Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this to this web test. Thank you for taking the time to spend part of your summer with us this morning. We will present to you our results that were reviewed by the board of director on the 2nd of August. As it is usual, they are not audited, but prepared under the IFRS norms. If I go straight to the main elements on slide four, we had a very good quarter and a very good half year as well, with, on the business side and on the financial side.
I will out- outline some of the main, some of the main elements, starting, of course, with the commercial activity. Here on the, on the lending side, I'm, I'm very pleased to report that our overall market share in, in outstanding, so on the portfolio, is rising on all segments, both corporate and retail. With the, with 8% year-on-year for portfolio growth at the end of June 2023, compared to June 2022.
The growth was especially seen on the corporate side, as you see on this slide, with the corporate loan book increasing by RON 2.3 billion, +18%, whereas our overall portfolio, all segments combined, stands now almost at RON 40 billion. On the retail side, we had a very good production at RON 3.5 billion for the first half of the year, mostly on consumer loans, +13% year-on-year. At the same time, we continue to finance the energy transition, and we have RON 1.2 billion of new sustainable finance transactions this semester.
Which is an acceleration of this kind of business. We see a lot of interest for clients on all segments, not only corporates anymore. We see that we're getting some traction as well on the individual segments. On the deposit side, we had a good growth as well, at +9%, and +9% represent, sorry, RON 4.7 billion of growth of deposits. In terms of digital banking, we reach 1.3 million users on YOU BRD at the end of 2023, with an increased usage, almost +20% year-on-year, at 11 million transactions for the 1st semester.
When we look at the gross operating income, it grew by 16% year-on-year, thanks to, on one side, the increase of NBI and a good management on the OpEx side. Our gross operating income stands now over RON 900 billion, with an improved cost-income ratio that we will be discussing a bit later. In terms of asset quality, we are at a historical low on our NPL ratio at 2.2%, while our coverage ratio remains high at 74%, well above both European average and Romanian average. The next cost of risk, sorry, is a reversal this year of RON 5 million, versus contribution RON 46 million last year.
All of this resulted in the net profit increasing by 24%, at RON 768 million, whereas the return, the return on equity stands now at 20%, which in itself is a very good result. I will now pass the floor to Etienne to talk about firstly economic, macroeconomic environment. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. On slide six, some information on the macroeconomic environment. First, we can mention that the GDP of Romania posted a growth of 2.4% during Q1. This is still well above the European Union average growth at 1.1. We must also notice that it's lower than the previous quarters of 2022. There is an economic slight slowdown in Romania as it is globally seen across the European Union. The driver for growth of GDP remain the consumption of households and the fixed capital formation, which are two very positive news.
The overall estimation for GDP growth in 2023 are still in a positive range between 2%-3%, might be even slightly higher if things goes well in H2. Regarding inflation, the positive news is that we are confirming the decreasing trend of inflation in H1. At the end of June, the 12-month inflation was at a level of 10.3%, declining by approximately 6 percentage point, compared to the end of 2022. However, here also, let's still pay attention because it is still a double-digit level of inflation. The forecast for the end of the year remains at high single-digit, around 7%, according to the latest National Bank of Romania forecast.
Now, we can move to the next slide, page seven, to comment on the interest rate and the liquidity situation at market level. First, we confirm that the National Bank of Romania maintains stable, its monetary policy rate at 7%. It was even confirmed in July. The liquidity situation overall in the market is very comfortable, and we have a liquidity surplus in RON at national level. Regarding the interbank rates, let's mention that the ROBOR three months continue to slightly decline since the beginning of the year, reaching a level of 6.5% at the end of June. Also important to notice that at the end of June, the rate curve in RON was almost flattish, as the long-term yields, the 10-year yields, were at approximately 6.6%.
Coming to page eight, just to comment on the main national program and European programs to support the development of the economy. We highlight here the three main topics. First, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan is still ongoing, and Romania has fulfilled several milestones and targets to enable the unlock of the 2nd payment tranche of EUR 3.2 billion. We, we are still forecasting it in the coming months. Regarding IMM Invest Plus program, as already mentioned, it is extended until the end of 2023, with an increased envelope, reaching RON 4.1 billion equivalent in terms of warranties.
The last driver to comment is the decision by the World Bank Group to grant a second development policy loan to Romania of approximately EUR 600 million equivalent. On slide nine, a brief overview of the banking sector, which remains very sound and solid in Romania. The overall capital adequacy of the banking system is very satisfactory, slightly below 22%. The liquidity situation as well, for example, the loan-to-deposit ratio is just slightly below 70%. In terms of asset quality at market level, it is also very good, with 2.7% non-performing loan ratio, which is below the recommendation of CBA, of 3%, and a very comfortable coverage ratio at 66%, which is well above the European Union average.
One interesting also comment on this slide, on the bottom right, chart, you can see that we have observed, in the previous quarters, an increase in the share of FX loans, especially Euro loans, within the overall loan portfolio. During Q2 2023, this trend has stopped, and we can see that at the end of June, the share of FX loans has decreased in the overall loan portfolio at the market level. Now we move to the Q2 and H1 commercial result, and I give the floor to Maria Rousseva.
Thank you, Etienne. Good morning, everyone, also from me. On page 11, I will detail what was already mentioned by François in the beginning, regarding our digital transformation, which indeed is accelerating. As mentioned, 1.3 million mobile banking individual clients recorded, which is a 45% increase year-on-year, and the transactions performed through YOU BRD is in the meantime quite high, with 11.1 million number of transactions in the first half of this year. Regarding the transactions which are performed through this tool, we are very glad to confirm that now we have also quite high usage of deposit and saving account services, which are now more than 70% of them perform through YOU BRD.
As usually, we report very high and stable, stable high usage of digital channels by our corporate clients, both SME and large corporate, which is confirmed also in the first half of this year. Traditionally, our bank is considered a pioneer in the trade activities, therefore we have quite high % of usage of our digital channels on the LC and LG business, as you can see here. Of course, also the FX activity for corporate clients happens mostly through the digital tools. Acquiring also recorded 23% growth year-on-year, and it's also in line with our strategy. Regarding more details of our functionalities in you, to be more concrete, what we have developed in the first half of the year.
We have now the lending page for loans and credit cards available also in the mobile app. The visualization of the BRD Asset Management products is also there, and we have improved our security features. Now, I would like to detail something which is especially important, which we saw in the last days of the last month. Actually, it's after the June result, but I want to report it because it's extremely important. In the meantime, we see that the digital sales, the share of digital sales in the VIP for private individuals, has increased in terms of percentage from 10%-25%. It's very much confirming our ambition and our strategy to move progressively our daily and including consumer finance activity on this tool.
Regarding the corporate segment, which is also valid for the small business we have now also the instant payments available in our tools. The tool is called the BRD Office, our online tool for corporate clients. Regarding the network, as you can see, we have decreased by 40 branches our network to 441 as of June 2023. To confirm the trend from 2016, we have a decrease of 46% of the whole network. When we mention here the expanded cashless approach, we have in the meantime, 169 24/7 points in our network, which is 22% higher year-on-year compared to last June, of June 2022.
I would like also to detail here something which is not on the slide, to give you a better view. In H1, we have implemented more than 600 new machines, if we count all ATMs, MDAs, and HCMs. As you see, our commitment to digital transformation in a balanced manner, combined with a solid presence in physical network, is confirmed also in this H1. Now I will move to page 12, where I will detail the performance of the lending and lending activity of both retail and corporate. I'm very happy to share with you something in more detail, something which François already mentioned in the beginning.
our production and our outstanding in both segments, retail and corporate, but we managed to increase our market share, which we find as a confirmation of our policy to grow our business on the market. All the efforts which our commercial teams have performed are now also shown in this increased market share across products and across segments. I will here talk about the lending part, of course, because this is the slide dedicated to lending. As you can see in the corporate, we had almost 18% growth year-on-year of the outstanding portfolio. While for SME, the growth was 29%. For the large corporate, it was still a very high 12.5%-12.2% year-on-year.
The lending portfolio outstanding increased by 18.2% year-on-year. You can see that our strategy to accelerate our presence in the SME market, in which we have been a bit underrepresented in the previous period, is now really confirmed. We, we can see that in the meantime we have a very balanced portfolio in the corporate segment between SMEs and large corporates with their respective contribution to the results of the bank, exactly as we wish to see it in our strategy. I would like also to mention the market share. Regarding the loans to corporate, we have increased year-on-year our market share by 60 basis points.
Regarding retail lending, despite the slowing down economy, with the respective impact of the capacity of the consumers to they have additional indebtedness, we see a growth of our outstanding by 3.4% year-on-year, which has been supported by a very solid growth of the production. I can mention here that the market share of production consumer loans in the second quarter was 17.7%, which is a record performance, actually. These, along other, the other segments which performed also better than the market, have led to growth of the market share in the retail lending activity as well. The outstanding is higher compared to last year for the individuals, by 20 basis points. Small business have similar growth as the corporate segment.
It has growth of 16% year-on-year, which is also in line with our strategy. Moving to page 13, to start before giving further the floor to Etienne. We'll start on the commercial side with deposits. You can see almost 9% growth year-on-year in the outstanding deposits, and generally attracted funds, 13.3% growth on the corporate, 6.6% growth on the individuals. Maybe for your information, few details on the structure. We have seen that in RON, our growth was mostly in the term deposits, while we have been in both retail and corporate. While we have been quite stable in the current account, which is very good news, because the current accounts have not been victims of this growth of the term deposits.
We just attracted, from outside, new term deposits. Regarding the EUR, what I mentioned was on the RON side. Regarding the EUR, we are observing the same. We have more term deposits in EUR than before, obviously, because of the growing interest rates. We are adjusting, but I will let here Etienne detail also accordingly, our pricing structure on all segments, in order to deal with these changes of interest rate and behavior of our clients. Etienne?
Yes. Thank you, Maria. Indeed, we had to adjust our pricing of term deposit to remain competitive in the market. It was pretty successful on the currency of RON, as explained by Maria. On euro, we are at the beginning of the changes, if I may say, because the increase in euro rates only started during Q1 this year to be really significant. We observed the change of behavior of the clients. We observed some shifts from current account to term deposit, and also some net outflows to other instruments with a better yield on euro.
This is a topic on which we are very vigilant, and we are regularly observing the market evolution to stay competitive in terms of pricing of our term deposit in euro. Our strategy being to maintain a good level of market share, a good level of liquidity, without compromising our profitability, of course. The overall liquidity situation is still very satisfactory. Our net loan to deposit ratio stands at 67.7%, in slight decline compared to last year, because the deposit grew faster than the loans, despite the solid growth of loans explained just previously. The liquidity buffer is still very solid and diversified. We have equivalent RON 25 billion in total, representing +2% of our total asset with different elements.
Basically, we have RON 13 billion of govies at fair value through OCI, RON 4 billion of govies at historical cost, and RON 8 billion equivalent in interbank and cash at the National Bank of Romania. Last point we can comment on this slide, is the performance of BRD Asset Management, so it's off balance sheet as items for us. They were, they confirmed their positioning, the third largest asset manager in the market, with more than 19% market share, with RON 3.5 billion of assets under management, and with a high single digit increase during H1 2023, which is a very good news, knowing that 2022 was difficult for asset manager in the context of changing rates.
The last comment on BRD Asset Management, they continue to innovate with very smart ideas, and they recently launched a new ESG strategy fund, which is a premiere on the local market. Now we can move to the profit and loss, page 14, to start with the revenue. I'm very glad to comment that the growth of NBI was really excellent in first half 2023, with RON +220 million additional, or +13.4%, compared to the same period last year. The two main drivers for growth are, first, the net interest income, with a growth of RON 206 million, representing +18.3%. This growth of net interest income is composed of two main components.
First, we have, obviously, the volume effect, with a growth of approximately 8% of the outstanding portfolio of loans. The second effect is the rate effect, which is a bit more complicated to analyze. Overall, it has, of course, a net positive impact, as we mentioned here, the main index for us, the ROBOR three months, grew by more than 230 basis points during first half 2023, compared to first half 2022. This has definitely a positive impact on the interest income. Our interest income, for example, on the first half, we are very close to RON 2 billion. We were only RON 9 million below the RON 2 billion net interest income, growing by more than 50%.
On the other hand, we are also, we have to cope with an increasing cost of funding, especially driven by the fact that we have more term deposits, and in RON, it's very visible. Our term deposit in RON, on the PI segment, grew by 100%, and on corporate segment by more than 25%. The overall growth of the interest income, interest expenses, sorry, was more than four times. Overall, the growth of net interest income is +18%. The second driver for growth of the NBI is the trading activities, which are positioned in the item other income. The overall growth is also +18% on the period, representing RON +28 million . It is mostly driven by two main products, the foreign exchange, and also the fixed income.
We have this semester, no material, miscellaneous effect in other income. The third item of the NBI is the net fees and commission. On this item, we are slightly declining in H1 '23, compared to H1 '22. The decline is minus RON 12 million or minus 3.4%. There are two main components, quite well balanced, minus RON 6 million each. The first one is a base effect. Maybe you remember last last year, when the war in Ukraine started, there was some kind of emotional effect in Romania, and we observed a significant increase of cash operations at the ATM and at the cash desk, and this effect generated a higher fee income last year. We don't have any longer this effect, hopefully, in 2023. The second effect is more structural.
The penetration of the packages is continuous, continuously growing, which means that we are collecting more fees on packages and amendments, but we are, and we accept it, losing some fees per operation, especially at the cash desk or at ATM, because all these operations are now fully embedded in the package. The overall net impact is minus RON 6 million on the period. At this stage, I would like to mention three things. We observed that on the market, it is consistent, this trend, and our competitors focusing primarily on retail banking, have also posted a slight decline of their fees and commission in H1 2023.
Second, when we do, we do regularly a benchmark of our different indicators, and based on the full year 2022 data, we observe that BRD is very well positioned in the ratio of fees and commission per client, or fees and commission within the overall NBI, and we are rather in the upper part of the market on these, these indicators. The last comment is that we are very conscious of the importance of fees and commission in our structure of revenues, so we are regularly making analysis and taking actions to reprice in a relevant manner, what we can reprice according to the market practice. We have started these kind of actions in Q2, and Q2 is already better than Q1 in terms of fees and commission.
Overall, we posted a very solid growth of NBI in H1 2023. If we move to the OpEx on page 15. The OpEx are also growing, mostly influenced by, first, the high level of inflation still, and the fact that the labor market remains very, very tight. The overall growth of OpEx on the first half is RON 91 million, representing 10.7% with two main components. I exclude the contribution to Deposit Guarantee Fund and Resolution Fund, as the overall cost is stable year-over-year. The two main drivers for growth of the OpEx are, first, the staff cost, with a growth of RON 47 million , representing 11% growth, and there are two main components in this growth. The first one is an exceptional item.
You remember that last year we signed a new labor agreement in June 2022, therefore, in first half 2023, we have the full effect of this new labor agreement, while in first half 2022, we had almost no effect of this agreement. This agreement was mainly focusing on the repricing of the meal tickets and some other additional benefits. The overall effect of this of these new benefits represent RON 18 million in the first half, which mean 40% of the overall growth of staff cost in H1. The remaining part, RON 29 million growth, represent the increase of wages, as we have a yearly increase of wages. It is partially compensated by a slight negative volume effect as we continue to make a structural optimization, especially in the network.
We must also admit that this structural optimization is going now at a slower pace than it was in the previous years. The second driver for growth of the OpEx is other expenses, and it's mostly driven by our strategic effort in IT, and external services that we use to develop our IT, and deliver our transformation roadmap of digital. If we exclude these items, the run-the-bank cost, without IT and external services, remain under a very, very good control, as the growth was only 6%, to be compared again to inflation at double digits, 10%.
It enables to deliver a substantial growth of the cost of operating income, plus 16% in H1, with a positive jaws effect, enabling to reach a cost-income ratio at 47% in Q2, which is improving compared to last year. The cost-income ratio for the first half is slightly above 50, at 50.7%, in decline by 120 basis points compared to same period last year. Now I give the floor to Philippe Thibaud to comment on the cost of risk and the asset quality. Philippe, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Etienne, and good morning, everyone. On Q2, things are improving, meaning we did better than last quarter, and we did better than last year. When you look at the slide, the 16, you can see that our cost of risk was a net release of 6 basis points. You see also that, from quarter to another, we are closing around zero, so we have a very stable cost of risk. When looking at the guidelines or our expectations for the whole year, I believe we can be slightly more optimistic than what we were previously. In terms of basis points, usually we are between 30 and 40 basis points in cost of risk on a yearly basis.
When we look at where we are today, compared to last year when we had the war in Ukraine, we had the rising inflation, what we see today is that there are still no major impact on our portfolio. The portfolio is being very resilient. We see that days past due, payment behaviors are not deteriorating. We are quite confident that we, we can do better this year than what we did in the past, unless there is obviously something major happening. We see it also reflecting in the NPL. We had a very low NPL ratio, the lowest again.
Last year, we, we thought that with 2.5, we reached the, the lowest level, but we, we did even better, thanks to also good recoveries, which also explains why the cost of risk translates into releasing. We have a very comfortable NPL coverage, where better than the average of the sector, which is very comforting for us. Strong portfolio, no, no change in the behavior of the clients, in the difficulties of the clients. So far, we have quite a good outlook on what's happening this year. Considering also the macroeconomics guidelines as presented by Etienne. That's it for me. Etienne, back to you.
Yes, thank you, Philippe. I will comment briefly on the slide 17 on the capital, adequacy ratio. We have a very satisfactory capital position at the end of June, reaching a level of 22.4%, which is almost stable compared to June 2022. I will guide you through, very briefly, the waterfall you can see on this, on this chart, because there are several, important component to keep in mind.
You remember that we were a bit concerned and very cautious on the end of the Quick Fix relief which occurred on the 1st of January 2023, because it had an impact of almost minus RON 900 million of additional negative OCI into our own fund, representing approximately minus 300 basis points negative impact in the ratio. To offset, to address this problem, we have decided to fully incorporate the H2 profit into our prudential own funds. It was an amount of approximately RON 600 million, with a positive impact of 200 basis points in the ratio.
It enabled us to support the growth of our loan portfolio, with a growth of 8% translating into a growth of RWA a bit more than 6%, and a negative impact in the ratio of minus 138 basis points. The good news is, the long-term is relaxed, and it enabled to decrease the negative impact of OCI into the own funds for approximately RON 600 million, representing a positive impact in the ratio of 260 basis points. All in all, we have almost a stable capital adequacy ratio, keeping in mind that we are still within this ratio of 22.4, still a negative weight of the negative OCI, representing more than 400 negative basis points.
We think we are very solid in terms of capital. The last comment on this slide is just to confirm that regarding the new requirement of MREL, Minimum Required Own Fund and Eligible Liabilities, for all the recovery and resolution topics, we are fully compliant with the requirements set by the National Bank of Romania, posting a ratio of 32% at the end of June. This is all for my part, and I give the floor to Mr. Bloch for the conclusion.
Thank you. We are now on slide 19, the conclusion. Indeed, we had a very, very good performance in H1 2023. It was a very dynamic semester and very, very dynamic second quarter as well on all the products and segments, as we have seen, except, of course, the known market slowdown in mortgage loan given the level of interest rates and therefore the impact on the housing demand in Romania. We ended up at again, with the net loan outstanding increasing by 8% at the end of 2023, and again, an increase in market share.
On the, on the deposit side, Etienne has commented a lot, already, the, the margin effect due to the switch from current account to term deposits. Therefore, it was important for us to continue the increase of the amount of deposits to mitigate this margin margin impact. Indeed, we had a nice a nice increase there, compensating somewhat the switch from current, current account to term deposits. At the same time, digital adoptions continue to grow, and this is very positive for two reasons.
First of all, it allows us to, to answer to customer demand, and you know that, Romania, in Romania, customer are very digital savvy, and it's important to continue, therefore, to, to have new services offered to, to them, and we are continuing to do, to do so. It's also, and this is the second positive element of the digital adoption, is that it allows us to better manage our cost base, because it allows us to continue to work on the network optimization. You saw, and you, you remember what Etienne was telling us about the fact that the run the bank is increasing only at half of the, roughly half of the inflation, level.
At the same time, the NBI grew by 13.4%, so above inflation, thanks, of course, to the commercial activity. You saw the results on the gross operating income and on the net profit increasing by 24%. In terms of capital, the very positive news is that we have been able now to fully absorb the end of the OCI quick fix. We have long-term interest rates that came down nicely as well, compared to previous quarter and end of year as well, 2022. All of this give us a lot of confidence of in our capacity in the future to continue to grow the business and deliver value to shareholders.