Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC's third quarter 2025 financial results earnings call. Please note to all of those who are listening to us via the webcast link to kindly refresh their browser link in case of experiencing any intermittent audio issues. As a reminder, please ask your questions by submitting them via email to webcast@dib.ae. I will now hand you over to your host, Hussein Mahfouzi, from Arqaam Capital Ltd. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This is Hussein Mahfouzi, and on behalf of Arqaam Capital Ltd, I am pleased to welcome you to Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC's Q3 2025 earnings conference call. I have with me here today from DIB Management, Dr. Adnan Chilwan, the Group Chief Executive Officer, John Macedo, the Chief Financial Officer, and Naveen Rajanala, the Head of Investor Relations. Without any further delay, I will now turn the call over to the Head of Investor Relations, Naveen. Over to you.
Thank you very much, Hussein. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to DIB's Q3 2025 results webcast. This webcast shall be led by Dr. Adnan Chilwan, Group CEO of DIB, along with Mr. John Macedo, CFO of DIB, and myself. A quick reminder to everyone to send in your questions to the email address webcast@dib.ae. We'll aim to address these questions at the end of the presentation. With that, let's kick off today's presentation. Let's start with slide four. On slide four, UAE's growth engine is now decisively non-oil and broad-based. Over the last three years, UAE's economy has moved from post-rebound strength to consistent mid-single-digit growth levels and comfortably above global averages and GCC peers. Looking ahead, consensus points to higher real GDP growth compared to 2024, with IMF expecting 4.9% growth in 2025.
This momentum is expected to carry into 2026 as well, with the policy reforms and project pipeline feeding through. In the first quarter of this year, non-oil sectors accounted for 77% of the economy. Furthermore, within the non-oil economy, the mix is well-diversified, the largest sectors being trade, finance and insurance, manufacturing, construction, and real estate. Growth isn't really riding on a single sector, and it's well-rounded. Looking at the economic activity on the ground, the UAE PMI remains comfortably above 50, signaling expansion. If you look at the September 25th PMI print, that improved to 54.2, reflecting evidence of sustained demand and corporate activity. FDI also continues to climb to record levels, reflecting policy certainty and openness. Almost AED 46 billion of inflows in 2024 into UAE shows that UAE is amongst the top global destinations and amongst the highest within GCC.
In conclusion, with global GDP growth expected at 3%- 3.2% levels in 2025, the UAE remains a relative outperformer, offering stronger growth and visibility mix for longer term. Moving on to the next slide to look at Dubai's economic story. The Emirate of Dubai continues to demonstrate resilience and diversification, with growth visible across multiple sectors, as shown on the slide here. Let's look at some of the key underlying driving factors. The property market in Dubai remains buoyant, with property transactions and property values continuing to be strong this year, as can be seen on the slide here. It's a combination of end-user demand and investor inflows, which continues to drive performance across segments. If we look at activity in the construction sector, that also has accelerated, and it's supported by a healthy project pipeline across residential, commercial, hospitality, and infrastructure developments.
Dubai's position as a logistics and re-export hub continues to benefit from the world-class infrastructure, strategic location, connectivity, and more importantly, continued investments. As a result, trade continues to perform well. If we look at the underlying tourism and hospitality indicators, they continue to strengthen with both tourism arrivals and hotel occupancy rates continuing the upward trend, as shown in the bottom right charts of the slide. All in all, business sentiment remains positive. The combination of sector diversity and investor confidence positions Dubai well to sustain its trajectory, not just throughout the rest of the year, but going beyond into 2026. Moving on to slide six, looking at the UAE banking sector. The banks in UAE continue to demonstrate strong balance sheet expansion, robust capital position, healthy liquidity levels, and improving asset quality.
The charts on this slide show consistent growth and improvement across metrics for the sector, and this positive trend is reiterated by the recent earnings results by the UAE banks. DIB also had yet another strong quarter, and this shall be discussed in greater detail by our Group CEO over the next set of slides. With that, I shall hand over to Dr. Adnan Chilwan to take you through the financial results and business updates for the first nine months of 2025. Dr. Adnan, over to you, sir.
Thank you, Naveen. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start from where Naveen has left us, typically by doing a quick page turn and followed by the standard Q&A format. As always, the last five minutes of the hour will be used to summarize the call. On page eight, just very quick three key highlights. One, the growth momentum in the GCC continues to be strong despite continued overhang of trade uncertainty among some of the larger economies in the world. Two, the UAE economy is poised to finish 2025 on a very strong note, and this is anchored by growth of the non-oil sectors, showcasing the country's economic diversification and non-oil sector strength. Of course, rising population, increasing tourism numbers, and continued demand for real estate confirm these positive economic trends.
Three, the banking sector in the UAE remains strong, underpinned by credit growth, high liquidity, healthy capital levels, as well as improved asset quality. These metrics reflect a strong banking sector which can ably support demands of one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Having said that, when we look at our first nine months' results, some of the key highlights of the bank's performance are what I will delve into details on subsequent slides. In summary, we've seen 14% growth in the bank's total assets, reaching AED 393 billion, led by strong origination across all our businesses. We've also witnessed a 6% increase in the bank's top line, reaching AED 9.7 billion, driven by strong 14% growth in non-funded income. Lastly, solid profitability delivered with 10% growth in pre-tax profits and pre-tax returns at around 22%. Slide nine looks at our income statement.
The bank's total revenue grew by 6% year on year to reach AED 9.7 billion in the first nine months. The net funded income performance was especially strong in Q3 on the back of higher volumes as well as stable margins. Non-funded income remains at pace with 14% growth year to date, maintaining a healthy contribution to the revenue mix. On the other hand, net impairment charges have declined by 60% quarter on quarter to reach AED 30 million in Q3 2025. This is a 45% year-on-year drop in the first nine-month period, reflecting the bank's overall asset quality improvement, successful recoveries, as well as disciplined risk management principles. Now, as a result of all of this, the bank's profitability has continued to be strong, with 10% year-on-year growth in the first nine months.
Net profit before tax reached AED 6.6 billion, and this, like I've said, was supported by stronger funded income and low cost of risk. Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC continues to generate strong returns for its shareholders, with return on tangible equity ending at 22%, as well as return on assets reaching 2.4%. The consistency of the bank's profitability growth and returns generated on a quarterly basis over the last seven quarters is well exemplified by the chart at the bottom left of the slide. On slide ten, when we look at our revenue drivers, the bank's funded income has grown solidly in quarter three, driven by higher financing volumes as well as stable margins. When we look closely at the bank's margins, the yields have stabilized this year at a 5.8% level, while funding costs have averaged around a 3.4% level, resulting in resilient margins at 2.7%.
With respect to non-funded income on this slide, the core contributors are fees, commissions, and FX income, which have performed strongly across customer segments, resulting in a recurring and resilient source of revenue. Slide 11 looks at operating efficiency. The increase in operating expenses reflects the bank's continued investment in people, technology, digital transformation, as well as infrastructure upgrades. This spend, like I've mentioned in the past, is essential to continually enhance the customer experience and position the bank to capture future efficiency gains. As a result, there is a moderate rise in the cost-to-income ratio, which stands at 28.7%. Nonetheless, it's still one of the lowest when compared to peers. Despite this, the bank's nine-month results operating profit grew by 6% year on year to reach AED 6.9 billion. Slide 12 looks at balance sheets.
Our balance sheet has grown strongly in the first nine months by 14% year to date, and it stands at around AED 393 billion. This growth reflects focused execution of our strategy across all our businesses. The bank's financing assets have grown by 17% year to date, and this is driven by gross new underwriting of close to around AED 73 billion across our consumer book and our corporate book, both within the UAE as well as within the region and cross-border. On the other hand, the bank's sukuk portfolio has grown by 16% year to date, with gross new investments of close to around AED 18 billion. As a result, asset growth is well supported by an equally impressive growth in customer deposits, as the bank's deposits grew by 21% year to date to reach AED 302 billion.
This showcases our strength and the strength of our franchise and our ability to fund growth with a diversified customer deposit base. Slide 13 looks at our total assets. If we look at the top two charts on this slide, it is clear that the growth in the financing book, as well as the sukuk book, has been consistent over the last seven quarters that you can see plotted on these graphs in front of you. From a composition perspective, the asset mix remains well balanced. The bottom left chart, the pie chart, shows that financing assets and sukuk investments account for 87% of the bank's total assets. If we now zoom into the finance asset portfolios, as shown in the pie chart on the bottom right, you can see continued diversification of the portfolio.
Consumer assets account for 30%, and the remaining corporate portfolio assets are spread across a variety of sectors, which is witnessed through the colorful pie chart. This solid asset growth supports the bank's strategic goals of scale, profitability, capital generation, and market leadership in the region. The next two slides are about asset quality. Slide 14, we can see that over the past few quarters, we have seen sustained strengthening of DIB's asset quality metrics, reflecting both disciplined risk management practices and a supporting UAE macroeconomic backdrop. The bank's non-performing financing ratio continued its downward trajectory, improving further to 3.1% at the end of Q3. You can see over the last seven quarters, it has improved by 230 basis points when we compare that with Q4 of 2023.
At the same time, the bank's cost of risk for the year so far has been exceptionally low, and it stands at around 12 basis points, highlighting both the quality of our origination standards and the resilience of our diversified portfolio. Despite low net cost of risk charge, the bank's increasing cash coverage shows continued efforts in raising provisions where required. Hence, both cash coverage as well as total coverage ratios have improved this quarter to 107% and 149%, respectively. Continuing to look at asset quality on slide 15, building on the positive story of the previous slide, these charts provide further evidence of the bank's improving credit quality. You can see stage one exposure stands at around 93% of the portfolio, while both stage two and stage three exposures have reduced by a combined 350 basis points, or 3.5% year on year.
Also, ECL coverage for stage three exposures has further strengthened, and it stands at 61.2%, and this is up by over 600 basis points year on year. In conclusion, the combination of the bank's sound risk discipline, continued provisioning, enhanced portfolio diversification, and a favorable operating environment in the UAE continues to translate into progressive improvement across key asset quality metrics for DIB. Slide 16 looks at liquidity. The bank continues to maintain a well-balanced funding profile supported by strong growth in customer deposits throughout the year. Deposit growth has been 21% year to date, and this is broad-based across both our consumer business as well as our corporate business, reflecting solid franchise strength and customer confidence. The bank continues to maintain a CASA ratio at 36%, as the bank grew its CASA volumes by a healthy 15% year to date.
This liquidity position remains comfortable with both LCR and NSFR ratios well above regulatory requirements. Slide 17 is a look at capital. We continue to maintain a strong capital position, reflecting strong internal capital generation as well as disciplined balance sheet management. Our CET1 ratio is strengthened further, and it stands at around 13.4%, comfortably above regulatory minimum requirements. This strong capital position ensures that the bank remains well-positioned to support our clients as well as pursue growth and maintain resilience. If we move on, we can very quickly look at the three key businesses and how they performed in the first nine months. We'll start with consumer banking. Slide 19 shows you the DIB's consumer banking business continues to show strong momentum with revenue growth supported by rising finance volumes as well as resilient fee income levels.
The asset yields continue to stay stable at 6.7%, reflecting disciplined pricing despite competitive dynamics and lower rate expectations. The consumer portfolio's growth of 17% year to date to stand at AED 74 billion was well-rounded, with particularly strong performance of 18% year-to-date growth in home finance and 19% year-to-date growth in auto finance. Gross new consumer financing has been a solid AED 27 billion this year so far. Now, furthermore, customer deposits have grown, and they have been quite strong, with total deposits growing by 13% year to date, with CASA balances continuing to be strong at 53% of the consumer business deposits. The bank has added around 230,000 customers in the last 12 months. Overall, the consumer business is delivering asset growth with margin resilience while strengthening the deposit base, particularly in the wealth management segment.
Slide 20 looks at our corporate banking business, both across local as well as cross-border corporates. The corporate business revenue growth was also driven by higher volumes with stable yields, which led to funded income growth in quarter three 2025 while delivering higher non-funded income. The corporate business assets have grown by 17% year to date from record-breaking gross disbursements of close to AED 46 billion within the corporate book, with growth particularly strong in sectors such as aviation, manufacturing, financial institutions, utility, energy, as well as selective real estate. Our cross-border business has been particularly strong this year with increased volumes in GCC markets, particularly led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the team has had a strong year with increased participation in syndicated deals, debt capital market transactions for GREs, financial institutions, as well as corporates across the region.
Lastly, within the corporate business, performance on deposit gathering has been stellar, with corporate deposits growing at 25% year to date while also maintaining growth in the CASA balances. Slide 21 looks at our treasury business. In the first nine months, treasury revenue grew by 7% year on year to around AED 2 billion. Yields continue to remain high at 4.9% levels. The bank's sukuk book has grown by 16% year to date and stands at around AED 95 billion. Clearly, the sukuk portfolio continues to remain focused on high-quality sovereign and financial institutions, which comprise around 78% of the total portfolio. Slide 22 looks at our digital strategy. The bank's digital transformation journey continues to yield strong results, whereby we've seen accelerated digital adoption and improved customer ratings across our apps.
Key digital metrics show strong growth, such as a high number of digitally active customers, 97% of all transactions being conducted digitally, and almost 80% of our new-to-banking customers have been onboarded within our digital franchise. Of course, the bank continues to invest strategically in digital infrastructure, analytics, process-driven designs, as well as cloud migration. These investments are all foundational to our long-term productivity gains and differentiating customer experience. Slide 23 is a look on our sustainability efforts. In 2025 so far, we have expanded our sustainable finance capability. This has resulted in close to AED 4 billion in gross new sustainable finance transactions, bringing the total portfolio to about AED 17 billion in sustainable and sustainability-linked assets. Additionally, the bank has played a major role in facilitating close to AED 25 billion of new sustainable sukuk issuances this year so far.
Furthermore, we have taken major steps by committing to the carbon disclosure project and also expanding our sustainability disclosures to include critical areas such as human rights, responsible investment, thereby aligning itself with global best practices. As a result, the bank has achieved tangible improvement in its ESG rating scores across various rating agencies. Slide 24 is my closing slide, and this compares our Q3 performance or our year-to-date performance with the guidance that we had given to the market at the beginning of the year. You can see that we have literally done well across all our key metrics, and you can see that our net financing and sukuk growth has reached around 17% in the first nine months. Our guidance for the full year was 15%, and if you recollect, we had changed that guidance on our last call.
We said that the 15% full-year guidance would be the new guidance for the first nine months, and we've already surpassed that at 17%. Once we open the floor for Q&A, I'm sure that you will have questions on our full-year guidance. We've revised this guidance now, having achieved 17% in the first nine months. We are revising our full-year guidance to around 20%, but we can tackle that with more Q&A. The net profit margin stands at around 2.7%, and that is very close to the guidance that we had given at the beginning of the year. Cost-to-income ratio, we are at 29%, and I've alluded to the fact that we are doing investment in our digital transformation, and hence investing in processes, people, journey, segmentation, all of that is inching that cost-to-income ratio a bit more than where we had guided.
When you look at all the other key metrics, whether it is return on tangible equity, which is better than guidance, we are at 22% versus our guidance of 21%. Our return on assets is in line with guidance of 2.4%. Our non-performing financing ratio is better than guidance. We had guided the market at 3.5% at the beginning of the year. We are at 3.13%, and our total coverage is better than our guidance. Overall, a very strong set of results for the first nine months, which have been fundamentally driven by gross underwriting across all our businesses, a very good cost of risk, and superior asset quality, as well as an uptick in operating expenses, resulting in an overall 10% growth in our bottom line, which stands at around AED 6.6 billion, well compared to where we were in the first nine months of 2024.
With that, I take a pause here. We'll start looking at the questions that have been sent to us on our portal, and we will come back to you within a few minutes once we have skimmed through the questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now start the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please send them via webcast@dib.ae. Thank you for holding until we have our first question.
The first question comes from Rakesh Tripati from Franklin Templeton. There are a few questions that I'll quickly go through. One is talking about which sectors are driving the strong loan growth and what is the expectation going forward, and want some color on the international lending and what particular sectors in Saudi. The next question is on asset quality improvement and what is driving it, and are there any emerging pockets of risk in any sectors? The next question is on the provisioning cost, the low levels of provisioning cost, and what are the drivers behind this reduction and how much of that is recoveries? The last question is on what are the drivers for deposit growth and some light on repricing of assets and liabilities in case of rate cuts.
Thank you, Rakesh, for all your questions, and I'll try to answer them in the order that you've raised. What is driving our loan growth? Like I've mentioned, we have witnessed strong underwriting across all our businesses. Whether it's our wholesale business, and within our wholesale business, we have a corporate book within the UAE, we now have a corporate book which is cross-border, or within our consumer book. The good thing to see is that all our businesses are in a northbound trajectory. Within those businesses, when you look at, for example, our consumer banking business, you will see all our products are taking a share of that pie, whether it's our personal finance business or our auto finance business. Our home finance business has done well. We've seen an uptick in our cards business.
Our commercial banking business, which is a combination of our SME and middle markets, is also contributing in the right direction. When we look at our corporate banking business, which is within the UAE as well as cross-border, we have seen sectors such as energy, utilities, aviation, real estate, manufacturing, trading, logistics, all of this. You could have seen that on one of the slides where the pie chart was very colorful. You can see that all these sectors are contributing quite well. Last but not least, when we also look at our fixed income book, which is also a contributor to our overall earning assets, that is also doing quite well. Each of these businesses has seen a double-digit growth from where they started at the beginning of the year, and we have diversified across all our sectors.
Overall, just like we saw good traction in Q1, good traction in Q2, we've also seen good traction in Q3. Having said that, there is also a very strong pipeline that we anticipate in Q4. Overall, business is going in the right direction across all businesses as well as all key sectors. That pretty much answers a major part of your first question. That strategy has been followed even in our lending to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is one country that we are focusing on in our cross-border strategy. There are other countries that we focus on in our cross-border strategies. It's the whole of GCC that we focus on. We are also looking at some of the MENA region countries. Overall, what we have successfully implemented within the UAE is what we are exporting to everywhere within the region where we are leveraging our balance sheet.
That just gives you color on what the strategy was. Again, on many calls, I've said that this is a continuation of an overall strategy that we have launched way back in 2022, 2023. We are in flight in that strategy, and we continue to just gain market share and continue to grow in key regions as well as key sectors. Asset quality, you've correctly noticed that there are healthy improvements in our asset quality. It's a bit of recoveries. The numerator is reducing in terms of our non-performing loans, as well as our denominator is growing. There has been no new NPL formation. That's great. That just shows you the strength of our credit underwriting. That also leads to the third question that you've asked, significant lower provisioning. It's a result of better underwriting. Our models are working fine.
It just shows you that the required level of provisioning is low. Of course, it has been supported by some recoveries that we've seen throughout the year in the first nine months. Those recoveries were only possible because our initial underwriting when we underwrote those transactions was quite strong. There was no credit risk issue in each of these credits. It was only matching cash flows and a timing issue, which now is behind us. We've seen some recoveries in each of these asset quality challenges of the past. The last question is around primary drivers of deposit growth. It's heartening to see that our deposit mobilization has been across all our businesses. When we look at our consumer banking business, we've grown our CASA book there. The number of customers that we have onboarded in the first nine months has been close to about 180,000.
When you look at a 12-month period, we've onboarded close to around 225,000 customers. The majority of these customers come in with their salaries. We have a healthy CASA mix on the consumer side. Within the consumer bank, also, when we look at our fixed deposit base growing, we've seen our wealth management customers add to that deposit growth. That shows you that consumer banking franchise is not just contributing on the asset side, but also on the deposit side. When we look at the corporate side, our corporate customers also have contributed to a healthy CASA mix. These are the escrow accounts and the operating accounts that we have from our corporate customers. Some of our corporate customers have also taken advantage of locking rates on the fixed deposit side. Overall, you can see that our deposits have funded our balance sheet growth.
The AED 91 billion of underwriting that we've seen across businesses, consumer, corporate, treasury, whether corporate domestic or corporate cross-border, that AED 91 billion of gross underwriting has been supported by deposit mobilization. Throughout this year, we have not gone to the capital markets and done a senior issuance. That also shows you the strength of our franchise. With this kind of growth that we've seen on our asset side, heavily supported by our deposit side, it still has allowed us to report strong LCR and NSFR ratios. That just shows you the strength of the franchise. Both sides of our balance sheet have grown, and that's how we have reached very close to around AED 400 billion in terms of balance sheet.
We'll go through the next question. Just give us a second.
The next question that we're going to go through is from Janany Vamadeva from Arqaam Capital Ltd. Her questions are around margin trends and around the guidance of 2.8%- 3% for the year, a question on how it will evolve in 2026, a question on lending momentum into 2026, and potential areas of growth. The last question is on the effective tax rate for 2025 for Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC.
Janany, as always, thank you for your questions. Your first question is on quarter four expected guidance around net interest margins. You know, we have reached about 2.7%. The good thing is that if you look at the last three quarters, we have been stable in our net interest margins quarter on quarter, right? We have ended at 2.7%. Even in Q2, it was 2.7%, and even in Q1, it was 2.7%. We are still holding our guidance of around 2.8%, you know, and between 2.8% to 3%. Probably, we'll be at the lower end of that guidance, but we are hopeful that we can probably look at 2.8% net interest margins to close this year. Like you rightly said, very early to look at guidance for 2026.
If anything, if we can operate at the similar levels, you know, in terms of net interest margins going into 2026, that will be a great achievement. There is a pressure on all the banks, and we've seen the margins of our peers starting to drop. I think the comforting thing to see is DIB is holding its margins, and if it can hold its margins into 2026, that will be a great achievement. I'll give you some great color on that, maybe on our next call when we look at our full-year results. We are very confident that we'll be able to do that for two simple reasons. One is we continue to lock in our fixed rates, both on our consumer banking side as well as our treasury book. We've also substantially grown our asset book.
We've locked in a lot of financing at good rates, albeit fixed in nature. We are very confident that when we start to reprice our deposits, as you remember, the majority of our book is fixed deposits, so a large portion of our book would be repriced downwards as opposed to some of our peers who have a large portion in terms of CASA. That's the advantage that we have. We are very confident that we can go into 2026 and give you better guidance, which would be within the ranges that we have been operating on in the last three quarters. That should give you some color on where your net interest margin is. Lending momentum, I think we are very, very confident. I've just revised our guidance upwards for 2025. It's no more 15% for the first nine months. We've already achieved 17% in the first nine months.
We've revised that upwards for 2025. We will probably close at around 20% or more. You have to patiently wait for 2026 guidance, but I can tell you that we will be going into 2026 with the kind of tailwind that we have behind us. We will go into 2026 also on a very positive note. I can give you greater details of that guidance on our next call. Our effective tax rate for 2025 is 15%. For 2026, we'll try and give you some guidance on where that tax rate should be. Most probably, it will be lower than 15%, but for 2025, it stands at 15%. 2026 will be a more positive look at the effective tax rate.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you if you have any further questions, please send them via webcast@dib.ae.
The next question is from Rahul Bajaj from Citibank. There are five questions. The first one is, in case there is a slowdown in the Dubai real estate sector over the next year or so, is it fair to assume DIB's income from properties held for sale and investment properties could decline compared to 2024 and 2025 run rate? The next question is, is it possible for DIB to take the benefit for a lower 9% taxes exemption? We'll cover this as well. Why did income from investment properties decline in Q3 compared to Q1 or Q2? The next question is on NIMS. Why was there an increase in margins in Q3? We will cover that as well. Lastly, a question on capital. How comfortable are we with current capital levels, and what kind of buffer does DIB want to maintain?
Thank you. Thank you, Rahul, for your questions. I'll answer them in the order you've raised. If there is a slowdown in the Dubai real estate sector over the next year or so, let's focus on the next 12 months, right? Is it fair to assume DIB's income from properties held for sale would decline? Of course, it would, right? The next 12 months, with all the key economic indicators, we feel that the real estate market is still buoyant. We are looking at a lot of activity, which we are a part of in terms of financing that we do on our home finance side. We are also monitoring a lot of transactions that are taking place within the UAE, not just Dubai, but within the UAE, because as you would appreciate that we have a real estate presence across pan-UAE.
Our portfolio has properties that are cutting across key emirates. It's fair to say that if the property market softens, then the activity will also soften. Having said that, the next 12 months are quite buoyant, and we feel that we can ride this trend in the next 12 months. When I say ride this trend, it is only to offload the properties that we are carrying on our book, which is also related to your third question. If I can just skip to the third and then come back to the second, income from investment property declined in Q3 when compared to Q1 and Q2. I think we've got to look at year-to-date performance. When you look at year-to-date performance, we've seen a very good income from offloading of our property book in the first three quarters.
When we look at that trend, that trend is similar to what we saw in the full year of 2024. Ending 2024, going into 2025, markets held, we had a good run in the market. We've offloaded a substantial portion of our property book, which was always the strategy of the bank. We've never been desperate to exit from that book. We always wanted to make sure that we capture the market at the right time, which we've done in 2024, and we are doing in 2025 this far. Q4 also continues to be, there are pipeline transactions that we are trying to capture where we will be exiting part of our real estate portfolio, and that would then translate into P&L gains, just like you saw in Q1, Q2, and Q3, or just like you saw in 2024. Of course, right, we are a part of the market.
We are not insulated from the market. If the market softens, then we will just slow down any sales that we wanted to do because we are not going to desperately reduce this position. 2025 looks like a strong real estate market. Question two is on whether we are taking the benefit of a lower tax, a 9% lower tax rate. In 2025, our effective tax rate is 15%. We are working to take a benefit of a lower tax rate, i.e., 9% for 2026. Once we are in a better position to give you clarity, we will come back to the market and we will tell you. We are working hard to make sure that our 2026 effective tax rate can be 9%. Your question four is on net interest margins increasing sequentially in quarter three. Yes, you've correctly picked that up.
We have increased sequentially in Q3, albeit to the second decimal. Overall, we have held our margins at 2.7%. Your question on whether there are any one-offs in these net interest margins, no, there are no one-offs in these net interest margins. It's just a translation of our overall strategy that we've been following over the last 18 months or so. Do more of financing, do them at better yields, lock fixed interest, fixed profit rates, fixed term rates, try to reprice liabilities downwards. We are just following the same strategy, and that is paying us rich dividends by allowing us to hold net interest margins in Q3, which was exactly what we did in Q2 as well as Q1. Your last question is on capital levels, how comfortable we are. We are quite comfortable.
All this growth that we've seen in the first nine months, this 17% year-to-date growth that we have seen, this has been supported by the existing capital levels that we have. Today, we are at 13.4% CET1, which is roughly around 350 basis points and where our minimum level should be. We are at good capital levels. These capital levels take us into 2026, and they can support our growth. Of course, our organic capital generation has also been consistent over the last so many years. Needless to say, if we require capital to support future growth, we've demonstrated that in the past, that we have the ability to do rights issues as well as tap international markets for perpetuals. If need be, we will do that.
Today, we are sitting comfortably, but when we plan our 2026 numbers with the kind of growth that we have in mind, we will decide whether we require any capital injection, and if required, we will make those disclosures to the market.
The next question comes from Olga from Bank of America. She's asked four questions in total. Two of them, one is on the NIM and the NIM outlook, which our Group CEO has already addressed. The other question is on the 9% corporate income tax that also has been addressed. The two outstanding questions that he will look at, one is, is Saudi expansion NIM diluted? Second is, does the UAE Central Bank set any limits on exposure to non-UAE jurisdiction as a percentage of capital?
Sure. Thank you, Olga, for your questions. Saudi expansion NIM diluted, I think there cannot be a broad brush statement on our Saudi strategy. There are key entities in Saudi where NIM might be a little more competitive when compared to some of the private credits within the UAE. When you look at a sovereign level, it's roughly the same kind of pricing. It all depends on who the borrower is, what sector we are entering. For example, if you go into Saudi aviation, it would be similar to how we would price aviation in another part of the world. If you go into Saudi energy, it would be similar to how we price energy in, let's say, UAE. If it would be utility, it would be similar. I don't think a broad brush statement on whether NIMs are diluted in Saudi applies. No, they are not NIM diluted.
Also remember some of the Saudi credits might have a better risk rating, which might demand a certain pricing. As long as we are making sure that we are not undercutting our yields or compromising credit, we have a Saudi strategy. We'll continue to follow that strategy. A broad statement, are they NIM diluted? No, they are not NIM diluted. Your third question on CB UAE setting any limits on bank exposure to a non-UAE jurisdiction, there's no specific limit. We are driven by our own risk appetite statements. We've got prescriptive limits for countries that we operate in. That takes into account their overall GDP, the size of their country's balance sheet, our exposure to the country, if any. We also are driven by per-party limits, which is all driven by the regulation around how Basel would want you to operate.
Nothing specifically of how much we should be lending to, let's say, the Kingdom or Oman or Bahrain or Turkey or Pakistan or any other country. We have our own internal limits, and that is driven in a very scientific manner.
We'll go through a couple of last few questions because we're running out of time. Just bear with us for a minute. The next set of questions are from Jon Peace, UBS. The first five questions have already been addressed by our Group CEO. One outstanding question, which is, are you still very comfortable on capital and dividend policy given some tightening by the Central Bank of UAE? For example, countercyclical buffers.
Yeah, sure. I think even before we go to countercyclical buffers, our current capital levels are taking into account capital conservation buffers, right? Countercyclical buffers, which are effective the 1st of January 2026, take into account certain things that we've already included in our future capital levels. To answer your question very simply, we are comfortable with our capital levels. We don't have a dividend policy as such. Dividend retention or dividend payout is driven by, one, future growth ambitions, two, what should be the payout ratio, and three, how much organic capital should be generated in order to support that growth. I think we will obviously balance that once we have our full-year results out and again put that in front of shareholders, and then the General Assembly can take a call on dividends. Overall, we are comfortable with our capital levels, like I mentioned on one of the...
When I answered one of the questions that we are operating with CET levels of close to around 350 basis points, more than the minimum requirements, right? I think currently we are good. Those levels support our current growth for the remaining part of the year, as well as we go into the year with the right capital levels. Given that we have just about five minutes left for our call, let me try, and as I mentioned, I'll try and summarize our call and talk to you about the nine-month performance that we've done so far. A great 2025 this far. You know, quarter on quarter, we have seen business moving in the right direction, a northbound trajectory across all our businesses, our consumer franchise, our corporate franchise, whether it is domestic or whether it is cross-border, as well as our treasury book.
We've seen great uptake, gross underwriting of close to AED 91 billion, and the net portfolio growing by about AED 48 billion has resulted in a 17% year-to-date growth across our financing and sukuk book. That has allowed us to maintain our net interest margins at 2.7% because you can see that our gross funded income, our total revenue, has been consistent and it's on the rise. Of course, there are interest rate cuts around the corner, and when that happens, we've always mentioned that we will be able to take an advantage of that because a major portion of our liability mix is fixed deposits. Those high-priced deposits are going to be priced downwards, and with our asset yields intact and our cost of funding going down, we will be able to maintain our net interest margins, if not increase our net interest margins.
That's one part of our conclusion. The second part of our conclusion is our asset quality continues to be very strong. We've seen the last couple of years, asset quality has only improved, not because the denominator is increasing, but because also the numerator has been reducing, which means that there have been recoveries. Those recoveries in the last couple of years have enhanced our P&L, and our overall net performing financing is down to around 3.13%, which is lower than our guidance of 3.5%. We are confident that we will close the year at better levels, and we'll go down further, not just because our numerator of NPL is reducing, but also our denominator continues to increase. Important to know within asset quality is that our coverage ratios continue to go up. Our cash coverage ratio is at 107%. Our total coverage is at 149%.
That gives us comfort that we are adequately covered. It's heartening to see that there has been no new NPL formation. The last few years of our balanced credit underwriting have only given us more confidence that our models are working fine, our credit underwriting is working fine, and that is only reflected in our NPL. There has been no new NPL formation. All of this has translated to great efficiency ratios because if you look at our return on tangible equity, that stands at around 22%. It's better than where our guidance was for 21%, and our return on average assets is standing at 2.4% in line with our guidance. Overall, the nine months of 2025 have been stellar and have been record in nature. We have this tailwind behind us, which we are carrying into quarter four of 2025.
This is the reason why we have changed our guidance upwards, and we are now anticipating that our financing assets would be at around 20%. That's our new guidance, and that would just translate to all the other key metrics. We are very, very confident that 2025 full-year results are going to be, again, record-breaking and stellar in every form. With that, I come to the end of the hour. Thank you for listening in. If there are any follow-up questions, and I know I can see that there are a lot of follow-up questions, you can get in touch with our investor relations team. We would probably meet again virtually or physically, maybe on a deal or a non-deal roadshow. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.