finally, we continue to operate from a position of strength while advancing our sustainability agenda. Our balance sheet remains robust alongside consistently strong AA- credit ratings. We've raised over AED 3.5 billion of wholesale funding year to date, including a region-first sustainable bonds, and on transition and sustainable financing, we facilitated AED 327 billion worth of projects, and thereby we've achieved more than 65% of our AED 500 billion 2030 target.
In summary, our performance is not only strong, but it's also strategic, diversified, and future-aligned. This gives us confidence as we continue to build this momentum that we will be able to continue delivering long-term value creation. Now, turning to our full-year financial guidance, our performance to date positions us well to meet and even exceed our stated metrics. If you remember, in Q2, we raised our loan growth guidance from high single-digit to low double-digit growth. I'm pleased to see that as of September end, we've already achieved 13% year-to-date growth, and this reflects healthy demand, as well as origination momentum across the whole group. While our pipeline remains healthy, the rundown of short-term trade-related financing may have a modest impact by year-end, and therefore, we'd rather not revise loan growth guidance at this point.
We're also ahead in terms of cost of risk, as well as CET1 and on returns. 2025 is bound to be a record year for the group, with a nine-month return on tangible equity of 20%, and this is standing well ahead of guidance. On the right-hand side, we outline our in-house view for key macroeconomic indicators. We continue to expect UAE GDP growth to accelerate from 5.2% in this year to 5.6% next year, and this should provide a supportive backdrop for our growth trajectory. Regarding interest rates, we now anticipate two additional rate cuts by the end of this year, with another two to three additional cuts expected next year. The main revision relates to our oil price outlook for 2026, which is now at $57 per barrel versus the previous $65 per barrel, and this reflects softer global demand dynamics, as well as incremental supply.
Turning now to slide eight to cover our financial performance for the nine-month period up to the end of September, as mentioned earlier, the group net profit rose 24% year-on-year, surpassing AED 16 billion, fully absorbing the step up in the UAE corporate tax rate during the period, which stepped up from 9% to 15%. The profit before tax reached AED 19.3 billion, which is an increase of 26% over last year. This was primarily driven by sustained revenue momentum of 16% and underpinned by strong business volumes, as well as resilient margins, solid fee generation, and an overall outstanding non-interest performance. Operating expenses were up 4% compared to the prior year, reflecting disciplined cost management and continued investments in strategic areas, including AI and technology, with revenue growth again outpacing cost growth. The cost-to-income ratio improved to 22% from 24.3% in the same period last year.
The impairment charge was AED 2.3 billion, translating to a cost of risk of 55 basis points. The tax charge for the period was AED 3.2 billion, and this represents an effective tax rate of approximately 17%. Our gross NPL ratio improved to 2.6%, and this is an all-time low for the group, while provision coverage strengthened to 106%. We maintain strong fundamentals across liquidity, as well as capital, with all key ratios above regulatory requirements. Turning to slide nine, which shows the group performance in the third quarter, our net profit reached AED 5.4 billion, and this is up 21% year-on-year. Although slightly lower sequentially, this is primarily due to the non-recurrence of some real estate and related gains that we booked in Q2. The profit before tax came in at AED 6.4 billion, and this is up 21% year-on-year.
Operating income rose to AED 9.3 billion, up 14% year-on-year. This again is driven by growth in both NII and a very strong acceleration in NFI momentum, reflecting our focus on these fee-based businesses. On the cost side, operating expenses stood at AED 2.1 billion, and this is up 2% sequentially and 5% year-on-year, while cost-to-income ratio for the quarter stood at 22.2%. Our impairment charges were AED 850 million for the quarter, and this is up 13% on the last quarter and down 7% year-on-year. On slide 10, we showcase the group's revenue mix by division and by geography, as well as by sources of income. Our diversified franchise continues to deliver strong broad-based growth across all divisions, supported by deeper client engagement, as well as sustained business momentum.
Starting with investment banking and markets, here our revenue reached AED 9.09 billion, and this is up 17% on last year. This reflects a 27% growth in lending year to date and underpinned by solid origination, as well as sustained institutional demand. We continue to demonstrate leadership in capital markets, leveraging our global markets franchise to boost client proactivity and deepen our product penetration, as well as maintain a resilient trading performance. Looking at wholesale banking, which reported revenues of AED 4.65 billion, and this was an increase of 11% year-on-year. Growth was driven by double-digit increases in both lending, as well as deposits, alongside improvements in regional coverage. We also saw strong demand for sector-specialized solutions, with increased cross-sell and deeper product penetration.
Our continued investment in digital enablement is helping us enhance service delivery, as well as accelerate onboarding and to support cross-selling through relationship management advisory tools, for example. Now, turning to personal business wealth and privilege client banking, here our revenues reached AED 9.5 billion, which is also up 11% year-on-year. We saw robust momentum across key segments, as well as products, and this included a 19% year-to-date growth in mortgages. This was driven by a 41% growth in new-to-bank customers and nearly a 50% growth in salary account transfers, as well as AED 17 billion worth of additional customer balances. Our assets under management grew 49% year-on-year, reflecting strong client inflows, as well as expanded private banking offerings and new discretionary mandates. We also broadened our wealth proposition with innovative products, such as check financing, and this is to capture our evolving client needs.
Now, looking at the revenue mix by geography, our UAE operations account for 83% of group revenue for the nine months, with 17% coming from international operations. Our international franchise continues to be a competitive differentiator for us, as well as a key contributor to the group's revenue and balance sheet. Finally, from a revenue composition perspective, the non-funded income contributed 46% of total revenue, reflecting one of the most diversified revenue mixes amongst regional peers. This also underscores the scale, as well as the sophistication and cross-sell capabilities embedded into our franchise. Turning to slide 11, here we see our net interest income reached nearly AED 15 billion, marking a 2% year-on-year increase. This growth was driven by continued balance sheet expansion, as well as resilient net interest margins, which stood at 1.84% for the nine months 2025. This was lower by nine basis points year-on-year.
In Q3, the NIM was 1.76%, which was four basis points lower quarter on quarter. This primarily reflects a shift in deposit mix, as some large ticket clients converted their customer balances into fixed deposits. From their perspective, this was to lock in higher yields in anticipation of a declining rate environment. Regarding interest rate sensitivity, a parallel movement of 25 basis points in rates is still estimated to impact our bottom line by approximately AED 200 million, and this again assumes no offsetting actions by management. On slide 12, in the first nine months, the non-interest income reached AED 12.7 billion, and this is up a remarkable 37% year-on-year, driven by strong contributions across all the various income lines. It was slightly lower in Q3 at AED 4.3 billion, and this is primarily due to the non-recurrence of the real estate gains I mentioned earlier.
Looking at the various components in more detail and starting with FX and investment income, which is up 45% in the nine months of 2025 to nearly AED 8 billion. You can see here that it's reached a new high in quarter three of AED 2.9 billion, and this is up 79% year-on-year and increasing for the fourth consecutive quarter. Although the market backdrop was less volatile relative to Q2, we continue to proactively engage clients, which supported stronger flow activity across various products, including FX rates, as well as commodities. Our global market sales were up 28% sequentially to AED 764 million, and this marks a new high, while trading income rose 12% to AED 1.2 billion. This reflects both recurring flow business, as well as favorable positioning.
Treasury and other income came out strong at around AED 900 million, and this is underpinned by effective asset liability management and a good performance of our equities portfolio. Turning to fees and commissions, which grew by 23% year-on-year to AED 3.5 billion over the nine-month period, with double-digit growth across all subline items year-on-year. Loan-related fees are up 21%, trade-related fees are up 14%, and other fees and commissions are up 43%. This overall reflects a sustained trade finance activity, healthy loan origination, growth in unfunded exposures, and committed facilities, as well as a strong capital markets performance. What stands out once again on the chart on the left-hand side is the continued expansion of our non-interest income, which has grown from 32% in 2022 to 46% this quarter.
Now, turning to the next slide on OpEx, we continue to maintain cost discipline in the nine months of 2025, and this is even as we progress with our strategic investments, particularly in the areas of technology and AI. Operating expenses rose 4% year-on-year to AED 6.1 billion, and you can see here that the main driver has actually been depreciation and IT costs at AED 212 million, which again reflects the investments we've made in both our platforms, our digital infrastructure, as well as our data capabilities. Importantly, we've begun to see tangible value from the accelerated adoption of AI across key functions, and this is boosting productivity. It's enhancing service, as well as client engagement, and overall, it's creating new efficiencies.
Group cost-to-income ratio was 22% in the nine months of 2025, down from 24.3% in the prior period, with revenue growth outpacing cost growth on a year-on-year basis for the 11th consecutive quarter. Now, turning to the balance sheet on the next slide, total assets crossed AED 1.38 trillion, and this is up 14% year to date, supported by broad-based growth across all businesses, as well as geographies. Loan growth was broad-based. It was driven by nearly all counterparty categories, with gross loans increasing by AED 64 billion year to date. This reflects healthy origination across corporates, where we saw AED 33 billion growth, across banks, where we saw AED 19 billion of growth, retail of AED 8 billion, as well as government lending of AED 7 billion as the main buckets.
This reflects meaningful contributions from both domestic, as well as from our international franchises, with international lending up 23% year to date, while our Islamic financing grew 17% year to date. Importantly, we've seen loan expansion across every single economic sector, both on a year-on-year and year-to-date basis, and this further validates the effectiveness of our sector specialization strategy. On the liability side, customer deposits rose by AED 66 billion since December, reaching AED 848 billion. As illustrated on the chart, this growth came from diversified sources and counterparties, reinforcing First Abu Dhabi Bank's role as an aggregator, both of regional and international liquidity. Sequentially, customer deposits were up 4%, driven by strong inflows in fixed deposits. The group's liquidity position remains strong, with liquidity coverage ratio at 158%, comfortably above the regulatory minimum.
On the next slide, we maintain solid asset quality metrics, with our NPL ratio improving to an all-time low for the group. Impairment charges were AED 2.3 billion, and this is 18% lower year-on-year, and this implies a cost of risk of 55 basis points, again well below our 75 basis points guidance. In Q3, impairment charges were AED 850 million, and this is slightly higher quarter on quarter, but it was in line with our expectation of a modest normalization from Q2 onwards. NPLs stood at AED 15.5 billion, and this is lower sequentially, reflecting write-offs of AED 1.8 billion during the quarter and relatively subdued NPL formation over the period. The group NPL ratio improved to 2.6%, and this is down from 3.8% last year, and again, just to reemphasize, an all-time low for the group.
Provision coverage strengthened to 106%, with total ECLs at AED 16.5 billion. Now, turning to capital on the next slide, our underlying CET1 depletion of 26 basis points was primarily driven by Q3 profits, and this was partially offset by higher RWAs, again reflecting asset growth during the period, as well as some other movements in reserves. As a result, the September end CET1 improved to 13.7%, and this is up from 13.4% in June. It sits well above the current regulatory minimum of 11.6%, but just to highlight that this regulatory minimum is expected to rise to 12% on the 1st of January 2026, with the increase of the countercyclical buffer to 50 basis points. Now, looking ahead, we'll continue to focus on disciplined growth, on efficient capital allocation, as well as on risk-weighted asset optimization to ensure we continue to deliver strong and sustainable shareholder returns.
Finally, just to wrap up, I think it's very clear that we've delivered a record set of results in the first nine months, as well as doing this while producing robust returns on an extremely large balance sheet of AED 1.38 trillion and getting royalties up to 20%, which again is well above our medium-term target of 16%. All business divisions achieved record revenue, capitalizing on solid momentum, as well as expanded capabilities and higher fee-based revenues. Our balance sheet fundamentals provide a robust foundation for us to pursue our growth journey, as well as to scale our business further, both in the UAE and across our international franchises. We are entering the final quarter of 2025 with very strong momentum and confidence in our outlook. With that, I'll pass it over to Sophia to open the question. Thank you.
Operator, please open the line for Q&A. Thank you.
For today's Q&A, we'll be utilizing the raised hand feature. If you're on a computer, this can be found at the bottom of the Zoom app as a raised hand icon or by clicking the reactions button. If you're on a mobile device using the app, simply tap into the three dots or more button to find the raised hand feature. If you're calling in today, star nine will activate the raised hand and use star six to mute and unmute. Our first question today comes from Naresh Belandani from Jefferies International. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Yes, hi. Thank you. It's Naresh Belandani from Jefferies. Congrats on the great set of results, Lars, Sophia, and everybody at First Abu Dhabi Bank. My questions are mainly on the outlook. Lars, could you please pull out any areas where you think the current ongoing momentum could continue into the next year and areas where you think the current period's stellar delivery could have peaked out? I'm just keen to understand from you the extent to which the earnings delivery that we are seeing currently, that momentum could continue into 2026 or not. That's the first question. My second question is, could I get some thoughts from you on the dividends keeping in context the rising regulatory conservatism on capital across the region? You did mention the scope for RWA optimization.
I'm just keen to understand this better, the areas where you could optimize capital as the countercyclical buffers set in both in UAE as well as in Saudi. Any color and insight there would be extremely helpful. Thanks a lot.
Hi, Naresh. Okay, in terms of outlook, you know, we give our formal guidance at the end of Q4, but it's very clear that there is, you know, a strong momentum which has been building up throughout this year. Again, you saw that in terms of our loan upgrades in, well, in Q2, and you saw that in terms of a proof point with the 13% growth year to date. I would say the pipeline continues to be strong. Really, for me, one of the strong pointers as to where this momentum is heading for next year is very much the GDP expectation that we are putting out there, because this is really from our own planning and delivery basis. This is one of the underpinnings that we build on.
You can see GDP this year was higher than GDP in 2024, and it's expected to be higher again next year. That's one of the main contributors. The fact that we are, you know, still building on our opportunities of developing our product penetration into our customer base, on building out our fee expansion, you've seen how we've structurally been improving that year-on-year. Actually, you could almost say quarter on quarter, but you're seeing those step ups. That has not yet peaked out. There is still opportunity over there as well. It's both on the fee side as well as on the loan volume side. You know, our international franchise, you see the strong growth we are getting over there in terms of both deposits as well as lending. I'd say another area of momentum that will continue is on our assets under management.
This is another lever for underpinning our fees. Maybe just a few, I guess, if you want to say, obviously, areas that will put some pressure on us that we'll have to find a way of mitigating is clearly one is we're going into a rate cutting cycle. We already saw a 100 basis point cut last year. You see how we responded to that, and you know, we were more than able to compensate for any lost NII. We are also in terms of oil price. I mean, this is something which, again, when we look at oil price, we look at what sort of underpinnings for the entire economy there is. I mean, we know the economy overall is diversifying, so we're not as dependent on the oil price, but it is at these levels, it's still a reasonably robust level, and it is well above break-even prices.
I think overall, I expect a better momentum going into next year than this year. Now, your other question on dividends, you know, again, dividends, we always do dividends in the last quarter of the year. You know, we'll do our dividend announcements then. You've seen that we've continued to accrete our CET1 this year. It's above the 13.5% minimum that we are targeting. That 13.5%, I'll just remind you, is actually the level before dividend payouts. If you look at that level and you even look at the new buffer, you know, there is a good buffer that we're working on. You know, we continue to optimize. We do a lot of work in terms of looking at underperforming parts of our portfolio. This is really one of the key strategies of boosting our returns. It's really on the ancillary side, so that continues.
Then, you know, something like I mentioned, I think in my summary update that in the fourth quarter, for example, we expect some short-dated balance sheet trade financing to run off. That is the type of optimization where we are reasonably smart in terms of how we allow the balance sheet to grow intra-year, and then it pulls down towards the tail end of the year. There are all sorts of measures that we have at our disposal.
Thank you, Lars. That was very clear. Thanks a lot.
Our next question comes from Ibekh Islamov with HSBC. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Thank you very much for the conference call. Very useful as always. I wanted to ask you on your non-funded income. Obviously, you have quite a decent derivative line that you club with your securities trading gains. Can you elaborate how much of that derivative income is linked to your client activities, in particular your corporate client activities in the international markets? If you have high international exposure, does it mean that you might also continue to book high derivative income? That's one question. Secondly, you show in your FX results retranslation losses, and they've been consistently negative this year. Can you please remind, what is this linked to? Is that the dollar weakness against other currencies? What's driving that retranslation loss? Thirdly, a question on your provisions.
Obviously, we know there's the General Reserve to credit risk credit asset ratio, which is, I believe it has to be at 1.5% as per UAE Central Bank. Can you please elaborate on how you drive your decisions as to how to top up this General Reserve, whether you take provision through the P&L or you do a top up by debiting your retained earnings? I think I did ask this question before, but it looks like in this quarter you've increased your retained earnings debit to meet this ratio of 1.5%. I think that's about it. Thank you.
Yeah, Ibekh, I was just on the FX. You were asking about what the FX translation reserve?
Oh, no, retranslation loss. You have this line, FX retranslation loss has been consistently negative this year. I'm curious what's driving that. Is it the dollar weakness or?
I think the main retranslation FX is really related to our Egyptian capital, right, which is booked in dollars. Then all of our Egyptian result clearly translated in the background of a devaluing currency. Those two in combination are really the main drivers. That's also, if you were to look at international revenues in total, it's one of the key areas that's actually pulling the revenues down because if you strip out Egypt, everything else is actually growing by something like 9 to 10% in terms of international revenues. That links a little bit into what you were asking on non-funds and the international derivatives. I would say at the moment, if you were to talk about a sort of pro rata, it's very, very much the same 80-20 split.
That opportunity of growing into the international clearly as companies come into our region or as our companies go into other regions, there's always going to be a need for derivatives and for hedging. I would expect that it will be a contributor and a growing contributor as we go forward. The question on the, let's call it the general provision, I think, Chris, maybe you could take that.
Yeah, just on the reserves question, you're right. We have to provision to a % of credit risk RWA, so effectively a delta between our sort of credit provisioning and the 1.5%. That then boosts the reserves and then comes through retained earnings.
Yeah, it doesn't go through P&L, it goes against retained earnings.
Great, thank you. Yeah.
Our next question comes from Rahul Bajaj with Citi. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hi, this is Rahul Bajaj from Citi. Thanks for taking my question. Thanks for the call. Two questions mainly. The first one is on dividend and capital again, actually. On dividend, just wanted to understand your strategy there. I understand you will come out with dividend at the end of 4Q, but with almost 20% Y on Y increase in profit for the nine months, and if the run rate continues similar, maybe for the full year, how should I think about DPS? I mean, will you be maintaining a 50% payout ratio, what you have done in the last few years, or you would rather maintain the DPS levels or increase it? What ratio should we be targeting? It is kind of linked to the capital levels at the end of the year, and how should we think about the 13.5% CET1 target that you have?
That's my first question. The second question is on the expansion outside the UAE that Lars, I think you alluded to earlier in India, Nigeria, and Turkey. Just wanted to understand what is the strategy behind choosing these markets and opening rep offices in these markets? Can this be a starting point for potentially inorganically expanding into these markets in the future, or at this stage, the strategy is 100% organic? How should we think about this? Thank you.
Hi, Rahul. In terms of this whole dividend capital DPS payout ratio, you've seen how we are, you know, in terms of the way we discipline and we fund our organic growth, it is very much tied to how much money we retain in the bank and how much we pay out at the end of each year. Also, the other factor that drives this is the central bank has a 50% sort of max payout that we can work towards. If you've seen our payouts over the last few years, we have been somewhere between 40% and 50%. In the past, we have paid out a lot more, and we've also paid out a combination of, let's say, stock and cash. We have all of these levers at our disposal.
As you know, with most places, the fourth quarter is also a key planning period, and that really gives us a much better insight in terms of also capital that's required, whether it's from a regulatory perspective, but more importantly from a growth perspective. I'm not going to get tied into now telling you what sort of payout ratio we're going to do because, you know, then I'm pretty much answering what Naresh was asking as well earlier. We will come back in the fourth quarter on that. You've seen a pretty consistent performance from us over the last few years. We are very sensitive, obviously, to meeting regulatory minimums. I think if you were just to take an indication of what the payouts of last year, they roughly ate about 100 basis points of CET1.
The 13.5 or 13.7 and whatever we build in the fourth quarter, and then you can, if you were to say, is there enough buffer for a dividend? That's roughly what we would have paid out last year, 100 basis points. The expansion, I mean, really, I think the rep office should give you an indication that we're going into markets, really, these are new markets for us. They are markets where also the governments of the UAE and Turkey, the government of UAE and Nigeria have signed safer agreements. We are seeing business flows, and we are now seeing sufficient business flows for us to say, look, it would be good for us to establish a foothold in these markets. The most minimal foothold that you can establish is actually a rep office.
It is an organic growth path where the normal, call it, growth path would be you go in with the rep office, you then go into a branch office, and that's how you then build out. If something opportunistically were to come along, which really matches up strategically, it builds out our capabilities, it meets our very high return threshold, you know, you could start talking inorganic. I think here this is very much an organic strategy.
Thanks, thanks Lars.
Our next question comes from Jon Peace with UBS. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hi Lars. The first question please is on the net interest margin. You mentioned in the second quarter there were some lower IIS recoveries. I wondered if there was any of that in the third quarter. Are you still comfortable for 180 to 190 for the full year? I appreciate it will give us guidance probably at year end, but any thoughts into next year? My second question please is you show a relatively large lending exposure to non-bank financial institutions that's grown a lot in the last four years. Obviously, very topical at the moment. I just wondered if you give us some more color on the breakdown there. I assume it's mostly domestic sovereign wealth funds rather than US private credit, but any color you could give on that balance and growth would be helpful. Thank you.
Hi Jon. Okay, on the NIMs, I'd say the main movement for the dilution quarter on quarter has been predominantly the switch from CASA into FDs on the deposit side. That's marginally increased the cost of funds. The interest in suspense recoveries, you know, that's very, very lumpy. It's not really something that we can sort of predict or that we even factor into our, let's say, into our forecasts. What I would say between now and the end of the year, we will most likely have a NIM somewhere between 180 and 185. That would be the range. I'm not going to give guidance into next year. I mean, suffice it to say that we can all see what the pressure is on interest rates going into next year.
In a way, as a bank, you know, we do tend to, if you were to say relative to peers, we do tend to perform, you know, more resiliently in a down cycle than peers. Our cost of funds, which still tends to be tied more to the wholesale corporate side, therefore we do get a much even 100% plus pass-through of any drop in rates. As I've said before, on the loan side, you know, yes, the bulk of our book is floating on the loan side as well, but it tends to have a repricing lag relative to deposits. That will help a bit. As I mentioned in the summary, our sensitivity is still around $200 million for 25 bps. That still stays. We're obviously actively watching that and seeing if we need to reposition our structural hedges.
On the non-bank FI lending, I'm going to ask Chris maybe to cover that one.
John, hi, it's Chris. On the MBFIs, you're right to point that out. I do think that sort of other FIs or MBFIs, it's quite a broad aggregation. Obviously, underneath it, there are a lot of different types of obligos. Certainly, from our perspective, it's really a question of looking at the subsectors and making sure that we've got the right strategy, aligned risk appetite, stress testing, et cetera, to those. In terms of our exposure, just to give you, I guess, some color is, look, we do have the vast majority that has a significant home bias in terms of the clients there. Very much a sort of sovereign-based and local entities. That's where the vast majority of our exposure is. We also pay significant attention around the private credit sphere. It's also not something that's particularly new.
I think, especially on the global stage, regulators have been analyzing that and looking at that now for two to three years in terms of how banks risk manage it and how banks look at the aggregation and understand the correlation effects across their portfolio, which is something that we are attentive to.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Olga Veselova. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Good day, good afternoon, and thank you for hosting this presentation. Several questions from my side. Slide 23 of your presentation shows that USA accounts for almost 20% of securities book. Can you please disclose for us more about this credit exposure? This is question number one. Second question is on net interest margin. Zooming out, is there a floor of net interest margin for you internally at which you would want to operate long-term? Or literally, any margin level would work for you given the specifics of how First Abu Dhabi Bank operates. My third question is on funding outlook for next year. This year, we noticed that the inflow of government deposits into the central banking system has been low according to the central bank data.
I'm thinking, what is your view on these changes in funding sources for the next year, given that first, you lower your oil price forecast for 2026, and second, that you are partly funded by the Treasury money. Thank you.
Olga, hi, it's Lars. Sorry, could you maybe just repeat the one on the U.S. securities?
Yes, I'm looking at your slide 23 of the presentation, and it says that almost 20%, 19% of securities book is in the U.S. I'm wondering, if you can disclose a bit more, what is this exposure?
If you look at by-product suites, you can actually get a sense of what the sort of products we are. You can see actually in the little slide next to that, investments by counterparties, you can see it's spread across sovereigns, GREs, covered bonds, and the U.S. is pretty similar in terms of that sort of makeup. Maybe Chris can give you a bit of an insight also into the investment ratings and some of those counterparties.
It's actually predominantly investment grade. As Lars said, a lot of sovereign exposures in there and fixed income. That's really the makeup of the U.S. exposure.
Okay. In terms of a floor margin, no, we don't really work with the floor margin. I mean, obviously, we have to be reasonably dynamic in terms of what happens. We do try and maintain, I think the word is resilient margin through ups and down cycles. I think if you pull it back over maybe the last 12, well, what even 24 quarters or go back into 2022, we are seeing an increase in NIMs where some of the competition are seeing a net compression. I think that gives you a bit of a sense of resilience. In terms of funding, one of our key strategies is generally to diversify our funding base, right? We're not dependent on government funding.
Of course, it's one of the funding streams which actually means that we have to hold quite a liquid portfolio because these can be quite lumpy and quite sizable, and we have to be able to manage those. That's a dynamic that we're used to. Really, in terms of focusing on both the liquidity we hold, you've just pointed out on the securities portfolio, you can see we do hold quite a liquid securities portfolio. On the funding side, you've seen how we've been growing our CASA, very focused on retail CASA growth. It's been very strong. We continue to grow our international funding base, really new corporates, new governments. Also, even though the switch to fixed deposits, for example, has a bit of a squeeze on NIM in another positive way, it actually gives us more of a stable funding base as well.
All of these things are at play. For funding from the government specifically, this is something that we just manage as a normal course of business.
Thank you. If I may squeeze in a very quick additional question, impressive growth of assets under management this year. Do you disclose the volume of assets under management?
We do. I mean, in terms of the total size of the book, it is AED 120 billion, but if you're talking about the underlying makeup of that, no, we don't disclose that.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Murad Ansari with GTN Middle East. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Yes, hi. Good afternoon, and thanks for the presentation. I'll try to keep this very short. A few quick questions just on your RWA evolution in relation to the expansion in the asset book. Your RWA density has improved, but if you look at your split of the book in terms of what's grown on the loan side, I mean, there's obviously growth across all key segments. Over the nine months, almost 40% of the incremental expansion in the book has come from banks and FI lending. I just wanted to get a sense of where is this incremental growth in credit RWA coming from, because it's almost 15% year to date, which is outpacing the loan book growth.
I think on net interest income growth going into fourth quarter next year, I know it's a bit premature, but if we look at net interest income, it's up almost 2% for nine months versus almost a 12% year-on-year growth in loans. What seems to be happening is that a lot of the loan book expansion on the face of it looks like is getting offset by NIM compression. Is there something, you know, kind of end-of-period kind of thing expansion, which is kind of bringing this discrepancy between net interest income growth and loan growth? Finally, on ROT guidance, on the FX and investment income, your guidance has been that 60% is recurring. There's an extra element that's come, but you're still guiding towards strong growth and this becoming a strong, decent contributor to income.
Does that warrant an increase in your medium-term ROT guidance, or is it too early? Thank you.
Hi, Murad. Okay, so maybe on the credit risk expansion in the banks, that's really what I was mentioning earlier in terms of our way of deploying capital intra-year. This is really where you see it manifest itself by the sort of trade financing that we do. That's also one of the areas that, yes, we saw the buildup early in the year, and we expect to see a pullback towards the tail end of the year. In terms of the NII growth relative to the balance sheet growth, I would say, look, the one thing, you mentioned 2% increase year-on-year. You've got to remember that we saw a 100 basis point reduction in rates towards the tail end of last year, right? We've had to, in a way, absorb that and mitigate it. One of the ways, of course, is to mitigate it via volume growth.
That is one way that you've been able to offset on the NII. Another way is to change the mix of the NII, and here we are also quite focused on, and I think I mentioned in the summary again that we've grown our retail mortgages, for example, very strongly. We're also seeing SME growth, and we're very focused on the sector-based growth on our corporate side. That's really why you'll see a difference there. It is very clearly a margin compression on the lending side, on the deposit side, driven by a 100 basis point cut in rates and another 25 basis points a couple of weeks ago, right? Now, on ROT, yes, it is extremely strong at 20%. We're not going to change guidance at this point.
That's why also we said that this ROT is greater than 16%, both in the near term as well as the medium term. It really is a through-the-cycle ROT. Of course, there's going to be some volatility around that 16% number, and this year we've got a very strong performance driven very much by the non-funds income growth.
All right, thank you.
We have now reached the end of the allocated time for the Q&A. I will now hand it over to the management team for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining this call. As always, if you have any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me, Ravi, or the broader IR team. Perhaps a quick update from our side. We're excited to announce that we're going to soon be launching an AI-enabled search engine on our IR website. This is a feature that's designed to make it easier and faster for you to access our disclosures, financials, and other updates. Once it's launched, we'd encourage you to use it, to explore it, and your feedback will also be invaluable in helping us continue to enhance your experience on our website. Thanks again for joining us today, and we look forward to engaging with you in the coming days.