Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to PT Bank Mandiri's third quarter 2023 results briefing, and thank you all for joining us today. My name is Laurentius, Head of Investor Relations, and together with us today as speakers, we have Mr. Darmawan Junaidi, our CEO, Ibu Alexandra, the Vice CEO, Pak Siddik, Chief Risk Officer, Pak Sigit, our CFO, and Pak Tim, our IT Director. Before we start, I strongly encourage you to download both our presentation material and financial statement currently available on the IR webpage of Bank Mandiri. Please note that the Q&A session will be opened after the presentation, and participants who wish to ask questions can use the Raise Hand button in the Zoom app, wait for your name to be called and your microphone to be unmuted.
Questions typed in the Zoom chat box are not prioritized in this meeting and will likely be addressed after the call by the Investor Relations team. We're also happy to take questions via emails afterward, and we'll try our best to reply to your questions as soon as we can. Now, to start the presentation, I would like to hand over to Pak Darmawan, our CEO. Please, Pak Darmawan.
Thank you, Lau. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to start by delving into the macroeconomic aspects that are shaping our current landscape. Overall, we anticipate a stable economic growth at 5.04% for 2023, slightly lower compared to the 5.31% achieved in 2022. This moderation can be attributed to the stabilization of commodity prices. However, we remain optimistic as we expect a robust interplay of factors, including increased household spending, government expenditure, and investments to bolster the GDP outlook. We also see encouraging trend on inflation rate at 2.28% as of September 2023, and projected to hover around 3% by December 2023. This result also backed by BI decision to keep benchmark rate high at 5.75% since January 2023.
However, BI eventually decided to increase the benchmark rate to 6% on October 23 as part of BI plan to stabilize rupiah exchange rate against strong dollar, in which our economists projected that BI will maintain benchmark rate at 6% level until the end of 2023. Nevertheless, Bank Mandiri continues to exhibit exceptional performance, achieving above industry year-on-year growth in both deposits and loans. These accomplishments can be attributed to our relentless pursuit of excellence through the ecosystem value chain and our successful digital strategy, which has further strengthened our market share within the Indonesia financial system. As a brief overview of our strategy, we continue to pursue a value chain ecosystem approach, which focuses on mobilizing the Mandiri ecosystem to unlock its full potential. This strategy serves as our enduring growth engine, sustaining our competitive advantage in the dynamic market landscape.
To ensure the realization of our ecosystem potential, we are committed to making the necessary investment in system upgrades, cutting-edge technologies, and talent development. While striving for market share growth, we remain steadfast in safeguarding profitability. The graph on the right-hand side illustrates that our Bank-only loan share and ROE have increased. At the same time, our Bank-only CASA share has been maintained at 17.9%. The matrix illustrates that our ecosystem approach will not only boost our market presence, but also enhance overall financial performance. Our value chain ecosystem growth strategy is more than just a short-term plan, it's a long-term priority for the bank. This approach will serve as our enduring growth engine, sustaining our competitive advantage in the dynamic market landscape. Moving to the results.
Overall, we believe that Mandiri delivered a strong performance as of September 2023, with all financial metrics within the bank's guidance, if not better. As you can see from the charts on the right, loan growth is slightly up than our guidance at 12.7% year-on-year, and the net interest margin was on the higher end of our guidance. The cost of credit as of September 2023 is also slightly lower than our guidance at 0.96%. More detail will be provided later. As usual, we identified our strengths and challenges during the quarter. Our strengths include the overall trend in loan growth, net interest margin, non-interest income, and asset quality management. Additionally, we achieved progress with digital innovations and successfully launched new offering during the third quarter of 2023.
On the other hand, we face challenges related to trend in cost of fund, liquidity management environment, and selective retail growth. Next, this slide provides a summary of the bank's consolidated performance as of September 2023, showcasing positive trends in most metrics. As of September 2023, our consolidated net profit after tax and minorities' interest experienced a growth of 27.4% year-on-year, and the pre-provision operating profit surged by 15.4% year-on-year. These figures were primarily driven by a noteworthy 12.7% year-on-year growth in loans, and a substantial 12.8% year-on-year increase in CASA deposits, resulting in high CASA ratio. Moreover, the consolidated net interest margin as of September 2023 improved by 17 basis points compared to the previous year, reaching 5.59%.
Additionally, the bank demonstrated decent growth in non-interest income, maintained a positive trajectory in cost efficiency, and effectively managed the cost of credit. Consequently, both return on assets and return on equity continued to increase, reaching healthy levels. As of September 2023, our ROA after tax stood at 2.60%, while ROE, including minorities, remained high at 22.5%. These figures reflect our commitment to delivering sustainable and healthy financial performance and value to our shareholders. This slide summarizes the bank's consolidated third quarter of 2023 performance, and as you can see, most metrics, matrices trended positively. On loan growth, Bank Mandiri Group recorded a healthy level of 12.7% year-on-year growth in September 2023, and 11.9% year-on-year on bank-only level, both of which are higher than the industry loan growth.
We see an encouraging acceleration on our retail segment, which can be represented by the strong growth in credit card, payroll loan, and mortgage. While this may be driven by macro-related factors, it should be highlighted that our digital ecosystem also helped in fostering this growth. The bottom left chart shows trend of retail loan bank-only growth breakdown based on value chain. In line with our strategy, almost 30% of retail loan has been driven by value chain, with a 15.6% year-on-year growth, indicating that the ecosystem value chain loans have been growing faster than the non-value chain counterpart. Our digital enabler, Super App Livin' and Super Platform Kopra, have driven loan acquisition significantly. Payroll loan and credit card Power Cash disbursement from Livin' has increased 337% year-on-year on bank-only level.
Similarly, business loans disbursement through Kopra has grown 37.3% year-on-year on bank-only level. This highlights the significant role and potential of our digital solutions within our ecosystem. Next, I would like to share some trend highlights in our bank-only loan yield and deposit cost of fund performance. As previously mentioned, one challenge that we faced this quarter was the rising cost of fund. From the top left, we can see that the cost of deposit increased Q-on-Q to 1.67%. This was due to some pressure in the deposit competition, which resulted in an increase of special rate deposits, as shown in the bottom left graph. However, our yield continues its upward trend and shows significant improvement, both Q-on-Q and year-on-year. Thus, despite the rising fund cost, our yield increase can offset the rising cost of funds.
This can be seen from the positive trend in our NIM that continues to grow Q-on-Q to 5.35%. Next, on non-interest income. In the third quarter of 2023, our total consolidated non-interest income was IDR 9 trillion, an improvement from both Q-on-Q and year-on-year. This performance was largely driven by transactions from our digital ecosystem, enabled by the expansion and enhancement of our digital ecosystem, namely our retail one-stop solution, Livin, and our wholesale digital comprehensive solution. From the right chart, we can see the breakdown of the recurring fees category, that Livin and Kopra are main contributors to this growth, whereby Livin grew by 12.2% Q-on-Q and 30.4% year-on-year, and Kopra grew 4.4% Q-on-Q and 10.2% year-on-year.
With our continued focus on further developing and optimizing our digital ecosystem, there is ample room for improvement in non-interest income for the bank going forward. Another noteworthy driver is the non-interest fees from subsidiaries, accounting for 20.7% of the total, and significantly increased 12.2% Q-on-Q and 23.4% year-on-year. We are passionate on delivering many exciting, innovative solutions through our digital ecosystem. The potential of the retail sectors is undeniable, as it contributes more than IDR 9,000 trillion to Indonesia's GDP in 2022. With more than 60 million MSME merchants in Indonesia and 92.1% of Indonesians being digitally aware, our penetration leaves ample room for growth.
So for this segment, the focus has been to expand our Livin Super Apps to be a comprehensive one-stop digital solution for both individual customers and online merchants within the retail, retail ecosystem. In line with this strategy, we recently launched Livin Merchant in the first half of 2023 as our enabler to acquire offline merchants. Pak Tim will later on delve further into the details of the digital innovation we have adopted and what the future of our digital ecosystem looks like. ... Let us now shift gears to the operational cost side of the equation. Much has been done, and the results so far has been encouraging. As of September 2023, Bank Mandiri was able to keep the cost-to-income ratio down from 2022 to 33.9% on bank-only level and 38.1% on consolidated level.
It is worth noting that there is a seasonality element in operational expenses, which are usually higher in the second half of the year. That said, we aim for better cost-income ratio overall in 2023 from 2022, with the expansions of Mandiri's digital ecosystem. Better efficiencies are also the result of several structural changes we have made in the past couple of years, such as optimizing our physical infrastructure. At the same time, we work towards improving the capability of our people in order to reach higher productivity level. Our CFO will later explain more on the bank's operational costs. Next, I would like to address the topics of asset quality. Over the past couple of years, we have achieved consistent improvement in our loans-at-risk ratio, which now stands at 9.79% as of September 2023, as depicted in the left-hand chart.
Similarly, our credit costs have shown a positive trend with consistent improvement, reaching 0.96% in September 2023. Even more importantly, we have maintained a healthy level of coverage through our loan loss reserves against our assets. As shown in the right-hand chart, our non-performing loan coverage remains high at 299% for consolidated level and 339% for bank-only level, indicating a strong buffer against potential losses. Additionally, our bank-only loan at-risk coverage stands at a robust 46.6%, further underlining our prudent approach to risk management. These positive indicators reflect our commitment to maintaining a sound and resilient asset quality, which is essential for sustainable growth and mitigating potential risks. Our continuous efforts to monitor and strengthen our asset quality will remain a top priority to ensure the stability and long-term success of the business.
The unwavering commitment to continuous innovation has yielded positive results, propelling the bank profitability to new highs. Both our PPOP and net profit after tax have shown significant improvements, demonstrating the efficacy of our strategic decisions amidst challenging circumstances. In the third quarter of 2023, our return on equity, excluding minorities, increased to 22.5%, while return on assets reached 2.6%. These figures not only surpass pre-COVID levels, but also reflect our dedication to excellence. We take pride in these accomplishments, but remain heavily focused on our long-term goal, that is strong profit growth and stable profitability. Finally, I would like to touch on our consolidated level guidance for 2023. First, we conservatively expect our loan to growth, loan to grow at the range of 10%-12%. This conservative outlook takes into account our macro assumptions.
Second, maintaining NIM between 5.3%-5.6%, despite our first half of 2023 number being on the higher range of the guidance. Liquidity could remain challenging, and therefore we need to be cautious. Lastly, we lowered, we lowered our cost of credit guidance on better asset quality outlook. Now, I would like to pass on the presentation to Pak Sigit, our CFO. Please, Pak Sigit.
Thank you, Pak Darmawan. Ladies and gentlemen, now allow me to run through our financial highlights. In the third quarter of 2023, our total assets increased by 9.11% year-over-year, driven by a 12.7% growth in loans, in line with our growth guidance, loan growth guidance in 2023. On the liability side, demand deposit grew by 21.7% year-over-year, and savings grew by 5.80% year-over-year. Both combined drove CASA growth of 12.8% year-over-year. Overall, consolidated CASA ratio stand at 73.7% as of September 2023. On the P&L side, net interest income was up 12.3% year-over-year to IDR 71.9 trillion as of September 2023.
Non-interest income was up by 10.8% year-on-year, driven mainly by non-interest income from subsidiaries and recurring fees from digital. The total revenue grew by 11.2% year-on-year to IDR 101 trillion, higher compared to the growth in the operational cost of 4.9% year-on-year, leading to positive jaws as of September 2023, and lower cost-to-income ratio. Pre-provision operating profit was 15.4% higher as of September 2023, compared to the same period last year. While provisioning was down significantly during third quarter of 2023, which helped net profit to grow by 27.4% year-on-year to IDR 39.1 trillion as of September 2023.... Next, on ratios.
Most of the key consolidated ratios are showing positive result as of September 2023, starting with NIM at 5.59 or 70 basis points higher year-on-year, and well within our guidance for the full year of 2023. Our consolidated cost-to-income ratio came down to 38.1% as of September 2023, from above 42% level in 2022. Equally, cost-to-asset ratio had also come down to 2.55%. Asset quality ratios are showing encouraging trend in general, and credit costs were kept at very healthy level of 0.96% as of September 2023. All the above led to the increase of the consolidated return on asset to 2.6% as of September 2023, and return on equity to 22.5%.
The next slide shows the group's loan and deposit breakdown. Loan growth in September 2023 was led by commercial segment at 18.6% year-on-year, consumer segment at 12.1% year-on-year, SME at 11.7% year-on-year, and micro at 10.1%. Our subsidiaries also contributed meaningfully to loan growth, with 15.5% year-on-year growth, leading to the total loan growth of 12.7% year-on-year for the group. On the deposits, a growth focused largely on the cheap funding, such as saving deposit and demand deposit, as you can see on the right-hand chart. Next, on the net interest margin analysis. Loan yield improved in third quarter 2023, as you can see on the top left chart, especially from wholesale loan repricing.
This can also be seen in the top left chart, showing the corporate loan yield has increased to 7.29%. Moreover, Bank Only cost of fund is stable at 2.17%, leading to the total NIM of 5.48% in the third quarter 2023, or four basis, four basis point higher compared to the first half 2023. The bottom right chart shows the NIM of the Bank Only, as well as the key subsidiaries, BSI and Bank Mantap. Overall, our consolidated NIM stands at 5.59% as of September 2023, or seventeen basis point higher compared to the same period last year.
As we continue repricing wholesale loan, shifting to higher yield loan while reducing the portion of specialty deposit, we expect our NIM to stabilize in the coming quarters. Ladies and gentlemen, our consolidated non-interest income saw a healthy growth of 10.8% year-on-year as of September 2023 to IDR 27.4 trillion. This was primarily driven by credit card, which grew by 19.2% year-on-year, and Livin' App, which grew by 16.5% year-on-year. On the non-recurring, cash recoveries helped growth, while forex and derivative remain challenging. Overall, our consolidated non-interest income to total revenue remained at healthy level of 27.1% as of September 2023.
On the cost side, we were able to maintain a healthy, low, single-digit growth on operational expense at 5.52% year-on-year at the Bank Only level. The driver of the Bank Only OpEx efficiency came from the cost related to promo and sponsor, training, and allowance expense. On the consolidated level, OpEx grew by 4.92%, meaningfully lower than the growth of the revenue of 11.2% year-on-year. Overall, our consolidated cost-to-asset ratio is 2.55%, and cost-to-income ratio, 38.1%. Next, I would like to pass the presentation to Pak Sidik, our risk director. Please, Pak Sidik.
Thank you, Pak Sigit. Ladies and gentlemen, now please allow me to run through some updates on the asset quality trend as of third quarter of 2023. Overall, the indicator that you can see on this slide are showing positive progress for the group. First, the COVID-19 restructure book continued to decline, as shown in the top left chart, to IDR 34.9 trillion, or only 2.65% of our total consolidated loan. Both subsidiaries and Bank Only saw improvements. Further, the improvement we had for the NPL ratio had led to lower loan at-risk ratio of 9.79% consolidated, with 44.9% LAR coverage. NPL ratio, which stood at 1.49% consolidated, is well covered, with 299% NPL coverage on consolidated basis.
As a result of the above, we were able to lower our cost of credit to 0.96% consolidated as of September 2023. We expect the trend of asset quality improvement to continue on gradual basis in the second half of 2023, as we lower our guidance to less than 1.1% for the full year 2023. Next, in this slide, I would like to update regarding our capital positioning. In general, Bank Mandiri CAR level was stable at 20.68% in September, and well-kept within the optimal level. On a yearly context, we intend to maintain CAR and Tier-1 ratio at around 18%-20% range in the near to medium term. I would like now to pass on the presentation to Pak Tim Utama, our IT Director, to continue the presentation. Please, Pak Tim.
Thank you, Pak Sidik. I think as mentioned by Pak Darmawan, I'm just gonna explore a bit more on our digital capabilities. On this slide, as you can see, we will continue our journey in our digital innovation, addressing the entire spectrum of customer needs, from retail to wholesale. Let me underline again, the capabilities and solutions that we provide is to position the Bank Mandiri as the transactional bank in the country. So there are three big components. The first one, continue to extensively build on digital capabilities for our retail segment. We have our super app, Livin', as you know. We continue to build comprehensively for relevant financial use cases. The new two items that I'll elaborate a bit more, one is actually we launched the new Sukha.
The second bit, as Pak Darmawan mentioned, the ability to serve our MSME under Livin' Merchant. The second one, we will continue to build full-scale digital wholesale solutions to establish a one-stop wholesale platform for our corporate clients, our wholesale clients. Third building block, which is gonna be getting more important as we move forward, is we continue to invest in the state-of-the-art data analytics and artificial intelligence to answer three main issues. First one is to unlock revenue growth potential. Two is to drive costs, operational efficiency. And then the third one is manage risk and regulatory compliance. So let me move next to the following slide. Just wanna go quickly.
I think when we do our digital propositions, we have got a very clear framework for our retail. This is all about Livin on the left side. When you see, the framework is very clear. We look completely from online onboarding to transactional capabilities, lending, investment, ecosystem, and so on. As you can see, I think the key to all this is the ability to bring speed to market with our solutions. We have now more than 85 use cases in just less than two years. There are some notable functions that we have developed, and I will address them as we move forward, all the way from overseas onboarding for our Indonesians in 122 countries, all the way down to the exciting capabilities that we will see in Suka and also Livin Merchant.
Next, I just wanna show to you that, you know, what we have achieved in Livin'. You know, we have positioned ourself as the number one mobile app with the highest growth of users in Indonesia. At the same time, we have also registered as the number one mobile app with the highest growth of account opening. We have now registered 21 million users on Livin', and that is showing 55% growth year-over-year. What is more exciting when it comes to the account opening, this year alone, we have seen a 1.5 times increase from last year over the same period. We've got 6.5 million accounts open digitally, of which, resulting in more than about, year to date, IDR 2 billion transactions.
That's 46% growth year-on-year. And the value is equally exciting. We are seeing a growth of thirty-seven percent, up to IDR 2,400 trillion. And all the savings account linked to Livin now is about 90%, bank-wide. Next, I wanna touch base quickly. We will continue to strengthen our cross-border capabilities with seamless account opening, cross-currency transfers, and also now we have got the capability to do in-store payments at foreign merchants. So, on the left, I just wanna show that we do have the cheapest and transparent Forex cross-border transfers. And what is exciting, 80% now we see first-time Forex transfer users through the app. And then, that's 51% of total bank-wide Forex transfers volume is now done through the app. This is an overwhelming response.
What's coming up next is the cross-border capability in-store payment. And that's gonna be done through contactless with foreign currencies, and at the same time, QR cross-border with multiple source of funds. So that's coming very fast soon. Let me move on to the next page, which is our all-new Suka. This is the first and only banking app with state-of-the-art next page, please. With the state-of-the-art capabilities, where we're gonna bring our strong wholesale partnerships to answer lifestyle needs. So as you can see, you know, we have launched the different feel and look, where we have three capabilities under the new Suka. This is the only banking app with one-of-a-kind entertainment and shopping experience inside the app.
We have Suka TV, so capability to streamline content of television, and we have Suka Reels, so we can feature reels for different topics, and at the same time, we also have Suka News. Just to show that Indonesia just launched the first-ever fast train, and since October, we already sold 15,000 tickets on our Suka platform. Next, I just wanna show, again, to, as we mentioned, the other new development after Suka. We have launched our Livin' Merchant. This is actually a growth enabler to help our merchants for offline MSME. In short, this is a digital ADC with a point of sales.
What we have seen since the launch in, in June, to be exact, twelfth of June, the daily adoption rate has grown extremely fast, and it, it's showing as on the left-hand chart, as you can see. So this is as exciting as, Livin' super app, Livin'. So the capabilities that we-- the, the reason we have, full adoption with fast onboarding, we have the capability of 15 minutes onboarding. We are, I think, the only one that are able to do settlements three times a day for our merchants, so they can see their cash and the, balances straight away, settle on the account. And, importantly, we do not charge MDR for merchants, and this is, including also modern and complete, POS systems.
So I'm gonna move next, shift gear, shifting gears to our wholesale platform. We position our Kopra, as you all know, to be the one-stop financial partners for all our corporate clients. And, quickly, as we've seen, we will continue to develop the Kopra portal and combine it with Kopra Embedded Finance. And, the solutions that we provide will continue to build on our cash management solutions, all the way from domestic and cross-border treasury solutions, working capital solutions. And, these are all again, enabled with data analytics, and AI to support risk management and global networks. So what is this? It's actually tailored to industry specifics, that we operate in, all the way from wholesale, retail, trade, minerals and energy, transport and logistics, healthcare, and education.
Let me move on next to the next page, where what we see is quite exciting with the growth and optimizing of the business acquisition of transactions. We are the highest wholesale digital transaction in terms of value in the nation. We have about 770 million year-to-date transactions, which is showing 20% growth, and our transaction value remains the highest, close to IDR 14,000 trillion year-to-date. Ninety-five percent of our wholesale clients are Kopra users. What's important is 85% of transactions is actually our top tier—sorry, top 1,000 clients are actually contributing 85% of the Kopra volume. As you can see, these are some of the examples of the top clients that are there in Indonesia.
Next, the end-to-end solution for our wholesale needs are becoming the, you know, making us the main operating account for our clients, resulting in a encouraging increase in fees as a fee income generator, showing quite a good increase of 10% year-on-year. And at the same time, we become contributing to the CASA balances, as you can see, with a 23% year-on-year increase. Next, what we develop in Kopra, we also now link to our Livin, so we have the capability to provide payment reminders for our future client, retail users, so the corporate clients can do that in Livin, and that will come up. At the same time, we also be going beyond borders, bringing Kopra to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Delhi.
I would want to, next page, I would want to just quickly touch on the capabilities of our data analytics. So we want to solidify our wholesale dominance using artificial intelligence. On the left-hand side, it's actually a picture to show that we have the network graph analytics to uncover new opportunities, identify new key players that are in our ecosystem, and create customized community-based solutions. What it has done, then we continue on again with working capital propensity score model, and what you can see, it's that is contributing, showing actually 85%-86% rate of success, resulting in our models for our loans and contributing 40% of our total SME loan results. So, so that AI will continue to build on our capabilities and ecosystem.
Next, I want to say that our data assets and AI-driven technology is significant also in our retail side. We use rich and diverse data assets to understand each customer potential from demography, products, transaction, behavior and profile, interaction, and preference. What we have done as a result, we have delivered 11,000 digital campaigns serving 20 million customers, optimized using AIs, and we have done more than 20 key visuals for every campaigns. The outcome of that is, we have increased the average transaction by 20% per month per user, contributing 35% of our retail loan booking. Quickly, I think after this, you know, we can see that we'll continue to develop and use AIs.
So now, let me hand this over to Ibu Sandra, who's going to take you over on the ESG initiative. Ibu Sandra, please.
Thank you, Pak Tim. Now I would like to discuss what Bank Mandiri's ESG. In order to achieve our vision of becoming Indonesia's sustainability champion for a better future, we have curated a comprehensive framework and set concrete milestones to ensure consistent progress. Our framework is divided into three pillars, emphasizing the role of sustainability: sustainable banking, sustainable operation, and sustainability beyond banking. Each pillar has a commitment that we work towards, and in moving forward, we are actively improving and implementing our initiatives so we can be Indonesia's sustainability champion in the future. Here we can see Bank Mandiri ESG performance at a glance. On the environmental side, one of our key commitments is to achieve net zero emission operations by 2030, and financing by 2060.
We continue to encourage customers to transit into the low-carbon economy by disbursing green financing, sustainability-linked loan, and transition loan. In terms of the social aspect, we also strongly emphasizes racial and gender equality in the company. Pursuing gender diversity, currently, women make up 25% of the management team, including myself, and there are 46% female senior leaders in Bank Mandiri. Finally, on governance, we take a big commitment in maintaining data privacy and data security, as well as other operational, regulatory, and governance issues.
For responsible banking practice, as the green market leader, Bank Mandiri has disbursed IDR 122 trillion of green portfolio and IDR 131 trillion of social portfolio to the micro and small medium enterprises segment in Indonesia, resulting in a total sustainable portfolio of IDR 253 trillion, or 25, 24.9% of total loan portfolio, bank only, as of September 2023. This lending has positively impacted millions of Indonesians, touching various sectors, including MSMEs, agriculture, renewable energy, clean transportation, and various other activities. We also provide various sustainable finance solutions, such as green loan of IDR 927 million, sustainability-linked loan of IDR 2.1 trillion, and transition financing of IDR 1.1 trillion.
We are committed to be part of the government's aspiration to phase out coal-fired power plant and achieve net zero by 2060, aligning with PLN net zero emission roadmap. We have gradually increased our renewable energy portfolio with loan to clean energy projects such as Poso, Kerinci, and Malea Hydro Power Plant. Lastly, we are also expanding our exposure to potential renewable energy projects, such as floating solar power plant, wind power plant, and geothermal power plant. On our operations end, we are committed to achieve net zero operation by 2030. To offset the carbon we produce, Mandiri is focusing on land restoration and conservation to absorb our emissions. Furthermore, we are adopting a green business mindset by implementing initiatives such as EV and hybrid charging stations, solar panel in our buildings, green building, and smart branches.
Lastly, on the social aspect, we are helping to increase financial inclusion by disbursing loan to the underbanked and unbanked population. As of September 2023, we have disbursed KUR loan to more than 2.8 million borrowers. We are also creating impacts through micro and small medium enterprise society, by providing training and entrepreneurship skills to more than 14,000 MSME players. That is all from me, and I will hand back the presentation back to Lau for the Q&A session. Thank you. Please, Lau.
Great. Thank you so much, Ibu Sandra, and to all speakers. We now open the Q&A section. Again, as a reminder, we are prioritizing questions from the conference, from the call. So if you have any questions, please press the Raise Hand button and wait for your name to be called, and your microphone unmute. I will call for the first one from Ferry Wong, Citibank. Please ask your question. Thank you.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunities. Congratulations, management, for excellent result. I have several questions. The first one is on the impact on the higher interest rate environment. Basically, if you have the internal assessment for every 25 basis point interest rate hike and impact your NIM. We know that basically you will be the beneficiary of higher interest rate environment, but do you have any internal assessment, i.e., for the fourth quarter of 2023? The second one is on the loans growth. Can you elaborate more on your Sharia lending, especially if you have some exposure towards the women's ultra-micro lending? Because we saw that some of the Sharia lending actually having a trouble, like at BTPS and...
They have been lowering their loan growth significantly, but it's more towards the women's ultra-micro lending. And lastly, on your GNA, it moved up by 29% in quarter-on-quarter, but I noticed that it is mainly from your subsidiary level. Could you elaborate more? That's all from me. Thank you.
Sorry, Ferry. Can you repeat the last question, please?
It's on your GNA expenses. Quarter-on-quarter, it's increased by 29%, but mainly because of the subsidiary. Could you elaborate more on that? Thanks.
Sure. Thank you so much. Just to clarify, there is somebody from the chat that is also asking about GNA expense, which came from, I think, Edward, from KB Securities. So, we're just gonna address that in one go. So maybe I will let, Pak Sigit to, answer the, GNA expense, as well as the, impact of, higher interest rates on yield, Pak. And, Pak Siddik, if you don't mind, touch on the Sharia and the ultra-micro part concern. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Lau. Maybe thank you, Ferry Wong. Maybe the third question about the GNA expenses. Okay, in the third Q 2023, we are seeing the an increase in operating expense, mainly driven by G&A expense of IT and telecom, transport and travel, good and other professional services. And those expense are mainly contract-based. That is due to due in third Q 2023. And going to fourth Q, we expect OpEx to keep accelerate due to seasonality. Historically Bank Mandiri cost-to-income ratio are higher in fourth Q due to employee bonuses, good and also services payment due in December.
The most important thing is we are still keeping our full year cost-to-income ratio guidance of 35-36% for bank only, and around 39% cost-to-income ratio consolidated, our guidance. The first question related to our impact of increased interest rate environment to our net interest margin. Okay, we are seeing we have a potential increase opportunities for yield of loan, because around 23% of our total loan is reference rate. So when the interest rate increases, fed fund also BI rate increase, we have benefit coming from yield of loan, especially for the corporate segment. On the other side, we also are cautious on the cost of fund.
So we're seeing the intense aggressive pricing from our competitors. So we see the potential increase on the cost of fund in the Q4 2023. But we believe the NIM will stable until the end of the year, because of our focus on the CASA can minimize our cost of an increase, and also our opportunity to repricing loan on the wholesale segment is more than enough to compensate the increase on the cost of fund. I think this is our view. The NIM should be stable until the end of the year.
Thank you, Pak Sigit. So just to recap, there is a seasonality on GNA, and there is some positive impact from the NIM side, from higher interest rates. I'll let Pak Siddik answer you on the.
Yeah
- Sharia concern.
Okay. Thank you, Lau. So basically, micro banking segment within Bank Sharia Indonesia is probably one of the smaller size segment. So out of, you know, the biggest one would be, the consumer banking segment, followed by corporate and then commercial, SME, and then we have a, a small micro segment. And we don't really have any particular special program for, ultra micro for women per se, you know. So everybody is under the same risk acceptance criteria, under the same micro-lending program. So there may be some women borrowers, but we don't have a particular special program to acquire, women ultra micro, lending borrowers.
Thank you, Siddik. And maybe just to add to that, in fact, the NPF ratio of BSI has been showing, you know, consistent downtrend as well, equally to the parent company.
Yeah. Perhaps the non-performing loans ratio for micro segment has reduced from around 3.2% in September last year, now to 2.7% in September 2023. So there has been gradual improvement in the last one year, so we don't see any significant concern at all in the micro segment within Bank Sharia Indonesia.
Thank you, Pak Sigit and Pak Siddik. Moving on to the second question coming from the line of Morgan Stanley. Selvi, please ask your question.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay. Thanks, Lau, and thanks, management. I just have three questions. So firstly, in terms of the loan yield, if I were to look at the Q-on-Q, I think with the exceptions of the corporate, commercial, SME, and retail, they actually declined Q-on-Q. What has been driving that? And also, if you could share a couple of, like, insights in terms of the corporate loan growth. Q-on-Q, it actually grew pretty well. Where has it come from? And then my second question is in for the credit cost. I guess, like, we saw a couple of, like, data with regards to digital lending that you are doing. In terms of the provisions for this lending, what kind of credit costs you are looking at?
In terms of, like, the tenure of these loans, is it more like short-term in nature? So I'm just trying to understand how good is, like, the credit analytics for this lending. Lastly, I think in terms of, like, both loan growth as well as fees from your subsidiaries, it, it was pretty good. Which subsidiaries have been driving it? Has it been, like, the Sharia side, or is there, like, any other subsidiaries? So those are my three questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Selvi. Sorry, could you repeat the second question regarding asset quality, please?
Okay. So in terms of the asset quality, for the credit costs related to those digital lending that you are extending, 'cause I think there is one slide about, like, how much loans you are giving out from, like, the digital app. Is that, like, the ECL per se, is it the same as what you are doing on the traditional basis? So I'm trying to gauge, like, in terms of your data analytics for the credit risk for that segment, how... what kind of, like, confidence level you put into it?
Sure. Thanks. Maybe, Pak Siddik, for the second question. For the first question, actually, Selvi, if we look at the growth on a Q-on-Q term, you'll see that commercial is still growing quite healthily, you know, at 3.1% Q-on-Q, right? And corporate is 3.7% Q-on-Q as well. So both are actually showing positive growth on a Q-on-Q level with, you know, sectors around energy, mineral, construction, as well as telecommunication. And as regard to the third question regarding fees from subsidiaries, these came from there is Mansek, there is our coming from our one of our multi-finance company, as well as our venture capital, MCI.
So those are the top contributor of the subsidiaries' fees in the third quarter of the result of the year.
Sorry.
I'll let-
Um-
Yeah.
I think, one of the questions was more on the lending yield-
Oh, so-
- With the expression of the corporates.... I think the lending yield across the other segment were actually fell Q-on-Q.
Okay, okay, sorry, I, I misunderstood. So on the lending yield, you're right. So pressure was visible across almost all the segments, and this was due mainly to overall competition and margin competition. The increase of lending yield that you see in the corporate, which actually is the only one that went up, is largely driven by the dollar loan. Mind you that we have about 20%-30% of our corporates in the US dollar loan. So that's the bigger driver of the corporate yield on a quarter-on-quarter term. I'll let Pak Siddik talk about the digital lending and the outlook on asset quality around that. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Selvi. I believe you're asking about, loans, consumer loans that we acquire through our, super app, Livin' by Mandiri. So, the process is like this, you know. So we actually acquire first customers to actually open online new savings accounts, yeah? And then, based on those, accounts that are online, users that are online, there are three segmentations. So existing, Livin user who have payroll with us, existing Livin user who have savings accounts and other products, but the payroll are not with us, and Livin user who probably only have savings accounts. So we have slightly different credit criteria for all these three different segments, whether they are really new to bank or existing to banks, depending on how deep the relationship they have with us.
Based on that, we actually offer pre-approve credit card limit and personal loans limit as well, you know. So today, between 10%-20% of our new loans acquisition for credit card and personal loans come from Livin users. And this proportion has continually to increase, showing that actually our Livin user prefer to get their credit card or personal loans online because the process is actually seamless. They don't have to come to the bank. They don't have to submit documents. They just have to do it via online, and within a few second, they will get an approval, yes or no, whether they're qualified for a loan, yeah. So the proportion is still, you know, quite low, even though the new bookings are actually 10%-20%, and it's increasing.
Today, the early vintage quality is almost the same as the new loans that we acquire via offline, you know. So this is probably very different than the digital lending quality that you get from a fintech peer-to-peer lending, because we offer credit card and personal loan to our existing customers. So if they don't have savings account with us, they don't have payroll accounts with us, we don't offer these products, you know? So we have more than 20 million Livin' users, and very small percentage of them have acquired personal loan and credit card. So we want to focus our business strategy to actually cross-sell personal loan and credit card into this existing 20 more million Livin' user before we go to other segments.
We expect the performance of the loans that we acquire via Livin to be about the same versus the loans that we acquire via offline.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you, Pak Siddik. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time, I'll just going to open for one last question. I'll let Harsh, Harsh Modi, JP Morgan, please ask your question. Thank you.
Hi, thank you so much for allowing me to ask questions. I have, I don't know how much time you have, but three quick ones. One is, how low can loan loss reserve to loans go down to? Second, can the banks cut savings account interest rate, given you have such a fantastic customer value proposition, as Pak Tim talked about? And final point, a bit more next two years, why can't you deliver 15% or more loan growth over the next two years? Thank you so much.
Thank you, Harsh. Just to clarify, your second question was on how low the saving, saving deposit rate could go, provided the digital initiatives and all that. The third question was the outlook on loan growth for the next 1, 2 years. Did I get that correct? Okay, sure. So, maybe Pak Siddik can start with the overall provisionings. The question is, you know, how low could provisions, in this case, NPL coverage, be over the next, I guess, 1-12 months?
Yeah. If you, you know, as we explained earlier, our asset quality growth have continues to actually improve in the last three years on a gradual basis, followed by also the reduced need of increasing, credit provisions. And also, as, because of that, then our NPL coverage has continued to increase. Now it may be around 340%, 350%. And we believe that the optimal level, you know, on our side, will be around between 250% and 280% on a steady state basis, you know. So-...
We will do a review on a continuous basis in the next two to three years to actually gradually reduce our coverage of credit provisions, but we have to do it very carefully to ensure that actually this optimal NPL coverage will be sustainable in the long run, you know? So we are taking a look at our, for example, models to generate the credit provisioning for each product and sub-product in the consumer banking, because their performance has increased significantly in the last five years, so necessitating a recalibration of the models, which resulted in some release of credit provisions.
On the wholesale side, we also review account by account, the need to actually maintain a certain level of credit provisionings, because probably 3-4 years ago, we had to increase the credit provisioning, but then many of these accounts have continued to improve after we did action on them, including restructuring. But this, loan loss reserve provisioning, the coverage, will probably go down from 340 to around 250% over 2-3 years period, you know. So, we'll update you every quarter if significant amount will be released, so that at least, we won't see any volatility in our numbers in terms of asset quality going forward.
Thank you, Pak Sigit. I'll let Pak Sigit get the second question. Can the bank cut savings account rate further, given customer value proposition?
Yeah. Thank you, Lau. Yeah, we know that now our saving rate is around 46 basis point, and we believe this is not the best in industry. So, we believe we have an opportunity to cut that rate lower than that level. First, when... Maybe next year, when the rate cut happening. And also, we also believe that Livin is our super app that can make all the customer happy and transact with the bank. So, 46 basis point, we believe we have a room to cut in the next next year, maybe. Thank you.
Thank you, Pak Sigit. I'll just get the last one. Harsh, when it comes to the loan growth, there are factors that, you know, we can deal with, and there are factors that are macro-driven. Our internal back-of-the-mind mantra is basically above industry growth. Unfortunately, we can't tell you how industry growth will be in the next five, ten years, right? So, I think the main point is that we are, through value chain strategy, we want to grow above industry growth, and we've been growing above industry level over the last two, three years, and still up to today, and we expect that profile, i.e., gaining market share, to continue going to next year. And, yeah, so that's the way we think about the outlook of growth, Harsh. Thank you very much.
This marks the end of the analyst meeting. Again, if you have any further questions, happy to response. Please email your questions to the Investor Relations team. I would like to thank our speakers. Have a good evening, everyone. Thank you.