Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Sabrina, your chorus operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Banca Transilvania conference call to present and discuss the 2022 annual preliminary financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and 0 on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ömer Tetik, CEO, Mr. George Călinescu, Deputy CEO, CFO, Ms. Luminița Runcan, Deputy CEO, CRO, and Ms. Diana Mazurchievici , Deputy Director, Head of ESG and Investor Relations. Mr. Tetik, you may now proceed.
Hello, good afternoon or good morning. Thank you for joining us for presentation of end of 2022 numbers. I guess for everyone it was an interesting year with a lot of challenges. A lot of, let's say, mood swings and expectation modifications. At the end of the year, financially, commercially, as it happened for most of our either peers or also our customers, it had been, I think for the bottom line, a good year. Still some of the challenges that are being carried over to 2023 or to the years ahead. We are sorry that, besides maybe, energy crisis, inflation or other maybe economic issues, we are still speaking a lot war and hope that there will be a quick, peaceful solution to that. Two thousand...
Our presentation is already at the website, for in case you want to look at now or later. I will actually use the opportunity to starting maybe the end of our presentation because 2023, 2022 was the 25th anniversary of BT's listing at the Bucharest Stock Exchange. It indeed it was an interesting journey for the first 25 years. Hope that the next 25 will be at least as successful and promising. Both definitely the team, executive team, but the whole BT family are committed not to disappoint our shareholders, our customers, all stakeholders. We are, as you may recall, we are one of the first two companies included in the FTSE Global Equity Index Series. The most traded shares, share in Bucharest Stock Exchange.
We have the best VEKTOR Score, 10 out of 10, thanks to our investor relations team led by Diana, doing a great job there. I will try to give a short brief about Romanian economy and market developments. Definitely as part of the European Union, as a central, southeastern European country, our economic trends from inflation to interest rates and social challenges have followed European general trends. Still Romania had a strong private consumption and had a good usage of European funds. Well, we have seen that after in Romania, still the expectations of GDP growth are positive and not much of recession or technical recession discussion for 2023.
To which we also, with which we also agree, we think that high incoming amounts of resilience and recovery funds and the strong corporate and investment growth that we have seen in the second half of 2022, which continues also in 2023, brings Romania to the investment level much desired. We have, let's say, one of the most challenged countries in terms of EU convergence. On the other hand, when we look at Romania with the high per capita arable land, huge energy resource and also a young population, we see quite a big potential for the years ahead, bigger than what we have tapped so far. Consumer prices have been increasing quite strongly as the rest of the world, but still at a lower pace.
As per Eurostat, it was 12% as compared to our peers or neighboring countries, sorry, which were at around 15%. We have seen also Romanian consumers changing attitudes when they started spending maybe less, they started accessing consumer loans, slightly decreasing pace. On the other hand, both the high savings ratio of population, high liquidity position of the banks and high stabilization of the banking system in the financial sector helped us to, let's say, break the first impact of everything what happened during 2022. The banking sectors have seen strong growth as well, 15% loan growth and mainly supported, as I said, by the corporate lending. This was a strong acceleration that we were all looking forward to see.
We have seen that the deposits continued their growth, but at a slower pace, which impacted Loan-to-Deposit ratios of all banks slightly increasing. Definitely households and smaller companies, they tapped into their savings when they had to pay higher energy bills, higher bank loan installments of higher supermarket shopping invoices. The good thing is that this high saving ratio is compared, especially as compared to the previous financial crisis in 2008, 2009, helped Romanian economy in general to maintain a very low NPL ratio. We have seen even in the last months of the year NPL decreasing throughout the sector. This, how to say?
The stabilization of the markets and, the, let's say, clarification of the expectations, increasing of the sentiment both on the companies and in household level, we think that 2023 is more open to, let's say, positive surprises than the negative surprises. National Bank of Romania has been the main pillar of the managing imbalances in the economy. They have been consecutively increasing interest rates, recently they gave signals also that the interest rate cycle is about to end, if not already ended. Also reversal of the rate, they don't see very soon. The governor of National Bank mentioned couple of times that it will happen only the inflation will reach the benchmark interest rate level.
The huge incoming funds from European Union, including the maintenance and recovery program, but also other programs, plus remittances increasing from the diaspora, helped Romania to maintain a very good foreign exchange reserve amount and also keep a very stable exchange rate. This is also one of the, let's say, main targets of National Bank of Romania, keeping the, let's say, devaluation or depreciation of Romanian leu at minimum of zero level, so that they will also help Romanian companies to access modernization investment capacity at lower cost.
When we come back to BT itself, we, as we said at the beginning of last year, without knowing what was about to happen, we said that we are here to lend, we are here to support SMEs and population, and we want to lead Romanian economic growth, is what we have done at the end. Our, how to say? Growth loans increased by 30%. Our assets increased by 7%, supported also by deposit growth from customers by 13%. With a decreasing NPL ratio, the EBA definition of NPL ratio, we have reached at 2.34%, 234 basis points.
Although our interest expense, cost of funding has increased almost 5x during the year, our vast current account base customer relationship and increased saver-savability helped us to increase both Net Interest Income by 33% and also Net Fee and Commission Income by 24%. This is another year that we are delivering about 20% increase in Net Fee and Commission Income. Although last year, this time I was mentioning that it will be difficult to deliver 20+% growth, we see that, how to say? Higher number of salary accounts, high number of customer relationships and continuous lending activity helped us to grow this part of the income generation as well.
Our net profit is for the bank with RON 2.178 billion, with 40 basis points cost of risk and slight over 25% return on equity. We have, we do not consider ourselves at the best of our shape when it came to managing our costs, but inflation hits salary adjustments and some unexpected, let's say, costs incurred, increased our cost-income ratio above our traditional level. Still, at 49%, we consider that our cost-income ratio is a good practice in European markets. When we come back to, how to say? transition income structure, as you imagine and you will see in the presentation, I guess it's on the 13th, slide number 13.
There's a very strong correlation between our deposits, current accounts growth versus the Net Fee and Commission Income. Although we were hit as all the banking systems and financial sectors participants by an increased cost of funding, our lending activities helped us to maintain almost 200 basis points net interest margin. Our scale, 34% of our bottom line is coming from Net Interest Margin, and supported by trading income and fee and commission income. As regards to the loans, after the last financial crisis experience, households and SMEs, they preferred to remain even at the increased cost in local currency, so they are well paid. Only 12% of our loans to households are in foreign currency.
Companies we have seen last year an increased preference towards foreign currency loans, which pushed the foreign currency portion lending slightly above 30%. Still, we see that if you look at the business trends and the incoming funds, yeah, we can also consider that they are naturally hedged because over a quarter of deposits of companies are in foreign currency. Romanian companies, IT, automotive, agriculture, they are selling their goods, their products and services at the foreign currency unit. When it comes to risk, I'm here also with Luminiţa, our Chief Risk Officer. I would say that our NPL coverage ratio is 195% as per EBA definition. It's quite strong.
If you look at the par ninety NPL coverage ratio including the mortgages, the real estate loans, we are at 125%. Our NPL ratio increased to 244 basis points, with par ninety NPL ratio of 150 points, which gave us, which sounds as a solid 41 basis point cost of risk. Definitely it is below our expectations as budget. I would say that when you look at the presentation, you will see also distribution of the stage, staging of our loan provisions and total loan book.
Definitely, our optimist but prudent, prudential approach has helped us to maintain a high capital ratio of 21.60% at the end of the year, definitely well above the minimum required level. Last year, one of the challenges of us, but also many banks, has been the MREL requirements coming to mostly deadlines and terms. In July, the first, let's say, requirement level of 23.34%, we have managed to meet the criteria. We will continue our efforts this year. This is also one of the reasons that we will discuss later in terms of profit capitalization and dividend.
We are planning to diversify our capital structure also by loan programs and maybe some other FTSE instruments in order to ensure that we will be meeting, I would say, sometimes, very high prudential standards of local and international regulatory authorities. Coming to sustainability, the efforts are being led by again, by our Chief Risk Officer, but also Diana here. I would let Diana to say a few words about BT's recognition with sustainability. Go on, Diana.
Thank you. The most important thing we would like to mention is that 2022 came with independent recognition for sustainability efforts fostered by Banca Transilvania. We have received very good ratings from Sustainalytics in terms of ESG risks. From Refinitiv, which scored us among the 50 position in the banks worldwide. Another recognition came in terms of our good practice for sustainability reporting with gold- level recognition for our 2021 Sustainability Report, as well as leadership in climate financing granted by IFC. We would be presenting a lot of
ESG data points in our sustainability report in 2022. In short, the bank's impact financing reached RON 1.6 billion in 2022, fairly split between companies and retail in terms of green mortgages. I will stop here and invite you to look after our sustainability report, which is going to be published soon.
Thank you, Diana. We will be discussing maybe, although investing more, more and more, probably we will be discussing less about digitalization because it became already embedded in everything what we do. It's not a separate effort followed by a separate group of people or departments in BT. Both our internal processes and customer-facing apps, our interactions, we are digitalizing very strongly. I would say that, although I'm definitely biased, I would say that we are the best practice in terms of digitalization in Romania. BT Pay continues to be the most popular financial app, the user numbers are growing exponentially. Almost 80% of our customers were digitalized last year. We are now at 85% of our customers digitalized.
From online account openings for individuals or corporates to all kinds of payments, financial type, personal or company financial management, invoicing, factoring. We do different activities, fully online. We see appreciation of the customers. I guess this can be seen also as due to the fact that we are increasing our number of active customers at a pace of more than 1,100 customers per day, especially in 2022. When we go back to the, let's say, inactive accounts, we are also trying to reactivate that. We are also very, let's say, proud of the results of our group subsidiaries.
All of them have been delivering strong results in their segments within our expectations and budgeted numbers, contributing both to the bottom line, to the profitability, to our let's say, customers, helping us to meet the customer's needs. I cannot not mention, especially BT Asset Management, which became, in 2022, the leading asset manager in Romania in a very challenging environment. This is something along with BT Capital Partners, BT Pensii, this is a segment that we will continue to invest. In leasing, after let's say, acquiring two more leasing companies, leasing and Idea Leasing, we are one of the most significant players in the market.
BT Mic, BT Microfinantare, has launched its new concept of Stup, hive, beehive, and already the number of interactions and customers flow is couple of times higher than our initial plans. We are planning to extend it geographically in Romania, the concept after this year when we will have some better and better weather in terms of what the customers need. We also continue in full pace the project of Idea Bank, where we will have the first fully digital bank, only online bank in Romania, licensed in Romania. One of our key executive team members, Gabriela Nistor, is the CEO of Idea Bank now, and she's leading the project there very successfully.
We hope that at the end of this year, we'll be launching our new mobile app and customer proposition there. Thank you very much for listening. Although I wanted to cut it even shorter, it seems that I spoke more than 20 minutes, so I would like to leave some time for Q&A. Our colleagues from the company organizing company will help us with logistics now. Please.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Thomas Unger with Erste Group. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions and congratulations on the strong results. My first question would be on your capital, on your decision to retain most of the result of the earnings of 2022, no dividend proposal. If you could walk us through the decision process here, I'd appreciate it. The second question is on the capitalization, the capital ratios in Q4, including profit or excluding profit, doesn't matter. They declined in Q4 alone. What is the explanation for that? I'd like to know that.
On the P&L and the importance and significance of the Net Interest Income, you mentioned it grew strongly in Q4. What is your expectation going forward? I mean, you mentioned that the interest expenses are rising sharply. Do you assume the rising interest expenses to neutralize income growth in the coming quarters, and in which quarter about you see the peak for the NII? Lastly, if I could ask one more question on loan growth. What is your expectation for 2023? It slowed down visibly in the last quarter of 2022. If you could talk about your expectations, it would be highly appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas, for your kind words. Just to encourage with that. Coming back to, let's say maybe to the last two questions, more forward-looking, I'm afraid I will not be able to give you too much insight because this information we should share with all the shareholders at once, not at the teleconference. What I can tell is that, in regards to the interest expenses, rising sharply, in the previous teleconference call also we had mentioned that we have been, not among the first biggest interest, literally the first banks increasing the deposit rates in the market. We were quite aware of the impact on our financial numbers.
Coming from emerging markets, most of our management having, and also board members having this kind of experiences, we wanted to make sure that liquidity position will not be affected. We don't expect a similar growth from now on in terms of net interest expense. We are soon, in couple of weeks, you will see the budget proposal when we will notify for when we send the notification for the general shareholders meeting. In terms of loan growth and in terms of financial performance, we are prudently optimistic for this. We are assuming that Romania will continue slightly growing. We still budget, I would say, wanting strong loan growth and our liquidity position will be mentioned.
As we are also the main salary accounts bank in Romania and the main bank of SME for most of the new corporate, we see that a huge pool of zero interest bearing current accounts. This has been, like I said before, this over 30%, sometimes close to 40%, in our total liquidity position. This will, this we assume to continue. That's why, Falpi, although I cannot tell you exactly till which quarter it will peak or not, what I can tell, and I hope that I'm not speaking like Mr. Paul now, we see that it's already peaked in terms of the negative hit. As also the benchmark index for retail loans, IRCC, is being, let's say with a 6-month gap, reestablished.
Now we see that the new rate will be in, let's say, in our favor. That's why we don't expect a decrease there. This is so far about the forward-looking side. Hopefully, we can discuss it more in detail after we announce our budget proposal and conduct December, which will be later. In terms of capital ratios impact is partially the growth by growth in regulated assets, but also. Also there had been Falpi, a period that we had been discussing about the what's it? Reclassification of the previous portfolio, which we decided not to proceed with based on both how to say? ABEL, eight months and different international IPC recommendations debate.
There are different facilities under discussion, different formats. Even at Ecofin, at European Union level, there are some proposals. We decided to see more clearly. There had been also some of the facilities due to COVID or others expiring in the at the end of the year, which impacted definitely our capital ratios. Dividend proposal is also more forward-looking, if I may say so. It had been, I repeat, a financially good year, but let's say the unknown impact of energy crisis, inflation, both still prevail. There is also indeed a very strong recommendation from both local and international supervisory authorities.
Instead of creating tension and also maybe risking our loan growth that we want to pursue strongly, we have decided, reporting to our board of directors, capitalization of part of the profit and the rest to be put in retained earnings. Once, I don't know if it will be this year or early next year, once we have the comfort in terms of market trend, macroeconomic trends and numbers, then this is kind of a reserve which can be distributed or utilized.
Every increasing MREL requirement, as we have seen from many other banks as well who have been tapping the market, doesn't make, don't make sense us to kind of give up on free capital that we have generated from our internal resources and then going to the market and as a last release volatility, we have seen MREL instruments over 10% in EUR, although this year the interest rates are much lower. We want to understand that we have to meet all the requirements. Economic conditions start improving. Our customer performance will be continuing strong sense as it did so far. We will hopefully come back to the shareholders with when and how much of the retained earnings can be distributed.
This will definitely also position us in a good place against the local and international authorities. We are now the largest bank in Southeastern Europe. We are not just a systemic bank, but the most systemic bank both in Romania but also in this part of the region. In fact, we have our obligation to make a good example of ourselves.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Iulia Furtună of Alpha Bank Romania. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, everyone. This is Iulia from Alpha Bank Romania. Congrats on your good results. I've got a few questions related to the OCI portfolio. I've noticed that you have booked other reserves totaling RON 2.6 billion within your equity position. I was wondering, out of this, how much is related to the OCI assets? If you could analyze how do you see this result going forward? Maybe or when do you expect a reversal of the current negative impact based on your estimates? Maybe if you could give us more details regarding the management strategy that you are going to apply in order to potentially mitigate the losses in the case. Thank you.
Thank you, Iulia. Thank you for the interaction that we had throughout last year. Your questions are always important guiding for us. On the other hand, coming back to how to say, portfolio. I will start with your second question. The revaluation impact is the virtual or hypothetical, let's say, impact. This. It's an opportunity cost definitely because though most of the portfolio is being financed. All our investments are financed by customer funds, and because of our high current accounts volume, as we are interested, it is itself is not loss-making.
On the other hand, because of a quite a low average duration, every year a certain part of the substantive, significant part of the portfolio is expiring and being replenished at the new rate, which we did also last year, we will do also this year. We don't have an active trading strategy. We don't consider ourselves an investment bank, so we are mostly this is alternative investment that we cannot utilize the lending to customers. We are using that. As it seems all around Europe at least the pressure on the sovereign debt is lower. Romania has been very successful tapping the markets in the last couple of months. We don't expect how to say, another jump from here.
Actually on the contrary, in the last couple of months we have been seeing, a significant improvement, in this position. As regards to OCI, I don't have a number. We will update our presentation, and come back to you. I don't want to, how to say, leave you now with a number. It's out of my mind.
All right. One more question, please. If you could disclose what is the average maturity of the OCI portfolio?
It's between three to three and a half years.
All right. Thank you.
The next question is from Robert Redeleanu of PKO BP Securities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you can hear me. I'd like to ask about the provisioning outlook. I've noted that you have likely created additional macro overlays in Q4, as evidenced by the rising Stage 1 provisioning. Does it mean that, given that you had already accounted for some of the potential risks going forward, does it mean that the provisioning in 2023 could be somewhat below the typical guidance of yours, which comes between 130-140 basis points? That's my first question. Second question is on the risk-weighted asset development over the year. Am I correct to calculate that the increase in risk-weighted assets has been much lower compared to the increase in the loans outstanding?
I mean, have you made any special initiatives to lower the credit ratios, I mean, loans to risk assets ratios, or what was the reason for that? Thank you.
Thank you very much. I wanted to say yes, we hear you well, but, in time we also heard the question. Coming back to your first question, in terms of cost of risk. Again, I don't want to throw you the numbers that we will be budgeting. As we repeat each time our business model working with all types of, all profiles of retail customers, micro and small companies, that accommodate cost of risk around 150 basis points plus minus. We never. I'll say this is not a target that we are trying to accomplish, and we are glad that we have been always at lower levels.
That's why, I'll say in the next many years to come, I guess on the average, we will be less than 100 basis points, if I can give you some guidance. You will see also in the presentation that we have been in the last couple of years with all the crisis, we have been below 80 basis points. I think it's quite comfortable for us to say that it will be remaining somewhere there. On your second question. Coming back to the full risk now, Dimitar is also telling me to mention that definitely quarter to quarter there are changes. This is also every quarter we are looking at our macroeconomics model and revising the numbers.
There have been some, let's say, volatility maybe, but it was never impacting our cost of risk pushing it into negative territory. As I said, we think that in the next five years, our cost of risk will be below 100 basis points on average. Most probably closer to last five years of 75-80 basis points. Coming back to your second question. It's a bit of also complexity information to give more details on how we are optimized our risk rating assets. We did some optimization and some structures also working with Falpi which helped us to decrease it. It has a certain cost, which we consider worth to bear.
I cannot also claim that this will be done in a explosive manner, that's not a trend to continue forever from now on.
Oh, thank you.
The next question is from Le Phuong Hai Thanh, with Concorde Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the presentation. Just a couple of questions from my side. Two of them are actually follow-up questions. The first one would be on NIM outlook. I think you touched it, the NII topic already, but during this NIM slide then that NIM would still improve in 2023 as well. I was wondering if you could share the, like, the magnitude, would be something similar that we saw from 2021 to 2022 or maybe less, maybe more that we should expect. My second follow-up question would be on dividends. It's clear that you are not proposing a cash dividend.
I was wondering, like, would you reconsider, like, at the end of the year or maybe it's more about 2024 that you would consider maybe if the regulation allows you to pay that you would pay from 2022 profits. My third question would be on costs. What is your cost outlook? Actually, you have quite a high base. It was growing by 27%. I was wondering if this is what the number that we should expect in 23 as well, or maybe less. I know that there was some one-off last year. Thanks.
Thank you. Hi. Actually, just before the call, I was reading your report, Ona. In terms of net interest margin, definitely, Romania is a very competitive market. All the banks like to fly by running after quite a small number of very good customers. That's why we consider that, although we managed to increase net interest margin by over 40 basis points last year, we will not be able to increase it from here, but we don't expect it to decrease neither. As I said, some of the, how to say? There are positive things kicking in, including the benchmark interest rates and repricing at better rates as compared to last two quarters, especially with the K loans.
Also, once we do our MREL bond issuing and some other transactions, that will put some negative pressure on the net interest margin. Again, I try to refrain telling you now the number that we are going to propose for the shareholders meeting. We don't see, let's say, any significant issue in maintaining our profitability and our net interest income growth as per the loan growth. We will continue our loan growth as well. I remember the last question is regard to the costs. There is one thing which in the presentation you may see, if I recall well, there was this one-off related to our CR division acquisition and integration, which impacted actually both on the other incomes and other expenses.
If you deducted, our operational expense, OpEx expense is growing less than 20%. We don't expect the growth to be that much from here. We have renegotiated our, we are actually renegotiating, sorry, present tense, our labor agreement. We don't do any restructuring, by the way. We don't because we grow our business with the team. On the other hand, we don't expect higher than inflation growth there. Also, we started taking certain measures in order to, how to say? Control cost growth in general. There is even a project going on in the bank starting this year. That's why we are... I mean, 2022 took us out of maybe our comfort zone a bit.
We were very strong on the cost control and cost-income ratios, you know well. We will continue our attention. We'll maintain our attention there. You had one more question. Sorry, I don't recall.
It was on dividends, whether you would consider that later this year?
It was an intent. In regards to dividend, capitalization will be definitely in terms of free share. It will be from our point of view, cash equivalent. As regards to a possible dividend distribution, I will refrain from giving a timeline now. I can assure that it cannot be earlier than end of year. If things will suddenly just, how to say, significantly improve, we will not try to, how to say, block dividend payments during cash payouts. I guess we can have a better guidance on this when we have the half year call after we announce our June numbers.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
The next question.
Let's take two more questions and for the rest of the questions, you can always reach out to Investor Relations or addressing Diana directly. Thank you.
The next question is from Simon Nellis of Citibank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks, thanks for the opportunity. I guess my first question. Actually maybe before my question, just a comment on the dividend. I find it strange that, you know, during the COVID pandemic, you were one of the few banks that did pay a dividend in the region. Now everyone else seems to be paying dividends and you won't. It's quite strange. I'd be interested in knowing if that's just mostly due to pressure from the regulator or really because of things that you see going on in the bank. My other question would be on Moldova, just if you could give us an update on that business and that court case that hasn't been settled and any impact from the government crisis.
Yeah, just on your loan growth, what kind of loan growth are you looking for this year? It sounds like part of the reason why you aren't paying dividends is that you're still quite upbeat on the outlook for lending. Where would that lending come from? Thank you.
Simon Nellis, thank you. I have to admit that in 2020, we had our conversations with investors, analysts, with the market before recommendations of authorities kicked in and we gave some guidance. That gave us, let's say, an open window. Although I don't think we created too much sympathy, if I may say so, by saying, you know, that much indeed. How to say, without knowing the right things, this helps to our investors, and we have good arguments also in terms of good capitalization. Coming back now, I mean, definitely we want to preserve part of the capital. That's why we are increasing our capital base for loan growth. One of the reasons is also MREL requirements. One of the reasons is the, let's say, instability in the markets.
We don't, we also have more or less one of the... I guess I read in one of your analysis that you were mentioning there are more of, how to say, more good-bad news. We don't know which news are bad, which news are good these days. That's why we want to be sure that the bank continues its, let's say, business growth, lending growth. Has good capacity to cover its, if there will be, non-performing loan ratios growth. But we don't have a drastic scenario. I mean, as I said, we are optimistic. I'm not able to give you the percentage now, but our growth will be very much in line with our, I wouldn't say 2022, but previously, pre-pandemic growth in lending.
It depends also on many different factors. We are planning to convoke the GSM, the notification for the GSM, and the budget proposal latest mid-March. We can definitely have a more detailed talk once shareholders and investors have access to this information.
Okay.
For Moldova.
Moldova.
It's not that I'm trying to ignore, but Moldova, Victoriabank had a tremendous year. They had a very good performance. I would like to, how to say, mention our appreciation in term from management of BT of that, for our colleagues, what they did there. On the other hand, as regard to the court case, there's a total silence, no movement, no news. We are, how to say, trying to, let's say, have an open, transparent discussion with the authorities there in order to put these things in end. I have my, let's say, personal interpretation, but I would refrain from that. The thing is that, it's a, how to say, now as a third bank in Moldova, Victoriabank continues, banking business, lending business.
Definitely we don't do even half of what we could have done there. We are not investing that aggressively. We are not pushing them to, let's say, transforming the bank business plan that much because we want to understand so how we stay. On the other hand, itself, as we always say, Victoriabank doesn't have much of a contribution to the bottom line of BT Group. That's why, how to say, this is something that we now actively follow. Once things will clear out, considering that the issue has not reached the courts yet. There hasn't been any court hearing yet. We continue our business, but not at the speed which we would have done if we would have the, let's say, more comfortable financial economic environment there.
Understood. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The last question is from Alex Boulougouris of Wood & Co. Please go ahead.
Hello. Many thanks for the presentation. Quick question on my side, regarding the Quick Fix. Do you know or could you tell us, give us a color of what the impact will be from the abolition of the Quick Fix in January 2023? That's my first question. My second, just to clarify a bit on what you said previously. You reclassified some of your bonds to held to collect in June, if I recall correctly. Now you reclassified back to OCI, these bonds that were held to collect. This resulted in the loss in the OCI and the reserves in the fourth quarter because of this re-reclassification, correct?
I mean, all the, let's say, movements, they are reflected in the numbers that we have presented. It's not on top of that. That's why.
Sure.
How to say, One of the maybe reasons that we gave up on that assist for that, for this moment, because for the capital position, we didn't want to be misinterpreted by any means. Coming back to your first question, the impact we estimate. Anyway, the impact is slightly about 2.5%, still giving us a very comfortable capital position.
Sorry, 2.5% of your capital you mean or RWA?
2.5 percentage points decrease in the ratio.
From the Quick Fix in January. Okay. Okay, got it. Many thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I would now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us. I hope we managed to clarify a few, some of your questions. If there are more, please do not hesitate contacting our investor relations team, Diana and her team. We will try to answer you in time, in an open manner. I'm sorry that we couldn't give much of further guidance. This is related, as I said, to the blackout period that we are in now, in terms of the budget proposal. I repeat that, we are very committed to Romania, and we are also aware of the role that we have in Romania. We are budgeting growth, prudential growth and strong profitability further also for 2023. Thank you. Speak to you. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephones. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.