Here, what I want to mention is that, when you look at this evolution, you have to remember what we've said in the previous meetings as well. The fact that, even though we'll have these one-offs, by implementing cost control initiatives, we will be managing to maintain the overall operating.
When we look at, first nine months, actually, our loan book growth, gross loans growth was over 22%, including OTP loans. Even if we exclude OTP, our retail loans grew over 10%, almost at the, let's say, double the pace of market growth. Our corporate loan book also was growing fast, over 10%, a couple of percentage above the market growth. We had been also capturing in the third quarter organic market share in terms of lending. A good part in the retail loan book is also the fact that, I'll say 35% of the production was consumer, unsecured and credit card loans, 65% was mortgage loans.
This brought our mortgage lending in our total portfolio, in retail portfolio, to 58%. Although it's a very competitive market, and relatively, how to say, aggressive pricing, we see mortgage loans are even cheaper than government bonds or government programs like Fidelis. On the other hand, it's an excellent opportunity for cross-sell and upsell from salary cards, credit cards, bancassurance, and BT Pay type of products. We also extend our offer to our mortgage customers from BT Asset Management and BT Pensi.
We are very happy about seeing that this segment is growing very fast. Also, we are accelerating our, let's say, online business with the customers. In the third quarter, through BT Pay, we granted almost 40,000 new loans. These numbers will be growing very aggressively from now on because both us and our customers and the Romanian market learn how to do it better, faster, and safer. We are looking with great confidence to grow in online lending through BT Pay in Romania. The corporate loan book was mainly focused on the areas of interest, energy, agriculture, R&D production, renewable energy, definitely.
We had been also a main player in the big tickets where we had arranged syndicated loans for club loans, big transactions like those done by, like, Transgaz, DG, Electrica. All have seen that we were one of the leading arrangers. I can now comfortably say that Banca Transilvania, after many years of being an underdog in this segment, now, it is not just, I will say, capturing market share, but is already the market leader, the bank to go for, not only medium-sized companies, but also for multinationals and larger companies as well.
We do grow also quite fast in the specialized segments that we enjoy, like healthcare division, Divizia Pentru Medici, and agribusiness. In, especially in agribusiness, our market share, according to the official data, reached over 26%. We believe in the future of agriculture and food industry in Romania, and we see high potential of growth, high potential of investments, and we will be active, supporting our customers, growing our customer base there. As we were mentioning also in the previous quarter discussions, we are not very aggressive because of our comfortable liquidity ratios and liquidity position in deposits, in funding.
We are not very aggressive, but still, we have seen growth in our deposit base. We see also that, both in the corporate and retail segment, customers' trust, confidence in Leu is coming back. Most of the, I'll say, new transactions, new deposits are being done in RON. Together with the increase of almost EUR 1.5 billion equivalent in different currencies, including RON, coming from OTP, we have seen growth of 7%, over 7%, in our deposit base.
What we see is our strong point because we are in cash processing, salary cards, and current account business, payments business, which supports the growth of our current account, salary account business, CASA accounts, which reached over 42%. This is like a core deposit base at zero or very low interest rate, offering us, how to say, very efficient funding, funding source. We see, as I said, both existing structure, but also new deposits are coming mainly in RON.
This also is in line with our view about Romanian Leu that it will maintain a very stable stance, as per monetary policy, and interest rates are not expected to decrease very aggressively in the next period. In terms of the, let's say, capital position risk items, I will leave Cătălin to give more insight.
Good afternoon. When talking about the capital position, I would say that we can look, in a mirroring approach when looking to both group and, and the bank standalone, the level of the capital adequacy ratio being around 20% for both of them. This being in line with our risk appetite and also with our guidance that we are frequently giving to the markets. If we look to the evolution when compared with June, we have seen a slight decrease in the capital adequacy ratio, this being on a basis of two factors. One is the portfolio growth.
This is visible also in the RWA growth, which is given by the loan portfolio growth, but also by the new dividend payout that was approved by the GSM and that we will talk about a bit later in the presentation because this dividend payout was already factored in according to the standards in the own funds. However, we should mention that this is just a temporary decrease because for the year-end, we expect to go back to a higher level of the capital adequacy ratio.
When going and looking to the asset quality, I will start with the NPL ratio where we reversed the trend that we have seen in the first half of the year, and we ended up with a 2.56% NPL ratio, which is still below the market average. Although if we look in the market to the competition, we are seeing increases in the ratio, but we can proudly say that due to our strong portfolio quality, we can stay below the market and also, reversing the trend.
This is visible in strong correlation in the cost of risk, where we continued to decrease the risk cost ratio, ending up at around 70 basis points, and now being very close or being in line with the budget and with the guidance for the year-end, which we said that it will be around 60-70 basis points. When looking to the liquidity and the MREL strategy, we continue to benefit out of our strong depositor base and showing a very strong liquidity position again, much above the market average, and much above the minimum regulatory and the appetite.
We can proudly observe also an increase in the loan-to-deposit ratio on a basis of loan portfolio and healthy loan portfolio growth, because the quality of the portfolio growth is factored in in this ratio and is visible here. When looking to the MREL strategy, here we are seeing the effect of the new issuance that we successfully concluded in July. Here it is visible that we widened the gap between the actual level of MREL against the minimum regulatory requirement, this being much above our risk appetite, which is saying that we look on a continuous basis to stay with 50 basis points on top of the minimum regulatory.
This again showing the very strong position when looking to the MREL strategy. I will finish my presentation with explanation about a new release coming from Moody's on Banca Transilvania's credit ratings. I will start with the BCA rating, which was reaffirmed at BA1. I will end up with a very positive evolution when coming about long-term deposit rating and long and short-term issuer rating, where Banca Transilvania received an upgrade from Moody's, an upgrade which we should mention that this is limited by the sovereign standing.
From our perspective, this upgrade should send a message towards our depositors and our investors, showing the resilience and the strength of our capital position, balance sheet position, as well as strong profitability results that we are envisaging and that we are showing also. Now about the GSM. Exactly. Coming back to GSM decisions, our shareholders, investors have decided, a distribution of RON 700 million dividends, to be paid on 11th of December with ex-date of 24th of November, coming from the net profit reserves of 2015, 2016, and 2019, corresponding to a gross dividend of RON 0.64 per share.
Also, in the extraordinary gathering of the shareholders, we have received the approval of EUR 2 billion of issuances. These are mainly related to, first of all, definitely to offer a stable and strong capital position and diversification, enhancing our capital position for MREL capacity and also offering good yields to our shareholders, good returns. We are planning to also come to the markets at a date soon with an AT1 alternative tier one issuance, but the program had been approved for the next five years.
I will just jump into customer satisfaction because it can be seen as a core of our ESG strategy, and this is a main point we did not touch during previous meetings so far. What is very relevant for all of us is that we have a net promoter score of 66 for the retail side, which is 6 points above the market average. This is the case also for the corporate side with 5 points above the market average for Banca Transilvania. This positioning is very healthy, sound, and with future potential for Banca Transilvania.
How we reached these good indicators is that on the retail side, we have a very good blend between product offering and the employees' approach in terms of being there for our customers. Also, the brand, which has enormous strength in Romania, we are transparent and customer-centric. At least these are the things that we believe in, we trust in, and from the feedback that we gather from our customers, it seems that we are doing it right. In terms of corporate, we have dedicated account managers, also the brand reputation, which helps us, and the in-branch experience so far is excellent.
This is the reason for which corporate loyalty, the loyalty of the corporate customers, is 90%, loyalty meaning that these are the customers that consider BT as their primary banking partner. On the retail as well, it is high, above 78%. For our most used and, Romania-wide, most used banking app, BT Pay, the satisfaction is also relevant. It's 90%. Going into digital, back to you, Omer, and thank you.
Thank you. I mean, definitely, our attention to our cost base, how we service our customers and what is the cost of each step in our product and services offering is encouraging us, not only pushing, but also encouraging us to invest more in our channels in, in a, how to say, a few weeks, from a ecosystem of five applications. We are consolidating our ecosystem to two applications, BT Pay, which is already utilized by 4.5 million customers in Romania with very good reviews in Apple App Store or Google Android Store, but also direct responses, and BT for retail customers and also BT Go for our company customers.
It's, how to say, in the first six, in the first nine months, sorry, of the year, we have seen 236 million mobile and NFC payments done with BT, BT Pay. We are also very happy about the performance and solidity and safety of our applications as we have also yesterday issued a press release only on Friday in the Black Friday of Romania. We have seen 11.5 million transactions had been processed by shopping transactions had been processed by BT. On that end, BT Pay is not just, how to say, a payments app.
As I said, it is also having online lending features, but it addresses also the financial well-being of our customers. Now we already have BT Asset Management and BT Pensi in BT Pay. BT Pensi joined BT Pay recently, I would say, but we see more than half of BT Asset Management customers are using BT Pay and most of the new, let's say, money is coming from, through, BT Pay. This is something that we will invest and focus more. BT Go, our future soon to be the main and only application for companies, has already 500,000 customers enrolled.
Around 75% of our customers are actively using the application already. We see the numbers improving together with the facilities because BT Go is not just, how to say, again, a payment and account management application, but it offers also invoicing, reporting, cash flow management features as well. Especially for the smaller companies segment, smaller micro businesses, it is a good business partner for our customer base. George.
Thank you very much. We're moving on to the evolution of the group. The group had a very good evolution. Even the companies that maybe do not have yet a positive result, like Victoria Bank, is growing quite nicely, with 600,000 users already on the Victoria mobile app and deposits increasing, loans starting to increase as well with the new products issued and also investment options, with foreign shares and ETFs launched quite recently via the mobile app.
The third quarter from the point of view of the group marked, I think, the most important change is the launch of the Inno Investments subsidiary, which received its license, among the few funds in Romania managing alternative investment funds. Even though it's not quite in the third quarter, but it was immediately after the end of the quarter, and it was announced as a subsequent event, we do have the closing of the deal with Microinvest in Moldova.
Victoria Bank will have a subsidiary in the biggest non-banking financial institution in the country that will bring additional added value to the results coming from the businesses in Moldova to us. In terms of other evolution, BT Asset Management increased in terms of evolution of the active accounts. Omer mentioned them being present in BT Pay. From the 350,000 active accounts, 150,000 were opened through BT Pay, which is a tremendous evolution. Assets under management, almost RON 8 billion, an increase of 13% versus the end of last year.
BT Capital Partners, 28% intermediation market share, with almost RON 18 billion value of transactions and international transactions increased versus last year by 50%. BT Direct growth, its asset, of 11% in terms of comparison with last year. BT Leasing had a July historical growth in terms of sales with EUR 91 million, the highest in its history. Launched tools that can be used by its clients like multi-sign, multi-party electronic document signing and partnership for projects in green fleet of cars. ECC has a very good evolution in terms of managed arrears.
BT MIC, more than 40,000 customers. BT Pensi, the second place in terms of pillar three contribution, and it's up from five years ago of number five, with 180,000 participants and record in terms of new participants in the month of August and I will stop here and give time a little bit for a Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we'll begin the question and answer session. You may submit your written questions using the ask a question window in the webcast. One moment for the first question, please.
Hello everyone. We have a first set of questions coming from Wood & Company from Miguel Diaz. One, there has been strong dynamics in the loan book development. Can we expect something similar in the last quarter? More generally, how do you see the evolution of the loan book development in the context of the Romanian economy? Two, where are you seeing the biggest opportunities and weaknesses? Three, in terms of net interest margin development, what can we expect for the last quarter?
Thank you, Miguel. How to say, indeed, it had been a good, strong quarter, especially being the third quarter. We are happy about this. It is mostly recovering, compensating for the slower start to the year. Without creating too much of expectations, I will say, I will reiterate that we are very comfortable that we will deliver our budgeted numbers as it was approved by the shareholders. In some segments, we are also expecting some, let's say, better results. On the other end, although the fourth quarter traditionally is our strongest quarter, due to holiday period, it's also a shorter quarter.
Although per day, production, productivity is better, at the end we are losing two-three weeks to the, because of the holiday periods. Still, as I said, we will deliver and we might slightly overdeliver from the numbers that we have presented in terms of growth. As in terms of the next year, we did not finalize our budget yet, and definitely we will come to our shareholders' attention, the numbers to be analyzed and to be approved, hopefully. What I can tell you is that we are not budgeting. We are not willing to budget, how to say, low growth, balance sheet.
We think that our loan book should be growing high single digits next year. Despite the challenges, maybe I will try to also answer the question related to the opportunities and challenges. They are very much also related. On one side, we see the infrastructure investments going ahead. Romania, if the fiscal consolidation will be as successful as it seems, at least for the moment, will have accelerated the amount of European Union funds and recovery and resilience funds will be released. Infrastructure investments will be a catalyzing factor in the economy.
We also see from defense to renewable energy to agriculture, food processing, and automotive production, we have more and more better numbers. Some investor interest, foreign investor interest, is also being seen. One of the opportunities is definitely that in the second quarter of next year, we might have Romania self-sufficient in terms of its own energy production. On the other end, the implementation of the, let's say, fiscal consolidation and all the measures is happening in a very fragile political environment. Political stability is very much important. Political support is very much important.
All the efforts of especially public sector companies and on the public sector in the central administration to reduce the cost base, to reduce the number of employees, while it will help private sector on the wage inflation side to be kept under better control. On the other end, higher unemployment may put pressure on the consumption, may put pressure on loan performances. However, I mean, we are not just anchoring our growth or plans to economic growth. BT had been growing faster than the GDP growth year on year, every year.
I guess, also next year, regardless of the economic growth, we can deliver, as I said, high single digit growth. There was another question that I missed. There was a third one, I guess, or net interest margin. Net interest margin, sorry. I mean, as I said, we are not expecting a big change in monetary policy. We think that definitely over 300 basis points net interest margin is sustainable for BT and for our growth. We will try to keep both our funding costs, but also lending returns, under control with our size. Now, also, we are trendsetters, market makers in many segments. I am sure market will align also to our strategy.
Next set of questions comes from Osmosis Capital from Maria Kuznetsova and is related to capital adequacy ratio. One, please explain the drop in capital ratios year to date. Second, is the bank still targeting a 22% capital adequacy ratio by year end, and how do you plan to achieve it? Third, what would the capital ratios look like if the temporary benefit related to unrealized losses on the sovereign portfolio were fully removed, or if all temporary measures scheduled to phase out on 1st January , 2026, were excluded?
Thank you, Maria. To start with the capital position, as I was saying also during my presentation, the September level and, because in the presentation it is true that the slide might be misleading because we are showing just year end. If you look also to the other Septembers, you will see this evolution because this is normal because each and every half year we are incorporating the profit at the year end. Yeah. That means that at this milestone, so half year and year end, you naturally see a higher capital position and then the capital position slightly goes down intra half year because of the portfolio growth.
For this particular trimester, we have seen also the, as I said, the incorporation of the dividend payout that was just approved. That is why we see this around the 1% drop. What we are expecting for, because you were mentioning the 22% for year end, the answer is yes, because as I was saying, we have our regular process of self-capitalization, so profit incorporation. As it was also just mentioned, we are also contemplating for an AT1 issuance.
This will for sure ramp up our capital ratio provisions. The bank has to build up a bit of a buffer at the end of the year, exactly for accounting for the transitional provisions, regulatory transfer provisions effect, which will be occurring in 2026. The level of this, the impact of these transitional provisions all together, it is between 1.5%-2, but more towards the lower range of 1.5%.
We have follow-up questions from Miguel Diaz with the company. What are you seeing in terms of asset quality so far in the, in the year? What would be the full financial year 2025 estimation for cost of risk? Second, net fee and commission seems to lag versus expectations. Why is that?
What we are expecting, we didn't change our expectations. You asked that we announced also at the previous investor communication meetings. We are still expecting a cost of risk ratio around 60-70 basis points for year end. Although we believe that in today's macro environment and looking also to what is happening in the market, also looking to our competitors, we will say that a normalized risk cost for this period is 1%. Our estimation is that we will be ending up the year below this level, ending in line with our guidance, so that around 60-70 basis points.
We have a couple more questions from ODDO, Johan Sikić. What is the expected seasonality in cost in Q4? Can we explain a little bit the development of local currency and euro denominated yield lending yields for deposits? Apologies for interrupting George on addressing the net fee and commission income question, please.
In terms of net fees and commission, indeed the growth was slower than what we budgeted, especially in the first part of the year. We started to pick up in the last quarters. You will see that when you look at the evolution quarter on quarter, which is in the annex of the presentation. For example, in the last quarter, we have an increase versus the previous quarter of 3% at the level of the bank in terms of net fees and commission. This is expected to grow even further in the last quarter of the year. Again, in the first part of the year, indeed there was a growth that was slower than estimated.
However, I would like to point out that, in terms of overall contributor in terms of return on equity, of this net fees and commission, BT is already at a higher level than the Romanian banks. Romanian banks having an average of 7.5%-7.7, and BT being at 8.5%.
We can continue with the expected seasonality in cost for the last quarter of 2025.
Yes. We do have, the last quarter will be definitely impacted, as I mentioned before, by the turnover tax, which will become overall, as we go forward, the biggest single cost item in operating expenses. Definitely in terms of seasonality, we will see a little bit more cost control coming to counterbalance the fact that we do have increases in terms of turnover tax. You will see the other items decreasing even more versus what we had in the first part of the year, in an effort to counterbalance and keep the overall evolution of the expenses within the budget.
I think we have one more question from Johan. Explain the development of local currency and euro denominating yields and deposits cost quarter on quarter due to different developments of benchmark rates.
Indeed, although there were, let's say, diverse reactions from central banks, we have, as you see, quite a balanced, let's say, portfolio structure in terms of funding base and lending portfolio. The impact is kind of faded out. We do not see, especially in the, I repeat, in the local currency in late next year, let's say, consecutive or aggressive decreases of interest rates. It will be supporting our net interest margin and returns, definitely. I would say we are in the bigger picture of especially foreign currency exposure or Euro mainly, being Europe-based country, European central banks monetary policy, there we are just adapting ourselves. As I say, it's not our, what's his strong, part of our portfolio that is being impacted.
Okay. One more question related to the BT Asset Management. Seems to be the single business line where Banca Transilvania is not the leader on the Romanian market. How do you think Romania still provides growth conditions for the BT's business?
Very relevant question indeed, because this somehow emphasizes our strategy of growing within the capital markets. We highly value the question due to the fact that it also reaffirms our willingness to grow in this direction. I would not say that it is the only one which is not a market leader because we were late arrivals also in the pension sphere. Nevertheless, with BT Asset Management, we managed to grow digitally, mainly digitally, our customer base, doubling it in the last one-one and a half years.
We reached to be one of the largest. If we also count the alternative investment funds that we manage, then we can consider ourselves as being leaders. On the other hand, what is important is the potential of the market because the market is still underserved by investment funds. This is where we see the potential.
We have an impact of GDP of only 1.5% and the overall Europe is around 80-85%. Keeping in sight all the macroeconomic data that we already presented and also the positive business growth that we are having, we maintain quite a positive, if not even bullish, approach for the Romanian capital market.
You, we have one final question coming from Citibank, Simon Nellis. Just to confirm, around RON 700 million of cash dividends announced is a special dividend. Do we expect to pay around 40% of 2025 net profit as a dividend going forward?
Thank you, Simon. I mean, this is, as I mentioned, this is a dividend paid from the previous year's reserves, profit reserves, which we kind of accelerated also, in order to be able to offer some fiscal optimization to our investor base. On the other hand, in terms of the dividend payment going forward, before we close the year and before we have the approval for the budget, I would not like to give any percentage.
However, also next year, I mean, looking at the numbers that we so far delivered and, hopefully we will close the year with strong results as well. I see, again, a combination of cash and share dividends, to be proposed and approved. About the percentage, we will be able to comment only after we finalize our budget discussions.
Thank you. We have no further questions. I will give the floor to management for final comments.
Once again, thank you very much for being with us. In case we did not address totally your questions or you have further observations, please do not hesitate to contact our investor relations team. They are doing so far a great job. I would like to thank them for their efforts. Hopefully, we will meet most of you at the Investors Day next week in Bucharest.
If not, with the ones that we will not be able to catch up, I wish you, let's say, happy holidays and a good and strong, healthy close of the year. Hopefully 2026, with all the talks about volatility and risks ahead, is coming with a lot of lessons learned from previous periods. We will prove that we are actually, we can perform not only BT, but all the markets and market participants. We can perform better than we think. And we are underestimating ourselves. Thank you very much.