Hello? Yes, hello, thank you so much. Hello everyone. As usual, we will present today our full-year unaudited financial results, which have been validated yesterday, examined yesterday by our board of directors, and I will start with page four of the presentation, with the snapshot and with the summary of our results. We are very satisfied with our commercial activity in 2024. As you can see on our slide, we have exactly in line with our strategy and our plans for 2024, a remarkable improvement of our lending activity. As we discussed on previous occasions, we have focused on reactivating again our SME lending activity, which actually has been also a strategic priority for the past several years.
Therefore, 19% growth of our outstanding loan portfolio, 29% growth of the corporate loans, and a very, very, very good production of the retail business, where we have new records related to the individual loans, 49% on the consumer loans year-on-year production, and regarding new housing loans, 63% year-on-year. Very satisfactory. In both segments, we have gained market share. I will let after that my colleague in charge share with you the details, but in both corporate and retail, we managed to increase our market share at the end of the year. Regarding our commitment to the green financing and to support the sustainability transition, we have, as of end of 2024, RON 1.88 billion in sustainable financing, and in total, we are far above our 2025 commitment during our previous strategy. So, as you know, we have upgraded in the middle of 2024 even this element of our strategy.
Deposits grew by 9% year-on-year, the reason being that compared to the very vivid lending activity, the reason being that we felt comfortable in terms of liquidity. We did not want to participate in price-related battles with our competition. Therefore, 9% we feel comfortable with. 1.7 million users of the YOU BRD, the Mobile App for Private Individuals. This number is representing 20% growth on a yearly basis. All this excellent commercial activity brought GOI growth by 3.6%, I would say only 3.6% year-on-year. Why? Because we had this tax on turnover, which I mentioned on previous occasions as well, the 2% on gross turnover, which impacted our OpEx as we book it there. If we wouldn't have had this tax, we would be growing our gross operating income by more than 10%. The NPL ratio, very healthy, 2.1% at the end of the year.
The NPL coverage ratio, 78% at the end of the year. Both ratios, the NPL ratio and the coverage ratio of BRD are above or better, actually, in the case of the NPL ratio better in the case of the coverage ratio better than the average on the banking market in Romania. In terms of cost of risk, as opposed to 2023, where we had actually release of provisions, we have RON 145 million provisions, which figure we are also comfortable with because it is reflecting the return to normal terms for a bank which is having intensive commercial activity, even below our budget and expectations for 2024. Regarding the final result, the net result is at RON 1.5 billion , and the return on equity, a very good one of 16.6% in 2024. So I now give the floor to Claudiu to talk about the macroeconomics.
But before that, I would like to mention that as a very good confirmation, also external one of our very good financial and commercial performance at the end of 2024, we got the Bank of the Year award of The Banker, a very reputable one, and it is the second year in a row. You can see on our slide five the other recognitions, but I'm mentioning just the one of The Banker, which is coming for a second consecutive year. Claudiu?
Thank you very much, Maria, and good morning, everyone. The remarkable increase in lending and in general our good results mentioned by Maria in the introduction were possible in spite of the slowing down in the economy that we witnessed in 2024. Most probably the economy, even though we do not yet have the final formal figures, increased by slightly above 1% in 2024, being supported mainly by the investment activity. We see all these public infrastructure projects that have been accelerated, and also with a good contribution from household consumption being supported by wage increases and also pension increases. Still, this is slowing down from the previous year in 2023, where the economy grew by more than 2%. As for 2025, we saw the first figures coming from the budget construction in the parliament now under discussion. The government expects 2.5% economic growth. The inflation was stickier.
Actually, the final figure in 2024 ended at 5.1%. This is higher than the initial expectations of the central bank at 4.9%, and this is due to food prices, but also due to some services showing inertia. And now the NBR expects the inflation to decline and to come down within their targeted corridor for 2.5% plus minus 1% at end 2025 and to continue being consolidated within the corridor within 2026. Having in mind this stickiness in inflation, it was no surprise that the central bank took a pause in continuing its easing in monetary policy after the first two cuts last year in July and August. And the stance is now for them to rather expect to see the budget construction and the budget management and to also see the evolution in inflation still embarking again on subsequent cuts.
Therefore, it would be probably realistic to expect additional cuts not earlier than the second quarter 2025 or even in the second half of 2025. Money market rates somehow showed this impact of higher inflation. So after initially having seen some easings in the first half of 2024, they went a bit higher at year-end, but this is also due to a decrease in liquidity that we saw, quite an important one. In 2024, the highest liquidity was at RON 60 billion , and till year-end, that was down towards RON 20 billion . And part of it may be linked to the interventions the central bank did in 2024 to defend the currency, knowing these vulnerabilities in fiscal deficit and current account deficit that at a certain point in time created some preoccupation for investors. Proceeding further with the Romanian banking sector, the indicators remain robust.
Capital adequacy, almost 25% above the EU average, also comfortable levels for loan-to-deposit ratios and liquidity. Whereas as far as asset quality indicators are concerned, they continue to be strong, even though we saw a marginal increase in the NPL ratio, 2.54% in 2024 compared to 2.37% in 2023, a bit higher than the EU average, which is 1.9%, but somehow this is mitigated by the coverage levels, which remain strong at slightly below 70%, and which are more conservative than those we see in the EU at 42%. And I would end with the macroeconomics, and I'll give the floor to Mădălina to continue.
Thank you, Claudiu. Hello, actually. I will start saying that the very good commercial performance relied on two levers. One was a very well and disciplined sales management activity across the segments. The other one by extending the digital footprint and enhancing the service capabilities into the digital environment. So this is why actually EVAN24 was showing double-digit increases in number of users in our digital platforms, almost 30% increase in transactions that confirmed the engagement in the activation of the customers into the digital environment. We continue to actually have above 96% of the payments of corporate and around 98% of retail customers via digital channels, as well as savings deposits. So daily banking has increased significantly into the digital ecosystem.
This was supported by initiatives that actually engage and increase the engagement of the customers into the digital platforms, like loyalty programs, the cashback that really launched only for half a year, reached record records in terms of enrolled customers, almost above 500,000. New initiatives like RoPay, we were the third bank across the ecosystem of the new payment launched by Transfond, as well as lending activity like APIA or any other, let's say, new initiatives that activate the customers into the digital environment. I will mention the investment funds that have been launched in the second half of the year, visualization buying and selling investment funds in the app. This actually gives us the possibility to reduce the traditional network footprint.
So we continue to decrease with 35 branches year-on-year, while enhancing and extending 16% the cashless approach with reaching 225 24/7 banking points in which the customers can actually perform daily banking transactions. We as well enhance and improve, raise the bar for the contact center, improving the service quality in the interaction with the customers. We improved basically the service level, reaching 80% of the calls in the first 20 seconds and successfully handling 97% of the calls. This performance has been also recognized externally by being awarded the best internal contact center of medium size. Moving forward, as Maria mentioned, in the lending activity, we had a very, very good performance, also overperforming within the market.
Within 2024, December 2024 versus December 2023, we increased our market share in lending by 70 basis points, an amazing performance of 110 basis points into the commercial lending and 30 basis points into the private individuals' lending. The amazing performance of commercial lending has been supported by both governmental programs and our own products in lending. According to the FNGCIMM statistics, we've been the number one bank in using the capabilities of the governmental programs. So this actually supports our growth in lending, 19% year-on-year, mainly in corporate and commercial lending, almost 30%. Leasing portfolio also showed a robust growth last year, surpassing the RON 2 billion outstanding, reconfirming our capabilities to diversify our product portfolio in front of the customers. In retail, as Maria mentioned, and as it is reflected here, so significant growth in both loan production and the stock.
The market share in mortgage has a significant gain, so we rely a lot on long-term commitment and relationship with the customer, consolidating our position in the market. Of course, this growth in lending has relied significantly on the sustainable economy. As it was mentioned by Maria, we surpass our target of green financing. We mentioned here three of the landmark transactions that have been supported and performed by BRD team, and we also mentioned the new partnership with IFC and EIF that is aimed to support even further the green transition of our customers.
Our contribution to the ESG environment has been also supported by the third edition of the Climate Change Summit in Romania that reached 1.3 million people worldwide watching live to this event and has been rewarded and confirmed also by Fitch that has upgraded BRD ESG entity rating to 2 from 3, increasing, of course, the score of our entity. As Maria mentioned, we also grow solid the deposit base, almost 9%, balanced between the retail deposit and corporate deposits. We continue to have a strong granularity and reliable deposit base. However, during 2024, we also focused on diversifying our asset-based asset products by increasing significantly the sales into the asset management. Our entity BRD Asset Management reached mid-year the first position and consolidated and kept the number one position in the market at the end of the year.
This actually, again, proved the Fidelis program in which we participate during 2024. In this Fidelis program, through our bank, we sold 28% of the bond. We had 28% market share in this activity. And this is another confirmation that our customer received products very much diversified based on their needs. I will hand over to Vladimir to talk about the liquidity position. And please, Vladimir.
Thank you, Mădălina. Good afternoon, all. I will start with the liquidity. So, as Mădălina described, the development of the deposits, our liquidity remains strong. We are keeping our liquidity coverage ratio above 220%, while the loan-to-deposit exceeding 73%, which is the result of more dynamic lending activity, which we have witnessed in 2024, followed by the deposit growth. The liquidity remains strong as we rely as well on our high liquidity buffer of 32%, mainly composed by high-quality liquid bonds. And we have therefore sufficient liquidity to support our growth as well in 2025. Moving into the NBI. As a result of these very strong and solid commercial results, we can say that our NBI was growing 5.2% year-over-year, driven by both NII and deposits.
The NII, fueled as described, mainly by the growth of the loans, a bit tempered by our cost of funds, mainly due to the term deposits and regulatory funding, which we have in our books, and reflecting as well the profitability of our business. For the fees and commissions adding year-over-year 7.8%, driven by the higher revenues linked to the packages and to the growth of activity of our clients, and as well by the growth of our client base, which we achieved in 2024, and slightly contracted by our strategy in the self-service in the cash operations, where we invest heavily into the self-service of the clients and on the efficiency on the cash handling on the branches.
In the other income, we have one-off provision which was booked already in Q1 and the provision linked to the BRD Finance loan portfolio, which was already booked in the first quarter. Moving to the OpEx, I can say the OpEx was well controlled during the whole 2024. As Maria already mentioned, in 2024, we were impacted by the newly introduced tax on turnover, on which we paid basically RON 129 million . If you would deduct this additional cost, which we did not have in the past, our OpEx would develop a year-over-year stable. The main area where we invest our resources are the staff expenses, which are growing year-over-year 4.9%, still well below the inflation of 2024. We as well invested in the non-staff expenditures in our IT development, our IT and digital capabilities.
This investment in the other costs we were able to offset by the savings in real estate and in our sales of branches as we are optimizing as well our physical footprint. Saying both NBI and OpEx development, if I look at the GOI and the positive growth, which we can see without the additional tax of turnover, we would be growing 10.2% of GOI, which is a very, very dynamic and solid result for 2024. I would hand over now and leave the floor for Philippe to comment on the cost of risk.
Thank you, Vladimir. And good morning or good day to everyone. So 28 basis points, that's the cost of risk for 2024. Actually, I'm quite happy that we respected the guidance. The nature of the CRO is always to be cautious and sometimes over-pessimistic. So I hope that we don't suffer the curse of Cassandra. In any case, when you look at last quarter, we were probably, or the mood was more negative, the outlook more uncertain. And so when you look at the first three quarters, we were on this consistent level of cost of risk. And actually, during the last quarter, we did better. So the portfolio is very resilient. And you see it also in terms of NPL. We were comfortable on not having an explosion of the NPL and being able to manage them by the end of the year.
So at 2.1%, we also still very comfortable coverage ratio. We are quite happy with this result. So I hand the floor back to you, Vladimir.
Thank you, Philippe. So I will continue with the capital position. We have a solid capital base and capital position to support our growth of the loans portfolio. Year-over-year, our solvency ratio is almost flattish, moving from 23% in 2023 to 22.7% in 2024, composed by several drivers. First, we improved by incorporating 30% of the profit of 2024. We have a small revaluation of our fair value bonds, which we have within our portfolio, leading to slightly negative 28 basis points. The risk-weighted assets driven by the loans are only mildly worsening the capital of the solvency ratio. As you know, and we communicated already in the past, we have concluded this SRT transaction with the World Bank, with IFC, the part of the World Bank, which is allowing us to, despite this dynamic growth in our balance sheet, to have only marginal impact into our risk-weighted assets.
All in all, our position, as I said, is very strong. Our capital requirement is slightly higher for 2025, but still we are having sufficient capital available for supporting our business. Regarding the dividend distribution, we are not announcing the dividends today. There is still discussion between us and the National Bank of Romania, and the final distribution of the dividend will be subject to approval of the National Bank of Romania. I'm handing over back the floor to Maria for the conclusion.
Yeah. We were quite fast today because the results were quite easy and enjoyable to explain. Just to repeat, I hope it will not be too boring to repeat three times today that we are very happy with our commercial performance across segments, across products, and including the digital channels. Regarding the profitability and the financial performance, this, of course, has been reflected in this excellent commercial activity there. If we exclude the OpEx impact of this new tax, which we commented several times, we have very solidly grown our result and our gross operating result notably with very positive growth. Cost of risk, very comfortable, absolutely comfortably within the guidance Philippe gave you some time ago, even below. Our ROE above 16% at 16.6%, also satisfactory with good capital levels despite this very dynamic commercial activity.