Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter results presentation. As usual, Gloria Hernandez will guide you through the main quarter highlights now. Thank you.
Thank you, David. Good morning, and welcome to our 2018 results presentation for the third quarter and the first nine months of the year. The related financial statements were posted on the website of the CNMV a few minutes ago, prior to market opening. All related documents can also be found at this time on the Bankinter corporate website. Here is a summary of the main indicators from the last nine months compared with the same period last year. Our loan book growth maintained its growth rate increase, showing resilience in the last quarter, despite the domestic market still shrinking. Our gross operating income continued to grow at a steady pace, even though the third quarter had some negative seasonality due to the summer term. Our NPL ratio continued its downward trend, decreasing by almost 52 basis points in the last 12 months to 3.2%.
Net profit amounted to €404 million, a 7% increase from a year ago. Finally, our CET1 fully loaded capital ratio stood at 11.7%, slightly above our guidance, and our ROE remained at 13%, which was also an improvement of 66 basis points on last year. As usual, we will first look at our performance in the first nine months and the third quarter alone, then review our quality of assets, to end with a summary of the performance of our various strategic business lines. Looking at our nine-month income statement, I would like to remind you again that we have restated 2017 figures for net interest income and loan loss provisions to make them homogeneous with 2018 figures, since IFRS 9 accounting was implemented, which impacted Portugal's NPL recoveries. This led to a transfer of €24.7 million from NII to positive impairments.
Looking now line by line, we can see a continued positive trend in earnings. Our net interest income grew by almost 7% with respect to the first nine months of 2017, and our net fee income was up by more than 6%. Regarding net interest income, it is worth mentioning that in the first nine months, extraordinary revenues from recovered NPLs in Portugal amounted to only €11.9 million, similar to the €12.5 million booked last year in the same period. In the third quarter, NII showed a very stable evolution, growing by only 1% despite one more business day. No more NII tailwinds are expected going forward, and headwinds will be depending on volume growth and margin pressure for the coming quarters. Nevertheless, we continue to see a mid-to-low single-digit guidance for the full year, thanks to the increase in lending and resilient customer margin.
Fee income grew by over 6% after a quarter of negative seasonality, but it is still in line with our high single-digit target for the end of the year. Other operating income grew by 17% with respect to the same period last year, mainly due to the solid performance of our insurer, LDA. Quarter on quarter, it grew by 30% due to the absence of SRM or FGD payments in the quarter. Our gains on financial transactions continued to be very low, contributing only EUR 40 million to earnings, 19% less than in the previous year. In total, our gross operating income amounted to EUR 1,472 million, up 7.5% from 2017, and with better quality as the weight from extraordinary revenues decreased. Our operating costs grew, driven by Línea Directa, like in the first half of the year, to maintain the solid sales growth.
Some slowdown occurred quarter on quarter, down 1% at group level, mainly in personal expenses. In view of this tight control, we maintain our mid-single-digit guidance for the end of the year. Despite the cost increase, our positive income performance allowed our nine-month operating profit to grow by more than 8% with respect to 2017. Loan loss provisions and other contingencies amounted to EUR 168 million, up 13% from a year ago. Legal contingencies amounted to EUR 111 million. That is EUR 95 million more than the same period last year. Nevertheless, after a strong effort to enhance our provision buffer in the first half of this year, this last quarter reflects a more normalized run rate in our coverage for multi-currency contingencies. In addition, a better evolution of impairments for NPLs and the increase in the sale prices of our foreclosed assets resulted in a reduction of our loan loss provisions.
As a result, the cost of risk in our banking operations has continued to hit record lows. Ultimately, our nine-month net profit rised by 7.3% with respect to 2017, and it continues to be well in line with our targets for the full year. The graph on the right reveals our net profit record over the first nine months in the last three years. We can see year-on-year improvements despite the extraordinary impact of goodwill from our acquisition in Portugal in the first nine months of 2016, which was the previous record. We'll have a look at the quarterly income statement. If we compare our performance in this quarter with the same quarter last year, we can see overall that the top part of the account referring to income has performed in line with our expectations at the beginning of the year.
Our net interest income, growing by over 6%, remained resilient despite an interest rate environment that showed no signs of change. Our fee income also stayed solid, undeterred by market turbulences and the consequent negative impact in volume growth. The line of other income and expenses continued to reflect the very positive performance of our insurer, Línea Directa. With all this, we had a gross operating income that grew by close to 6% with respect to the same quarter last year on the back of recurring business, as our gains on financial transactions continued to contribute very little. At the bottom part of the account, costs grew by 6.7%, reducing the growth rate from the first half of 2018. This figure was down 1% from the previous quarter.
On the other hand, total provisioning, including legal contingencies and the results of asset sales, rose by 3%, or EUR 1.6 million over the same quarter last year. With regard to the cost of risk, even if we adjusted for the EUR 8 million in reclassified provisions in the quarter, it remained very contained, as we will see in further detail under the asset quality section. Lastly, both our pre-tax profit and our net profit outperformed the same quarter last year by more than 5%. The group's loan book continued to grow by EUR 2.6 billion, or 5% year-on-year. In Spain, where the sector has shrunk by 1.7% as of August 2018, we added a net EUR 2 billion in new lending in 12 months. In Portugal, loan book increased by 12%, which is over EUR 600 million in the same period.
It is worth mentioning that our mortgages book increased in the last nine months by EUR 300 million in net terms, unlike other listed banks in Spain. As for our retail deposits, they have grown by close to EUR 5 billion or 11% in 12 months, clearly outperforming the sector in Spain. Now we'll go into the analysis of the P&L. We have some problems with the slides, no? Concerning net interest income, despite the unfavorable interest rate environment, it grew in Spain for another quarter, while Portugal contributed EUR 1 million less due to fewer extraordinary revenues from recovered NPLs. Further on, we will analyze our recovery net interest income figures in Portugal, which continued on a very positive trend. Our buoyant net interest income performance was also due to the resilience in our customer margin, 10 basis points higher than the same quarter last year and very stable in the quarter.
The yield on loans has maintained in the last few quarters, while our cost of funds has gradually reduced to its current level at 6 basis points. With regard to our ALCO portfolio, its size and composition hasn't really changed with respect to last year. Its contribution to the group's net interest income remained low but stable. Unrealized gains remained close to EUR 370 million, with a small impact due to a new quarter of high market volatility. Nevertheless, an important portion is in the amortized cost portfolio that has no impact on the capital ratio. The other portion, related to the available-for-sale portfolio, reduced our CET1 ratio in the period by 10 basis points. This was more than offset by the 22 basis points of the internal capital generation.
The second income line that continued to perform well is our fee income, up by more than 6% year-on-year and representing 23% of our gross operating income. Fees in the third quarter are affected by summer seasonality, nothing different than any other year. The largest contributor continued to be asset management. It is driven by our solid private banking franchise, although fees from mutual funds have been negatively affected by the market turbulences in the quarter, as well as by MiFID II regulations, reducing its rate of growth from +12% in Q2 to +7% in Q3. In this sense, we have estimated a EUR 6 million to EUR 7 million impact on fees as a result of adapting to MiFID II during this year. The rest of the fee income lines improved their performance in the quarter with respect to the previous one.
Payment and collection fees grew by over 9%, insurance fees grew by 7%, and finally, fees on risk transactions by 4.4%. Lastly, fees from product and services more related to the market performance, such as brokerage and custody, as well as FX differences, were also negatively impacted by the increase in volatility, showing flat growth rates year-on-year. If the market stabilizes in the last quarter, we can maintain our mid to high single-digit guidance on fees for all 2018. Otherwise, the growth in fees will moderate somewhat in the last quarter, placing the year's guidance closer to mid single digits. In other operating income and expenses, the strong contribution from LDA's insurance margin, up by over 13%, was maintained for one more quarter, driven by sustained growth in premiums and policies.
This quarter saw no negative impact from regulatory charges. On the other hand, other income from fees on new mortgages and corporate loans continued to grow. Therefore, we managed to reduce the year-on-year negative impact on charges by 36%. As a result, this line increased by over 17% in the first nine months of the year. Overall, gross operating income for the group grew by 5.6% from a year ago, and almost 7% considering only the strict customer business revenues. The graph to the right shows the contribution of our different revenue sources to gross operating income. 55% of our total income, gross net interest income. Fees and commissions contributed 23%, with 19% from other revenues, where LDA's insurance margin is included, and only 3% from gains on financial transactions. This maintains a good diversification to counter the persisting extremely low interest rate environment.
In relation to operating costs, we present individually banking costs and LDA costs, as their performance continues to be very dissimilar. Whilst Línea Directa's costs grew by mid double digits as in the previous quarter, banking costs grew more restrainedly, falling in the quarter by EUR 2 million in Spain and growing by less than EUR 1 million in Portugal with respect to the previous quarter. Moderate cost growth, along with good revenue performance, allowed our doors to remain open and our cost-to-income ratio to continue improving. Regarding our cost of risk, as mentioned earlier, our EUR 8 million in provisions reclassified from insolvency to legal provisions, together with a positive NPL performance, had a positive impact on it. Our cumulative cost of risk as of September totaled EUR 57 million, 57% less than a year ago.
This has allowed us to be more conservative when recording provisions for future legal contingencies. The group's cost of risk for the last 12 months stands at 11 basis points. Finally, our ROE remained at 13%, growing by 66 basis points year-on-year, thanks to our good performance in banking as well as insurance. Bankinter continues to deliver best-in-class ROEs amongst its peer and clear above its cost of equity. I think we have a problem, I'll stop here.
Apologies for this technical issue. We continue now this management. Thank you.
Now let's go over our management of credit risk, liquidity risk, and capital. Our non-performing loans continue to fall by close to 10% a year. In Spain, our NPL ratio is below 3%, and in Portugal, it's already below 6% from 7.4% at year-end. After the announced sale of EUR 360 million NPLs and write down assets in Portugal signed in October, our pro forma NPL ratio for Portugal will be below 3.5%. In the next quarter's financial statements, we will post the positive impacts of this sale. NPA's provisions amounted to EUR 1.15 billion, up 6% from December, due in part to the first implementation of IFRS 9. Our provision coverage continued to be at levels similar to our peers, and from NPL coverage, including generic provisions, levels are appropriate for us and 6% higher than a year ago.
As for foreclosed assets, coverage is well above the average discount price on sold assets, as we will see in a minute. Before, let's review our foreclosed asset portfolio, which has shrunk by 22% since December 2017. We sold all these assets through our commercial network. Total sales in the last nine months amounted to EUR 111 million, 27% of the stock at the beginning of the year. The average discount price is around 32%, well below our provision coverage rate, with a positive impact on earnings. Our fully loaded capital ratio was 11.7% at the end of September, 15 basis points more than in June and 24 basis points over December 2017. The increase since June stemmed from a stable loan book during the quarter and a small drop in unrealized gains in our fair value portfolio, which has increased the cumulative negative impact by an additional 10 basis points.
This was more than offset by our organic capital generation of 22 basis points in the quarter. Compared with December last year, the ratio improved by 24 basis points because all the negative impacts were more than offset by the organic capital generation and the IFRS 9 first implementation impact. Finally, both our total capital ratio and our leverage ratio remained fairly stable with respect to previous quarters. Balance sheet increases in both loans and deposits ultimately led to a lower commercial gap, which is the difference between our customer loans and deposits. It is now at EUR 3.7 billion. In Portugal, it is also improving. Thus, our loan-to-deposit ratio improved once again, reaching its lowest level in recent years, thanks to the strong increase in retail deposits. The maturity structure of our wholesale funding remained the same, with maturities that can be easily rolled over in the next two years.
We do not expect any future issues at the moment, since our liquidity buffer is still very high and continues improving. Any future issues would be in modest amounts and always in line with any MREL requirements we are given. Now we will look at our most significant customer business income contributors in the past nine months. Corporate banking and commercial banking provided jointly 56% of our recurring income in almost equal measure. Our insurance business contributed a very relevant 22%, followed by our consumer lending business with 10% and Bankinter Portugal now at 6%. Lastly, our non-customer business, trading, ALCO, and others, continue to contribute with only 5% to our total income. The largest contributor to gross operating income is corporate banking, and this remains on the same growth trend from 2010. Its loan book now amounts to EUR 23.7 billion, up by 7% year-on-year.
In Spain, where we have grown by more than 5% in the last 12 months, the sector continues to shrink at a rate of 4.5% from August last year to August this year. Thus, we continue to be an outlier in this main driver for income growth. In Portugal, with a much more modest base, the corporate loan book is growing by 45% year-on-year. Slightly over half of our corporate loan book represents loans to large-size enterprises, which accounted for 41% of year-on-year growth. The rest is split by loans to medium-size enterprises with 35% of the growth, and by small and medium enterprises with the remaining 24% of the year-on-year growth. Our improved asset mix lets us preserve our average asset yield despite increasing competition in all three segments. Now we will focus on our business in Spain.
Our corporate relationship business continued to show significant growth rate in fees and interest income in international trade finance, which now represents 26% of the segment's income. A similar trend is taking place in our collateral business with corporate customers, where the fees and net interest income from related service increased by double digits with respect to the first nine months of 2017. Corporate banking continues to develop products and services that increase customer stickiness with high value added and long-lasting relationships. Managed wealth in private banking grew by 9% year-on-year in spite of the negative market effect. The net new money obtained since December represented a 31% increase from the same period a year ago. More significantly, we are collecting value-added fee income already on EUR 16 billion or 43% of all our managed assets.
In personal banking, managed assets grew by 7% year-on-year, with EUR 900 million in net new money during the first nine months of this year. Our delegated and advised assets grew at a 40% rate, and our mutual funds grew by 11%. In commercial banking, the first nine months of the year performed very well in our two main retail products. Payroll account balances up 21% and new mortgages up 14% from the same period last year. This increased our market share in new mortgages to 6.3% as of July 2018. Balance sheet funds, both in Spain and Portugal, continue to see double-digit growth year-on-year, mainly in mutual funds, pension funds, and wealth management. The MiFID II requirement of creating clean classes in some mutual funds has had a minor impact on our fee income.
Nonetheless, our experience in offering third-party funds to our customers makes us a clear winner of the new regulation. Finally, our mix of funds continued to improve with more value-added products. This helped to sustain our average fee. Now we will review the nine-month figures for Línea Directa, which has continued performing very well year to date. New policies grew by 8% in the period, and premiums increased at 7.3% with respect to the same period last year. In motor insurance, premiums grew at 6%, more than doubling the sector average. In home insurance, due to the cross-selling, the growth rate reached 13%, almost four times the sector average. LDA's combined ratio continued to outperform the market, standing well below 90%. Its ratio slightly improved in the quarter and in the year. The claims ratio was reduced from the very low level showed in the last quarters.
Furthermore, its expense ratio at 21% went unchanged quarter-on-quarter and is slightly higher than a year ago due to the strong growth in policies. Moreover, LDA's first 19,000 health insurance policies sold under the Vivaz brand did not have a negative impact on the group's combined ratio so far. Lastly, if we look at the nine-month P&L, its net profit increased by 11% thanks to growth in premiums, with technical insurance results growing also by 11%, despite rising operating costs and a reduction in its investable income. These results help us maintain both LDA's high Solvency II ratio of 214% and its higher ROE of close to 40%. In consumer finance, lending continued growing along with our number of customers, which exceeded 1,200,000. Credit quality ratios still maintain acceptable levels, with an NPLs ratio just over 8% and cost of risk of 3.2%.
Risk-adjusted return at 9% continue to be appealing, particularly if we remember that more than 40% of our business is conducted with Bankinter customers in the form of credit cards and personal loans, with much better risk quality and somewhat lower spreads. Portugal's consumer business makes up already 7% of a total portfolio of EUR 1.8 billion, and the newly acquired Avantcard in Ireland will represent, from the closing date, an additional 18%, improving the geographical diversification of our total consumer finance loan book. Lastly, like every quarter, I'll now go over the main figures from Bankinter Portugal. Balance sheet growth is in line with our expectations. Portugal's loan book increased by a very remarkable 12%, with a high concentration in loans to corporates that grew by 45%. In commercial banking, both mortgages and consumer lending grew by 5%.
Retail deposits rise by 8%, slightly reducing the liquidity gap of the Portuguese business. Balance sheet funds, mostly unit-linked and mutual funds, grew at a sound 17% in the first nine months of 2018. As for its earnings, a strong growth in all income lines over 20% and a better cost control can be appreciated. Recover NPLs allowed a release of credit provisions of around EUR 18 million, 54% more than a year ago. As a result, Portugal earned a pretax profit of EUR 43.5 million in nine months, EUR 75 million more than in the same period last year. To better analyze recurring business growth in Portugal, here we have a quarterly breakdown of its performance in recurring net interest income and fee income, which are up by more than 30% and 20%, respectively, in relation with the same quarter last year.
On the other hand, its costs saw more contained growth at a year-on-year rate of 5%. As a result of this, its pretax profit, more volatile due to NPL recoveries, it's likely to amply surpass last year's figure, despite fewer extraordinary recoveries in 2018. Finally, on this last slide, you have a brief recap of what we have seen already, highlighting our nine-month profit growth, our high ROE, and a stable capital ratio, and our increased recurring income from customer business. Thank you very much. I can now answer any questions you may have through the webcast tool. I again apologize for the technical problems.
Thank you, Gloria, once again. Let's start with the Q&A. Since probably we have received a very large amount of questions on the mortgage topic, we probably will start with that one. What is your view on the latest Supreme Court ruling? Obviously, what are the impacts for new production, and what could be the impact for Bankinter specifically? Thank you.
Well, before entering into this topic very current in these days in the news. I would like to comment on the litigation risk in general, and particularly on the multi-currency risk. The situation of this contingency has changed little in the quarter. We have continued to build our buffer according to our methodology. This methodology was approved by the ECB as well as by our external auditors, that means a run rate of approximately EUR 20 million-EUR 25 million per quarter. This is what I have to say concerning the multi-currency question. On the stamp duty on mortgages. First, I would like to say that at this point, the new criterion is not definitive yet, we'll have to wait and see what happens on the 5th of November.
So far, what I can say is that banks have always abided by current regulations that have been endorsed by the Constitutional Court, as well as the Supreme Court itself, for more than 20 years. If there was a change of criterion, logically, we would apply the new one from that moment. In our opinion, it is not appropriate, has no sense, to apply any type of retroactivity, insofar as it is a modification of a tax regulation. This has been endorsed by the Supreme Court itself in a recent sentence of 13 of June in a case related with another tax. Many one-sided reports have reinterpreted the facts of the initial ruling, we must understand that it is not a mortgage-related cost imposed by banks on their customers that now must be returned. This is not the case now.
It is a mortgage stamp duty that was transferred to the autonomous regions and that, until now, should be paid by borrowers according to the court's criteria in the past 23 years. Banks have always followed the law, and we never decided that customers should pay this tax, which only the government collects. We do not have anything to return, nor should we be subjected to any claims. We only abide by the law. In terms of the impact, what I can say is that we consider that the new sentence, if it is finally considered jurisprudential, will enter into force from its publication in the official bulletin, and we hope that no retroactivity applies at all.
In this sense, we think that, as usual, financial impact reports were released too early and have not taken into account the fact that the real impact, whatsoever is, can be distributed during the life of the mortgage. On the other hand, estimating something like this is very complicated, even for banks. Therefore, reported figures about the sector and Bankinter are not at all grounded in reality. In certain assumptions, these figures are notably lower than those that have been reported. This is what I have to say. Well, an additional comment concerning the new mortgage production. Well, we continue business as usual in new mortgage production. We have continued signing mortgages according to the calendar previously agreed with our clients.
From last Friday, Bankinter is assuming the payment of the tax, maintaining the financial conditions previously agreed with the client in those cases where the client has received a binding offer from Bankinter. In these cases, the client endorses a specific clause indicating that if the court finally decides in favor of the bank, the client will allow us to charge the amount of the tax in his or her account. In the new mortgages, those with no binding offer, we are also assuming the stamp duty with the same clause, with no changes in our current public commercial offer. The question here is that we are not admitting any exceptions to the conditions established in the commercial offer, which is the normal case as of today. This is everything. Sorry.
Thank you, Gloria. Very clear. We move on now. Another topic. We get some questions on the balance sheet. Whether you can explain what the behavior of the loan growth was in the quarter and what shall we expect for next quarter.
Well, the quarter, as always, has a negative seasonality. The loan book has remained flat quarter-on-quarter, but continues to grow year-on-year by 5%. The industry continued to shrink by 1.7% as of August. We continue to be an outlier in this question. The growth continued in the quarter, the growth came from consumer lending and Portugal. Both businesses continue to grow. In the case of consumer lending, by almost EUR 100 million in the quarter. That means 6% quarter-on-quarter. In the case of Portugal, particularly in corporate lending, growing also in the quarter. In terms of year-on-year, the main drivers for the loan book growth continue to be corporate lending, growing, as I mentioned, by 5%. In Spain, the growth was 6% year-on-year.
In Portugal, 45% year-on-year, which is a stunning rate. In the mortgage loan book, we also observe a growth in net terms that is, again, very dissimilar performance with respect to the industry. We continue to have a very strong market share in new mortgages, 6.3%. I don't know if you want me to add anything.
Thank you. We move now to the P&L. We get some questions on the fee income in the quarter. Also, what is your view on the AUM business and on the remaining fee income business towards year-end. Thank you.
Well, on the quarter-over-quarter, the fees grew by over 4%, while year-on-year, this growth was 6.2%. The market turbulences that have persisted in the last quarter had a negative impact on our income fees, in the part of these income fees that are more related to the market. That means the asset under management fees, as well as equity trading and FX differences. These products have shown certain resilience despite the market turbulences. For example, in the case of equity trading and FX differences, they were able to remain flat over the same period last year. We will depend now on the situation of the market in the following quarter. If the market stabilizes, we will maintain our guidance, and we will see, again, growth in asset under management fees, as well as in the rest of our products and services.
If the market continues in the current situation of turmoil, we will have to reduce our guidance to mid-single digit from high to mid-single digit.
Thank you. Moving on to costs and expenses now. What's your outlook for costs in both banking and insurance businesses?
Well, as we have mentioned in previous statements, cost will be in line with our guidance at the beginning of the year of mid-single digit range. In fact, in the quarter, costs were reduced by 1%, and considering the year-on-year performance, the growth is now 6.7%. This high rate implies a very dissimilar performance. On the one hand, our banking business performance, where costs grew by only 4%, sorry, in line with the guidance, and our LDA or insurance business, where costs grew by 15%, and this is related to the strong growth of sales in the first nine months of this year. In the case of the banking activities, the growth is related to our growing Bankinter Consumer Finance operations. We need to spend some money in marketing and sales force, sorry.
We are also investing in our group's digital and transformational projects, which include also processes re-engineering, which, in some cases, these expenses are activated, but in other cases, are costs of the period. Apart from this, I remember the question of the regulations. We, during the year, had a lot of new regulations coming into force, IFRS 9, MiFID II, data protection regulation, and all these new regulations demand new expenses. We have estimated that more than 30% of all our IT development budget this year is devoted to this question of adapting our systems to the new requirements. We hope that the next year this can change, and we can save money from this issue.
Thank you, Gloria. On cost of risk now, what are your specs for year-end, whether we have any impact from the portfolio sale we announced last summer? You can comment on that.
Well, this year is a year of cost of risk reduction for several things. First of all, the NPLs performance, which has been very good both in Spain and Portugal. The result of foreclosed assets, we are selling assets at prices above our provisions, that we are earning money in this point. Finally, because of some reclassifications from this line in the P&L to the other provisions or the legal provisioning line, as I have mentioned this quarter and the last one. Taking all this into account, the cost of risk has continued decreasing, we are now in 11 basis points on a yearly measure. If we take this reclassification out of the figure, the cost of risk will be 20 basis points, or annually 23 basis points.
That means that this is below our guidance of 30%-40%, that we are positive in this indicator. In the medium term, we maintain our guidance in around 30%. Concerning the sale of the NPLs in Portugal, although the transaction will be reflected in the next quarter statements, we can now say that the impact is going to affect the NPLs ratio of Portugal. That will be 3.5% pro memory, more or less. This will impact also the capital ratio of the group in a very low level, four basis points, more or less, of impact is our current estimation.
Okay. Regarding the capital, whether you can comment on the result of the quarter, a little positives and negatives that we have seen in the quarter.
Okay. In the quarter, the ratio rose by 15 basis points. First of all, retained earnings, the usual run rate of 22 basis points. The risk-weighted assets as a result of the negative seasonality of this quarter, this third quarter of the year, risk-weighted assets contributed positively to the ratio by six basis points. The market turmoil affected our available for sale unrealized gains, that means that this subtracted 10 basis points from the ratio. Finally, other small items such as IRB deficit and the insurance consumption of capital subtracted three basis points.
Okay, very clear. Regarding Línea Directa now, what's our spec from premium growth towards year-end?
Well, we continue to outperform the industry, doubling our peers' average growth in premiums and customers. Concerning the next quarter, although the situation in motor insurance is every day more difficult because the price pressures are growing, we will forecast to continue outperforming the sector. I don't know if the same rate or not, but in any case, we will outperform the sector in the following quarter.
Okay, the last final questions are on M&A, whether we have any updates on the EVO deal or any further appetite for M&As or consolidation in Ireland.
Well, first of all, concerning the EVO update, no, nothing new to say. We are now dealing with the regulators in terms of the authorization. We have presented the first draft of the application, and we will expect to present the definitive application in the following weeks. They have 60 days to decide. Taking this into account, we expect to have the answer during the first quarter next year. After the acquisition of EVO, we have no appetite for further transaction, although, as we always mention, we continue to scan the market for any opportunity that may arise.
Okay. Thank you, Gloria. You can find some EVO transaction highlights at the end of today's presentation. Okay, that was all from us today. Please address any further questions to the investor relations team, and goodbye for now. Thank you.