Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Techcombank and Techcom Securities' first quarter 2026 financial results presentation. Today's session will begin with the 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. Nguyễn Xuân Minh , Chairman of Techcom Securities, will share detailed insights on TCBS's performance, and we will then conclude with a Q&A session. Our management will present in English, and a live Vietnamese translation is available via a separate link. As usual, there will be a dedicated Vietnamese call for retail investors on a separate session conducted tomorrow. The session is expected to last approximately 90 minutes. With that, I would like to hand it over to Jens to begin the presentation on Techcombank.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. I think it's probably fair to say that these are very interesting times and a lot of macroeconomic volatility, and it's kind of hard to predict exactly how things are developing. In the context of these things, I believe we actually have shown a very strong performance in the first quarter. If you take a look at the numbers on TOI, PBT, and the growth is actually quite substantial. We have done quite okay on the NII side as well as on the NFI side. Our return on assets and return on equity is in the range of what we had guided, and also CI ratio stands actually at a relatively low level of 28.3%.
At the same point in time, all the measures which are indicating the strength on our balance sheet, be it capital, but also NPLs and when it comes to loan loss coverage ratios, et cetera, are all market leading. I think we are very well prepared for any kind of uncertainties and volatilities which might still be coming in our way. First quarter looked quite okay also from a macroeconomic perspective with 7.8% GDP growth. Again, as I said, there will be uncertainties along the way. We'll probably have a little bit more time to discuss those also when Alex will talk about the guidance. Overall, as I said, the first quarter, which was probably a little bit less affected from the turbulences we're seeing right now, showed a very robust performance in line with our prior performances.
again, I think we are on a good track. We are in the right segments. We are with the right capabilities and positioned. with that, let me hand it over to Alex to go in deep.
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Yeah. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. We'll start as usual with an overview of key macro data points affecting banking conditions. As Jens explained, the environment is clearly complex, including on the geopolitical scale. I think the key message will be largely similar to the previous quarter. The real economy remains very strong. However, we see increased pressure on the liquidity side, though as Jens also mentioned, the reading for the first quarter's GDP was quite commendable, +7.8%, supported by a good progression of exports +19%, and also FDIs both months, +8%. However, we could see some emerging signs of stress in other areas. Deposits only increased 0.4%, well below the growth of credit at 3.2%. Meanwhile, inflation edged up a little bit to 3.5%, and interbank rates increased sharply, showing therefore a very tight situation in terms of liquidity.
This explains why, broadly speaking, across the system, we are seeing pressure in terms of CASA and pressure in terms of funding cost. All in all, I would say strong macro fundamentals supporting credit demand, which is good, but also tightness on liquidity, which is pushing up funding costs and therefore compressing margins. Jens mentioned it, the performance of the bank in the first quarter was quite strong, particularly in the context of the complex environment that we had to navigate. PBT reached VND 8.9 trillion, which is +23% year-on-year, supported by a very robust increase in TOI +18%. NII expanded 15%, including the impact of some NIM compression, and we will come back to that later. We had a stellar performance from fees +47% year-on-year. Cost of risk was well controlled and provision expenses reduced by 14% year-on-year.
Overall, I would say this is a strong quarter, which confirmed that our earnings growth is coming from a good balance of volume, mix, and fees and is not coming just from balance sheet stretching. We will go now to the usual focus on our wealth business. The key message here is some temporary pressure on margin, which we will explain, but also a continued expansion and structural expansion of our franchise. Our AUMs grew 74% year-on-year. The number of affluent customer increased also double digit + 61%. The TCBS continued to make progress on equity brokerage, increasing the market share to 9%. We continue to dominate also the market on bond advisory with an 86% market share. The only area where we saw some quarter-on-quarter softness was on investment banking fees.
The main driver here was margin in the context of higher deposit rates, but also some pipeline delays. If we look ahead, then I would say the trend and momentum are strong and wealth in general remains one of our big bets and strategic pillar. This slide is new and aims at shedding a little bit more light on our digital banking business, which we are using, as you know, as leverage for operating model advantage. The key takeaway here is increased engagement, driving efficiency as well as monetization. The number of digital customer reached 13.7 million, up 23% year-on-year. Digital transaction value also increased 23% year-on-year. Our cost-to-income ratio reduced sharply to 27%, showing the ability of our digital business to scale at diminishing marginal cost. I also wanted to highlight the fact that 95% of our retail transactions are today performed entirely digitally.
In other terms, transaction banking and digital banking is continuing to be a critical driver of our CASA and fee monetization strategy. This slide provide a little bit more details on our margins. I know that the key point that you are interested in the net interest margin. We saw some pressure in the first quarter on that front. We guided accordingly three months ago, if you remember. This is not really a surprise. The key message is that it's mainly temporary, including also some one-off effects, which will not repeat in the second quarter, therefore temporary and not structural. The main reason were obviously the increase in our cost of funds to 4.2%, which is 60 basis points higher than the previous quarter in a context of intense competition in the market.
On the asset side, the yields increased a little bit, but less than on the deposit side. Plus 10 basis points. The reason is essentially asset duration as well as the high-quality liquid asset buffer that we are maintaining. Those HQLA assets are essentially placed with the central bank, are not subject to any repricing, and that also explains why there is a lag in the increase of the yields on the asset side. However, if we look at the last 12 months NIM, then it still stand at 3.7%, which is a very healthy position.
Going forward, we believe that the shift toward lower duration assets and also the expansion into higher-earning products like unsecured lending, will allow us to offset the cost of funding pressure that we are seeing, and therefore, we believe that for the full year, and particularly in the second half of the year, there will be a significant recovery of the NIM with the full-year level, which should be broadly in line with what we had in the 2025, which means, I would say maybe a little bit below 3.6%-3.7% would be my best guess as of today. Here, you see also how our credit books have developed. I would say a healthy expansion led by retail. Consolidated credit grew 20% year-on-year, and within this, retail credit grew even faster, +33% .
Our medium and long-term loans expanded a little bit faster than short-term loans, which is due to the disbursements of mortgages and infrastructure in the infrastructure sector, where duration is a little bit longer. During the first quarter, our growth remained quota-constrained as opposed to demand-constrained. However, as we enter now the second quarter, then we are free to expand our books by up to 12%, which is significantly more than the 3% that we had to maintain in the first quarter, and therefore you can expect the growth in the second quarter of the year on the asset side to be on a very different trajectory compared to the first quarter. This is another important slide which shows that we are staying on track and continuing to make substantial progress on our strategy to diversify our assets.
The proportion of real estate credit in our total books reduced to 29%, which compares to 31% at the end of the previous quarter. Most of the growth is coming from retail and SME with a broad-based contribution across a variety of products. As an example, secured lending increased close to 160% year-on-year, margin lending increased 47% year-on-year. Therefore, the key takeaway is that there is a continued shift at a high pace toward the direction which has set and which is meant to protect the NIM, as well as control our concentration risk. This slide provides, as usual, an overview of the real estate market. As you can see, there is continued recovery with healthy fundamentals. Our mortgage disbursements exceeded again VND 30 trillion.
This was an area where some people might have had some concerns in terms of whether the increase in interest rates would have reduced the appetite of retail borrowers for mortgages, and the answer is no for the first quarter, and also no for what we're seeing in the first weeks of April. Meanwhile, early repayments remained also within the historic range, pointing to good liquidity on the part of borrowers. Primary market in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh remain strong with a lot of transactions and a continued upward trend on costs. In other terms, the market is functioning very healthily. As we will see later on the risk side, the health of our credit books in our mortgage space remains very good, which is giving us confidence in the resilience of our retail credit.
This slide focuses on deposits, and as you know, this is clearly one area where the market has experienced some stress in the first quarter. The reality is that we had to defend our deposit balances, particularly the deposit balances from the most affluent customer, against a very aggressive pricing from our competitors, and therefore we had to push up the rates on our deposits, which increased by around 70 basis points during the first quarter. Our CASA ratio reduced a little bit to 37.9%, and the reason is essentially the impact of the higher term deposit rates, which are essentially incentivizing customers to transfer their cash to a higher earning product like term deposits. However, on the positive side, our corporate CASA proved very resilient. Balances increased 3% quarter-on-quarter and 40% year-on-year.
If you look ahead then you may probably know that on the 9 April, the central bank initiated a concerted action to control the rates on term deposits and setting an objective to reduce six months and 12 months rates by at least 50 basis points. We acted promptly, proactively reducing our rates on these tenures by 50 basis points. Beyond that, I would say that our focus is continuing to be on expanding our structural strengths in terms of deposit franchise, as opposed to engaging into a pricing war with our competitors. As an example, in the household and merchant segment, we are seeing very good traction of our new T-Shop proposition, which is essentially an integrated proposition for sales and sales management and collection.
Similarly, in the mass affluent segment, we will soon be making some important announcements which will also support the expansion of our franchise. Our base case for the coming quarters as regards deposits and deposit pricing is some further easing of the market-wide interest rate pressure, combined with continued expansion of our structural franchise on deposits. Let's look now at our fee income. I mentioned that at the beginning, this is clearly an area where we had a stellar performance. You remember probably that I mentioned it last year, the performance on the fee side was largely impacted by accounting changes on cards and on trade services, and this somehow obscured the underlying momentum in the business. This quarter, we no longer have these effects, and you can see, therefore, quite visibly the strengths of our business and fee services, which becomes more clearly.
Our fee income grew 47% year-on-year, reaching the highest level of record, and this performance allowed our return on assets to stay broadly constant at 2.3% despite the contraction, the compression of our NIM. If we look into the details of our fees, then insurance had a remarkable performance, more than doubling TOI compared to the first quarter of 2025, which is largely attributable to the launch of full-scale operation of our life insurance subsidiary, Techcom Life. On LC cash and settlement, we had a similar level of growth, +160% year-on-year, more or less, which is credited to the effort we have made in terms of product innovation and also product digitization. Very strong performance as well on FX, which is the seventh consecutive quarter of growth.
I would say there is one area, as I mentioned already, where we saw a little bit more softness, which is investment distribution. This is largely due to the competition from higher earning products or from earning products like term deposits, which has forced us to reduce our distribution margin. However, with the expectation of moderating interest rates going forward, then I would say the perspective for the coming quarters remains very strong, particularly the demand from customers for bonds in particular, remains very high. Overall, I would say our fee performance illustrates the benefit of having a diversified business model, which helps stabilize the volatility of the earnings, particularly in a context where we see a compression of margins in the market.
This is another slide, shedding a little bit more color on our life insurance subsidiary, which, as you know, came into full operations in January of this year around a very simple concept. First one is a very limited range of products, mostly Universal life and some riders, but very customer-centric and with extensive guarantees. For example, we have the best and the longest death benefit guarantee in the market. The second important differentiator is that it's a highly specialized company. It has essentially one market, one partner, and one distribution channel, which means it's able to really organize its products and product distribution approach to be fully integrated into the bank. As an example, we are able to process our new policies end-to-end in less than five minutes in the majority of cases, which is quite impressive.
The third leverage is the fact that it's the newest and youngest life insurance company in the market. It has been designed from the very first day around a cloud-first and an AI-first architecture, which allows the company to be extremely efficient. On that premise, it's not really surprising that the feedback and the reaction of the customers was extremely positive. Actually, it even surprised us on the positive side. In the first quarter of operation, we therefore reached the number one position in the bancassurance market with a 21% market share, which is 5% points ahead of the next competitor. We reached a 9% market share in the overall market. Obviously, we don't want to stop there. We believe that this life insurance business has significant potential to scale.
Beyond that, we also believe that there are very important synergies for the bank, particularly in terms of product cross-selling or customer acquisition that we will be able to leverage in the future. The key point is that we have now access to a new engine of fees beyond TCBS, providing low volatility, recurring sources of income. Moving now to cost. We delivered a very strong performance in term of cost efficiency this quarter with a cost-to-income ratio of 28%, cost reduced by close to 20% quarter-over-quarter, driven by adjustments on bonus provisions and adjustments also on sales incentives, but also some optimization of marketing.
If you look year-on-year, then the increase is +18%, largely driven by other operating expenses, which is a category where you will see the costs incurred by the group in the setup of the two insurance subsidiaries, but also some lumpy discretionary items like consultancy costs or conference costs. The overall point for me is that we are continuing to operate at a very high level of efficiency and with the AI investments that we have initiated, and we believe that this trend will accelerate and therefore will be able to enjoy in the future consistent positive growth. This is a slide now on our credit risk. As you can see, our cost of risk stayed broadly stable at 0.6%, which is quite low, and 0.4% if we include recoveries.
NPL edged up only slightly to 1.16%, and organic NPL, so excluding the impact of the credit bureau, was mostly stable at 1%. Meanwhile, Jens mentioned that our loan loss coverage ratio continued to strengthen to 129%, which is well ahead of our competitors and provides significant downside protection on earnings. Overall, the health of our credit books is very strong, and it's also stable. This slide, as usual, provides some transparency on our credit risk and provisioning. The point you can see is the stage two formation, which is ticking up. However, it's mostly early stage and it's also, we believe, largely seasonal. Therefore, at this stage, we're just monitoring the situation and taking some proactive recovery measures. The key points for us is that we don't see any signal of systemic risk emergence.
The risk environment more generally is in line with the guided assumptions. Looking now at capital and the liquidity position. Our Capital Adequacy Ratio strengthened this quarter to 15.2%, showing the benefits of the asset diversification strategy and the pivot toward retail books in particular. Liquidity funding position remained very strong. Funding structure remains broadly stable despite the tight liquidity situation in the market. We are not resorting more extensively to wholesale funding in order to finance our growth. Overall, our fortress balance sheet remains a critical pillar of our business model, which gives us optionality in terms of our credit underwriting strategy. This slide shows how we compare to the rest of the banking market. As you can see, we continue to outperform our peers in most metrics. We'll turn now to our forward-looking guidance. We are still bullish on the Vietnam economy.
As you can see, we are revising our forecast for GDP growth for the full year to 7%, compared to 7.8% in the previous quarter. This is just to acknowledge the fact that the Iran war could have some limited impacts in three areas. First one is manufacturing and export due to weaker overall demand in the U.S. and in Europe in particular. The second one is domestic consumption, which could be a bit impacted if inflation was to rise. As of now, we are currently expecting inflation to be around 4.2% for the full year. The third one is the impact of the higher transportation cost on tourism, particularly international tourism. However, the government is still adamant that they want to achieve at least 8% growth for the full year.
Given that they have full control over a very important policy lever, which is the fiscal policy, I think we cannot completely rule out the possibility that the Vietnam economy still reaches 8% growth in 2026. This is now our forward-looking guidance in terms of 2026. Obviously, credit growth will be in line with our quota. We believe we receive a strong quota given our business performance, our asset quality, and also the effort we're making to support infrastructure investment of the country. Our cost of funds clearly is now coming to a point where probably it will not be able to go down again to the level achieved in 2025.
However, we expect some moderation of the growth in the coming quarters due, in particular, to the concerted action initiated by the central bank, but also, as I mentioned, continued effort on our side to grow CASA, particularly in mass affluent as well as household and merchant. Our CASA ratio, therefore, should improve from where it is now. The NIM, as I mentioned, might be a little bit below where it was in 2025, but still, I would say around 3.6%-3.7%. As a result of that, the NII growth will be significantly accelerated compared to what we had last year. Same for NFI, particularly given the fact that we were able to grow NFI by 47% in the first quarter. Our cost income ratio would be in the same ballpark as 2025, NPL as well, and definitely below 1.5%.
Credit costs will also remain around the level we observe in 2025, which is 0.6%. Coming to the guidance we will announce and present in AGM on Saturday. We presented, as you know, in the report, which was attached to the resolution for the AGM. We guided on two possible scenarios, recognizing that we needed to be cautious. It was early stage in the war, in the conflict in the Middle East, and we did not really know how long it would endure and also how intense it could be. At this stage, the numbers you see here reflect the base case and reflect our best assumption in terms of how the performance of the bank should develop in 2026. Our profit before tax should hit at least VND 37.5 trillion, which is an increase of 15% compared to 2025.
At this stage of the year, we have already achieved 24% of this VND 37.5 trillion target. I would say we're therefore on a good track to hit the target and hopefully exceed it. The outcomes of our strategy, I think are also quite visible already in terms of earnings mix, in terms of efficiency, and in terms of risk. Insurance, wealth, and digital are also continuing to show huge potential to scale and huge potential for efficiency improvements. I'm not even mentioning here the further upside which could come from the AI adoption in the bank. Though on the things which are in our control, I would say we are quite optimistic in our capacity to deliver a very strong year. With this, I will hand it over now to Nguyễn Xuân Minh for the section on the performance of our Techcom Securities subsidiary. Thank you.
Hello. Basically, as we all know, there are so many problems in the world, with the war and then in the Middle East, and then the commodity price and so forth. Also in Vietnam, we have a rising interest rate environment in the past few months. Despite that, our business continue to be strong, carry over from last year. In the first quarter, our revenue has been growing about 37% in general. The profit increased only about 11%. Basically, the main question here is why our revenue grows much faster than the profit. The short answer is that the financial expenses has been increasing because our cost of fund has been increasing in the environment, especially in Vietnam, that we have the deposit and the lending rate in Vietnam has been increasing quite a lot in recent months. Overall, in terms of business, everything remains solid.
We continue to be the number one in bond advisory business. In first quarter, basically, we are probably the only player in the market. We control about 86% market share. We are number one in margin lending. Our margin lending business has been growing very fast, with the new equity funding from last year. We continue to see the ratio in terms of margin lending per equity is very low at TCBS, and we have a lot more room to grow in general coming to the year. We are number three, still number three in terms of stock trading in general, and number two in stock trading in Hanoi Stock Exchange. Let me go through the picture on the capital market in the first quarter for Vietnam in general. Basically, Alex talked about the macro. We continue to have a strong macro picture in Vietnam. We have good GDP.
We have manageable inflation. Even though we foresee that there's some increase in inflation going forward in the coming quarters because of the commodity price, the oil price and so forth. Overall, it's good. We have the interest rate environment has been not very favorable in Vietnam, so the funding cost is higher for most of the businesses in Vietnam in general, from fourth quarter of last year and carry into this quarter. The capital market is not too bad. We increase about 6% in terms of the VN-Index in the first quarter. The volume trading has been very good. We continue to see a lot more interest from the investor, both from foreign and local investor coming to market and trade more. The market become more liquid in general.
We have the secondary emerging market status update that is going to be official in September of this year. It's not really a new news, but in general, it creates certain sentiment for the market in general in the first quarter. Overall, it's good. The bond issue, usually the first quarter is a seasonal low-end season for the bond issuance in Vietnam because most of the corporate, they need to wait for the audited financial statement, audited annual report in general, in the first quarter to be finished in order to be able to issue more bonds. We will see the pickup quite dramatically in the second quarter and third quarter of this year. That also reflecting in our book building currently. We will see a lot more bond issuance in Vietnam in second quarter.
In terms of business performance, overall, investment banking business, especially on the bond issuance business, has been going strong. We grow about 27% in the first quarter. The margin lending is strong. It's currently about 50% of the total income in the first quarter. I expect that because the margin business is pretty stable in general, we have a balance sheet, or we have an AUM on the lending, and it continue to earn interest quarter-over-quarter. It's pretty stable. The bond distribution has been weak, especially weaker compared to first quarter of last year. I think mainly because of the higher interest rate environment in the deposit. More people would tend to go into the deposit more. We don't see a significant drop. We actually see an increase in distribution, in bond distribution or wealth product distribution.
The margin on bonds, especially in the rising interest environment, we see is shrinking in the first quarter. Basically, we make less money on the trading fee on the bond distribution business for retail in the first quarter. I believe that the trend will get better in the second quarter and then the third quarter in general. Most of our bonds are floating, so there's a lag of about three to six months in terms of interest rate, but then the bond will be reset to a new level, and we will make more money on the bond distribution business in the second quarter and so forth. Let me have a deep dive into the three major businesses. The bond corporate issuance, as I said, we have about 86% market share in the first quarter of this year. We advise more than $1 billion in general.
This has been strong and will be going pretty strong in the second quarter and third quarter of this year. On the distribution, the volume is not too bad compared to first quarter of 2025. Basically, seasonally, we have long holidays as well in the first quarter, but in the second quarter, we will see a pickup in the distribution volume and also in the margin on the business in general. The market has not been very strong in general, so we see a weakness in fund distribution. Basically, we have a marketplace for all the funds, like a supermarket for funds in Vietnam, that we distribute funds from many asset management companies as well. We see a slow demand so far in the first quarter. I think mainly because of the uncertainty in the stock market.
The market had been very volatile in general, and also the global geopolitical situations that are also impacting into the performance of the market. People tend to be reluctant to put money into funds. They tend to prefer to put into fixed income, term deposit, brokerage and margin lending. Our market share has been increased about 1.4% in terms of market share, 140 basis point, if you compare with the first quarter of 2025. In general, the retail trading market share at TCBS has been increasing quite strongly. The only thing that impact our first quarter market share is the institutional trading. We don't have a lot of institutional investors in general trading with us. Most of them are retails, and that somehow impact the overall market share of TCBS. That's why since the first quarter; we have been moving into serving the institutional investors as well.
We start to introduce new features that other competitors don't have to offer the institutional investor. For example, we launch dark pool for our big institutional investor clients who want to trade without swinging or without getting notified in the market in general. That has been received quite well by some of the funds that are trading with us. We launch pre-funding; we launch the Bloomberg connection so that the institutional client can trade easily via the Bloomberg platform. Margin lending, in general, has been strong. We continue to see the strongest trends in this, and we still have a lot of room for more margin lending in general. We see that will continue to carry very strongly in the second quarter and third quarter of this year. In terms of cost, our cost stays similar to last quarter.
In general, we don't expect a lot of cost in staff, for example. Most of the cost that has been increasing, mainly in the absolute term on IT expenses. We have been moving very aggressively, together with Techcombank, into the AI space, and we try to bring AI to all the employees in TCBS to use and to try to cut down on the inefficiency in general and improve our productivity. That has been the trend, and we continue to invest very strong into AI in this year. This is probably one of the main strategies that we move in this year at TCBS. In terms of the balance sheet of TCBS, it's very straightforward and simple. Our margin lending per equity is about 1x, so we have about another 1x to go. In Vietnam, the maximum you can lend is about 2x of your equity.
Currently, it's only at 1x, so we have a lot of room to offer more margin and more lending to our investor in general. Capital structure. Our debt equity is also less than 1%, so the balance sheet has been very strong. I think the keynote on the structure of the balance sheet is that we have been trying to move some of our lending to offshore. We do syndicated loan with Asian investors or Asian banks in general and increase that portion somehow to hedge against the potential uncertainty in the very high-interest rate environment in Vietnam. We see that in the past when in a low liquidity and high-interest rate environment, then the domestic banks in Vietnam tend not to give out credit to a financial institution like TCBS.
We try to hedge that and increase the offshore lending to make sure that our lending business, our margin lending business, will stay stable in general. The negative impact on that is somehow the interest rate and the hedging cost because we fully hedge all of our lending, our borrowing in general. We don't want to have any exposure in the FX risk in general. We fully hedge on the loans we have with international banks, and the cost has been quite high in general compared to last year or 2024. That's also impacting into our financial expenses, and therefore, the profit growth has not been strong as the revenue growth in general.
We continue to be emphasizing and pay a lot of attention to AI, how to institutionalize or democratize AI into the daily work of all our staff in TCBS, and we also received some award in that area as well. Outlook for 2026. Basically, we expect that in 2026, we will grow about 26% in terms of revenue. In terms of profit, it will be about 18%-20% is the base case. Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty, but also there are certain opportunities for us. The macro picture in Vietnam has been very strong, and if it continues to be very strong and continue to have a lot of demand in terms of funding in Vietnam, then this is our base case for us in general.
On the negative side, if there's certain negative development in the war and the uncertainty on oil price, on some commodity price, and the interest environment in Vietnam continue to be high, then it could be some downside. I think these are the target that are pretty much achievable for us in the year 2026. Both in the investment banking area, we do have still a lot of demand from the corporate in terms of bond advisory. The wealth distribution, we expect it to be strong, and probably stronger than last year, starting from the second quarter of this year. Margin lending business is very solid, and we continue to earn quite good size of profit in general. We continue to see an increase in margin lending book for us in 2026 and so forth. Funding, I mentioned about the diversification of funding for us.
We try to have more offshore loans to balance out the domestic loans from domestic banks in general, so that we manage our lending book better in general. Technology and AI, this year, this is probably the year that we start to expand into many other new businesses within the financial service space. For example, the crypto, the digital gold, P2P lending, some of the new structured products in general. We also try to set up a subsidiary in the new IFC center in Ho Chi Minh City, TCBS subsidiary, the securities license in the IFCs as well. With that, the strategy is that to maintain the current level of staff and employees, but we will invest heavily into AI to increase significantly our productivity and to be able to expand into more businesses without hiring a lot of more people in general.
That has been the strategy of this year, and we will be doing this. With that, thank you. I will turn back to the team, and we open up for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Jens, Alex, and Nguyễn Xuân 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 presentation just now or will be addressed at the upcoming AGM this Saturday. We kindly ask that you refer to those presentations, which will be posted online shortly after today's event. Of course, the IR team will 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 the macro- outlook. In the context of heightened global geopolitical tensions, does Techcombank have an internal assessment or outlook on the Vietnamese government's GDP growth target?
How does this outlook translate into expectations for credit growth across the banking sector?
Thank you for the question. Yes, of course. Probably would not be doing our job if we would not look into the scenarios. I think the scenario which Alex presented is basically our base case. The base case would say we're at 7%, probably took off 0.8%, and the internal assumptions which we had were around 17% credit growth for the market. That would bring it down maybe by 1% and let's say 16% would be in the base case scenario for the market, which is probably roughly in line with what the central bank has guided. Again, there are some uncertainties in it because as Alex rightfully mentioned, there is a big unknown, which is the efficiency of the fiscal policy of the government. There's a lot of room for spending, and there's a lot of funds available.
If really the government comes out and goes with a very expensive fiscal policy and supporting a lot of projects, and as a new government is coming into place, there might be again, upside. Right? The downside scenario, which is again, if you're saying 60% is maybe the base case, there is a chance that things might not be turning out as hoped. That would be really a protracted situation in the Middle East, and the flow of oil would be disrupted, more uncertainty, and the markets would probably react with higher interest rates. The Fed might find it a little bit harder to really lower interest rates, and there might be a flight to the US dollar. Depreciation and pressure on some currencies, et cetera.
If you put that together, and we might be ending up in a scenario of maybe around 5.5% in GDP growth. Again, that would assume that the dollar price per barrel of Brent Crude would actually stay at an elevated level of maybe at around $100 per barrel for a longer period of time, which would mean a substantial uptick from the $65 before we went into the war. That would actually probably bring down credit growth rather maybe to a 12% trajectory because just then there will not be so much demand. As I said, the transmission mechanisms in here would mostly be on cost-push inflation because a lot of the inputs, especially also in infrastructure projects, but close to everywhere, fertilizers and agri-products and even ship production and the dependency on the Middle East and the oil production is actually tremendously substantial.
We would have cost-push inflation as well as probably higher interest rates and more elevated foreign exchange depreciation pressure. That would then translate into different sectors. Let's go maybe sector by sector. Of course, real estate would be to a certain extent affected on both sides. One, demand might actually be going down a little bit just because interest rates are getting higher. Then also at the same point in time, input costs might be a little bit higher. Again, I don't think this will be so tremendous because I think there is still actually a lot of good positive momentum as Alex has said, where even despite the high interest rates and we saw actually demand. That would actually be okay. Industrial real estate, and that might be coming down a little bit.
FDI might be the main reasons because maybe if global demand is really weakening, are you expanding your production capacity, et cetera. If FDIs are coming a little bit down, industrial real estate might be affected. Construction and companies same. I think today there were already some information in the press like for example, Long Thanh Airport and where it becomes harder and harder to find people while at the same point in time the input costs are actually increasing. Key export-oriented services or industries, they might also be affected if global demand is reduced. If you take a look at the latest forecast, we are basically 20 basis points down. If you take IMF forecast from global GDP growth 3.3%-3.1%, but that is still assuming base case scenario.
That is not assuming really this protected situation which would then bring it further down, which would also mean apparel, electronics, all of that would be coming down. Plastic, automotive sectors might also be affected while at the same point in time probably EV cars which are quite important also right now and for Vietnam might actually see even more demand especially if fuels are coming down. I think it's a little bit of a mixed picture. Again, when we look into this downside scenario and as I said it might be 5.5% GDP growth maybe then 12% kind of market growth on the credit side with constant pressure on pricing and probably also NPLs might be going up as some companies might actually struggle
with the surrounding environment. That is the main reason why we basically then put another scenario forward for the AGM and said, okay, if we're getting into that scenario, it might be difficult to hold the 37.5%. This is not our base scenario. Our base scenario is exactly what Alex has presented, and with an even still upside to that scenario, depending on if it really gets over relatively quickly and the very expensive fiscal policy is coming out, we could actually see a different scenario which goes closer again to the 8% up. Again, that's then an upside scenario compared to the base scenario which we're talking about.
Thank you, Jens. This next question is for Alex. What is the bank's view on outlook for the USDVND exchange rate and domestic interest rates, and has Techcombank revised its net interest margin forecast for 2026?
Yeah. Thanks for this question. As we mentioned, there is a level of pressure at the moment in terms of funding for the banking system in Vietnam, and this somehow also reflects the overall monetary situation of the country. What we have at the moment is also some pressure coming from the higher cost of input, so higher cost of imports, particularly for fuel, like for oil and gas. This combines with potentially also a relative slowdown of the growth of exports, and therefore the trade surplus of Vietnam could be a little bit more constrained in 2026 compared to 2025. Then overlaying this context is the interest rates, and particularly now the perspective that the Fed could keep rates stable or even increase them in light of inflationary pressure in the U.S., and investors are taking that into account as well.
They are revising their scenarios, and we believe this could put some pressure on the value of the dong, and that's the basis for us to expect maybe a 2% depreciation of the dong versus the US dollar. Your second question was on the level of interest rates in the market. I will not come back to the NIM but focus just on the level of interest rate in the market. As you know, there's been some very rapid escalation of the pricing competition between banks in Vietnam. We estimate that interest rates on deposits probably increased around 100 basis points in the fourth quarter of last year, and 140 basis points, that's for new deposits, 140 basis points in the first quarter of this year, including negotiated rates, which are maybe a little bit more difficult to capture if you're just observing the quoted rates on internet.
As I mentioned, an important development was the decision by State Bank of Vietnam to implement a concerted action to bring costs down by at least 50 basis points at the six months and 12 months tenor. In addition to that, we can see that the State Bank of Vietnam is very willing to inject liquidity in the market to avoid any situation of extended stress through open market operations or through foreign exchange swaps. This is essentially the basis for us to currently assume that interest rates will moderate a little bit in the remainder of the year, maybe reducing by 30 basis points, 30-40 basis points.
Thanks, Alex. Let's bring in Nguyễn Xuân Minh for a bond market question. With market deposit rates remaining high around 8%-8.5%, corporate funding costs are elevated. How does TCBS assess the outlook and capacity for underwriting corporate bonds this year? Are smaller issuance sizes becoming more common as companies explore alternative funding channels?
Basically, there are two components, the demand for volume, the demand for more corporate bond issuance in general. We see and we actually are having the bookings in general, and the pipeline has been very strong. A lot of demand from corporates in general. In terms of the interest rate, basically, that somehow, I believe that also impacts the demand to some degree as well. Because with the rising interest rate, basically on the bonds we do issue, we always have a floating rate. It's usually the deposit rate plus certain margin 4%, 5% in general. And of course, when corporates now issue bonds, then they will need to pay for a higher interest rate for us to be able to sell to our investors in general. Net, the demand for corporate bond issuance has continued to be strong in general for us.
We don't see a decline yet in terms of book building for us in this year in general. Higher interest rates than the corporate bond interest rates will also be high in general. In the long term, if the interest rate remains very high, in a high-interest rate environment in general, in the long term, it may impact. I believe that in the current environment, in general, if you borrow 12%, 13%, even 15%, then it's very hard for business or for corporates, in general, to make good money or to make good margin because the financial expenses is pretty high for them in general. We believe that the interest rate environment would come down. Hopefully will come down somehow in the second half of this year, but it remains to be seen in general. That's the situation.
First, the demand is still very strong from the corporate side.
Thank you, Mr. Nguyễn Xuân Minh. Back to Techcombank. This one's for Jens. What is the bank's liquidity strategy under scenarios of increased market volatility? Have market risk management frameworks, particularly foreign exchange risk and interest rate risk in the banking book, been reassessed or adjusted?
I think from a risk management perspective, that is a little bit "business as usual" for us. I don't think we need to readjust the frameworks or the governance principles. I think what we need to adjust is ultimately the parameters against which we are stress testing. Of course, if you have a situation like with U.S. dollar and VND or oil price, and we need to assess that. In general, we are really keeping a lot of our market risk very limited. For example, if we're doing foreign exchange on lending, we would actually hedge the entire position from an FX perspective, but even from an interest rate perspective. We're also not gapping very much, so we're really matching short-term and long-term funding. Of course, there needs to be some kind of translation, but ultimately, a lot of our loans are floating.
We can adjust the interest rate so that we can actually really have a match if we need to adjust our funding, because most of that is three to six months term deposits, which then, if interest rates are increasing, we basically also translate that on the corporate side. From that perspective, again, we don't need to change any of the frameworks. We look into the interest rate of the banking book, and we have changes in equity values, and what are the risk if one basis point changes, how would this translate into our overall position, et cetera. I mean, all what you would expect from a bank to have under an SBV regulations, but also under Basel III regulations, is actually available, and we're using it.
Then the last point I would like to make is, as Alex has said, we have a very conservative stance towards liquidity. We're probably having the highest buffer in terms of highly liquid assets, which we can, at any point in time, basically take to the central bank for liquidity. That costs, to a certain extent, a lot of money, but I think it really keeps us in very good standing. Therefore, yes, we're seeing the volatility, but we don't expect that this will affect us in a major way, even if the volatility might even increase.
Thanks, Jens. The next question is for Alex on customer impact and portfolio exposure. To what extent has Techcombank's customers been affected by the geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East? Have recent market fluctuations had any noticeable impact on asset quality? In higher risk environment, does Techcombank prioritize growth or balance sheet safety?
Yeah. Thanks. The short answer is that we do not expect any significant impact from the developments in Middle East on our customers. We have looked at the proportion of our customers who are in the oil and gas sector, in logistics, or in sectors directly related to oil and gas. Then what we have found is that this proportion is very small, like 0.6%, which supports our estimate that the impact would be insignificant in the short term on our books. As you've seen during our presentation, the current health of our credit books also supports this view.
In terms of our underwriting strategies, obviously, we are particularly vigilant with regard to those customers who are operating in sectors particularly exposed to the Iran war conflict, either from the point of view of their imports and inputs, or from the point of view of their sales and therefore markets. At this stage, we are not seeing any significant situation requiring action. We are just, I would say, tightening a little bit our underwriting policies, maybe also staying ready to step in proactively if there was any early situation of stress. However, I would just highlight that we are only a few weeks into this conflict. There is also a possibility that a solution might be found in the short term, and therefore we do not believe that it would be appropriate to make drastic shifts in our underwriting and risk approach just now.
I think it's just too early.
Thanks, Alex. Now back to TCBS. Nguyễn Xuân Minh , could you please update us on the licensing progress and launch timeline for tokenized assets?
Well, basically, a lot of people apply. So far, we have a shortlist of five companies to be considered. I believe that currently our applications as well among them are being considered by various ministries in general. The timing I wouldn't know, but I expect that it will be probably in the third quarter of this year. From our side, basically, parallel with the application, we also develop on the platform on the back end and prepare everything on the processes so that we can be ready in terms of operation and open for business probably a day after we get the license. This is the status. We continue to work on developing our platform and the exchange and some of the systems to be able to run the business, and to start the business as soon as we get the license.
Thank you, Mr. Nguyễn Xuân Minh . Let's now turn back to the bank-specific topics. Alex, could the bank share the current mortgage lending rates? Please also comment on the change versus the beginning of the year. In addition, what is the average floating rate of the existing real estate loan portfolio, and how much has that declined from peak levels in 2023?
Yeah, very happy to do so. Overall, when we set the rates on our mortgages, we will look at the competition because the reality is that even though we have a significant market share for mortgages, we are a price taker, we are not price setter. Therefore, we would look to always maintain a competitive position while ensuring that the return on our risk-weighted assets would meet our criteria. I think the difficulty with mortgages is that, as you know, you have a fixed rate period usually at the beginning, and therefore, when you set the rates, you have to take into account the possibility of further increases in the coming months after you underwrite the loan. The current level of interest rates on new mortgages is around 10.3% for the initial fixed rate period.
We would set the rate for 12 months, let's say, at around 10.3%, which compares to 12.5% in 2023 and around 7% at the end of last year. Interest rates, as I mentioned on the new term deposit rates, increased by 240 basis points, and we adjusted the rates on mortgages broadly by the same quantum, taking into account also the possibility of a further increase during the interest fixing period. As regards the floating rates or those mortgages which are in the floating rate period, then the rate currently is on average 12% in our books, which compares to 13.3% at the peak in 2023.
Thanks, Alex. Next question is on TCBS. Nguyễn Xuân Minh, could you update us on TCBS' pricing strategy for margin lending in the current high-rate environment? Will you prioritize maintaining NIM or lowering rates to attract clients?
Basically, currently, TCBS is number one in terms of margin lending in the market. Even though that, we only have about 11%. Our target is always that we need to reach about 20% market share level in general. The strategy has been that we try to continue to increase our margin lending and using a few strategic advantages or strategic direction. Basically, we try to be very competitive on margin rate in general, and therefore, agreeable on lower NIM for us in general. Basically, we try to do a very competitive rate to win customer from the market because our market share is only 11%, so we have so many other room to grow our market share. Also providing additional and unique services to the customer that is using our margin in general.
Of course, at the same time, we try to be more strategic on the funding cost. The idea is how to continue to drive down the funding cost in general, especially in this environment. The funding, I think, two key factors that we need to pay attention to. The stable funding sources. That's why we try to diversify into offshore lending as well, offshore borrowing as well, to make sure that we have a stable funding for our investors and therefore winning more market share, especially in the current environment in Vietnam, where liquidity is somehow pretty tight at the domestic banks in general. We try to take advantage of that. We try to take advantage of borrowing lower interest rates from international banks compared to our competitors as a competitive advantage to win more market share on the margin lending.
As I mentioned before, our margin lending size per equity for us is only less than 1x. In Vietnam, the maximum you can do is 2x of your equity in general, and most of our big competitors are actually reaching that level. We still have a lot of room for growth, and we also try to take that advantage to win more market share and win more business from our clients.
Thank you, Nguyễn Xuân Minh. Staying with TCBS, another question on funding and financial expenses. TCBS's financial expenses increased significantly. What drove the increase in cost of funds? For the U.S.-denominated borrowings, could you update on pricing versus domestic loans, the rationale for foreign borrowing, and how hedging is managed?
I mentioned before, we try to balance the funding source from both domestic and international markets as well. International market, basically, you can borrow at lower cost in some degree, but more importantly, at a longer duration or tenure in general. In Vietnam, if a financial service like TCBS borrowing from domestic bank, you can borrow very short-term in general, and that somehow creates certain uncertainty, especially on the tight liquidity environment in Vietnam, like a couple of months ago. Therefore, we prefer to choose a safer side to manage our borrowing. We try to increase the offshore funding.
For example, we just recently signed a nearly $500 million syndicated loan from offshore, which is good, and that would provide us a very stable income in the next few years, stable loans and funding in the next few years, and somehow to fund for the growth of our margin lending business in this environment. Basically, that's the strategy. Currently, the hedging cost is high, and therefore that somehow impacts our financial expenses. For the long term, I think it's a good strategy, and I think it's a much safer and more prudent strategy for us to pursue this business.
Thank you. Now a hedging policy question for Techcombank. Alex, could you please elaborate on the hedging policy applied to U.S.-denominated borrowings and confirm whether the hedges fully cover the tenor of the underlying debt?
Yes, thanks. I can indeed confirm that our policy is to cover our FX exposure, and therefore we have a very low appetite in that area. The FX exposure is managed by the treasury function and the business as part of the first line of defense within the bank's risk appetite and then is also subject to the control of the risk function as a second line of defense. Though, as I explained, our approach is engineered to cover our FX exposure, so we use foreign exchange swaps, which are consistently rolled over. We would sometimes keep an open position depending on liquidity requirements and depending also on market situations, and other ways. As an example, as of today, we have a residual open position of $100 million, which is a long US dollar position.
Overall, I can indeed confirm that we are not taking any meaningful risk on FX or foreign exchange interest rates.
Thanks, Alex, for confirming that. The next question for you is on mortgage credit risk management. Against the backdrop of deposit rates trending upward again, how does Techcombank assess the debt servicing capability of mortgage borrowers? What is the outlook for potential NPL formation from this segment, and what is the provisioning strategy to address these risks?
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to get back to that important point. As I mentioned, there was a question mark from investors and also something we wanted to see, which is the impact of the higher interest rates on the mortgage market. As I mentioned during the presentation today, we can see that the market is operating well. There is no real sign of stress. Our disbursements remain high, both during the first quarter and during the first weeks of April. Same for our repayments. There is no real sign of deviation. What we can also observe is that within the mortgage borrowers, there is a higher proportion of people who are taking a mortgage to buy a property to live in the property, so for a real housing need as opposed to buyers who would be more speculative and seeking a capital gain.
This is obviously positive in terms of the overall health of the mortgage market. Yeah, in terms of the NPL therefore, we do not currently anticipate any significant increase. We believe we will stay broadly in the same ballpark as of today and same goes for provisions. With regards to provisions, we are strictly applying the policy of the central bank, which is very prescriptive and formulaic in terms of how much provisions you need to book based on how much collateral you have and also based on the number of days past due.
Thank you. A follow-up for you, Alex, on the mortgage portfolio. Is there any observable difference in credit quality between primary and secondary mortgages? Does the bank have a target allocation for these segments, and what is the split between owner-occupied loans and investment-related mortgages?
Yeah, thanks. Basically around 60% of our mortgages are primary mortgages, and therefore 40% are secondary mortgages. I would say there is no significant difference in terms of behavior between these two types of mortgages. If anything, primary mortgages are probably a little bit less risky, though the NPL rates would be maybe at 1.7% instead of 1.9%. This is due to the profile of the borrowers. We are usually talking of relatively higher segment properties, therefore, with a different kind of profile of borrowers. We are working in close coordination with the developers, which have been working with us for a number of years, which also gives us more opportunities to proactively manage any situation of stress.
With regard to the proportion of speculative buyers versus end users buying for housing needs, I would say more than 50% of our mortgage borrowers are seeking to buy a property in order to live in it. The exact proportion is difficult to determine, but a majority, and as I mentioned earlier, an increasing proportion of them are essentially buying to live in the property rather than buying to speculate. However, I would say there is still a proportion of buyers who are also looking to make capital gains. This is not specific to Vietnam. I think it's a feature in Asia. People do buy real estate properties for asset accumulation, for wealth preservation, also for inflation protection, even though they are not making any significant investment return because the rental yields are not very high.
In any case, what we would do is that we would look to combine the three criteria, which are repayment capacity, so the borrower needs to have a clear plan to repay the loan, in terms of liquidating another property, inheritance, asset disposal, whatever. They need to have a recurring income, and therefore the capacity to service the debt. And three, the loan-to-value would be set at a conservative level, typically, 70%. This is the combination of criteria which ensures that basically we are able to maintain the NPL and the cost of risk at a very manageable level on our mortgage portfolio, whatever the segments we're looking at, whether we're looking at speculative buyers versus home buyers and end users, or whether we are looking at primary mortgages or secondary mortgages.
Thanks, Alex. Next question is on TCBS. Nguyễn Xuân Minh, could you update us on TCBS's plan to develop and grow your institutional client base?
Yeah, I mentioned before that we see the trend of institutional investor coming to Vietnam increasing and increasing. We believe that it's a right timing for us to start to come into that marketplace and try to serve our institutional investor in general. We have been trying to develop certain features and certain services that is unique to us, and we don't want to be me too, following the traditional in the same way that many other peers are doing. A few things, for example, we develop our dark pool. We try to connect with many service providers and trading platforms so that our client, the fund, can easily trade very low touch in general, with very high speed for us in general. For example, dark pool, we are developing that.
DMA, we develop a lot of connectors that can connect directly with the trading platform of some of the big institutional funds in the world so that the trader can trade very easily and transparently with high speed. We develop certain Prefunding feature with very high Prefunding allowance or services or size so that the institutional client have more room for their investment into Vietnam in general. Basically, we are trying to come into that space, and we hope that we can increase more market share in general from the institutional investors in general going forward.
Thank you, Nguyễn Xuân Minh. Now shifting to insurance. This one's for Jens. Could you share more about Techcom Life? How do you expect its contribution to fee income to evolve, and what milestones should investors watch as indicators of progress over the next strategic cycle?
Thanks again for the question, and I think Alex has already shared a couple of points, but maybe it's good to reiterate on some of those. First one is, I think the reason we set up the insurance business is that we believe it's really very critical going forward as a lot of questions of an aging population, but also a richer population is coming up and what kind of products are required, and I think insurance is critical to those. I think at this point in time, and the expectations we had for that business are probably over and above what our own initial plans were. As Alex said, more than 20% market share on the bank insurance side, being the fifth largest insurer and/or a growing insurer when it comes to an APE.
I think that all speaks for the fact that there probably is a need for an insurer like ours. What does it mean? First one is, we try to be very customer focused, don't have such a broad product range, really be very focused on protection and certain accumulation, certainty, just reliability, and I think that's what our customers actually like. At the same point in time, we are trying to deliver that through a very modern platform. The fact that we have set up this company in a very short period of time, but also that 95% of all the insurances are actually straight through and processed and in a very short time, and policies can be issued, is all due to the fact that we actually have a very modern technology platform.
In addition to that, we are completely leveraging all the data technologies and the data tech stack, which we have built in TCB and can be leveraged in TC and Ally, but also actually in our general insurance business. That means these companies from the onset are AI ready, and as Nguyễn Xuân Minh actually has said, we are pushing very hard to shift these whole models right now on the AI side. Not just for productivity, I think that's one point, but I think also creating completely new value propositions in terms of understanding customers and being able to serve customers around the clock, giving advice, et cetera. From our perspective, we have shown VND 400 billion APE, and I think the overall income of that is around VND 440 billion in the first quarter.
As we had said, we believe that probably in five to 10 years, and we believe that this business probably can be as large or even bigger than what TCBS is right now. The real things to watch out for is actually, ultimately, are we continuing to grow at the current level? What's the product penetration? I think internally we're measuring a lot of questions like customer satisfaction and how are we delivering straight through processing efficiency ratios and all of that. Ultimately, we have relatively aggressive acquisition targets and penetration targets, but also persistency targets. Which means that are we selling it in the right form that people are really using that product as a long-term investment and protection vehicle and not what we've seen in 2023, unfortunately, that a lot of these persistencies were actually very low.
Therefore, again, I think when we submitted the original plan, there were some targets for the growth. I think that is probably the lower end and what we had submitted, and we might actually be even more aspirational, but it's very clear we want to be, probably over the next five years. From a stock perspective is a bit hard because others have been, let's say, more advanced or longer in the market, and so therefore they have a bigger amount of total premiums, premium volume. Again, I think from our perspective, in two or three years, we want to be the fastest growing insurer from all insurers in the market. Right now, we're number five, so we want to be on the APE side and to be number one.
In bancassurance, again, I think we are at the 20%, and I think we would like to be somewhere in the 30% range. Because we believe there's a lot of opportunity still for us. Then I think what you will also see and what you should be looking for is we will expand our distribution range. You would expect us probably to set up an agency networks, but in a very different manner. I think we will not set this up in the way how it's currently seen in the market, but probably much more as a professional financial advisor and who are very much focused on these insurance products. It will not be quantity which will make a difference here, but actually the quality. That is in our plan, probably ready for next year. We're testing and targeting these models.
Again, as I said, 30% in market share on the bank insurance side and plus being probably in two or three years, the fastest growing overall insurance company in the market, and that's what you would and should expect.
Thank you, Jens. Next question is also for Jens on new digital payment initiative. Regarding the launch of MobiFone Digital Payment JSC, where the bank is a strategic shareholder, could management update us on the business objectives and Techcombank's role going forward?
Again, I think rightfully we are a minority shareholder, so we're having an 11%, so probably it's more for MDP to comment on these objectives. Again, I think what is out there in the public domain is that MDP really tries to be in creating new backbone for the digital payment infrastructure as Vietnam goes to Digital 4.0. There's a lot of demands on really real-time and digital payment infrastructure and being able to have a multimodal connectivity across all the different participants, fintechs, banks and consumer finance companies, merchants, ecosystem partners. At the same point in time, having a much higher level in terms of services when it comes to reconciliation and anti-money laundering, et cetera. I think that is what MDP tries to provide.
It's not that NAPAS is not a stable provider of these services, but I think there was the feeling and that there are probably certain services which are required in the market which are not provided, and the feeling was that this company, MDP, could actually provide those and maybe in a faster and more effective manner. Our role ultimately is that a little bit of advisor but also lead customer. We are the largest user of NAPAS. Our market share on NAPAS transactions is around 16%. If you would think about a super user and for such payments, which it probably would be us. Our role is to a certain extent saying what is needed and at least from a banking perspective, one of the largest transaction banks in the country.
The systems are very much kind of basically taking up these requirements and are geared towards that. At the same point in time, we are also receiving the benefits of these new systems because as we going on them and we'll channel a lot of our transactions through these systems, we will actually be the beneficiary of all these new services coming up. At the same point in time also, we are providing expertise how to build systems at scale, right? Our own systems, we have increased our transaction volumes on our systems over the last couple years by four times. We know actually how to build scalable systems and how we can actually make sure that these things work and relatively seamlessly stable levels and quickly.
Again, it's advisory functionality and at the same point in time kind of being a super user who helps to fine-tune these systems. Again, right now we are on the system, and we are basically clearing with one other bank already and quite a lot of our transaction across that system. It performs actually as expected very well. Then as we start rolling it out, we believe there will be benefits for us as a user of the system, which we can then give to the ecosystem, to merchants and also financial institution partners.
Thank you, Jens. Finally, a shareholder return question which we have received multiple times. Could the bank share the dividend payment plan for this year and the key principles guiding the dividend decision going forward?
You're absolutely right, and I think this question comes up often, and I think usually I give the same answer. This time, of course, it will probably be even maybe a little bit less urgent because we have the AGM in two or three days, and then I think it will probably be very clear. Let me share what I believe again the considerations are and what we might most likely see. We are seeing a very strong performance of the bank, and we see that our capital is very strong. It's close to double that of the regulatory minimum. If we look into Basel III, if we would cut over to IRB systems and the capital would be even higher. I think capital-wise we are very well equipped and the earnings momentum is strong.
As I said, we have in the past said that we can have a dividend policy which would justify going forward and to pay dividends should the board decide to do so. At the same point in time with all these uncertainties, right, which we're having right now, the question is, are you let people participate through stock dividends or are you doing cash dividends or what is the perfect mix between these two? Again, I think the board will probably deliberate on an overall mix between these two instruments, and then I would expect that to be coming out on, as I said, over the next two or three days should they decide to do so because it needs to be announced before the AGM.
Again, I think from the core conditions where we said enough capital, enough earnings momentum, we need to internally finance our credit growth and all of that in place, I think there is room to do stock and cash dividends. Again, ultimately this is up for the board to decide.
Thank you everyone. On behalf of Techcombank, Techcom Securities, thank you to Jens, Alex, Nguyễn Xuân Minh , and the broader management team for today's insightful updates. Thank you to all analysts and investors for your questions and continued support. This concludes our first quarter 2026 financial results presentation. As mentioned before, the presentation materials and replay link will be posted on the IR section of our website shortly. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to the IR team. We look forward to continuing our dialogue and delivering sustainable value to our shareholders. Have a great rest of the day.