Good afternoon, everyone, and a warm welcome to Oma Savings Bank's Capital Markets Day. It's a pleasure to see you all here in Helsinki, and likewise, you all joining us online. We really appreciate your time and interest in Oma Savings Bank. My name is Pirjetta Soikkeli, and I'm Head of Communications at Oma Savings Bank, and today, I will be your moderator. As you've heard, we released our strategy, January this year, and as well as the financial targets for the four-year period up to 2029. At the very core of our strategy is our willingness to change the bank to become more efficient and more profitable. Growth is at the heart of this strategy, and more importantly, growth that is disciplined and sustainable.
Today, we want to take you deeper into that journey, how we translate strategy into concrete actions, and how we improve performance and efficiency, and how we deliver sustainable value for our shareholders. Throughout the afternoon, our management team will be talking you through the key action points and demonstrating how we are going to reach our financial targets. Before we begin, I would like to remind you of couple of practical things. We will have two Q&A sessions, and those joining online, you can start posting your questions. We will take them during the Q&As. With that, let's begin, and I hand over to our CEO, Karri Alameri. Karri, please.
Thank you, Pirjetta. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure of seeing you here, all here in Helsinki, and of course, on the line, so many of you on the line. Me and my colleagues will do our utmost best to make you feel that your time is well- spent today. As Pirjetta mentioned, we introduced our new updated strategy in January the 14th. We will not go through the strategy. We will not present the strategy, but I want to emphasize that all of the presentations, all discussion that we are today taking and discussing is an implementation of the strategy. No presentation about the strategy but especially talk about the objectives that we have and how we are going to reach those goals.
I have now been at OmaSp for 14 months, and I can assure you that I have not regretted a single day. I have worked in the industry during five decades. I have worked for a range of companies from 15 employees to 13,500 at OP, where I spent 10 years in the company in six different positions, ranging from the listed company, Pohjola, in the executive committee, or management team of that to the executive committee of OP. Prior to joining OmaSp, I was the CEO of Savings Banks Group, which actually, in my opinion, gives a quite good way for me to come to this company and take the position that we have, that I have today.
The company has grown during the five past years very rapidly from 2,500 persons, EUR 3.5 billion in balance sheet to over 600 employees and a balance sheet of EUR 7.9 billion. One can say that quite often, you can say that too much, too quickly, and t hat is basically what happened with the company. Otherwise, I can state that today, the bank is very strong financial position. It has never been in this strong financial position during the modern times. For me, with this background and knowledge about the company, it was very easy to accept the current position and also to analyze together with the Board all the actions to be taken. I had three or four objectives, depending how you calculate it.
My mission was to restore the trust for Finnish FSA, i.e., to focus on governance and to processes. The second one was to gain trust from investors, including fixed income investors, and then return to the growth and a better profitability. What comes to the gaining trust from you, all people here and online with the investors, of course, we do believe that we show what we do, and it's up to you to decide whether we have succeeded. Having said that, I would also I like to highlight that in September 2025 last year, September, October, we were able to launch a EUR 200 million, s orry, t his always happens sometimes when you are very keen on talking to what you want to talk about, b ut the EUR 200 million bond issue.
We issued EUR 200 million, and actually, the interest was for EUR 600 million. At that way, we already fulfilled the requirements for MREL requirements, which took action, got into force in April this year. We can also say that during last year, we entered back to the CD market on the fixed income market. What comes to equity investors, of course, also we have introduced more transparent way of talking about our Q3 reporting. We have introduced them in English. We have English-speaking webcasts also, and o f course, this is one step more for us to show transparency, but also to show what we are doing.
With the growth I needed, what we actually did with the Board and the objectives that I had was one thing was, of course, also that it was realized that we needed the updated strategy, which also Pirjetta was referring to. Also, we needed changes in the management, in the management team, as well as on other levels in the organization. With that, I would like also to introduce our management team and the people that will be talking to you today. Starting from the left, Markus Lauri, our Acting Head of Branch Network. He's been in the company for three years now.
Prior to that, he was in the Savings Banks Group, and actually, I had the pleasure of working with him in the management team where he was responsible for the private client sector or household sector. Sarianna Liiri, our Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer. She's the one who has been the longest in the company out of the management team, with a 20 years experience look at on the company, seeing also the development and being part of the listing processes and many other things happening on the positive things happening on the company. Ville Rissanen, been in with the company in now for seven years in the management team. Prior to that, he was in Aktia and has a vast experience from the market.
Sasu Sihvonen, our Chief Risk Officer, joined us last September. Has also vast experience from Nordea, being abroad in the U.S. and, also before joining us, he was responsible for Nordea fund management company's risk processes. Hanna Sirkiä, our Chief Legal Officer, will not be on the stage today directly, but of course , if there are questions regarding her expertise, she is prepared to come to the Q&A and answer to the questions. Very vast experience also, not only from banking, but also being a lawyer in private sector and also in the public sector. Pirjetta Soikkeli joined us in July last year with a vast experience from Handelsbanken prior to joining us, being in the listed companies like Metsä Group and Stora Enso.
And then, Kalle Virtanen, our Chief Operating Officer, also been in Nordea for more than 20 years. Prior to joining us, at EY, responsible for advising, legal advising on companies. Of course, I would like to also say, highlight, that this is a new position for us in the company, o ne thing that we just, with the actions that took place already last year. If you look at total on the management team, we can say that the average time in OmaSp's management team is three years. According to surveys, it's something like four years is the optimal average for a management team, so w e are closing to that.
On the other side, everybody of us has been more than 10 years in the industry. As I mentioned also, experience from OP, Nordea, Aktia, Danske Bank, and probably, don't recall all, of Handelsbanken especially. So, the broad, very broad experience, and I truly believe that this is a team that will lead us to success. If we look a little bit where we stand today, OmaSp is a nationwide mid-sized player with a focus on personal service. We are nationwide, 48 branches. All of them are open from 9:30 A.M.- 4:30 P.M . This differs us from the other players. We can also say that all of our branches, we have cash services, for example.
The focus for us is, if you look onto the map, 40% of our business is on growth areas like Helsinki, Tampere, Turku areas, but o n the other side, we have also in our strategy stated that we will not only divide the Finnish landscape to rural areas and growth areas. We have defined that we will be in the areas where we see growth, and t his is very important because currently, the market development is closing branches, moving to more larger entities, and that way, of course, we have the possibility of being on the market and gaining markets. Customer promises range today on the market, and this is a free translation from Finnish, best service in banking, easygoing bank, effective bank, digital bank.
Our customer promise is we will provide you with the most personalized banking service in Finland responsibly and smoothly in every interaction. This is to create some kind of a bond for the client. If you're effective, if you are smooth, easygoing, but personal service creates something for you, it's a bond because you feel that you are serviced, you are met as a person with your needs and solutions for you. I make an anecdote. We have a small branch in Juva, in middle Savo, what should I say, i t's in the more to the eastern part of Finland. We, for six months ago, we celebrated 10 years of that branch. The municipality has 405,000 inhabitants.
We normally don't disclose the amount of clients in the branches, but we can say that we have more than 5,000 customers in that branch. When I was there, I met a senior couple in their late 70s. They came to the branch and talked with a new CEO, and I thought this is the normal discussion about the importance of the branch. They told how important it was and so forth, and then they showed out from the window that, "Actually, we moved here four years ago, and you see our flat there, and it's only 250 m." Okay, this goes like normal discussion with elderly people that they want to come to the branch. Is this something that is just growing business for us?
I said to them, "Okay, it's very good that you have this kind of branch, and you certainly come quite often here, and it's good that we have this kind of service to you." The man said, husband said that, "No, the branch is very important for us, but this is the first time in three years when we are in this branch because we do everything digitally." This is something that we truly believe that a branch is not only for the elderly people. It is an emotional thing. It's core part of our services. We have time for people. It's easy to come to us. I'm asked quite often, how many branches will you have? Will you decrease them or will you increase it?
Our message is that 45- 50 branches, today 48, is normal level that we are going to have. Of course, the branches have to live in time, especially for household clients. You have to be there where the clients are. For entrepreneurs, SME clients, it's very important that it's easy to come to the, the access to the branch is very important. If we then look about, little bit about the situation and development and trends on the market, you can see increasing competition and change in customer behavior. We have large opening hours, as I said, cash services with a digital unit supporting branches. Markus Lauri will talk a little bit about our digital unit also later. We see Nordea focusing on efficiency, directing customers to digital channels, also moving away from SME clients, OP moving to larger units, cutting costs and branches.
They are, of course, also saying that they will be on the SME market. I truly believe that they do that, but on the other side, the development is the opposite, also creating up possibilities for us mid-sized companies or banks. Aktia is focusing on asset management and targeting growth outside Finland. POP and Savings Banks Group, they are a group, an amalgamation, four mighty independent banks that form, as I said, an amalgamation. We are one balance sheet. We can allocate both our capital to regions or client groups where we see growth, and o n the other side, we can also allocate our risk measures. Just to put also into the context about the Savings Bank. In the Savings Banks Group, the largest Savings Bank is EUR 2 billion balance sheet.
We are 3.5x, almost 4x larger, so w e are clearly also the largest independent Savings Bank in Finland. We use segmentation to understand our customers and earnings, but the customer chooses the channel where to meet us. This is also very unique for the market. We do not say that you are allowed to be only in digital services. You have this kind of money or business with us, so you are able to get a contact person, dedicated one.
For us, the client chooses where to meet us and whether the clients want to have and needs to have a dedicated service, client service person. If we look otherwise on the market also, we truly believe that, for example, taking into the collateral on the market and changing, looking onto the flats housing market, you can do it digitally in the Finnish market. You have all the information on the market. But when you go to the SME clients, you have to be on place, you have to understand the client and the environment where the company works, and of course, what kind of clients they do have. And there, we truly believe that the 48 branches that we have on, in Finland is, makes us, gives us a very sufficient way of meeting our clients.
If you look, remember the map that was shown in that previous picture, we can also say that, remind you that during the last 18 months, we have opened three new branches, one in the greater Helsinki area, one in Vaasa, one in Kuopio. All of those are areas where there is growth. We also combine the human service with digital services. Our centralized customer center handles more than 80,000 meetings. It takes 20 seconds to, through the chat, to get reached to a person. It's above 95% of the, 95% of client accessing us are solved with that kind of chat or in the telephone services.
One thing about the digitalization is, of course, then I want to highlight that we also started a cooperation with Bo, the largest, the most rapidly growing real estate agency in Finland, where on their pages there is either a way to contact us directly or to start chatting with us. So, this is a combination that we do not see on the market currently, and a lso, it is digitalization, i.e., that we also are, by which we are offering personalized services to our clients. About the industry consolidation, just to say that it gives us many, many possibilities on the market to look where to grow, to whom we want to cooperate with. We are the largest non-integrated distribution channel. This is something that creates opportunities for us during this strategy period that we have.
Very briefly on the market currently, if you look on these pictures, you see that on both pie charts, you see that the three largest players have 78% respectively and 79% of the market. Our market share in SME sector is about 5%, according to a survey, latest surveys, and it's double of that if you look the cooperation with the state-owned Finnvera that provides guarantees. So, we truly live, we are together with our SME clients. We see the uphills and downhills of the Finnish market, but on the other side, we also understand our clients. 58% of our employees are shareholders in the company, showing a commitment that shows also, in our belief, to the customer experience.
We have talented people, we have committed people, and as I said, they are, a lot of them are shareholders in this company. Markus will later talk about customer experience, how the depth of the relationship affects the profitability. Once again, here we can state that if we look on the market as such, we are dividing, sorry, I would just jump quickly to this and say that flexible, user-friendly, we have possibilities to meet our clients. It's easy to access us through different channels, and also, we have time to personal meetings. This is something that currently gives us very much new clients because other banks do not have time to meet clients and time for them to wait. If you're an entrepreneur, we are talking about a week at most that he wants to meet the client representative.
If we are talking about household market, people want to know if they are granted the loan. This gives us possibilities, flexible, user-friendly, time to meet clients. If you then look onto the market as such, looking from the bottom up, share of wallet of our client is very important. We have classified our clients to narrow, developing, and broad-based customers. If we look onto the household market, for example, from the developing client to broad-based customer, it increases the revenues for us by 4x. The same goes for SME or business banking SME clients. There, the figure is 6x higher. As I said earlier also, Markus will also go more thoroughly about this logic on the business logic that we have. We are behind the Finnish averages. A lot can be done without investments.
If we talk about the expanding fee-based, broader income base, for example, we can say that on loan protective insurance, on mortgages, gross sales on the market currently is something like 35%-40%. We started from circa 15% a year ago, and today, we are closer to 25%, and in some regions, up to 40% in latest months. An exciting opportunity for us is also a K-Business card Visa . It's an exclusive cooperation with Kesko, a trading sector giant ranging from grocery stores to building materials and products to car sales and import. As I said, this is an exclusive cooperation with Kesko. Those who know the Finnish market know the cooperative version, which is quite broadly used, so t his is the attack towards that, kind of the counterparty way of looking into it.
Then, about the development of unified operating models. The company has grown very rapidly, as I said. It has grown like a petal on a daisy flower in growing new businesses, and on the other side, with that growth, no unified processes enough. What we have done in 2024 already, autumn, we centralized our decision-making of loans. We then, at the year, beginning of 2025, we also centralized our collateral monitoring, and once again, we are moving also forward in those areas. About the AI, we are also investing in personal development, leadership, and setting targets. Ville Rissanen will also look more detailed into this. And then, of course, expanding digital services and capabilities, that is something that we continue to develop.
We have set also targets for every year what we are going to do on this side and move forward on that. Delivering on financial targets, Sarianna will talk about this more detail, but a small teaser already about in my speech also. Starting from the right, CET1, more or less a hygiene effect, a 2 percentage points above regulatory requirement. Net Promoter Score, which today is 40%, we have set it to 50%, and we truly believe also that with the current way of working, we will reach to that figures. Annual growth in fee commission and income over 10%. We are currently, for example, 7.4% in the Q1, and on the other side also, almost 9 percentage points at, with the, for example, cards and payment services.
We are well on track on that also already. Comparable income ratio below 50%. If you look on the Finnish market, you see ranging from 40%, 30% from Nordea, which is, of course, more effectivizing, focusing on digital services. Then the other side, we have non-listed companies ranging from 60%- 70%. This is also set from a peer group relation for the Finnish market, where we do believe that we have to be to enable to be competitive moving forward. Return on equity, this is something that we have also stated quite clearly, is the most challenging part here. It will be reached through combination of growth and also optimizing the capital structure. There, I want to highlight the dividend policy, which was also updated this spring.
We have a payout ratio at least 30%, and then of course, a preparedness to pay additional dividends, which we also did this year. Moving towards over 14% return on equity will be a gradual way of effectivizing operations, creating profits, and also then optimizing the balance sheet. We will deliver a sustainable growth. It is very important that we have a strategy of growth, and we also are targeting to sustainable growth. We combine that. We want to be transparent, and we want to be on the right path from the direct, from the beginning. Significant percent points increases on the loan activity. Insurances work, for example, was one thing. On also on fund sales, we have a lot of activity, but on the other side, we also know that today's sales is tomorrow's revenue.
That is still yet to be shown in the profitability, but the activity of sales is already there. Risk management is a core for us, and Sasu will tell more about it and give some light also to the development of the non-performing exposures, like Kalle also will. These are important issues, and we know that we've been addressed it by investors, on the NPLs also. It will be covered in two separate sessions here. If we look onto also to leveraging on the automation and AI optimization, Kalle and Ville will touch this area also more deeply. So, I want to end by saying that we are committed to our targets. We are well- prepared. The company has never been in this strong position. We have a solid, good person, employees, and a good management on place.
With that, I want to introduce and ask, invite my colleague, Chief Risk Officer Sasu, on stage. Sasu, you are welcome.
Warm welcome to everyone on my behalf as well. I wanted to say a few words about how investing in risk management can actually add value to the OmaSp. Let's start with the activities that we have already taken. We've made significant investments into risk management to make sure that the risk management framework that we have in place is matching the scale and complexity of our business. First of all, we've made significant investments into our expertise that we have in the organizations by adding full-time employees. That enables us to have the expertise, the accountability, and also the ability to support the growth that the company is planning. Secondly, we made significant enhancements to the risk management framework.
For example, we have established a Board's Risk Committee to allow more transparency to the Board. We have revised our risk strategy, making sure that it aligns with the overall company strategy. We have a risk appetite that's setting clear guidelines where business can operate in. All of these, when we look at the third point, doesn't really mean anything unless we can implement it into the day-to-day practice. So, making sure that all of the risk framework elements are embedded into day-to-day decision-making is a key to us. It makes sure that we have better execution, helping customers, and then also other stakeholders. Last, but definitely not least, is the strong cooperation with the Finnish Supervisory Authority.
Here, we want to maintain a very good in relationship because we see that, from our point of view, it is really important to develop and maintain effective governance and also helping us to ensure the long-term resiliency. We want to make sure that we have open dialogue going on with the Finnish FSA. Now, usually, the first reaction when I talk about making additional investments into risk management, making or taking risk management more seriously, the first reaction is usually that, "Oh, no. Now, here goes out of the window the business. Now, they're only focusing on risk management." That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to be very smart about that.
So, what we want to do is find the right balance between the business activity and the risk framework maturity level. We want to find the sweet spot where we are not over-investing, but definitely not under-investi ng in risk management. We wanna make sure that we have the right risk-based, right-sized risk management framework in place. We know what our key risks are, so for example, in our case, credit risk, liquidity risks, that we recognize them, we have them under control, we can manage them. As mentioned, risk appetite, we have that in place so that we have clear boundaries and we are taking the right risks supporting our strategy. We also wanna make sure that our management have capabilities to monitor and steer the business, so we want to have a good monitoring reporting in place.
Also, we want to make sure that we price our risk correctly so that in the longer run, this will be seen as a or is affecting to the overall quality of our, for example, our credit portfolio. Then on top of that, we wanna make sure that we are long-term resilient bank, so we want to make sure that we have strong capital and stress testing framework in place. Let's take a look at our current loan portfolio, how it's developing, and how we are taking or what kind of actions we are taking to improve the overall quality. As Karri mentioned, we have a wide branch network, and thanks to that, we also have a nicely diversified loan portfolio when it comes to geography in Finland.
This helps us gain resilience across market cycles, reducing concentration risk, and as Karri mentioned, we have 40% of our loan portfolio allocated to Finland's biggest three growth areas with strong long-term fundamentals. This is also a good thing from our credit portfolio perspective, allowing us to capture performance over time. In addition to geographical diversification, we also have diversification through mix of households and business customers. Roughly, at the moment, we have about 60%-40% split between household and business customers, and when we look at the business customers, we also have a nice allocation to real estate, agriculture, construction, wholesale retail sales. The portfolio construction in itself helps limit single sector dependency and enhancing our resilience in the longer run.
Next, about loan portfolio performance. Our non-performing loans or non-performing exposure is relatively high compared to the industry as a whole. The non-performing loans, they are stabilizing, and the impairment losses, they are coming down. When we compare to the previous Q1 2025, it's materially less, and also if we compare 2025 to 2024, we see the same trend there as well. We see that the asset quality is developing to right direction. Few things I would like to shed light on the numbers when it comes to the NPE or non-performing exposure is that the percentage of new NPLs, that has already stabilized and trending down. We're not getting new non-performing loans any faster than usual.
The percentage number is still going up here, and p artially, it is due to the smaller size of the overall portfolio. One thing to highlight is that in the current market environment, it is taking significantly longer to see the outflows from the non-performing loans. For example, if you want to liquidate collateral, real estate collateral, it's taking longer than in a normal market. Bit more on the impairment losses, so we can see that it is trending down quite nicely, and n ow, what we see here is more consistent with a healthier run rate that you usually see. So, what are we doing to make sure that this trend continues and how are we improving our lending practices?
We've done, and we continue to do, enhancements to our credit risk framework, making sure that we can support the growth. As mentioned earlier, we've done some work on risk strategy, and we've also done significant work on the credit risk strategy, making sure that it is clearly aligned with the overall strategy. We also want to make sure that we have a risk appetite that clearly guides the credit decisions, setting boundaries, but also opening possibilities. Risk-based pricing, we want to be pricing our risk correctly so that it reflects in a positive manner to the overall credit portfolio over time. Active monitoring and steering. Also, the centralized credit decision model that we have done, that's also visible in the credit quality in overall sense.
We're also making, taking activities like soft collection and improving that process, and Kalle will be talking about that bit more when he comes on stage. Discipline risk management, it's not a constraint to growth. If we take few examples how the better or new lending standards, how do they look in our overall portfolio? Over here, what we have done is a sort of a vintage analysis. We take half a year chunks of our new loans and run analysis how they compare to the previous years. Over here, we have, we're looking at households, and the steeper the line is, more loans end up being overdue.
If we take a look at the two latest vintages, 2024 H2 and 2025 H1 where we have enough data, we can clearly see that the line is less steep compared to the previous years. We feel pretty confident saying that less and less of the new loans issued ending up being overdue. We can also see the same trend in the business customers. There, we can of course see that already, before the 2024 H2, there was a positive development, but the newer vintages are also performing significantly better here. To sum it up, enabling stronger performance through robust risk management, what does it actually mean?
So, current asset quality continues to reflect the legacy portfolio. However, at the same time, it's important to highlight this, that the quality of new loan origination is changing the overall portfolio materially as the newer vintages are increasing their share in the portfolio. Then, the last thing maybe here to say is that we take risk management seriously. We believe that investments made into risk management in a right way are actually not only supporting the business but making sure that we do everything in a consistent manner and that our growth is sustainable in the longer run. Thank you.
Next, I would like to invite Kalle Virtanen, our Chief Operating Officer, and Kalle will be talking a bit more about the actions that we have already taken on the loan side, planning to do, but also how we make the bank run more smoothly and efficiently. Welcome, Kalle.
Thank you, Sasu. Good afternoon, everyone. Talking about banking operations, it almost has to funky. You know, I could, I would have a lot of stories, but I will start but just by saying that it is kind of a jacket that has buttons over many things. Today, my presentation will mostly focus on three main categories. That is to talk about credit-related guardrails, credit quality-related topics, non-performing loans chosen as a topic, and also to anti-financial- crime-related matters, matters that have been also a discussion of public domain. Why is response important? We are answering to the market demand, and we are also answering to the client demand. Creating robust credit-related guardrails, which we have already initiated, we have a lot in pipeline at the same time, t hat is important.
Accountability is a word that we use a lot within the bank, with my own team, and we talk about it a lot on a general level. Credit portfolio quality and managing it towards lowering trend is important actually to all stakeholders. It is important that we, as a bank, operate consistently and with accountability. That is also very, very relevant. When it comes to streamlining anti-financial crime processes, as you all know, if you read the papers, there's a lot of demand that the bank is asking this, and the bank is asking that, and it's so difficult to get an account open, and you get a lot of problems. I would say, customer satisfaction is one of the key reasons why we are also doing it.
But it's also due to legacy and also greatly increased regulatory requirements, which, by the way, are not gonna be any more diminished when it comes to anti-financial crimes now with the new European regulator. Partly due to legacy and partly due to increased regulatory requirements, we have had and we have been forced in the last 24 months to implement a lot of manual processes. Obviously, they take time, but we have to streamline those processes going forward and to increase and to improve client satisfaction and expectation, and I have some examples of that in a few slides later. If we talk about the credit-related guardrails, we have done a lot in the past 18- 24 months.
As Karri was saying and a few others before me, that internal collateral valuation, credit decision segregation and duties, and also on loan documentation. But what is important is it's consistent. The credit decisions have to be consistent. They balance the business efficiency with a robust risk control, as Sasu was saying. We're also trying to be, credit processes and risk mitigation, and credit portfolio quality are consistently upheld and developed. We have work in progress already to the one that we have done thus far. Then, we talk a lot about culture. We talk about accountability. We talk a lot about responsibility.
It's the culture of responsibility and reciprocity in risk culture is expected, and this is something that we also put a lot of focus on when we interact with our clients on a daily basis, but also to investors and shareholders. We are strengthening credit governance. We have some further plans on automating certain parts of the credit processes, but we'll come up to that later. If you're looking, the reason why we are doing these guardrails and making centralized processes is that we have to get it also to leading to client-facing improvements. There are three examples here. We have improved our KYC processes in account opening, onboarding business customers, and in opening services.
That is reduced to one to two days. If you go to a peer group bank and ask how far you can, how fast you can open a corporate account, I assure you we are very well-placed in that comparison. If you look at our centralized customer service, we handle about 160,000 contacts per year with over 85% resolution rate. To certain matters, it can be even higher when it comes to the method of contacting client. We have also, based on our new processes, been able to accelerate the loan documentation process. In the past six months, it has improved over by 20%, still containing all the new guardrails that we have implemented and put in place.
Now, if we go to the fixing the non-performing loans, in Q1, we had a total of EUR 92 million in loans, 90 days past due. But we are now seeing a downward trend in those loans. We have also been able to start making payment arrangements with clients, and those have been established. We are, at the same time, also looking into options of to sell part of our non-performing loan portfolio. There are, so there are possibilities as well. It's not, but t o the same time, I have to emphasize that the longer-term trend in NPLs is downwards, but obviously a lot of work is still needed. About the soft collection process, we have introduced that during Q1, and the objectives are to initiate early intervention procedures.
This is also something that the regulators like to see. It's also to increase accountability, both in business and also on the client behavior side, and to manage risk better early on. This is actually very important when you look at the statistics that Sasu was showing on the vintage analysis, so that the new portfolio quality is much better. We are now putting emphasis on if the clients are facing problems, we will identify it faster, and we'll be able to take actions and escalate them, genuinely insolvent cases to legal collection faster, but also promote voluntary collateral realizations and helping the clients to understand their situation and assist them. It's kind of a reciprocal discussion between clients.
We are seeing positive signs of credit demand and credit quality, so the number of new loan negotiations completed has risen and at the same time our lowering debt recovery. Less loans are going into recovery than a year ago, vis-à-vis, and t he same goes with the new loan negotiations. We see that development quite positive as well. Then, about streamlining anti-financial crime. The AFC is very important, and those processes to the bank going forward. Technological development, a lot of, there's a lot of talk about AI, but there should be a lot of talk about automation as well, because that is actually more of it in my mind. At the same time, technological development is a big advantage to us.
We can operate, w e have plans, as and Ville will talk to you more about that. You also have to, as we all know, it also, t he technological development can also pose a threat within the new technologies, deepfake messages, phishing, and fraud, and things like that. So, we are taking those into account, and they must be taken into account as per being a responsible bank. We have invested significantly to people and systems in the last two years. We have invested to increase automation and also to come up with new AFC functions. At the same time, we plan to automate key AML processes, and those plans are under review at the moment.
If you look at the improving quality and timeliness, what we have done in the past, you could, we have done a lot in 2025. We have done a lot, and we're gonna do a lot in 2026. You could say, in a nutshell, that in 2027 and 2028, the overview, the financial crime prevention as a trend and as I believe in the market, is moving, shifting from a rules-based monitoring to data and AI-driven monitoring. That comes basically from the necessity that the systems are improving, so t he monitoring alerts and guidance given by the systems, they cannot be manually processed. You need automation, you need AI, and that obviously improves the cost-income ratio.
Our goal is to build a scalable analytics-based operating model, and that goes to the loan processes, to the anti-financial crime processes. So, it is making change using new technologies and a very solid banking organization and the capital and liquidity processes, as Karri and Sasu were already saying. To sum up, w e believe that the simplification that we have done and are going to do for faster response, also to improved accountability and to customer satisfaction, by doing, for example, the three things I've shown in my presentation today, that will also improve our cost-to-income ratio below 50% target by 2029. That concludes my part.
Guys, good presentations, but now it's time for a Q&A session, our first Q&A session. For you here present in Helsinki, I would like to remind that you need a microphone before you ask your question. The microphone girl is back there. You need to state your name and the institution you come from before you ask. The online audience, I already have received some questions, but please continue posting those, so we will take them as we proceed. We already have questions, and the first one is here.
Hi, good afternoon. Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. Regarding the fee growth target, in your own mind and assessments and analysis, how much of this should be driven by the savings products or on, and on the other hand, how much of this growth target is tilted towards lending- related and daily banking services products?
Thank you very much for that question. I will briefly touch that because then we'll have Markus Lauri walking through also this area. Basically, it's a broad-based target that we have. Simplifying it, we have, in all areas, the possibilities to grow double digit. It will be savings products, especially on households and also SME clients and companies with clear ownership, where we can also take part of the whole family's banking services. Then, what comes to lending as such, we are growing on the business area, and that, of course, creates also fee income on that part. We have a lot of to-do on the credit card side also, and that will also be addressed by taking up by Markus Lauri also later on.
Hopefully, this, briefly touching this area, and then we can come back in the next Q&A session if you have additional questions regarding this.
Good, thanks. My second one, you are focusing on personal service, perhaps in areas where other larger players are kind of escaping. In order to meet your targets, will this mean higher risk pricing, how you are able to kind of deliver on the profit targets that you are stating in those kind of a bit of a declining areas?
If you look on the margin, for example, household margins on loans and so forth, we are able to charge for the additional services that we are providing. On the other side, we are not, we look into the position in a way that we, of course, come down closer to the market prices. Now, I'm talking about lending margins, i f we are able to sell full-scale services to the client. So, it's a combination, i t's not only a question about what the lending margin is. It's a combination, how we look into the client and how we can find long-term relationships with our clients.
Then, what comes to the areas, what you are referring to, declining areas, of course, as I said, we are not splitting the market with the rural areas and a couple of growth areas. We have a lot of places in Finland where the growth is operation environment, and there is still growth going forward. We see possibilities on those areas if we look on the regional perspective. On the market price, if we look at markets, if we look on the client basis, as you mentioned, larger players are closing branches, focusing on digitalization, or even strategically leaving place for us to move. On the SME sector, I would like to emphasize that, of course, we are in the S and the mid- M, i.e., coming from small- scale entrepreneurs to mid-sized companies and in the mid-sized companies also to the mid of that.
Basically, that is the area where we see that the personal service being close to the client and other ones leaving, I'm not saying disappearing from the market, but leaving space for us. If we had the market share of 4x , 5x our current market share, then we would be in a situation where we talk about effectivizing, closing branches, and effectivizing and directing people to digital services and so forth. Currently, we clearly see that there is a lot of potential for growth and for us, demand for this type of services, unique way of working with the clients, and also be able to charge for that.
Excellent. Thank you.
There's a question back.
Hans Rettedal Christiansen, Danske Bank Markets. Thank you for the presentation, and thank you for the sort of focus on the NPEs. I was just wondering if maybe we could, if I could get some additional comments. It's very positive to see sort of the new NPEs coming down and the charts that you had around that. Just trying to understand a little bit about how you're managing sort of the older vintages. I think you've mentioned some NPE sales or potential sales, p erhaps if you could touch upon, if you've sort of been in process around that already or what is kind of the key drivers for that to go through. The second one is perhaps also on collection processes.
Is it only sort of macro improving that can fix that? Or is there any other initiatives that you're sort of running currently to bring down the total NPE level?
May I start, and then my colleagues here will answer more deeply to the question. If we look on our NPEs and the old stock, it also includes controlled winding down portfolio, which we are unfortunately not commenting it today because we have also said that we will do it every six months, and we did it at the year-end, next time with the Q2 results, but t he portfolio at the end of this year was EUR 180 million, and there you have, of course, three ways of recovering. That is, of course, with the finding, selling the underlying assets, which we are not doing, but then, it might be financed from somebody else.
Of course, it is the way of, the underlying asset is sold, and that way, we are continue to finance the underlying investments and that way, it will start to recover. This is something that has happened. There are two ways of looking into that, that how it will come down. Then, what comes to the other part of the portfolio, of course, these are also some kind of ways to look into those areas and then of course, insolvency processes which we also referred here. Basically, to elaborate a little bit around the thinking about, thinking around the possible sales or this kind of thinking, so p lease, Kalle, if you can a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Karri.
Talk about that.
Yeah, a good question. Thank you. What's the trendy word? We are looking into it. Basically, we have some multiple discussions ongoing. There has been interest on it because on a general level, the Nordic loans, the recovery rate is better than the non-general level, if you look on European level. That is something that we are looking into. Quite diversified. We have identified a certain amount of loans that could come into questions, but we will obviously come back with that on later. On the collection processes, we have actually, we have centralized kind of the soft collection process. In our terminology, centralizing doesn't mean you put the people in the same place.
We have selected a group of good people who understand how these things are to be handled, and they are diversified, spread out around Finland, and they are, so they know the local market, and w e have got some good feedback on making payment arrangements and collateral liquidation. As I said, we are seeing improvements in those areas, but obviously, we will come back with those in Q2 reporting possibly. Yeah, we are. It's a combination of active partnership with clients, new processes, and identifying the areas where we can make tangible results in a rather short time.
Thank you, Kalle. I would like to add that, as Kalle said, that it has been decentralized in a way, so all branches have been responsible for soft collecting. When you do it in 48 different branches and different, possibly different ways, so the focus might disappear, and that is one of the reasons why we have centralized it. As Kalle said, it is very important that when we talk in our company about centralizing, it is actually unifying processes, unifying ways of working. We are very good in having people in different locations. So, centralizing, as Kalle said, is not to move operations to one spot, but to have a centralized leadership, centralized targets, and centralized way, unified way of working.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Would there be any further questions here in Helsinki? It seems not. We can continue with the questions from online. We have a question from [Jimmy Andfolk]. Oma Savings Bank has been successfully grown by acquiring and integrating smaller regional savings banks. Do you see any mergers and acquisitions and the consolidation of smaller banks returning as a key growth driver going forward?
Thank you for that question. Our strategy, it's a strategy of growth, not a growth strategy, which was the former one, which was very, very much based on non-organic growth. So, we focus, especially, we focus on our operations currently. On the other side, as I said, the bank is very, very solid and a good strong financial position, so, we are not closing doors for different kind of add-on, bolt-on investments or strategic cooperations. As I said, we are currently the largest and possibly, the only non-integrated, non-independent distribution channel. Basically, something will take place during the three to five years. That is one thing that we can state about the market development.
Thank you. We have a question from [Johan Karlsson] . How sensitive is your target return on equity to declining interest rates, especially given the recent decrease in net interest income?
Actually, this is something that will be touched by our CFO, Sarianna Liiri, and I would like to postpone this question to the second Q&A.
Okay. What about this, from the same person, a verage loan decision times have improved. What is your target level relative to peers?
Would you, Kalle, like to comment on this?
Could you repeat the question?
Yes. Average loan decision times have improved. What is your target level relative to peers?
Do you want me to start?
I think it would be better if you start.
Of course, it's always a question about when the negotiation starts. Is it the discussions prior to putting it in the systems or not? Currently, we can say that we have, our process is approximately one week, varying from six days to five days, depending on about the corporate side or business banking or the private clients. We do believe that it is very competitive currently on the market, and especially when we talk about the situation that for us, the persons, customers can actually get an appointment with us, and in some cases, we say that we are two weeks, three weeks before the other players. This is basically my view.
Kalle, if you can add a little bit more flavor on this because you have statistics.
Yes, I think we can be faster, but on delivering actual loan decisions and getting the documentation, I think seven days is a good reflection of the current, but I think we can do it faster. That requires some time planning and investments, but I do, I still believe it is possible.
I would like to add that Ville, our, talking about the IT sector and all the development that we are doing, we have the Lending Leap process, one of the largest investments that we are current doing on the lending processes. This is not an IT investment. It is a business transformation that we are doing. There are actions we take and currently with the current process and develop that and enhance, improve that. On the other side, the Lending Leap that we have is going on that will end in 2027, the first stages. We are currently implementing gradually already, changes from that part. In two years' time it will be, or less than two years' time, it will be up and running.
Just a quick, to add on, so b asically, the developments we are now doing in credit processes, those will be actually amalgamated with the Lending Leap, which Ville will be talking later. We are learning now, and at the same time we are learning, improving the current processes, we will implement them so that all the good new learnings will not fade away. They will be implemented going forward.
Good. That was all so far. If no further questions from the audience here, o kay, then we can make a break here. Thank you for participating this Q&A. We will go to a break now, and we will be back 2:30 P.M. s harp.
[Break]
Good afternoon, everybody here in Helsinki and also online. It 's a privilege and a pleasure to step on the stage and talk about the customer and why customers choose OmaSp to be their partner in banking. I'm also going to show you a tangible route to improve growth and solid profitability. We stand out from our customers, sorry, competitors by investing in customer experience, the quality of personal service, and local presence in many ways, s trengths that are in the core of OmaSp's competitive advantage. During the presentation, I'm offering you information from different perspectives behind the competitive advantage and concrete examples how we are going to deliver the financial goals as we have stated earlier. Let's jump to the plan.
The plan is a combination of different aspects, of course. In the core of it, is strengthening our competitive advantages, as I just mentioned. It's about growing fee income in savings, in payments, in cards, and in other services, but i t's also growth, prioritized growth by deepening our existing customer relationships and acquiring new. It's targeted and planned to the highest potential household segments and in SMEs. Two dimensions of growth. It's a balanced growth in fee income through existing and new customers. OmaSp has been strong in customer acquisition, especially during time when housing market has been busy. The focus in OmaSp has been in new customers and in growing volumes in lending. This also has been in the focus in managing the banking business.
The balanced growth comes through existing customers using wider range of services and centralize their banking with OmaSp, but i t also comes through gaining new customers that complement our customer base and increase fee income. By understanding this, there's a great potential in our customer base to be able to strengthen our income base, and let me show you two easy examples. We have a strong relationship with our customers. As a proof, 2/3 of our customers use three or more services, and there are two views to this. Loyalty and customer satisfaction is the core of our success and gives us a chance to do better business as our strategy stages. We have a strong bond with our customers. But there is a lot of potential in it as well, g reat chances to upside fees.
Let me give you an example. 30% of Finnish people holds investments in mutual funds. The penetration rate in OmaSp's customer base is approximately 20%. By being able to grow the penetration level on the average market level to 30%, this means approximately EUR 3.3 million growth in annual revenue. Another example comes from the credit card penetration. Approximately, 76% of Finnish people own credit card. In Oma Sp's customer base, the penetration is 45%. By lifting the penetration rate in our customer base to the market level, this will grow our annual revenues more than EUR 5 million. So, there is significant potential in our existing customer base and significant upside potential in growing the fee income. Let's dig little bit deeper to our customer base.
The biggest number of revenues comes through the customers using five or more services. We call this customer group broad scope customers. 26% of our total revenues comes through the customers who are using more than three and less than five services. Just to give you an example, like Karri already mentioned earlier today, is that by growing customers from these developing customers to broad scope customers, their revenues are 4 x higher in households and 6 x higher in SMEs. Developing existing customers base hasn't been in the focus earlier, and it really makes the diversifying income possible. How do we do that? This is like internal view how to do better business, but we need to be able to deliver that for the customer and understand this from the customer's perspective.
What is it in for the customer? Basically, we're going to do this by understanding customer's life. For each one of us, the life is what matters the most. When we can be alongside customers in their different life situations, we can create added value for them. We have identified three key customer groups that allow us to approach customers in a way that resonates with each group in particular. It's about being proactive. It's about being right timed with the relevant message. Nothing matters more than life. It's easy to say that we can deepen our customer relationship by doing this. We are creating value, not in customers' finances, but in life. This also applies in customer acquisition.
Changes in life make people to evaluate their values, and usually, those value changes and events in life demand actions in finances and where the bank is needed. We will be there by making our service as seamless and smooth as possible but also creating value from the point where the interest, for example, buying a new house or an apartment, rises to the situation where the actual purchase is done. As an example, we have just launched, like Karri already said today, a cooperation with Bo LKV to create a fast track for Bo LKV's customers, which is the most modern and growing brand in the real estate market in Finland, to be able to create smooth, fastest, and the most personal way to a new home.
How does this work in concrete is that if Bo LKV's customer visits their website, they will get an immediate access to negotiate with us, with our professionals in person in digital channel, in digital channels. Talking about households and moving towards the SMEs, which is actually the biggest opportunity for us to grow our business, i t's targeting specific customer group. Growing and owner-entrepreneur led companies benefit the most from our service model. The market leaves an empty spot when it comes to creating the most personal and value-adding service for SMEs. Traditionally, there's a separate service path created when taking care of personal finances or SMEs. These paths don't understand too well each other, and the customer needs to repeat and start over.
In OmaSp, we avoid this by pointing in a way that demonstrate a lot of professionalism but creates value. We assign a dedicated contact person to handle both entrepreneurs' and companies' banking needs. All of our strategic targets, segments, a re businesses with identifiable hands-on owners. Our service model creates added value for this target group. Dedicated contact person understands the entity, not separate parts in entity. Our operational model gives an easy access to professional advice who handles both the entrepreneurs' and company's banking needs before, now, and especially to understand the future that the customer wants to achieve. Being local, we have a story, we have customer segmentation, and we have a plan. In addition to this, we need to be the local bank right where the customers are.
We have 48 branches with wide network of offices with wide opening hours. Being local bank in OmaSp means that we are open, we are easy to access, and we are ready to serve. Being local is the core of our growth, but also it means the service availability. We need to be trusted, we need to be agile, and we need to be smooth. It's built in our culture, and it's built in our employees. Being local isn't just the branch network. It's also leveraging most personal service and value in digital channels. Customer decides, we don't steer or force. We also have local people in digital channels that creates a feeling of OmaSp to be local but modern bank. Being local is being at present, but it's also a feeling of being local.
What do we get out as a result of our service model? It's bringing us 700+ customers per month, and personalized customer experience is the key. Like Sasu said earlier, new loan issuance is performing better. We are making right choices both in household and SME lendings at the moment, and we are also able to price our service model. Our wide branch network offer also possibilities to do business and grow in many ways in different areas in Finland, growing in mortgages, finding customer deposits and investments in every branch in our network. Customer experience and our service model is the key, g row locally, but also through concrete actions in digital channels. Talking about the customer experience, we are aiming for NPS 50, which, I think, is one of the most important KPIs in our updated strategy.
At the moment, customers tell a great story, and we get good feedback from our internal service, but also from official external research. Our NPS is 40, which is a great result and shows us that we are on the right path to be even more recognized as the most personal banking partner in Finland. I'm also extremely proud of the overall satisfaction to the OmaSp advisors, t hat is 4.6 out of 5, according to the latest measures. Talking about employees, the employee satisfaction is on a good level, and employees are exceptionally committed to change, almost 4.6 out of 5.
In addition to this, 58% of our employees are shareholders of OmaSp, which create us a situation where we have a lot of people, self-driven people, driving us towards our goals, both in growth and in finances and in customer experience. To sum up, it's about developing existing customers and getting new. Both growth dimension strengthens fee income and expands income base. Differentiation from competitors mean that we invest to be the most personal bank in Finland. Customer experience is the key. Being local both at branches and in digital channels that OmaSp is easy bank for the customers to join and to stay, and hopefully for decades. Now, at this point, I'm ready to introduce my colleague.
Next come on the stage is Ville Rissanen. Ville is always asking if there's something missing from our digital services to our customers, but t he answer is luckily, no. We are happy on the business side, but i t is nice that he asks. It means he's thinking about our customers. So, thanks on my behalf and welcome, Ville.
Thank you, Markus, for the kind words, and w elcome everybody to the 10 minutes of the digital journey, as we say here. Before I jump further, there's actually some truth in what Markus said. We take customer feedback quite seriously and also from the branches. We collect it, we analyze it properly, and we take actions. For example, the mobile development is basically prioritized according to the customer needs, so, happy to do that. Let's jump further. What I'm trying to explain to you is that we are in many ways, as you have heard, we are a traditional bank. I will explain why that is also a strength. We, as you have heard from Markus and everybody else, we rely on the personal service, getting happy people to the branches and giving good service also online.
More than that, we have a good attitude, we have a very high ambition level, and I will go through even quite detailed examples for you what we mean by that. But first, kind of a warm-up slide, so, I said we have a comprehensive fleet of digital services. We have all the modern payment methods, net banks, web meetings, and as mentioned already, this digital unit is something new. We will make sure that we can handle this cooperation with Bo LKV in a proper fashion, and the digital unit will be also help processing another important cooperation, the core business card cooperation we have together with Kesko.
And maybe, looking back the seven years I've been in the bank, it's nice to see that we have had the possibility also to invest quite a lot in actually all of these areas, and these investments will, of course, continue. We try to get kind of the best from both worlds. Being a traditional bank, by that, I mean that we invest in all this resiliency as much as needed. We have done it and we will continue to do that. So, cybersecurity, Kalle talked about AML fraud, sanction screenings, data governance, all that needs to be in place.
If we look at what possibilities we have, it's, even if banking systems are somewhat complex, we still have an edge here since we operate in one country, we have basically one system per product, we have one currency, we live in one time zone, so there's a lot of simpliness in my life in that way. Where, I'll show you later, we think we can be able to challenge and do better is of course utilizing data. It's key part of our strategy. We have lots and lots of basic integrations missing , as Karri and everyone has mentioned, this lending project. Just by adding those, we will get great benefits. AI needs always to be mentioned, i t is a part in our development now, and I'll show you what we are thinking about that.
We have some additional tools to play with. We have a relative simple architecture, I said, but we have also outsourced software development. As you know, what all the software companies are going through today, we have this kind of luxury to be able to select our partners every day, so w e will take advantage of that. Of course, in-house, we still keep all the architectural responsibilities and analytics parts. What is it that we are committed to at the moment? The lending and collateral system renewal is a quite extensive program. It will be finished within one and a half years, two years maybe, after which, we will have all the missing interfaces in place.
We will have better processes for our experts in the branches to operate basically by next, next methods as you can do with modern interfaces. In addition to that, I'll get back to the where we put this room for more AI in place. Then, the data utilization, we will simplify our data structures somewhat, will be visible inside for more experts in-house to do simple analysis, but it will probably also help the AI to do some analysis for us. Then, regulatory part, as mentioned, payments program, Payment Services Directives is forcing us and other banks to do quite a lot of investments, AML regulatory reporting always happening. On the product side, well, the core business card was already mentioned, but it is actually quite nice product.
It has its own web portal where the companies can order cards and close cards and adjust them. It is a credit card, which is, can be applied anywhere on Earth. We're continuing to improve that. It has a nice app also that goes with it, and we have quite nice potential calculated into that case. The cooperation with Kesko is going quite well. To the hot topic, if you say. I actually wanted to do this on a much higher level, but I was advised to give proper examples, so I'll give you some examples. First of all, for example, archive analysis. Well, archive is what it says. It's a place where you hide all the customer documents usually, and then you never see them again until today, because now we have new tools.
Why don't give the language model access to the archive? After which, you can probably start discussions with the data that before this, these technologies was hidden. We have done some early piloting already a couple years ago with, we tried with ChatGPT to do some own customized internet search engine. The Copilot wasn't that good by that time. Nowadays, it already competes well with our own experiment, but we learned a lot. Even more important, in the branches, our people have been trained and given access to these kind of agents. The best parts that we have found so far are kind of collateral analysis or housing inspection analyzing tools. When they get tested well enough, they will probably end up in some part of the process in the lending project as we go further.
Machine learning, it's not a new thing, but we have, in the AML part , we have an algorithm that is learning. It has been doing its learning now for five months, and it's showing some quite good progress already, and after nine months it will possibly be taken into use. The point here is nothing new. It's an algorithm, i t will learn from what it sees that happens in our environment. Of course, if the algorithm can do the rules and blockings by itself, then it saves us time and energy to program each and every rule to the system. So, that's one thing. Then, the AI is also creeping in, of course, in different kinds of software.
For example, in the customer service side, there are these add-ons that come with the package, voice transcription, and real-time instructions for the support people, so cases like that. Back to the lending, which is actually a quite good case. Here it feels a little bit stupid to get so excited about documents, but lending is documents and there's a lot of nice things, building managers, confirmation letter, and my personal favorite, the sales brochure that the sales agencies describe. What a fantastic document. It has all the information about the apartment. It tells what kind of balcony you have, what kind of view you have, what kind of bedroom or kitchen or, b ut not even that. It can also look back into the history.
It tells you all the 10-year back what has happened for the property. It looks into the future. It sees five years ahead what is coming up. So, this couldn't be better for kind of language models to, as an input. From the bank side, we also create lots of documents, internal documents, to tell what is possible or not possible to do. For example, my new favorite is the [Non-English content] credit management guideline, which is a 70-page document that the branch needs to understand and learn how to do it. Why not give that as a prompt to the language model?
The point is here that on the right side, so with the traditional data in the databases and the automation of all these documents that we have in a bank, combining these will create miracles within time. If you ask, do we have any evidence of success in this area? We've been tracking now all kinds of efficiency improvements, whether they are normal interfaces or AI-based. Within six months, we have already shown 1 million of kind of saved working hours. Some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller, but there's a lot that has improved and a lot that will be improved. That was it, and the time is ended. To summarize, we have all the services our customers need. We continue to invest in them.
Markus' people are happy. Our digital ambition, I tried to tell you that it is quite high. We will utilize new tools. We already have a quite clear vision where to implement improvement. We will benefit from some simplicity compared to others and good partner selection. I can't increase sales, but I will try to help with the cost income ratio from my part. That was my part. I think it's time to introduce Sarianna Liiri, our Chief Financial Officer, to the stage.
Good afternoon, all. Now, we are continuing with financials, where we are now as the starting point to our strategy period, and how we are delivering our new updated financial targets by the end of 2029. As a part of our communications earlier, and Karri also mentioned that we have already noted that the challenging part of our financial targets is comparable return on equity over 14%. In this presentation, I will clarify all the necessary actions required to reach the target. The key message is stable earnings and cost discipline underpin sustainable return on equity. Let's start with look at our Q1 figures and starting point to our strategy period. This year began in an operating environment with geopolitical tensions, modest economic growth, and uncertainty in the financial market.
Despite the challenges, we delivered performance in line with expectation in first quarter, and comparable profit before tax improved from the comparison period by almost 200%. During the first quarter, also new loan volumes returned to growth track again, and fee and commission income increased broadly by 7.4%. At the same time, operating expenses declined by 15.4%, also in line with our plans. Comparable cost income ratio was 57.5%. Impairment losses on financial assets decreased, but weak performance of the Finnish economy, and particularly in real estate market, continues to be reflected in non-performing exposures, which still grew under during first quarter. Capital adequacy strengthened further, and total capital ratio was 19.4%, which is clearly above the requirement. CET1 ratio was 18.5%.
Strong financial position gives us a good basis to implement the strategy. In January this year, our Board confirmed updated financial targets as a part of strategy of growth. Financial targets shows the main focus areas implementing our strategy. I will handle all targets and our measures getting to target levels in this presentation. Let's jump to the demanding one. As we have noted, the demanding one to reach is comparable return on equity, and getting there will take a multiple actions across the bank, not only one single level or area.
If we take the full strategy period to year 2029, and especially the back end, when we expect more of the benefits to come through, we see three clear work streams to deliver a comparable return on equity target: g row earnings broadly with a clear emphasis on accelerating fees, k eep costs under tight control while continuing to simplify and automate processes and reallocating resources more on sales side, and o ptimize capital allocation, m aintain strong buffers and use surplus efficiently.
In addition to this, we need to keep our impairment losses at lower level. First, the earnings growth. For us, the key is to step up fee and commission income, and we see multiple growth pockets, like Markus told. Payments and card business, fund- related services. We will deliver that by doing two things: keeping and broadening our existing customer relationships and also winning new customers. Net interest income will remain our largest revenue line, and market share gains support stable growth. But changes in market interest rate environment will add volatility, and a higher share of fee income helps balance that sensitivity. Importantly of all, deeper customer relationship also support retention.
Second, the cost side. We started cost containment actions already in 2025. Back then, we also invested to strengthen our risk management and control processes. This created, of course, one-off costs and also increased the cost base, including higher headcount. Those major investment- heavy initiatives have completed during 2025, and s ince then, we have moved back on the normal development cycle. You can see that in the stabilization of other operating expenses during the latest quarter. The next step is to continue automation of processes that still require manual work. Over time, this frees up capacity we can redeploy in the customer-facing services and sales and operate more efficiently. We will do this all progressively throughout the strategy period using automation and AI to streamline our back office and reporting processes, like Kalle told.
Third one, capital allocation. Our capital position is very strong with a meaningful surplus over regulatory requirement. Our priority is to keep sufficient buffers in all conditions. This also supports our credit rating and stable funding outlook. At the same time, retained earnings will increase equity buffers going further our strategy period, so we need to keep assessing capital efficiency. Earlier this year, we updated our dividend policy, a 30% payout ratio and the ability to pay additional dividends. Primarily, we will allocate capital to the growth, and our goal is to invest in sustainable growth and support our customers on their financial needs. We will use these tools in a way that both safeguards capital strength and supports efficient capital deployment, fully aligned with our return on equity ambition. Next, about fee and commission income, and our target is over 10% growth annually.
Over the past quarters, like during Q1 this year, we have seen a steady growth driven primarily by card and payment transaction fees, reflecting higher customer activity and scalable volumes. At the same time, growth in fund-related services and other fee-related services, like loan protection insurances, further strengthen the income mix. We will continue to focus more on all of these, like Markus told in his presentation. In Q1 this year, total fee and commission income increased by around 7% over the comparison period. At the same time, fee income from cards and payment services grew by almost 9%, and fund-related services and lending-related activities rose by over 4%. Fee and commission income has became increasingly important growth driver for us. Our target is further to increase share of fee income of total incomes going forward our strategy period.
This development diversifies our earnings profile and reduces dependency on net interest income, supporting more stable and sustainable profitability. Based on Q1 figures, the development has been good, and w e are on track towards our target, over 10% growth annually. To deliver sustainable return on equity, we need profitability to improve structurally, and c ost discipline is a critical lever alongside earnings growth. Let's move on cost side. This slide shows that our comparable costs are now declining, and w e have a clear path toward comparable cost income ratio below 50%. We are driving this throughout streamlined processes and higher operational efficiency, and by shifting more people toward customer-facing activities and sales, where they directly support growth. At the same time, we keep tight control and prioritization of investments, focusing spend where it delivers the highest return.
In Q1 this year, comparable operating expenses declined to EUR 28.6 million, which is a decrease of over 11% compared to the comparison period. However, personnel expenses increased by about 12% at the same time. Other operating expenses decreased by over 30% during first quarter. Going forward, execution remains priority. Continued cost reduction is essential to deliver return on equity target and comparable cost income ratio target. Headcount growth over recent years has supported business scaling and building required functions, and t his is reflected to cost development. Our focus is now stabilizing the number of employees at current level, which improves cost predictability. On the previous slide, we showed that comparable costs are now declining, driven by disciplined execution and clear focus on where we invest. This slide explains an important enabler going forward. Headcount has now stabilized.
That gives us cost predictability, and it also allows us to improve profitability without adding people. In coming quarters, the priority is to reallocate capacity, moving more of our workforce into sales, while reducing the share of manual work throughout productivity improvements, streamlined processes, and increased automation. This is how cost discipline translate into operating leverage, and it directly supports the core message on delivering sustainable returns. Stable headcount and workforce reallocation support to reach our return on equity and also comparable cost income ratio targets. Strong capital position provides the foundation for sustainable growth in the future. Next, we will continue with financial position. OmaSp has never been as strong and well-capitalized as it is today. Our strong capital adequacy is a core strength. It gives us resilience throughout the cycles and flexibility to invest while remaining disciplined on risk and returns.
Strong financial position also support stable funding outlook and credit rating. Our financial target for CET1 ratio is at least 2 percentage points above regulatory requirement. At the end of March, the total capital ratio stood at 19.4%, and total accumulated equity amounted close to EUR 630 million. The supervisor's requirement for CET1 ratio is 10.78%, including indicative additional capital recommendation. So, the core capital surplus is over EUR 320 million. Also, the surplus of T1 capital is over EUR 170 million. Looking ahead, OmaSp has many levers to actively manage and optimize capital position. We will use these tools in a way that both safeguards capital strength and supports efficient capital deployment. This slide captures the investment case at the heart of our strategy execution.
Predictable earnings delivered with cost discipline, improving efficiency, strong capital, and growing share of fee income. Together, these drivers support resilient profitability and improving efficiency, which in turn creates room for distributions while we still invest in sustainable growth. Our dividend policy is to pay stable and growing dividend of at least 30% of net profit with a preparedness to pay additional dividends when conditions allow. Our aim is to be predictable and profitable investment with sustainable growth. Let's move in the financial targets combined overall capital allocation. Strong capital position with disciplined risk management secures the predictability, and company's long history with profit orientation will support productivity also in the future. Delivering our key financial targets, comparable return on equity, and comparable cost income ratio, the message from the preceding slide is that the delivery path is already visible.
Stable earnings provide a solid floor, and sustained cost discipline is translating into efficiency gains. In line with our strategy, we have successfully increased fee and commission income across a broad range of areas, particularly driven by strong development in card and payment transaction fees. We will continue our focused efforts to grow fee and commission income and deepen customer relationship across both households and SMEs. Strong capital position enables us to invest in sustainable growth. We will support our core customer segments on their financial needs and invest to the processes where we can increase customer satisfaction and improve customer experience, automate our own processes, and maintain a good risk culture. Over the strategy period, we will keep reallocating capacity towards sales and customer-facing work, accelerating fee and commission income growth, and maintain sufficient capital buffers in all conditions.
Executed together, these levers support our return on equity ambition, improve cost income ratio and efficiency, and of course, create incremental value for shareholders as the operating leverage builds. Balanced capital allocation supports sustainable growth. The strategy of growth provides a clear direction for the coming four-year period. Despite ongoing uncertainty, operating environment, we remain committed to systematically executing our strategy and creating value for our shareholders. We will focus on three work streams to deliver our financial targets: growing earnings broadly, keep costs under tight control, and optimize capital allocation. Our key message is a clear execution plan supports confident delivery of our targets and incremental shareholder value creation, and t he path is already visible.
All right. Thank you, [Sarkku] and the boys, for very good presentations. Now, we are ready for our final Q&A. And as earlier, I would like to start here in Helsinki. Would you have any questions here? I already see two, three hands, so l et's start.
Thanks. Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. A bit of a perhaps detailed questions on the plan to accelerate the fees and the mutual fund penetration within the existing customers. Are you seeing these untapped customer groups holding their assets in your bank accounts as a cash, as typical Finns do, or do they trust other fund service providers?
Would you like me to start?
You can start.
Okay, thanks. Your question was about the deposits and are they kept on the other banks or different places. We currently do not see any differences with our clients compared to other players. Of course, as said, we clearly see that the potential for us is to come to set the targets that are comparable to the Finnish household markets especially and thereby to broaden the, and accelerate the sales. But to your questions, we do not see any differences between the being compared to other banks.
Of course, if we continue to elaborate a little bit around that, as Markus was showing, that we have mainly our clients are in the mid-sector or the developing group of clients, and of course, we want to grow, and we target to grow to get the whole business of our clients, depend less if it is about households or SME clients. I don't know if you can elaborate a little bit more.
Yeah, I can shortly continue that the focus has earlier been in the growth in lending volumes, and basically that's the core reason, in my opinion, to that situation where we are at the moment. We can already see, like Karri mentioned earlier, that we have seen great improvement already during the last months in the activities, but also in concrete sale numbers, and we are already starting to see the results. Of course, there's a long way to go.
Thank you, Markus. If I may continue about, because you actually addressed one thing, that if you look under the OmaSp compared in 2024 or previous, we were the bank that was most dependent on or relying on net interest income, and a s Markus said, that was a decision by streamlining the sales, focusing the sales. Now, what we are doing is, of course, to broaden the offering, but also leading the organization to take these kinds of discussions with the clients. It's a combination of setting targets, managing leadership, and also for our people also to understand that we talk about the whole needs of the clients.
Basically, as I said, tried to say at the beginning, is that we have a lot to do and to increase our sales in different areas without huge investments. We have the place, we have on place the products, the services, and so forth. That gives us a very good, strong foothold to start the sales, which actually took place already last year.
Thank you. A second one on the IT. How agile or modern your core IT system is? Is it creating bottlenecks to your development projects, or are the bottlenecks perhaps elsewhere than within the systems?
Would you like to take it?
Would you like it?
You all know that we're working together with Samlink and Kyndryl and that we have a legacy system. I don't see that as a huge problem. All the new tools can be built around that. Whatever the core, the transactional core is, I don't think it really makes that much of a difference, so I'm quite happy.
May I continue? Ville, in his presentation, took up that we have, we are agile in many ways in adding on open API. What is the.
Interfaces.
Interfaces and so forth, so that is something. Then, the Lending Leap process that we are doing investment now currently is, of course, also enabling us to do changing the processes and enhancing, finding the ways of cost efficiency, but, of course, also benefits for the clients or customers.
Yeah.
One more.
Final one. A bit broader question. What kind of economic environment or growth assumptions your financial targets are built on? Are you expecting a growth in the Finnish economy to reach those targets, or would those targets be a kind of a doable in this current, what we've seen over the past few years, a bit of a muddling through Finnish economy?
May I start?
Please.
Yeah. Our assumptions are based on the long-term estimates given by different economic institutions, Bank of Finland and so forth. Basically, that's the path. What we look onto the shorter perspective, of course, is that we see the potential from our side on increasing market shares also in the current market environment. If we look into the short term, of course, as shown, we have been increasing our market shares in house mortgages currently, doing it well on the SME sector. But if we look, for example, for this year, we cannot change the market environment, especially for the mortgage demand.
Thank you.
Okay. I think you can hand over to Kasper.
Thanks. Kasper Mellas from Inderes. Within SMEs, you said that you target growing entrepreneur-led companies. How do you define highest potential customers in the household segment?
Markus, could you comment?
Yes. There's a lot of potential basically 'cause we provide quite a wide range of services to our customers, so I see a lot of growth potential in almost every segment that I try to describe the building customers and so on. Also, in the young adults, there's a lot of space to grow in through mortgages. As we all know, it's one of the key factors when the customers, like, make decisions who is going to be their partner in banking. So, mortgages is one, and it's something that we need to be able to cross-sell better that we have done before. Also, there's a great potential, like mentioned earlier, in like selling funds, in wealth management even.
We have, like, possibilities, but t he way that we need to deliver those things is that we really add value, and we understand what we are selling, so that it's like creating 25-year-old, 25-year-long customer relationships rather than just making it, like, short selling efforts. We need to understand that we are building lifelong relationship with the customers. It's not like fast in sales, but it's like creating value for the customer also in the long term.
All right. A follow-up question. How do you find and reach these potential customers in both corporate and the retail side?
Like in my presentation, I said that the core of our, like, growth is in local actions, networking and being present 'cause actually the competitors, especially in the SME market, they have left, like, empty spots in the market. There's a lot of growth potential in it, and it's based on our, like, service model and being present in all over Finland. Basically, that is one thing. Of course, we need to also understand that we haven't been focusing too much on doing growth by, like, a bank-level actions, and this digital unit that we have just established is one example that we are, like, building new ways to do business and to find new customers.
I'm really happy that we are now, like, able to cooperate with, like, the most growing or the fastest growing real estate agency in Finland and finding new ways to put our, like, best parts in our service, which is the professional and then the personal service to place and close to the situation where customers already are, so that they don't need to come to us, and we go to the customers. It's being local, both in the branch network but also in the digital channels.
All right.
May.
So.
May, d o you allow me to.
Yes, absolutely.
Comment also on that? If we look on the market currently, we clearly see some kind of churn on the market or two ways of customers thinking currently is one of those that are for the, looking only for the price, and this is, as we have been trying to sell, t his is not what we are targeting to. The other one is currently, which is actually creating clients to us current, is that people trying to find services and being also willing to pay for that service. This is something that really is currently going on in the market with the larger banks adjusting their strategies and, as I mentioned, with some kind of mergers and things like that.
Then, of course, one that has been very important for us and is, we had a little, downhill on that, but c urrently from, six months, nine months ago, it started to be recommendations, they are very important for us. When entrepreneurs talk with each other, they, of course, quite often, they change views about what kind of services you are getting, how do you feel about that. That has been in the past very important for us, and t hat is something that we clearly see now that is increasing.
So, you've been seeing a growing dissatisfaction towards the bigger banks among the customers?
Banks as such, of course, because, for example, the digitalization and forcing clients to different segmentations and putting them to different channels. As I said, our competitive advantage and unique model is that the client chooses or customer chooses in which, when and in which channel to meet us.
All right. About your solvency, c urrently you are way above the target of + 2% above the required CET 1 ratio, which makes the targeted + 14% return on equity very hard to achieve, at least in my opinion. You stated that you are planning to optimize capital buffers to an efficient level. What is this level, and how are you planning to get there?
Just looking once again at me. As we have been saying is that we are optimizing, especially as Sarianna said, we are allocating our capital to growth and to combine and to come into the return on equity above 14%. Of course, we have to look also to, for example, dividend distributions. Why not? Because I have been asked why not to distribute it immediately. One has to also to look backwards two years and also a new Board or fresh Board, very professional one, of course, they are taking the steps gradually.
All right. One last question.
Thank you.
If I may. You said that you get +700 new customers every month. Does this figure include only past quarter or so or longer timeframe?
The past quarter. The first quarter of 2026.
Okay. Thank you very much all.
Thank you. Back there, and thanks to us, question.
Yes. Hans Rettedal Christiansen, Danske Bank Markets. Perhaps two questions from my side. First one is, you've touched upon it a lot already, but it's on the fee income and sort of trying to marry that up against your targets. I appreciate the numbers that you gave us on sort of credit card penetration and also mutual funds. If you sum those up, that's around EUR 8 million in sort of more income that you can take out, which is maybe 13% up from your current fee income base. I'm trying to understand how much of your guided sort of above 10% fee income growth going forwards is truly sort of increasing penetration, and how much is coming from loan growth and new customers?
If you could split those two up in those targets, that would be interesting to hear. My second question is on the net interest income, which I guess we didn't hear so much about in the presentation, but maybe just trying to understand a bit how you're thinking around the funding side of things, especially looking at your sort of upcoming, on the wholesale side, upcoming refinancings perhaps, and also tying that up against your surplus capital of EUR 320 million, sort of how much is truly surplus and how much is maybe something you need to keep there from, for a funding perspective, or for a rating perspective?
Good. If, later, Miss Sarianna, you take the second part of the question.
Yeah.
You actually started to answer, do you want to answer?
Well, shortly, in our, like, plans we have double digits in all business areas when it comes to fee income growth. And I think that we went through those numbers already, that the biggest improvements have been seen now in payments and in cards, and also improvements in the funds. When it comes to the fees in lending, we have, as Kalle, I think it was in Kalle's presentation, that we have a lot of improved activities in lending. Of course, the housing market itself is not, like, helping us in the situation, but we are seeing that our, like, activity levels and sales are starting to improve, which will lead to also better fee income results.
In SMEs, actually we are already, I think , that beating the market at the moment. You can see that the SME part is actually like developing quite well at the moment, but t he results will be seen in the next quarters and during the rest of the year, 2026. The market environment is challenging us in lending growth, especially in the mortgages. By honestly saying that the activities in sales and the activities in meetings with the customers, they have improved significantly, so I 'm actually waiting to see also the improvement in the sales and also in the lending fee income
If I may add, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but we were talking about the example was about households and funds.
Yeah.
Fund earners. We have also, we are also growing organically our private banking business since two years ago. That is growing very well according to our plan. If I ask me, of course, as a CEO, it could be even more quicker growth on that, but t here you, of course, have the average sizes of savings or investments are of course higher. Basically, the example was quite easy, just if we would jump currently to the Finnish averages. Basically, it's a broad-based growth in different areas. Of course, gaining new clients is one thing also, and then deepening the relationship with current ones.
About the liquidity position.
Yes.
Our liquidity position is very strong and we are having a meaningful surplus to liquidity requirements. That's explained by our new regulatory requirement for liquidity we gave last year. What comes to the coming financing needs, we will be refinancing our bond, which is maturing in December, and we are planning to be at the market in the second half of this year. Our aim is to keep the sufficient buffers to this new liquidity requirement, and also we need to keep liquidity to our growth targets we are seeing this year and next year.
About the capital position related to the credit rating, I would say that our existing solvency levels are quite in line with our credit ratings, and we are having a EUR 170 million surplus to T1 capital, and that's quite in line with our credit rating needs also.
Thank you very much.
Are there any further questions here in Helsinki? Okay, if not, then we will go to the online questions. I have a huge question from Antti Saari, OP. Partly it has been answered, so I short it down to question regarding the use of excess capital. Extra dividend was mentioned, but w hat about buybacks and/or mergers and acquisitions?
Thank you. I take this one. What comes to mergers and acquisitions, as I said, we have not closed the door, but the strategy is to grow organically. Bolt-on investments or strategic partnerships will of course be, w e are open for this kind, those kinds of discussions . In the past, the major shareholders have been positively looked into, for example, acquisitions done by share issuance. We are not aware, though, about changes on that. What comes to share buybacks, it's a very good question. On the other side, referring also to the free float that we have currently, we have 10, 11 large shareholders, and they also understand that they are keen on seeing the free float increasing.
On the other side, once again, if it was done by share buybacks, it will decrease the free float currently. It's a difficult question in a way, but currently, if you ask the company management, we are more favorable for keeping the free float not shrinking. What comes then to additional dividends, of course, we have stated it a couple of times that during this period, we probably will be distributing additional dividends as we did already this year.
Good. A further question from Antti Saari, d o you see any value to gain your own asset management unit through acquisition?
That's also a good question. Of course, there would be added value, but on the other side also, it's always a question about what kind of asset management entities there are for sale, or which one would suit us. We are currently satisfied with the cooperation that we have with the Savings Bank Fund Management Company , for example. But as I said in the early presentation that we are currently the only independent, free, large distribution channel, which of course creates interest in many players.
Good. We have a question from [Marco B.], a couple of big Nordic banks are investing heavily on AI. Can smaller banks follow along here? Is there a risk that the large banks will realize large cost benefits which they can use to lower margins and thereby take market share from smaller players?
If I start with the market pricing and so forth, Finland has, to my knowledge, the lowest mortgage margins currently in Europe. It has been for several years. Hopefully, if you look onto that kind of development, it's, then it would once again be adverse compared to the Europe as such. If we look otherwise to the agility that we have, and as Ville was describing, we have all the possibilities and we have not too many of these legacy systems and thinking and ways of working, so it creates us some agility.
Yeah. Trying to add to that, I think the important thing to realize is that everyone has access to the same tools. We are probably not the first ones to invent something new, but whenever we're seeing something nice, we have access to the same tools that the big banks have. I'm not too worried. It's an exciting competition, more or less.
Thank you. We have a question from [Nina M.], w hat is the biggest bottleneck in growing your SME market share?
The biggest bottleneck, of course, is always to have talented people. As we've been describing, we are focusing on personal service, understanding the client needs, both the private needs of the client and on the other side, also the companies. This is one question for us, but we are investing on that. Then, of course, small next steps or less, if that was the most crucial one, then of course is that the operations are smooth. They work very well and are efficient, not only from a profitable point of view, but that it creates also some personality for the client.
We have a further question from Antti Saari, OP, w hat is your interest rate sensitivity to NII if we see ECB to raise rates?
Yes, I can take that one. Yes. Our interest rate sensitivity is quite stable looking forward a 12-month period. If market interest rates will rise 1 percentage points, the impact will be around EUR 3 million to our net interest income. Otherwise, if market interest rates will decline 1 percentage points, the impact would be somewhere around -EUR 4 million, so quite stable.
Good. A further question from [Marco B.], d eposit flows turned negative again in Q4 2025, and the outflows continued in Q1 2026. How concerned are you about this? What can be done about it?
There are fluctuations during, of course, in different quarters and especially the year end is one part when the business banking part often decreases. We appreciate deposits. That will be continuously for us in the coming years, something that we focus on as well as other services. As Markus also said, that there are also differences, regional differences between where we have a surplus of deposits in our branches, and otherwise, that also creates us the possibility of allocating our resources. We have, of course, also we have now, a t the end of last year and moving forward, now we are in the process of, or have started a way of also to take deposits from institutions, both Finland and outside Finland.
First step has been taken this quarter, and it looks very good.
A further question from the same person. Other operating expenses have declined from the peak in Q4 2025 and in Q1 2025, but they are still significantly above the 2023 level. Can you lower them from the current level? If not, can you add a revenue without increasing them? And how much additional volume can you handle with your current setup in risk, know your customer compliance, et cetera?
There was quite a lot of questions, starting with the know your customer processes and so forth. We have been investing a lot of those, and there we have the possibilities of also with the automatization or AI, whatever word you want to use it. The operational efficiencies are improving every day, so we are not worried about that. Then, actually, I missed, c an you repeat it?
Sorry, just a minute.
Cost base.
Yeah, cost base. Sorry, I deleted, but he was referring to how much our current organization can bear within the current structure if we continue to grow.
As Sarianna took up the, about the personnel, how the employee levels have been increasing and now stabilizing. What we are doing is, of course, then allocating resources to more to sales, freeing also time for meeting clients, which was part of what Ville told and Kalle was telling about. Once again, we are in a growth strategy. We are in a growth path, so basically what we are striving for is to increase our sales and customer base and on the other side continue to do efficiencies.
Good. What about, will you consider reactivating your IRB project at some point?
You could answer on this, Sarianna .
Yeah. We would say that the starting point when we start our IRB project, the operating environment and especially the requirements and regulatory have changed, and also our loan portfolio and consistent of our, especially the SME loan portfolio, has changed after that. We don't see any agreements or reachable targets on IRB side, under this regulatory requirement using CRR3 standardized method for bank.
Okay. We have a new person online, Joeri Weerman from ABN AMRO Bank, and he's asking, c onsidering the intention to keep the staff count stable, do you still see growth possibilities in adding new branches?
Yes, as I said, we've been adding or opening three new branches during the past 18 months. We are, of course, looking into different places where we see growth potential or business potential. I would say that that's not a question about personnel, increasing personnel. As we've been saying, we can allocate people more to client work, so to say.
Okay. We have the final question from Marco B. What are the discussions with rating agencies like these days? What would it take for S&P to remove their negative outlook?
If I start, and you can continue. We have a good relationship with the rating agency and regular meetings and dialogue with them. If we take one thing from the negative outlook was actually it is the NPLs, non-performing loans, and questions around that, and that is something that we've been trying to address today with you and also what we've been talking with the rating agency.
Also, the one question is related to the loan portfolio growth and our target on that side, and the question is when you are turning into growth track again. That's the two main questions about credit rating agency.
Yeah. Okay, that was all this time, and I thank you very much for your good answers. Karri, would you like to sum up?
Yes. Thank you. I hope that you have enjoyed this afternoon. We have been able to show you how we are moving forward with our strategy and with the financial goals that we have. I would like to, just to highlight about that for you to remember. We have a dedicated and highly skilled personnel. We have a high NPS. People, our people have, 58% are shareholders in the company, and the culture that we foster is credibility and cooperation. I hope that this was also shown with the presentations that we have. Enhanced and unified processes improving efficiency, t his is not only in the back-office processes, t his is also in processes that is shown for the clients. Also unified processes, how we address clients, how we approach clients and things like that.
So, very much focusing on unified processes. We use automatization, AI supports the superior customer experience. Ville , hopefully, highlighted it very well. For the most to remember is that we are well- positioned to deliver the sustainable and diversified profitable growth. The company has never been in this good, strong financial position with talented people, with clear objectives that we are here and will continue to strive for to perform. Thank you very much for attending this for our first Capital Markets Day. Remember, we are here to also to answer questions in not, if not today, also in the future. Thank you very much.