Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Techcombank and Techcom Securities' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 financial results presentation. Today's session will begin with opening remarks from Jens Lottner, CEO of Techcombank. Following that, Alex Macaire, the CFO, will provide a detailed overview of our financial results and key business updates for Techcombank. Afterward, Mr. Xuan Minh, Chairman of Techcom Securities, will share detailed insights on TCBS' performance. We will conclude with a Q&A session. Jens, Alex, and Xuan Minh will present in English, and a live Vietnamese translation is available via a separate link. As usual, there will be a dedicated call in Vietnamese tomorrow for retail investors. Today's presentation and Q&A will last approximately 90 minutes, and with that, I would like to now hand it over to Jens to begin the presentation on Techcombank.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining this call. Overall, as usual, we'll give you the summary of the highlights, and then my colleagues will go into a little bit more detail. I think it is fair to say that the fourth quarter of 2025 was, again, a very, very strong quarter from all the targets we had set for ourselves. We again achieved the third consecutive quarter of record earnings as well as profits, so overall, if you see the numbers, there's a little bit of a distortion because in the fourth quarter of 2024, we took a one-off hit because we separated with Manulife, and therefore some of the growth numbers are very, very high, but I think, even taking the side effect away, it was a very strong quarter.
TOI in the quarter, VND 14.8 trillion, and profit around VND 9.2 trillion, which gets us to overall VND 32.5 trillion, which is above the guidance we gave to the AGM. The return on assets is still at 2.4%, which is among the leading banks in Vietnam. NIM has been stabilized at around 3.8%. Again, we've seen the downward trend, but we were still able to maintain it. From our perspective, at an acceptable level, given what we've seen around us. Again, operationally, things are very much under control when it comes to OpEx, with the cost-income ratio of 30.8%.
In addition to achieving very, very strong performance measures when it comes to the balance sheet and the quality of the balance sheet, we've seen actually that despite quite a significant credit growth of 18.4%, which is exactly the quota which has been granted by the State Bank, we've actually seen a reduction in NPLs, but we've also seen an increase in our coverage ratio, again, probably different to some of other banks in Vietnam. The CAR has reduced a little bit. This is partially due to the fact that we paid dividend in October, and so therefore we probably lost around 60 basis points there. But again, Alex will give a little bit deeper explanation, but we think it's rather temporary. Last but not least, CASA, which we always have focused, is one of our key areas. We maintain at the top of the industry, above 40%.
So overall, as I said, I think it's a very strong performance. We will go into more detail also in the Q&A, but I think it's fair to say that we believe we're actually on the right track. Again, we will not share this time, but probably at the AGM in April, much more about our next five-year strategy. But I think we're feeling very, very comfortable and very confident that in the next five years, with all the changes looming in Vietnam, but probably also in the larger regional context and even global context, that we are very, very well prepared and positioned to take full advantage of that, and that we will, based on all the foundations we have created and the results which we're seeing already, that we're actually able to accelerate that trajectory going forward.
With that, let me hand it over to Alex, who will go into the details.
Thank you, Jens. Good afternoon, everyone. So as usual, we will start with a brief overview of the macroeconomic context. The way I would summarize it is a very solid performance for Vietnam in a complex and volatile economic and geopolitical environment. The GDP growth achieved 8% for the full year and 8.5% for the fourth quarter in isolation. I think this very strong performance shows actually how Vietnam is benefiting from the continued reorganization of the supply chain, a bit like what happened a few years ago during the first wave of tariffs imposed on China, and also the growing competitiveness of the Vietnamese economy and its capacity to meet more stringent requirements in terms of green energy, in terms of traceability, etc.
There was also in 2025 strong support from domestic consumption and tourism, therefore a very strong performance across the board, although it might have also benefited from some front-running of import orders in the U.S. ahead of the imposition of higher tariffs. Therefore, I would say 2026 will be the real test of the capacity of Vietnam to continue to grow at an elevated pace. I think the main challenge remains on the monetary side. As you can see, assets continue to grow a lot faster than deposits, 19% versus 13.7%. This is pushing up the LDR in the banking system and therefore also creating pressure on interest rates. So there is no reason why there would be such a big disconnect between the growth of the assets and the growth of the deposits.
Usually, when it happens, it's because part of the money is kept in banknotes or invested abroad. In this respect, it's likely that the recent changes in tax law and the fact that all merchants now have to issue invoices was one of the drivers behind this monetary pressure that we are seeing at the moment. Therefore, in the coming quarters, as people get used to the new tax environment and accept the new rules, we can expect some of this pressure to ease a bit. I will move now to the overview of the results. I think Jens mentioned the key points. So we hit a new record high on PBT at VND 9.2 trillion, which is up 19.5% on 2024, the fourth quarter of 2024.
As Jens reminded us, this is also a quarter when we recorded VND 1.8 trillion payment to Manulife for the discontinuation of our bank card distribution partnership. If you look at the full year, then our PBT reached VND 32.5 trillion, which is 103% of the AGM target communicated to the market. Our TOI grew by 13.6% with very robust upper single-digit growth in both fee income as well as net interest income. I would also mention very prudent control of operating and provision expenses, which further supported our profitability, as well as the one-off recorded in other income in the fourth quarter of 2025, which is linked to the successful completion of one of our real estate projects. Moving now briefly to our wealth business, I think Techcombank, Techcom Securities has been once again an important driver in our performance in this business this quarter.
Xuan Minh will present more about that, but I would say we have recorded stellar performance across the board. You can see that the assets under management grew by 86% year on year, and the number of affluent customers progressed by 74%. At the same time, our cost-income ratio continued to improve very significantly from 41.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 32.1% in the last quarter. This is a very significant improvement, which shows the benefit of continuing to scale up our customer franchise. Looking now in a bit more detail at the formation of our NII, the first key point, our interest earning assets grew by 20% year on year. Meanwhile, our mobilizing from customers grew even more rapidly at 23% and grew by around 9% quarter on quarter.
At the same time, we faced a context of tight liquidity, as I mentioned earlier, particularly in the fourth quarter. As a result, we had to pay more on our deposits, and this is translating in an increase in our cost of funding from 3.4% in the third quarter 2025 to 3.6% in the fourth quarter. Though this is not a surprise, we anticipated it in our last analyst presentation, and we expect that this trend will continue at an even higher pace in the first quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, I think the picture on the asset yields was a lot more positive. In the last quarter, if you remember, we managed to stabilize our asset yields.
This quarter, we managed to increase it a bit from 7% to 7.1%, and we expect also this trend to continue into 2026, particularly as the credit quotas might be a bit tighter, forcing banks to be more selective. With that, our NIM, as Jens mentioned, stabilized at 3.8%. Now, if we look ahead, so I said cost of funding. So what does it mean to the NIM? So the reality is that the average duration of our asset is longer than that of our deposits, which means that the pricing adjustments on the asset side take longer to deposit. This is why we are expecting a short-term pressure on our NIM, which could come down a bit in the first quarter before recovering in the second half of the year, with the last 12 months NIM stabilizing around in a range of 3.6% to 3.8%.
So all in all, I would say short-term pressure on the NIM, but expectation that over the full 2026 year, the NIM will stabilize around the same level as now. So this looks at our asset growth in a bit more detail. The key element for me is the continued progress on diversification. So we managed to grow our retail loans by 9% quarter on quarter, and at the same time, our corporate loans and bonds reduced by 2% overall. So this means we continue to deploy more and more of our capital toward the retail segment, which is the strategic segment for us, as you know. I also would mention the slight increase in the proportion of medium and long-term loans this quarter. So this is linked to the rapid expansion of our mortgage books.
And for these books in particular, we have already implemented some adjustments to our pricing strategy in order to avoid the erosion of our NIM. We're also working on cost-cutting activities in order to make up for the NIM stress I mentioned earlier. Portfolio diversification. Again, I think one of the key points this quarter is the fact that we have been able to reduce the proportion of our real estate assets to 56% of our corporate books and 31% of our total credit book. As you are probably aware, most of our competitors at the same time are following the exact opposite direction, increasing their exposure to the real estate sector, sometimes very significantly.
As a result of that, I think it's probably fair to say that we are now increasingly getting close to the industry norm in terms of the proportion of our assets invested in or mobilized in the real estate sector. The other point, obviously, was the very rapid progression of retail loans this quarter. As I mentioned, this was largely driven by mortgages, but we also continued to record some stellar performance in margin lending and unsecured lending, though growth rates, as you can see, were five% and 24% quarter on quarter, respectively, and 69% and 248% on a year-on-year basis. There are several drivers behind this very strong performance. The first one is the continued expansion in our equity brokerage market shares. Xuan Minh will talk to that a bit later.
The fact that we have also transferred the SME segment to the retail bank, allowing a much better coverage of those customers. Our investment also in continued improvement in AI and machine learning underwriting processes. Last but not least, the design also of new and innovative propositions catering to the need of micro-SME and merchant customers. Looking now at the real estate sector, you can see we had a record quarter in terms of mortgage disbursement, so exceeding for the first time VND 40 trillion. There is also a very clear recovery in the real estate market in terms of supply of condo apartments. Then actually Hanoi and its region remained at a five-year high, continuing to improve over 2024.
The supply in Ho Chi Minh City almost doubled year on year on the back of effort from the regulatory authorities to unblock some of the projects which were still frozen, and very importantly, absorption rates remained close to 100%, so I think this makes for a very healthy operation of the real estate market, and meanwhile, we can see that the prices in the north, prices in Hanoi and its region, continue to catch up with the south, even edging ahead actually of Ho Chi Minh City in terms of the primary market, so this is good because it means that the market has now found a balance both in terms of supply versus demand, but also in terms of the north versus the south.
Looking now at our deposits, very strong CASA ratio at the top of the industry, as Jens mentioned, 40.4%, decreasing a little bit from Q3. At the time, if you remember, we were at 42.5%. And the main reason is the context I described earlier, erosion in liquidity in the overall banking system, partly driven by the changes in the tax law. However, we still managed to grow our CASA, Auto-Earning balances, by 17% year on year. Auto-Earning was clearly a very important driver of this impressive performance. But then beyond that, we're also benefiting from a very strong new-to-bank customer acquisition, 2.7 million new customers. And also our improved capacity to convince these new customers to use Techcombank at their main transactions. Auto-Earning, as well as new-to-bank acquisition, amounted to roughly 50% of our CASA growth this year. Turning now to fees.
Overall, I mentioned earlier, 8% year-on-year growth in fees. This also includes a very important factor I mentioned in previous analyst presentations, which is a change in regulatory and accounting rules, which had a very significant and adverse impact on cards and on letters of credit business. Actually our fee income would probably have been showing a growth of around 15%. Important point to note is obviously there are offsets elsewhere in NII or provisions, and therefore the net impact on PBT of those changes in regulations, either tax or either accounting or regulatory, was neutral to PBT. Very strong performance in IB fees, plus 21% year-on-year, and Xuan Minh will talk to that. I would also mention, obviously, a 92% year-on-year growth in our bank fees, very impressive.
This year, as you know, we changed our approach, changed our strategy, and in the last quarter of the year, we also started piloting the sale of products directly manufactured by our in-house subsidiary, Techcom Life. This is the first time that Vietnamese people have the opportunity to buy the products from an insurance company, which is 100% domestic, fully privately funded, and linked to a banking group with unique investment capabilities. Therefore, it's not surprising, the customer feedback that we have received was overwhelmingly positive. I would also call out the very strong performance on FX, plus 37% year-on-year. This performance was attributable to revamped and very convincing propositions, particularly on the retail side. Costs.
As you know, the third and especially the fourth quarter of the year is usually a bit heavy on costs for reasons which have to do with seasonality, particularly for marketing, for communications, and for CSR activities. However, in Q4 2025, so this year, we found opportunities to optimize our costs in staff costs and marketing. And as a result of that, we contained the year-on-year growth in our cost to +7%, which compares to +13.6%, if you remember, for our TOI. This means that our cost-income ratio improved quite meaningfully from 32.7% in 2024 to 30.8% in 2025, which is at the lower end of our target range of 30%-35%. Asset quality metrics remain very strong. As you can see, our cost of risk on the last 12 months basis stabilized around 0.6% and actually 0.4% on net of recoveries.
Meanwhile, our NPL ratio improved further from 1.23% to 1.13%. We're seeing a very encouraging trend, particularly in our mortgage book. So a number of the one-off cases we mentioned in previous quarters in our mortgage portfolio have now been worked out, leading to a significant decrease in NPL ratio. I will also mention the continued increase in our coverage ratio, which makes us an absolute outlier in the industry. Most of our peers are around 70%. I mean, if we focus on private banks only, and you can see that our coverage ratio in the fourth quarter of 2025 actually stood at 128%. Also, another slide which gives a bit more details on our credit costs and NPL.
I think the key point for me is the fact that both Bucket 2 balances as well as NPL balances reduce this quarter, and this despite the significant growth in our credit books. So you can see that the reduction quarter on quarter is of 8% for NPL, and which is even 23.5% for Bucket 2. So this is very encouraging and confirms the fact that we have maintained a very conservative approach to risk underwriting during the whole year. Capital and funding. So our capital adequacy ratio, Jens mentioned it, reduced to 14.6% in the fourth quarter of the year, primarily as a consequence of the payment of around VND 7.1 trillion in cash dividend. You can see, however, that our leverage ratio remains extremely low at 6.6%. This is almost half the industry average. Meanwhile, we maintain mobilizing from customers at around 74%, which is very healthy.
So my overall take is that the funding and capital position of Techcombank is probably as strong as it has ever been. Quick glimpse into how our performance compares on. You can see we continue to outperform the market across all metrics and in a number of areas. Actually, the gap to our peers is starting to widen again. Okay, moving now to the forecast for 2026. Obviously, we remain very bullish on the Vietnamese economy. We believe that it can again grow at an 8% clip in 2026. And there are several reasons we believe that. First, the enhanced fiscal policy with increased disbursements from the government strengthens domestic consumption, supported by initiatives from the government such as an increase in regional minimum wage, personal income tax amendments, and so on and so forth.
FDI inflows should continue to be sustained as Vietnam continues to maintain a stable geopolitical, macroeconomic, and political environment. There's also initiatives from the government such as free trade zones and international financial centers also come to fruition. We are also presently optimistic on exports. We believe that Vietnam will continue to benefit from a favorable position against its peers in terms of tariffs from the U.S. However, we recognize at the same time that the situation is complex, and we will monitor particularly closely how the U.S., the stance of the U.S. with regard to transshipment tariffs. Okay, looking now at our guidance for the full year, first, our credit growth will be in line, obviously, with the guidance we will receive from the central bank. We have received so far a 12% quota.
However, we believe that the quota for the full year will be very strong and higher than that, given our business performance and also given our asset quality. Our cost of funds clearly will go up for the reasons I mentioned earlier. However, we will look to contain that increase. CASA has potential for continuing to improve due to Auto-Earning 2.0, our expansion into merchant banking and transaction banking. The NIM should stabilize around 3.8%, and I recognize at the same time that there is some potential downward pressure to this forecast, but at this stage, let's say around 3.6%, 3.8%, hopefully closer to 3.8%. Our NII growth should obviously be very significant, double-digit. If NIM stays broadly stable and credit continues to grow close to 20%, then obviously the NII will grow very meaningfully. NFI growth should also be on top of what we saw in 2025.
The reason for that is the effort we are making to increase cross-selling and also the opportunity we will have from 2026 to reach a higher performance in the insurance and investment banking areas, and Xuan Minh will present his plan in this respect in more details very soon. Cost-income ratio will clearly remain in the 30%-35% band. NPL will be managed below 1.5%, and credit costs will be managed below 1%. I will now very briefly talk a little bit about how we see 2026, so clearly, the banking sector will face some headwinds in terms of elevated loan-to-deposit ratios, in terms also of pressure on deposit rates. However, we see a number of positives on the economic side.
The government is announcing its intention to continue to step up the public investment disbursements, and that should continue to impact very powerfully and positively the economy in 2026. And there are also enhanced regulatory measures to open up new business opportunities for the banking sector, for gold, gold as well as for crypto assets. So what are the implications for Techcombank? First, we will continue to diversify our credit portfolio. We will look for a better risk-return mix. So we will increase our exposure to infrastructure and the healthcare sectors, leveraging the trends and the priorities of the government. And we will obviously continue to accelerate our growth in unsecured lending. Funding structure is obviously a very important priority for us in the context of tight liquidity.
As described earlier, we will look to continue to grow CASA, stepping up mobile banking acquisition, working on loyalty ecosystem expansion, and also increasing the cross-selling of Auto-Earning with leveraging the fact that this proposition is still unique in the Vietnamese market. Fee-based income, we believe that there is a strong potential to continue to expand it. We will deepen our expertise and capabilities in capital structuring, bond issuance, supply chain finance. We will aim, as I mentioned, to achieve double-digit growth in banking and also develop new fee-generating products in gold and crypto. Xuan Minh will give more details very soon. Then from an operational efficiency perspective, AI will give us opportunities to streamline our processes and elevate customer experience.
And we will obviously leverage this tool to reinforce our OpEx discipline and continue to lead the market in terms of efficiency, and particularly in staff productivity. So to wrap up everything before I hand it over to Xuan Minh, 2025 has been another very meaningful year for Techcombank. We managed to grow our PBT by 18%. We exceeded the AGM target. And importantly, we increased our credit risk diversification and further strengthened our credit and overall risk profile. At the same time, I recognize that there are some clear headwinds for the banking sector, the main one being the creep-up of funding costs and the sustained competition on lending. But at the same time, I believe that the operating and strategic context is even more aligned to the competitive strengths of Techcombank.
Because as Vietnam continues to pivot towards digital economy, it creates new opportunities for financial innovation. Then actually, we will have more opportunities to leverage our dominance in digital banking, our dominance in wealth services. And this will hopefully allow us to accelerate our growth. So it's clearly, I would say, a new era for Vietnam. It's a new era for the banking industry, but it's also an era where we will have a unique and distinctive right to win. With this, I will hand it over to Xuan Minh now for the presentation of.
Thank you, Alex. For me, I think it's going to be the same format. I will take a look at the overall market in 2025, then the operation result for TCBS last year, and then looking ahead, what are we going to do for the year 2026. Basically, we had a very good year.
The market has a very good year last year, both in terms of return on the stock market and also on the activities for the investment environment in Vietnam in general. Market return about 40%, more than 40% last year. We have very strong equity trading volume in the market. The margin lending business is also growing very fast for all the companies, all the securities companies in Vietnam. In terms of activities, we had a few major events last year. For example, we have the stock exchange upgrade in terms of trading system, KRX. We have the market status upgrade in Vietnam to an emerging market by FTSE Russell. We also see a lot of IPO activities in the market. When the market is good, then more and more IPO come in. We also expect that there will be more IPO in 2026 in general.
Not only the stock market, but also in the bond market, we also see a lot of activities in terms of corporate issuance, where we are the leading player in the market. So we are enjoying the trend in general last year. In terms of operation and financial result for TCBS last year, overall, we did very well. We grew about 40%, both in terms of revenue and profit. We have a strong ROA. We have a strong ROE, and we have a very solid cost-income ratio. We continue to maintain the lowest cost-income ratio in the market in general. In terms of market share, we continue to be the leader in the corporate bond market, both on the corporate advisory and also on the distribution.
The wealth distribution business is also growing very fast in a sense that we are introducing quite a number of new products, new investment products to investors or to our customers in general. We continue to be the pioneer in introducing a lot of new wealth products for the clients, especially the high-net-worth and the affluent clients in Vietnam. In terms of stock equity business in general, we continue to be the number one margin lending leader in Vietnam. We have about 11% market share and it's growing about 40% last year. We continue to be the number three in terms of market share in stock trading in Vietnam. We gained only about 1.3% market share last year. Our objective is about 0.5% every quarter.
So we need to try harder, but in general, we try to catch up with the top two and soon to become the leader in the market in general. In terms of the business segments, basically, we see on the core business in TCBS has been growing about 40% last year. It's very strong in the investment banking, investment advisory, in the wealth distribution, in margin lending, and so forth. So our business across the board has been very, very strong in general. Let me break down, let me go deeply into each of the individual business. For the bond business in general, last year we start to see, we continue to see the growth in terms of new issues to the market.
We are reaching about VND 86,000 billion , VND 86 trillion in terms of business advisory, which is roughly about $3.5 billion in terms of advisory last year, which is very high and has been the highest since before the crisis in general, so we are getting to the level of the pre-crisis in 2022. In terms of distribution, wealth product, the highlight is that not only we continue to see more and more bond distribution to retail last year, but we start to introduce a lot of more investment products for our investors. Try to, because we are to help them to diversify and also introduce more and more of the investment product that wasn't available in the market, but has been very popular in other developed markets, and we try to bring it back to Vietnam and try to introduce to our affluent clients in general.
For example, the fund. We have a supermarket fund called FundMart, supermarket for all the open-ended funds in Vietnam, and we have been distributing many other funds from other fund houses as well, and that has been selling very strongly. We have iTracker, we have equity structured products, and so forth to introduce to the customer last year, and therefore, overall, we see the new business has been growing very strong, about more than 30% last year, and we expect that we will continue to see more and more new products coming out, and that will be also one of the growth drivers for us in general on the distribution side. Equity program, the market in general, Vietnam has a very good year for the stock market in general. Our market share again to about 9%, still number three, but we are catching up with other top two very fast.
Our margin continues to be the number one with about 11%, about 11% market share. And we continue to gain more and more. And that's also one of the key drivers for us in 2026 as well. In terms of balance sheet, we have a solid balance sheet in general. Basically, margin lending has been growing very fast. But to give an idea that in Vietnam, the law allows us to do two times of our equity. Currently, our margin volume on equity is only about one time. So we still have a lot of more room to grow this business in general. And another thing is the leverage, how much money we borrow to fund for this margin business in general. Currently, our debt equity is about less than 1%, 0.8% in general.
Therefore, we believe that we still have more room on the debt side, on the borrowing side, on the funding side to fund for the margin lending business in general. Our ROE is steady, and we have a lot of more room for the capital adequacy ratio in terms for the securities company in Vietnam by law. Cost-income ratio is still solid. We continue to try to maintain a lowest level of cost-income ratio and try not to increase the ratio in general. And it has been quite steady at about 14% in general last year and probably going forward as well. We continue to show a very strong productivity because of the use of technology, the use of generative AI, and so forth in our business and our operation. Productivity per employee continues to be increasing quite dramatically year-over-year.
Currently, again, 60% of our staff is actually IT-related. Cost per customer is also pretty solid and pretty low, about $20 per customer in general, and last year, we also received a lot of awards, both in terms of wealth business and also on the technology business as well. Looking ahead, we continue to see the growth and solid business on all of the segments of our business with the strong economic growth in Vietnam, and the market has continued to be opened up in general for new businesses. We see the increase in new bond issuance, very strong in new bond, and we believe that more and more corporates will start to use the capital market for their funding in general in the years to come.
Wealth distribution, as I said, the key is that we continue to introduce more new and pioneering investment products or investment solutions as a wealth product for our affluent clients. And that has been receiving very well in the market. And we continue to see a strong demand in general. Margin lending, as I said, the market is good. Volume has been increasing quite dramatically overall. So we believe that the margin business continues to grow. And also the brokerage market share, as I said, the target is 0.5% per quarter, increase every quarter. Cost-income ratio, we also expect that it's going to be flat or maybe slightly increased in general because we are expanding into quite a number of new businesses. As probably many of you already know, we are looking at core business together with Techcombank. We are looking at crypto business. We are doing peer-to-peer.
We are doing crowdfunding for ECM. We are expanding the ECM business. I think 2026 is probably the year that TCBS started to come into the ECM and institutional sale business for equity in general. We want to be, or we want to do it a little bit different from our peers in a different way where we believe that we can earn a good profit and to serve better in certain needs from the institutional investor. And that is the new business that we are also coming this year. Again, very short, the new business continues to be our strength, introducing new investment products, new wealth products. We try to learn from other developed markets and try to bring it to Vietnam and try to fit it in and offer to our Vietnamese customers.
We introduce new products not only on the equity space, but also on many other new asset classes in general. Then wealth distribution to retail continues to be the focus. And we continue to use technology and also data and data science to somehow try to reach more retail investors in general this year. The use of AI, generative AI, fintech stuff to give a better experience for our customers in general. I mentioned about institutional business in general. We try to get into the ECM in a pretty different way. And also we try to serve the institutional investor for stock trading in general, but in a more non-traditional way. For example, we are developing API to connect to our institutional clients, alternative trading platform in general that we try to develop for our institutional clients, or like Dark Pool that we are going to launch next month.
That's also something that we can offer a unique offering, something that other colleagues may not have in general in Vietnam. And hopefully, that provides more efficiency for our institutional investors and funds. Thank you. And probably I turn back to Jens and we open up for Q&A.
Yeah. Thank you again, Alex and Xuan Minh. Before we move on to the Q&A session, I'd like to highlight a few notes. Based on feedback, to keep the sessions flowing smoothly, we'll skip the questions related to financial guidance or requests for detailed financial metrics that have already been covered in the presentations just now or will be addressed at the upcoming AGM. We kindly ask that you refer to those presentations, which will be posted online shortly after today's event.
Of course, the investor relations team will always be available to answer any further detailed questions once you've reviewed those materials. With that, let us begin the Q&A session. The first question is for Jens on a macro background. In the context of continued global uncertainty, Vietnam remains one of the region's strongest performers with high growth expectations for 2026. Jens, could you please share your view on Vietnam's upcoming economic outlook and how you expect monetary policy to evolve?
Yeah, thank you for the question. I think we talked already about it, and Alex made the comment. We are envisioning somewhere like an 8% GDP growth for 2026. I think right now, as the National Party Congress is basically in session, we see that the target is 10%. That depends a little bit, right? I think you could probably see a trajectory towards 10%.
But again, probably then a lot of things would all need to come together, and we see how this would pan out. But if you think about the underlying drivers, so first one is, I think infrastructure will play a very, very important role as the overall economic model restructures. We're getting deeper integrated into global supply chains. We change and upgrade the production kind of capacity, really going much more into intelligent manufacturing. And it's about sustainable investments, etc. So there's a lot of money which goes into infrastructure, seaports, railways, etc. And I think we have not seen probably that kind of investments in the past. So probably a more expansionary fiscal policy and strong PPPs will probably help on that side. And the real estate sector, Decree 75 and 76, have unfrozen a couple of projects.
We should see this area and actually also getting good momentum. Domestic consumption should pick up. Again, I think we've seen a relatively good year 2025. But if the other elements of the economy are in full swing, then usually that would also benefit domestic consumption. Then probably last but not least, you still have FDI and exports. Of course, there is always an uncertainty at this point in time. But overall, what we saw, and we don't believe that Vietnam will structurally get into a disadvantage of other strongly export-focused countries. And I think so far it has proven to be very resilient. And we expect that this will actually continue. If you think about all the three components of GDP growth, domestic consumption, investments, and export, etc., should actually be relatively strong. Therefore, I think that side should be clear.
Now, what will then the monetary policy do, and I think it will be trying to accommodate. If we're having such a strong GDP growth, 8%-10%, we believe that credit growth will also continue to be strong. I think the SBV tries to be a little bit more caution or exert a little bit more caution at this point in time and give quarterly guidance, making sure not too much money goes into the real estate sector, being just cautious that there's no bubble coming up, but again, I don't think we will see any disruptive moves, and so they will help to basically provide the right context. Of course, monetary policy is a little bit more, how should I say, constrained than the fiscal policy.
As long as you have actually tax revenues, and there's still quite a lot of room also on the public debt to GDP. So I think there is room. And on the monetary side, you always have the question of exchange rates and inflation, etc. But I think we can still see a path where probably we can get below the inflation target, which is somewhere between 3%-4%, as set by the National Assembly. And probably there is a little bit of depreciation of the dong, but let's say maybe in the 2%-3% range. And however, we probably expect still a relatively tight environment. And so we expect interest rates to go up a little bit. We've seen already quite some increases in 2025. Maybe there's another 50 or 60 basis points. But the question is, how will that translate to the asset side?
And again, I think it was very, very muted in 2025. I think as the economy is really completely booming, you will see that credit demand will probably increase. And then probably also interest rates or credit yields will also come up, which is why Alex guided a little bit on, yeah, there's pressure on the NIM, but we hope that we can basically mitigate the increase in funding costs. And we're also seeing that some of that gets translated to the credit side. So from our perspective, therefore, it is a very conducive market environment. And again, we probably have all the tools at our disposal to take full benefit of that.
Thanks, Jens. This next question is for Alex. And as Jens has alluded earlier, infrastructure development will be one of Vietnam's most significant growth drivers. As the scale of national infrastructure expands, banks are increasingly involved in structuring financing solutions that balance opportunity with prudent risk management. Alex, from your point of view, what competitive advantages enable Techcombank to participate in large-scale infrastructure funding while avoiding over-dependence on the balance sheet?
Yeah, thank you. And it's a very good question. It's exactly the kind of question we would ask ourselves before deciding to enter into a specific segment or sector like infrastructure. So the first thing and the first competitive advantage are, I would say, the size of our capital base and the strengths of our funding base, which allow us to play an anchor role in selective projects, including very large ones if we think it makes sense. Obviously, when extending funding to a project, we would always look at the concentration risk, and we would always look to maintain a diversified risk profile.
So how do we do that? Essentially, our philosophy is not to warehouse the risk over the long term on our balance sheet. It's rather to syndicate it out at some point, either to other domestic or foreign banks or directly through distribution in the form of bonds to retail investors. But in the end, we will only retain part of the initial exposure on our balance sheet. And obviously, talking about competitive advantage, the fact that we are the number one in the market in terms of debt capital markets, bond advisory is a critical advantage in this respect.
The third point I would make is that whenever we decide to participate in financing a project, we would also look at cross-selling opportunities beyond the credit dimension itself, though in the form of cross-selling to the anchor investor or in the form of further expansion into the value chain of the project, right? So selling cash management, trade finance products, or FX solutions. So how does all of this come together? So essentially, we would look to step in relatively early, so have an underwriting role very early in the maturity of the project in order to be able to capture a risk premium, so commanding a higher interest rate. Then at some point, when the project is ready and mature for refinancing, we would look to sell down part of our exposure either to third-party banks or to retail investors.
And at that point, we hope to have made enough progress in terms of cross-selling to be able to offset the loss of net interest income in the form of fees or in the form of interest income on other credit products to the value chain. So this is how we would combine all the strengths of the bank in terms of debt origination, bond advisory, and fee cross-selling in order to derive a superior profitability on this activity and avoid the risk of dependency that you mentioned, both from a risk perspective as well as from a revenue perspective.
Thanks, Alex. Next, I'd like to bring in Mr. Xuan Minh from TCBS to address the question on the bond market. Could you please give an update on the key developments in the Vietnam bond market in 2025, and how do you foresee the market trending in 2026?
Well, I mentioned before, our bond business has been very strong last year. In 2025, we grew about 40%. The whole market grew about 40% in general. A lot more bonds and products actually come out to the capital market to raise more bonds or funding for their business in general. With the current environment and the macro environment, expanding economic growth, and also a lot of investment into infrastructure, into private sector, the private sector has been investing into infrastructures as well. And therefore, the demand for funding is definitely continuing to increase in general. And that would benefit us as an investment banking advisor. So in short, I think the market continues to be strong on the fixed income market in this year.
Thanks, Mr. Xuan Minh. Let's now turn back to bank-specific question topics. Jens, could you walk us through the key profit drivers for TCB in 2026? Additionally, how should investors interpret the bank's NIM outlook for 2026 onward, given portfolio expansion into infrastructure and unsecured lending segments that Alex talked about earlier?
Sure. I think if you look through the profit drivers, I think, of course, the first one is kind of volume, right? Which is ultimately what's the credit quota, which will be granted to us. And again, we assume that whatever the current guidance is, if you think about the need to mobilize capital at this point in time, it's actually very, very high, right? If you want to achieve an 8%-10% GDP growth, you need, if you have an inflation rate of, let's say, 4% on top of it. So that gets you to 12%-14%. You put a credit multiplier on top of it, and you get to 18%-20% credit growth.
So ultimately, then the question is, who will help to channel that growth? And I think given our balance sheet strength, the track record of risk management, and our ability because of the capital to actually do exactly what Alex has described, taking on big lots in the beginning and then syndicating it out, which would require syndication capabilities, distribution capabilities. So I think we will actually be getting, again, like what we had in the past, probably over the market average and credit growth. But even if that volume would actually not be there and we cannot warehouse it on our balance sheet, as Alex said, there is a lot of distribution than what's happening that we actually create it. Our customers are coming and basically, I think credit and the expansion of credit, the investments in infrastructure, etc., I think that will be one big driver.
We then need to make sure that we keep our cost of funds under control. That is why we continue to invest in CASA, new-to-bank acquisition, loyalty systems, and Auto-Earning. I mean, all of that will continue to be relevant. Again, I think if you look into our overall funding mix, it's very, very stable. As we said, we actually grew funding more than loans. And whereas for the rest of the industry, actually LDR ratio spiked. So again, I think overall, a lot of the stories we had in the past will actually continue. We believe we can deal with the NIM pressure on the cost of funds by, A, really going and originate an additional fee income. But the other one is also, as we said, we will diversify in high-yielding assets, unsecured lending, etc.
And if you see that portion, and when we looked on the credit side, actually right now, our unsecured portion stands at roughly 85%, and it came down from 90%, so we have a higher proportion of unsecured in our book, while NPLs are still very much under control. So again, I think there's still room to expand the credit yields while maintaining our risk profile and the discipline on that, and then I think there's the whole fee income.
We are actually very, very excited about the opportunities, of course, in the investment banking side, and Xuan Minh talked about it, but also, I think everything on the life insurance, the general insurance, and we have such a high underpenetration or such an underpenetration of these products, and as overall the market recovers and people become wealthier, I think we also see a very, very strong increase already this year.
And we increased, for example, bancassurance 90% overall, again, away from a low level. But I think we can actually continue on that trajectory. So I think there will be not significantly new areas. Again, we will switch a little bit or focus a little bit more on infrastructure, a little bit less on real estate as we continue that diversification, a little bit more on retail instead of corporates, within retail a little bit more on the unsecured side, and then all the fee-based business. And again, I think that will actually help us to probably perform very well next year.
Thanks, Jens. Turning now to TCBS. Mr. Xuan Minh, could you please outline the main profit drivers for TCBS in 2026? I mentioned in the presentation in general the BAU core businesses that we are currently doing.
We continue to see to be the driver and continue to see very strong growth in general for our business. In terms of bond, we also are seeing more and more demand from the corporates in terms of bond issuance. We expect the number to continue to grow in terms of continue to be a higher record in the bond issuance at TCBS in general for corporate clients in Vietnam. Wealth distribution, as we continue to introduce a lot of more and more wealth products on top of bond, on top of open-ended fund. We have equity structured products. We start to come into crypto products. We start to come into more other asset classes, equity-linked structured products.
Then, of course, we are expecting to continue to be the key driver for us to explore because, as Jens mentioned before, the penetration in general in Vietnam for the wealth, for the investment products in Vietnam is still very low. Margin lending and brokerage, as the market continues to see more and more activities, volume trading has been increasing tremendously since the upgrade of the market and also the upgrade of the system at HOSE. And then we're also gaining market share in general in the stock market. So we also see those as the key driver for us going forward as well.
Thanks, Mr. Xuan Minh. Next question is on liquidity for Jens. From an operating environment standpoint, does the bank anticipate any notable upward movement in deposit rates over the next six months? And more broadly, could you please share TCB's deposit funding strategy for the next two years?
As we said, yes, there will be an upward pressure. What exactly is the next six months? In our plan, we are probably going somewhere between 50 to 60 basis points over the next year. And then we should just put that into context because sometimes we forget where we all came from. During COVID, the interest rates came down very, very significantly. Even right now, these interest rate levels would be still probably below the 2018, 2019 pre-COVID situation. So it's not like something we're saying, "Oh, that's now extremely high." It's just probably rather the norm, and we're gradually moving back towards that norm. So from our funding side, if you look into our book, actually, we roughly have 30% in wholesale funding, and we have 70% in customer funding.
And I think we have been able to maintain that pretty much during all these cycles, even right now as LDRs were going up. And you see that our LDR actually moved pretty much sidewards. The funding mix is the same. We actually increased our liquidity buffers very, very significantly because we already moved internally to a lot of IRB ratios and Basel III ratios . So from that perspective, even in all these situations, we have maintained and improved our liquidity situation. And usually, I always say for us, it's really more a question exactly what are you willing to pay and which markets are you tapping. And we're relatively flexible in that, but these are the big broad areas. Now, again, I think it all comes down to what can you achieve, right, depending on the credit quota.
If you suddenly would get a credit quota of 30%-35%, then again, I think all these areas might actually move a little bit differently than if you're going on a 20% growth trajectory. But assuming that we are roughly in line with what we have planned, we believe that we can actually maintain that. If at any point in time it would become like the loans would be getting into a level or the growth opportunities is where the funding would not be as sustainable, and therefore our loan-to-deposit ratios would be going out of control, or we would actually need to do wholesale market funding, which is completely over and above what we find acceptable, and/or we would need to pay for customer deposits.
That's, I think, when our business model comes in very, very handily because in that case, we would probably be saying, "Well, then really try to talk to our customers and basically rather use the bond market and the capital markets and find other ways or we syndicate something out." So again, I think we are like, and I think whoever has followed the bank for quite some time, we are very, very disciplined when it comes to our balance sheet structure, our funding structure, and all of that. We are pretty much investing a lot in order to make sure that these ratios are very stable. As I said, we have not moved a lot. We actually have increased our liquidity buffers in anticipation of that. Our leverage ratios are very, very low.
So we can continue on that, and then we just continue on our trajectory looking for CASA, operating liquidity, wealth management, etc. But again, we also have other ways to adjust, and should there suddenly be a major increase in demands. And that's when we're saying then we would be looking for other models for originate to distribute and tap other financing sources. And then the ones which we usually would use, which is customer funding or wholesale market.
Thanks, Jens. Mr. Xuan Minh, on TCBS funding next, what is the current proportion of financing sourced from onshore loans, offshore loans, and bonds as of the end of 2025? And how do you expect this composition to evolve in 2026? And is the trend shifting upwards or downwards or in any particular segment?
I would say we continue to maintain the balance.
Basically, to eliminate some of the funding risk, we try to diversify our sources into three things. We try to do about one-third of that is offshore, one-third is domestic institutional or domestic banks borrowing from the banks, and the other third is from retail, including the bond issuance to the retail interests as well. So I would say on the strategy-wise, we try to maintain that to make sure that it's more balanced and it's more controllable for us. So there won't be any change in general. In terms of funding cost, of course, as the whole market is, the interest rate is increasing in Vietnam. We do expect an increase in our funding cost in general. We try to compensate that with the funding from retail investors, which is lower in general.
Also at the same time, most of our, for example, the margin business is floating anyway. We can very quickly adjust the margin lending rate to our customers so that we don't get impact on the NIM in general. Even some of the bond that we warehouse in our book, they are all floating anyway, so we don't have any exposure on the interest rate risk in general.
Thank you. Let's now discuss the bank's asset quality. Alex, how should investors frame TCB's 2026 NPL and credit cost expectations given the current pace of credit growth?
Yes, thanks. I think we covered that largely during the main presentation, and Jens also alluded to that. We have a risk appetite, and it's for the NPL to be below 1.5% and for the cost of risk to be below 1%. However, our forecast will be lower than that.
We believe that the NPL in 2026 will be broadly stable compared to 2025, so probably around the 1.2% mark, and this would be a very strong performance, as Jens explained, right, because at the same time, we will also look to expand into higher yield assets where the interest rates are obviously a lot higher, but the risks are also more significant, so let's say a broadly stable NPL, and as far as cost of risk is concerned, then we believe it will also remain in the same range, around 0.6% and 0.4% net of recoveries.
Thanks, Alex. Jens, from a portfolio management perspective, which sectors in your view are likely to experience the greatest asset quality pressure in 2026? And what portfolio control risks, risk filters, or early warning mechanisms are in place to prevent broad-based credit deterioration?
Very good question. So let's start with probably what everyone would say, which is real estate, which is a little bit like an evergreen. And again, given the fact that the real estate sector is always in Vietnam very much affected from a lot of different influencing factors, right, which are reforms, change of laws. And what other alternative investment opportunities do you have? What's the cost of borrowing?
There's always a certain volatility surrounding that real estate sector. But as we have shown in the past, somehow we are able to manage through all of these cycles actually relatively unscathed. And the main reason for that is actually we're just focusing on the basics, which is, is it a good project, right? Is there demand for that project? And is it legally correct? Are we selling it ultimately to the end consumer, or is there a lot of speculative investors in between?
And all of these factors, of course, are influencing and ultimately how much volatility or risk you can have in some of these projects. But as long as you're really going good quality, clear demand for this from an end demand, not from an investor perspective, clear legal rights, then I think you can actually mitigate it very well. And infrastructure is another area. And the reason is because there's so much pressure right now to really get this going and that some probably even of the legal frames and what exact PPP construct will we have, what are some of the concessions. And all of that might be a little bit unclear. And then the other one is, of course, some of the sizes are just very, very big, right? So you have the risk of concentration risk.
You might actually be not able to syndicate everything as quickly as you want to. And some also of the timelines are a little bit different because some might need a much longer time to really turn profitable. So therefore, cash flow risk, etc. I think we know these areas actually very well because we have done a lot in big project investments, maybe not 15, 20-year gestation periods, but again, five years. And we know actually how to do cash flow-based lending and how to mitigate, how to make sure that a lot of these arrangements are in place, how to make sure that we can actually syndicate out, that there are people and other investors who are actually willing to take over parts of the project at a certain point in time.
As long as you're doing that and you look into the right contracts, enforceability, is there the right backers? Again, I think you can actually also handle this. Then last, I would probably mention export-import trading. There's just the continuous flux of tariffs, of restructuring, of supply chains of different countries and different trade blocks erecting borders. That will be with us and still quite a bit. I think even if you are the best operator, and if you are caught in the wrong markets, etc., then I think you might actually be trapped up. Ultimately, it really comes down to what are we really financing? Is it more machinery? Is it working capital? Are you going for a certain transaction? Are you really monitoring the demand?
Are you going to a single exposure producer who's either saying, "I have a very limited product line. I only delivered exactly to one more next manufacturer or exactly just to one country"? And I think by really averting these kind of non-diversified exposures and relatively going broad, so for people who are doing broad trade across multiple areas, multiple jurisdictions and regions, I think you're actually relatively okay and also not committing capital for too long, but rather do working capital. So I think real estate, infrastructure, and exports and imports, by definition, are the big, big drivers anyway in the economy. So from therefore, I think as this expands, you would expect pressure there. But then again, I think it comes down to the right risk mitigation strategies. And as you can see from our books, we probably know how to handle these risks.
And otherwise, again, I think we will probably abstain and not going too deep into areas which we really don't understand or where we're not feeling comfortable.
Thanks, Jens. Next one's for Alex. In the recent quarters, TCB indicated an intention to expand unsecured lending to support credit growth and mitigate NIM compression. How will the bank manage credit risk exposure from this segment while still meeting growth and profitability goals?
Very fair question. So the first thing is obviously about the effectiveness of the underwriting. And this depends on, first, the credit rating models and second, behavioral analytics. In those two areas, we use complex machine learning and AI models that we keep refining over time. And we would leverage typically also non-traditional data, such as transaction patterns of customers, their digital footprint, any signal we could also capture on social media.
And this would essentially help us form an understanding about the credit worthiness of the customer, even potentially in the absence of information from the credit bureau. And the second part is early warning indicators. So it's about being able to capture very early any signs of stress on the part of the customer in order to take some preventive measures, like initiating a recovery of our exposures or stopping disbursements. So by combining these two dimensions, we believe we can preserve very good control about the cost of risk and reach a level of return on risk-weighted assets, which is in the range of 5% or more, which is more than 50% higher than what we would be able to achieve on traditional secured lending, even higher margin secured lending like real estate. So obviously, it's not something that you can achieve without significantly investing in those analytical capabilities.
It took us time to get to where we are now. But I would say the maturity of our approach, underwriting models, behavioral analytics, predictive analytics is sufficient to allow us to confidently expand into and secure the very high growth rates that you saw around 25% quarter on quarter, which is very significant. So yeah, I think we stayed away, we shied away from this sector for long, and now we are really resolute and organized in order to make this strategic shift happen in a way which is completely controlled from a risk perspective.
Thanks, Alex. Turning to loan growth direction for 2026, Jens, how does Techcombank view the credit growth trajectory across both corporate and retail portfolios? And could you please share TCB's roadmap for tightening credit exposure to real estate? Specifically, which business segments do you think will receive the relocated credit room?
So again, I think good question, and I think we talked probably already a little bit about it. So first one is we want more retail, we want less corporate. And I think that's what we said. And again, I think mortgage is a good opportunity, but also unsecured credit is a good opportunity. SME lending is a good opportunity. As Alex rightfully said, in the past, it really required different business models, which we tested, developed, and now we feel actually that we're relatively okay in that area. Real estate sector, yeah, I mean, the good thing is that basically what the Central Bank is guiding is what we're already doing.
As we said, or as Alex said, other guys are actually and other banks are increasing their real estate exposure, whereas we are actually decreasing our real estate exposure, and we're probably becoming a little bit more rather the norm, whereas with others going a little bit up. From that perspective, we anyway have the intent to diversify it, and we made this comment beforehand that somewhere between 20% to 25%, from our perspective, is a good number, which we want to achieve until 2030, and we are continuing to do that. As you can see from the numbers, we are committed to do it. Then where will this go? Again, we also talked about infrastructure, and we'll go into the financing also not just big infrastructure projects, but all the way down in the value chain.
And we think health and care, health-related loans will actually be required quite a bit. That's a good area. And then I think there's a lot of the diversified sectors we're calling FMCG, utilities, etc., where there's still a lot of strong domestic demand and where we can actually participate. So again, I think it will go away from the corporate side into the retail side, and there are also unsecured SME and household merchants, and then infrastructure and other growth sectors, which are mostly driven by domestic consumption. And we still believe that ultimately these are the areas which will be stably developing, and we just want to participate in those.
Thanks, Jens. This next one's for Mr. Xuan Minh. Turning to TCBS's new business initiatives, could you please update us on the progress of new business areas such as gold and crypto? What is TCBS's overarching strategy and expectation for these emerging segments?
Let me go with gold. Crypto first. Crypto, basically, we submitted the application, and then probably we are going to get licensed in about three months. Could be earlier, depending on the regulatory body. Basically, we are ready in the sense that we already have set up the platform, the system, the processes, and everything. So hopefully, when we get licensed, we can open the business next day. In terms of gold, currently, the law allows banks to do physical gold. So basically, TCBS and TCB has been working very closely on this business, and we're also waiting for the license. And when we have the license, we may launch it and have our TCB Gold physical gold product initially, probably next month.
And then after that, we continue to look and work with the authorities on some of the digital gold products and derivatives in general. And that is something that we don't have the legal framework to do yet, but I think it's pretty soon, perhaps in 2026, that we can have that in Vietnam, and therefore, we will participate on that space as well. Can we make money, or can we become a big contributor to our business? I don't think so. I think probably in the next one or two years, there will be a very minimum contribution to our main business. The core driver for our business is still the business that I mentioned before. But this is the future, a new asset class for us.
Hopefully, we have this to provide a full portfolio in terms of asset allocation or wealth allocation to our clients, and therefore, we can attract a lot more clients at one-stop shop in general in Vietnam.
Thanks, Mr. Xuan Minh. Last question on dividends for TCB. Jens, could you please share Techcombank's dividend plan for the coming years? Do you expect the bank to pay a higher cash dividend, and has there been any consideration towards the share dividend?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. Again, I think I'm coming back with the first standard answer, which is rightfully, and that is the prerogative of the board, and the board will decide what they will do.
We came back when we took up the dividend policy that we said is we should be able to start when we start paying dividends, that we actually should be able to continue that. You've seen our overall growth in the earnings and our earning capacity. Of course, also, there were certain events like the TCBS IPO. Then you look into our leverage ratio, which is relatively low. I think you can also, and there have been broker reports coming out, talking about the impact of Basel III on capital and how that might actually affect the capital position of banks. I think if you take all these things together, you see that we are in a very, very strong position compared to a lot of our other peers.
And again, we can and we want to basically maintain the dividend policy on which we have embarked. And in the past, you saw there were stock dividends in it, and there were cash dividends. And what exactly the concrete amount is, as I said, that will be very much up to the board. But we are actually, as I said, in a very strong financial position. And so that and whatever the board decides, we can implement. And I think what is also fair to say that with the growth going forward of the economy and the aspiration of kind of 10% GDP growth, as well as the stretch on the bank balance sheets, right, that this will start consuming capital.
I think, again, we've seen that quite a bit from other banks where the capital adequacy ratio, which already compared to our ASEAN peers is relatively low, might actually get further stretched. We probably need to see, I don't know, 28, 29, 2030, as we right now embark on that new journey, how will that affect the capital position of the banking industry, of the overall banks? We will see what happens and in what form the SBV will allow the adoption of internal ratings-based models compared to the standardized approach, and what are the implications on the capital position of the banks. That's why already in the past, the board basically said we will look at what we want to do.
And also made the comments that we don't want actually to fall somewhere below 15% CAR ratio, basically based on a Basel setting, and also made the comment that we actually want to maintain as possible a self-funding approach, but as I said, that's a little bit up in the air going forward, so probably rather than the 2028 and later years, and at this point in time, as we said, our capital position is very strong, and our earnings potential is very strong, and the growth is still completely in line with what we had anticipated, so it will be up to the board to decide what they want to do and how they want to either change or maintain the current dividend policy which we have put in place.
Thank you to Jens, Alex, Xuan Minh, and the broader management team for the insightful updates, and to all analysts and investors for your thoughtful questions. This concludes our 2025 fourth quarter financial results presentation. The presentation and replay link will be posted on the investor relations section of the website soon. Please, of course, feel free to contact the IR team for any additional questions. We look forward to continuing our dialogue and delivering sustainable value to all our stakeholders. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.