Friends, this is Kaan Gür speaking, CEO of Akbank. I hope you are all well. Thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. Before moving on to our bank, I would like to share my thoughts on the operating environment. Economic growth in 2023 was 4.5%, in line with the medium-term program target of the government. Economic activity remains solid in first quarter on the back of upbeat consumption demand. Accordingly, hard indicators imply an annual growth rate around 5.5% for the quarter. Looking forward, high borrowing costs and the prospective fiscal tightening are expected to curb excess domestic demand and cool down the economy, especially in second half of the year.
For the full year, we forecast growth to be around 3.5%, as the weak global backdrop and the lagged effects of the monetary tightening will weigh on economic activity. Inflation remains high and is set to increase further in the short term. Cost push factors, strong demand, and base effects will continue to drive annual inflation up. We expect inflation to peak around 75% in May before declining to 43% at year-end. Fiscal stance, including administered prices and wage policy, will be key elements for macro rebalancing and disinflation path. On a positive note, current account balance is improving, which will be supportive for the external financing need. Twelve-month cumulative current account balance as of February fell to $31.8 billion from $45.5 billion in December.
The underlying trend during the first quarter points to a more benign outlook than the market expectations for the full year. We project current account deficits be around $22 billion, as the ongoing moderation in loan growth and the prospective slowdown in domestic demand will contribute to external rebalancing going forward. We're to mention that one key risk factor remains for the external balance, namely geopolitical tensions and associated fluctuations in oil prices. In light of our inflation expectation, we expect policy rate to remain high for long. Macro stabilization, particularly bringing inflation down to single digits, requires enhanced coordination between tight monetary and fiscal policies. The recent tightening steps taken in March have started to give early signs of a moderation in loan growth. Four-week annualized momentum in Turkish loan growth has already come down significantly below expected inflation.
Slowing down the loan growth, along with the prospective fiscal tightening, is key to curb excess domestic demand. The moderation in loan demand is expected to somewhat limit the profit generation capacity of the banking sector. However, we believe that the sector has strong muscles to generate non-interest earnings to support profitability in the short term. In addition, maintaining macro stability will create a favorable environment for the financial sector over the medium to long term to utilize the growth potential in terms of low indebtedness. Increasing digital penetration, the structural drivers of the prospective growth. Let's move on to our bank. Dear friends, I'm happy to share that we once again demonstrated our position as a leader in the banking industry with our performance.
The capital position of the bank remains solid, with 17.3% total capital and 14.6% Tier 1, despite the dividend payment, which had negative 65 basis points on yearly BRSA applied to operational risk, which had negative 99 basis points impact during the quarter. I'm proud to also share that thanks to our strong capital as well as growth potential, close to 200 investors showed TRY 3.7 billion demand in our AT1 bond issues, which was a first in our region during the first quarter. We believe this is an indication of confidence to both Turkey's economy management as well as Akbank. The bank's strong momentum in expanding the customer footprint persists.
We added 600,000 new customers, reaching 13.7 million in total active customer base, with cumulative increase of 5.2 million since end of 2021, exceeding 60% growth on a cumulative basis. The exceptional increase in our active customer base has resulted in our fee market share among private banks to increase by almost 3% for the same period. The continuous customer growth solidifies our recurring revenues, the bank footprint for long-term success in evolving markets. In addition, our strategic focus in high-yielding small-ticket loans remain whereby we gained, again, 90 basis points market share among private banks. This comes on top of the 300 basis points gained last year. I would like to underline, due to high interest rate environment, we have remained prudent while growing with risk-return in focus. We have adjusted our lending criteria as and when needed.
In addition, we have once again been very agile in adapting to regulatory environment. We are doing optimization on a daily basis to manage the balance sheet in order to maximize sustainable shareholder return. As a result, despite the challenging macro and regulatory environment, we ended the quarter with 24.9% return on equity and 2.7% return on assets. This was in line with our projection for the full year. We expect return on equity to remain relatively low in the first half and to improve towards our fiscal year guidance in the second half of the year. Dear friends, I am delighted to share with you that we remain fully on track with our 2025 targets. I have already mentioned some of them in the previous slide. However, it is worth to highlight our revenues derived from customers have been dramatically enhanced.
Our fee to OpEx ratio surged impressively by 18 percentage points, from 58% to 67% since, 76%, I am sorry, since end of 2021. The robustness of the bank is driven by our agility, proactive and prudent stance in balance sheet and risk management, and our long-standing commitment to investing in our people as well as infrastructure. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to all of our people. The driving engine of our success is powered by their commitment, passion, and strength. Now, Ebru will provide insights regarding our first quarter performance. Following her presentation, I will be more than happy to answer your questions together with Türker and Ebru. Ebru, now the platform is yours.
Thank you so much, Kaan Gür , and thank you all for joining our call today. As you have just highlighted, regardless of the sector-wide challenges, especially in the margin evolution, we started the year in line with our full-year projections. Our robust proficiency and flexible balance sheet management, including the quick adaptness in navigating the tight regulatory environment, as well as our sustained excellence in fee performance, continue to be supportive factors for profitability. Our fee income almost tripled year-on-year, thanks to uninterrupted momentum in customer acquisition. Our revenues were up by 42% year-on-year to TRY 35.571 billion for the quarter. Our net income increased by 23% year-on-year to solid TRY 13.185 billion, resulting in a quarterly ROE of 24.9% and ROA of 2.7%, as expected.
Moving on to the key drivers of our healthy first quarter performance in more detail, let's first start with the balance sheet. Our growth strategy incorporates a diligent approach to risk-return balance, with timely adjustments to lending criteria as needed. In first quarter, our TL loans were up by 12%, mainly led by consumer segment. This was in line with our ambition to grow in small tickets, as consumer loans continued to provide better pricing opportunities during the quarter. Accordingly, on top of a phenomenal 300 basis points market share gain in consumer loans among private banks last year, we successfully increased our market share by an additional 90 basis points during the quarter. This underlines our competitive strength, especially when considering the significant milestone reached last year. As a side note, advanced analytics and technology remain pivotal in our growth strategy, and this strengthens our robust asset quality further.
Our 100% automated loan decision processes, with an excellence in AI-based consumer credit models, enable us to take quick and timely actions. Please also note that in terms of volume, around 90% of our GPLs are pre-approved and 25% are to salary customers. On the commercial loan side, we pursued a cautious and selective growth strategy during the quarter, while carefully managing maturity extensions, depending on the pricing of the product. Accordingly, we maintain our strong positioning in business banking installment loans, where we had gained substantial 225 basis points market share in the fourth quarter of last year. Supporting and strengthening the margins on a sustainable manner lies at the core of our growth strategy.
On the foreign currency loan side, despite some pickup in demand, our net foreign currency loans were down by 2.9% year-to-date to $9.7 billion due to a big ticket redemption in our fully owned subsidiary in Germany during the quarter. Our solo foreign currency loan book increased by 5.1% year-to-date, with 20 basis points market share gain among private banks. Considering our already de-leveraged foreign currency loan book, remaining committed to grow this year as guided. Foreign currency part of the balance sheet has remarkable spreads, therefore, any growth on this side would also be margin supportive. Moving on to the securities side. Our strategically designed high-yielding security portfolio continue to provide margin support. We have been increasing our positioning in TL floating notes since the beginning of last year.
Accordingly, FRNs, with a decent 54% yield at the end of first quarter, reached 23% of our TL securities, with a cumulative 12 percentage point increase since the end of 2022. Note that majority of these notes are TLREF index bonds and have a robust above-market spreads. Our strategic approach also involves decreasing the share of CPI Linkers in TL securities. This strategy resulted in a cumulative reduction of 19% since the end of 2022. Meanwhile, our Treasury's proactive positioning in positive CPI Linkers continue to be differentiating factor, considering the tightening spread between policy rate and inflation. Our CPI Linker portfolio now stands at TRY 166 billion, which equates to 78% of our equity, and continues to help to mitigate negative impact of inflation while creating a solid ROE support.
Please note that every 1% change in CPI has around TRY 1.1 billion net income or 50 basis points ROE impact. Also, note that we have further redemption in our CPI linker portfolio in second quarter, which will enable us to invest or lend in higher-yielding assets. On the TL fixed-rate securities, having met the regulations proactively, we were able to build this book at favorable levels. Similar to last year, we continue to lead the sector in TL corporate bond purchases from primary issuances. Our high-yield corporate bond portfolio, with an end-of-quarter yield of 53%, stands at TRY 29 billion, or around 8% of our TL securities. As shared in several occasions, our foreign currency securities, which make up around one-third of total, were timely hedged against Fed rate hikes.
Also worth noting that thanks to our timely actions taken by the Treasury, once again, trading side remained supportive. On the funding side, cost optimization has been our primary focus, serving as a pivotal factor in supporting margins. I am happy to share that our continuous efforts in dynamic cost of funding management, which strategically prioritizes in meeting CBRT's ratio requirements, harvested the rewards, whereby during the quarter, the remuneration we received outpaced the cost, including commissions paid and additional deposit cost incurred. This is thanks to our analytical and agile asset liability management. In the meantime, we broadly maintained our sound positioning in widespread and small-ticket customer deposits on top of the eye-catching market share gains last year.
To recall last year's figures, thanks to our sound customer franchise and strong momentum in customer acquisition, we had gained 150 basis points market share in the widespread consumer-only TL time deposits, while we had gained 260 basis points market share in below 1 million TL deposits, while our market share in zero-cost TL demand deposits was also up by an outstanding 260 basis points during last year. Please also keep in mind that the regulation-induced low level of TL LDR, which is at 84%, creates significant room for margin improvement going forward. As Kaan Gür mentioned earlier, we pioneered the market with our successful Basel III compliant additional Tier 1 issuance to international capital markets investors in March. Our AT1 marks the first out of Türkiye, fully purchased by international investors, with a peak demand of around $3.7 billion.
The $600 million dollar bonds, with perpetual maturity, with a call option in year five, were also favorably priced at 9.37%. Please also note that we renewed our sustainable syndicated loan recently in April, which is a first in Türkiye in allocating according to sustainable finance framework, and again received record demand. 45 banks from 20 countries participated, with 16 new participating banks. Our solid foreign currency liquidity remains intact, with a buffer of $9.3 billion, whereby $3.1 billion is short term, indicating a liquidity buffer of three times. In addition to our sound foreign currency liquidity, we have succeeded to increase the share of sustainable transactions in our wholesale funding book to 60%. This excludes our AT1, given its capital status.
Hence, I am happy to share that we are well on track with our 2030 sustainable wholesale funding target of 100%. Moving on to the P&L. Without any doubt, margin evolution has continued to be major challenge in the sector. Despite the consecutive rate hikes, tight regulatory and competitive environment, our proactive and diligent balance sheet management and regulatory compliance with maturity mismatch and focus have been among the key enablers of a healthy start to the year. Our self-adjusted NIM was 2.7%, below our full-year guidance of around 4%, but broadly in line with our expectations, whereby we expected a gradual improvement throughout the year. However, as you can see on this slide, our CPI-adjusted quarterly NIM has improved by almost 70 basis points quarter-on-quarter. Indeed, our strategically designed and sound balance sheet has been composed to support margin evolution going forward.
To name a few of the key elements of our margin evolution strategy, on the growth side, we prioritize high-yielding loans or installment loans and carefully extend maturities, as well as diversify product mix to lock in spread. This offers strong room for asset repricing. On the funding side, we use our strong expertise and agility to optimize costs, even on a daily basis, while meeting CBRT's ratio requirements. Last but not least, our sound floating and high-yielding security positioning helps to minimize margin pressure. As mentioned earlier, momentum and customer acquisition continues at full pace with an additional 600,000 net customer increase during the quarter. Accordingly, our active customer base reached 13.7 million, up 62% since the end of year 2021, with an impressive 5.2 million net active customer growth.
Similar to last year, 65% of our new-to-bank customers were acquired via digital onboarding, emphasizing the excellence of our digital capabilities and innovative offerings. We continue to leverage digital onboarding and revamp our value proposition in a comprehensive manner for our customers. Our active product portfolio, a function of active customer base and average cross-sell per customers, has enhanced further by 20% year-on-year, reaching a new all-time high. Our expanding active young customer base solidifies the sustainability of our recursive revenue generation from our customer-centric strategies in the years ahead. Our numbers consistently demonstrate the impact of our digital strategy crafted around our customers' journey. Number of our digital customers is now approaching 12 million, with a robust 78% growth since the end of 2021.
Digital penetration continues to increase, extending to 86%, while migration of transactions to digital channels have already reached 96%. A digital customer enters our mobile app 35 times a month, so more than once a day, playing a significant role both in our sustainable fee income generation as well as asset quality evolution. Please note that digital channels have secured a visibly striking share in credit card sales with 69%, GPLs with 92%, and time deposit account openings with 84%. On the fee and commission income side, we started the year on a very strong note. All business lines positively contributed to the remarkable 195% year-on-year growth in the first quarter, which was significantly higher than our full year guidance of above 80% growth. This achievement even suggests an upside risk to our fee guidance.
Our dedicated investment through the cycle, strong momentum in customer acquisition, and new product offerings have been distinctive factors of the sustained excellence in fee performance. This can easily be seen by the year-on-year increases in different products on this slide. I am also proud to say that we are fully on track with our strategic target to increase fee to OpEx ratio above 80% by 2025. Once again, during the quarter, our fee income growth exceeded our OpEx increase, thanks to all-time high fee chargeable customer base and cross- and strong cross-sells. This success resulted in a fee to OpEx ratio to further improve by 4 percentage points year to date to 76%, on top of the 14 percentage points increase during last year.
As a reminder, following the exceptional increase in our active customer base last year, our fee market share among private banks has surged 230 basis points. I am happy to share that we have been able to maintain our 16.2% solid fee market share as of February, based on the latest BRSA data. Despite the OpEx challenges, we have a notable competitive edge due to our relatively low OpEx base, particularly in times of inflation. Our OpEx increased by 30% quarter-over-quarter due to some regulatory cost increases, as well as salary adjustments during the quarter, which we view as an investment for our future. We expect OpEx to ease towards our guidance throughout the year. Moving to asset quality, our loan portfolio continues to perform well, thanks to our prudent risk management and healthy loan composition.
Robust and broad-based collection performance across all segments supported our NPL evolution during the quarter, which eased towards 2.1%. Both the majority of NPL inflows and collection were retail-led. Share of stage two and plus three in our gross loans, which would be deemed more problematic loans, continue to be limited in our loan portfolio at 8.4%, while coverage remains strong at above 28%. Our well-diversified loan book, proactive approach and provisioning, along with our sophisticated digital capabilities, which plays a crucial role in managing the quality of the portfolio on a dynamic basis, are clearly reflected in the evolution of our cost of credit. We ended the quarter at 32 basis points net cost of credit, excluding currency impact, much better than our full year guidance of below 150 basis points.
I would like to underline that our coverages remain solid, with loan loss provision built approaching TRY 34 billion, excluding our TRY 1.4 billion free provision. Looking forward, we are confident in our next cost of credit is manageable, well within our full year guidance, thanks to our robust provision build, solid collateral values, as well as our proficiency in digital capabilities, minimizing the need for additional provisions. Our total capital, Tier 1 and Core Equity Tier 1 ratios without forbearances remain robust at 17.3%, 14.6%, and 13.4%, despite negative impacts driving from a few items. Significant growth, including current currency impact, had around 149 basis points negative impact; dividend payments, 65 basis points; operational risk, which is a sector implementation during the first quarter of every year, 99 basis points.
As you know, this operational risk is a main component of the methodology, is the average net income of last three years, and thus directly correlated with the bank's financial performance. Hence, the higher profitability, the higher operational risk. Meanwhile, our inaugural $600 million AT1 issuance in March bolstered the capital by 126 basis points, while also mitigating the foreign currency sensitivity of the capital ratios, including Tier 1, reducing the first 10% depreciation impact to 25 basis points from 40 basis points at the end of the year. A 100 basis points increase in TL interest rates results in an 8 basis points decline in our solvency ratios. Note that sensitivity of solvency ratios shared have a diminishing impact.
It is also worth noting that adjusted for the temporary risk weight increases applied by BRSA, our capital would even be 210 basis points higher at an outstanding 19.4%. Strong capital buffers persist as a shield against unprecedented challenges and market fluctuations, offering significant resource for sustainable, profitable growth. Before moving on to Q&A, I'd like to share a few highlights regarding our ESG journey. Starting with sustainable finance, our strong commitment to embedding sustainability at the core of our operations continues at full pace. Please recall that not only did we surpass our 2030 sustainable finance goal, but we set a new ambitious benchmark of TRY 800 billion. In first quarter alone, we provided TRY 41 billion of sustainable finance in Turkish liras, bringing our total to TRY 267 billion since the end of 2021.
Moreover, our ESG theme funds have witnessed increased interest, leading to a 19% year-to-date surge in investor participation. As for ecosystem management, I am very pleased to report a remarkable 23% year-on-year increase in the number of women-led business customers last year. Furthermore, I am proud to share that we have not only met, but exceeded our annual financial inclusion target of 10%. As for people and community pillar, we remain focused on our efforts to advance diversity and inclusion. A significant milestone includes the publication of the Board of Directors diversity policy, outlining clear objectives, measurable goals, and proactive measures to foster diversity and inclusion at board level. Furthermore, we have taken important steps by publishing our pay gap analysis results in our 2023 integrated annual report.
Additionally, in first quarter, our dedication to supporting women, youth, and individuals with disabilities persisted through ongoing projects aimed at their empowerment and inclusion. At the core of our climate change pillar lies our commitment to achieving net zero by 2050, a pledge that has propelled us to join the Net Zero Banking Alliance. We have taken concrete steps by disclosing 2030 emission reduction targets for power, cement, iron and steel, and commercial real estate sectors. Regarding our comprehensive approach, we continue to develop our sectoral net zero strategies. Moreover, I am happy to say that we are on track towards our 2030 operational emission reduction target to achieve, and we have already achieved 82% reduction in operational emissions since our base year of 2019.
Finally, on this slide, you may find a summary of our sound start to the year. Momentum, as I shared earlier, continues across all business line. We remain confident in our full year guidance, and therefore, I would like to end our presentation now, and would like to move on to Q&A session. Please raise your hand or type in the Q&A box if you have a question. For those of you who are joining us by telephone, please send your questions by email to investor.relations@akbank.com. Now, the first question comes from Mikhail from Goldman Sachs. I'm allowing you to talk. Please go ahead and ask your question, Mikhail. Please unmute yourself.
Sure. Good day. Thank you very much for the very comprehensive presentation. I have a few questions. Firstly, in the light of the recent rate hike and also some changes on the growth caps by the central bank, do you see any changes in the guidance which we have on the screen? Or did you compare it, any changes relative to the previous guidance here? And also, what outlook could you share on net interest margin in the light of the recent changes for the next quarter? Do you expect to see some improvement already in the second quarter? Or, because of further repricing of deposits, you could see some more pressure. Finally, also, what is your latest outlook on rates in the current environment? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks a lot. First of all, it's a very comprehensive, you know, question. I can tell that actually, we, actually, we are very confident within our 2024 guidance, and there's not going to be any change regarding our existing guidance so far. Actually, this is a kind of chance that I would like to give a, you know, much flavor regarding the latest regulations, because your question covers the whole of things, you know, net interest margin, the profitability, everything. First of all, I would like to emphasize that the major challenge within the existing environment, actually margin evolution. So, considering the comparatively low demand and the competitive environment, actually, the most important thing is, you know, managing your funding cost.
So, because of the consecutive rate hikes from the central bank, there are lots of pressures on funding costs. So what are we trying to actually achieve in terms of enhancing our net interest margin? That first of all, our expectation is about the net interest margin, a kind of gradual increase throughout the years remain unchanged. The other thing is, I really would like to emphasize that our balance sheet is, you know, very well positioned in order to support margin evolution. So there are some important actions that we are daily focusing on. The first one is actually our ongoing asset repricing with extending loan maturities, diversifying our product mix. So, we grew more on the consumer side in first quarter.
In meantime, we were prudently growing selectively commercial loans as the pricing was comparatively low. So, the other factor here, difference, especially in the yield between our front book Turkish Lira loans and back book Turkish Lira loan side, give room for us further asset repricing. The second important action is, of course, the cost optimization. This is our key focus on the funding side. But at the same time, we are diligently complying with the regulations. So we are dynamically meeting the calculations, considering different scenarios, like having higher remuneration from reserve requirements at the cost of higher KKM to Turkish Lira conversion ratios or vice versa. The third one, especially thanks to our, again, well-established, well-positioned, you know, security positioning, floating and high-yielding security position, actually, we are going to get benefits starting from especially, you know, upcoming quarters.
Low Turkish lira LDR, Akbank has 84, less than 84% for the first quarter. Actually, this creates room for net interest margin improvements. Last but not least, you know, I would like to emphasize that, our growth ambition, it will continue because, our fee income generation is key factor to offset our net interest margin. So fee OpEx, this year, fee growth is expected to exceed, OpEx growth again, I would like to underline that, and yielding further improvement in fee OpEx ratio. So all in all, actually, I tried to, give you a, you know, very large explanation, regarding your question. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you, Mikhail. The second question comes from Mehmet Sevim from JP Morgan. Mehmet, please ask your question.
Yes, good evening. Thanks very much for the presentation and for your time. Just maybe following up on the earlier question, could you talk about the growth trends in more detail, especially following the CBRT's additional tightening measures that were announced earlier in the year? So where, where do you see demand coming from right now? What sectors are you lending, and how do you expect the momentum to evolve in the coming quarters? And if we assume another 5 percentage points rate hike by the CBRT, I appreciate that may not be your base case, but how would you expect your growth momentum, but also margins, et cetera, to change as a result of that? And my final question, if I may, is on asset quality.
It seems like the trends are still very strong, and in fact, if I look at collections, they were extraordinarily strong this quarter. So, could you talk about these trends a bit, particularly what's causing this? And in line with that also, cost of credit was very low. So looking forward, when would you expect to see some normalization in the trends? And any color you may share would be helpful. Thanks very much.
Hi, Türker, you better start, and then I'm going to support some areas that I would like to share with Mehmet. Thank you.
Hi, Mehmet and Gür . Actually, yes, maybe. In our base case scenario, the latest 5% rate hike was not embedded. So therefore, actually, which came towards the end of the first quarter. So therefore, actually, the repricing, so, in the deposits, on the deposit side, has also continued in April. So, which will maybe like, maybe like slightly delay this NIM improvements, the overall core spread improvements, in the second quarter. Probably we'll see this core spread development towards the end of the second quarter. But there's actually one maybe, like, slight offsetting factor, on the deposit side. Up until the elections, like, the customer behavior was slightly different than nowadays, because up until elections, like, affects KKM holders.
We prefer, we're preferring mostly rollovers rather than the, rather than switch into TL. But nowadays, with the stability in the currency after elections, we are seeing, observing more appetite by the customers into, like, switching into TL, into playing with the Turkish lira time deposits, which may like, which will probably give us some room in like, in optimizing our deposit cost going forward. So therefore, it will be like a supporting factor on the deposit cost side. But overall, yes, this 5% was not, was not embedded, but we are sticking to our full year net interest margin guidance of roughly 4%, where we are expecting the NIM improvement to like, to happen more starting from the beginning of the second half of the year.
With regard to growth trends, actually, as you may also like, as you've also seen, from like, CBRT figures and BRSA figures, up until, like probably March, like loan growth was still significant on the corporate commercial side, as was on the consumer lending side. As we have shared at the beginning of the presentation, with regard to the latest four-week averages in the loan growth, now these have come down significantly, both on commercial side as well as on the consumer side. Still, like, the credit card's balance growth is, like, higher than the other products, but also on that side we are seeing some normalization. And so in the light of maybe this 2% cap, probably actually the demand is also moderate.
But if you would ask us, like, with regard to our full year guidance of 40%, actually, it's still, it's, it seems to be still achievable because, you know, 2% in compounded terms, and still there are some exempt loan types like export loans, investment loans. So there are still, like, maneuver areas where we are, where I believe probably we can still end the year at, around our full year guidance of 40%. With regard to asset quality, as we have also mentioned, first quarter was quite strong. This 30 basis points cost of risk was much lower than our full year guidance, where actually a strong collections have also helped significantly.
Like, collections, collections were across the board, like in all segments, but also we had some big ticket collections, which have also kept our cost of risk significantly lower than our full year guidance. Probably, in the coming quarters, there will be some normalization, but we are confident with our full year guidance of 1.5%. I think we will be, we will end the year below this full year guidance. And like after first quarter in April, actually, still the trend is similar. There is no major change in terms of stage one to stage two formation or into stage three formation.
And NPL flow inflows are mainly coming from more smaller tickets, but which were, which was expected anyway, and where we had built our provisions proactively in the last year, when the asset quality trend was quite robust. So all in all, we preserve our strong provisioning levels, and we are confident with our full year guidance.
Yeah, maybe I can add, again, more flavor to Türker's, you know, comments. Maybe I can add that on the FX loan book, actually, our focus will continue, thanks to our very strong 81 bond issuance, thanks to our very strong liquidity, thanks to our low, very low level, LDR on the fixed side. So the, those are giving us room to grow. So, actually, you can see that, you know, there is a 20 basis points year to date, the market share gain, on our side. So even though there are some big ticket redemptions, but our focus will be on the especially exporter side. So there are some, you know, demand from the corporate, you know, side.
So, I can add that all in all, we are comfortably, you know, positioned in order to reach our growth targets, both in Turkish lira and the foreign currency loans. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Kaan Gür. Thank you, Sir Türker . That's very helpful. May I follow up-
Thank you.
ask if you could remind us of your latest pricing levels, both in the front book and the back book, for both loans and deposits, if possible?
Yes. Like, in terms of the back book, our loans are at around mid-40s. Deposit cost is again mid-40s to high 40s. But on the marginal side, marginal loan pricing is at around 60% levels, whereas deposit pricing is at around 50% levels. So actually, in terms of the marginal spreads, these are quite strong. But the struggle we are having is the monthly growth gap and low LDR. So there is actually huge potential for us to improve the core spreads.
Yeah, maybe I can add again, Mehmet, especially, the most important thing is here. In the same time, since we are focusing on our deposit costs in order to, you know, you know, press down, especially the most important things here, KKM conversion and the standard Turkish Lira ratio.
So if you are successfully manage those conversions and the ratio of standard Turkish lira, which we are in that position, so it's gonna be helpful in order to enhance the existing Turkish net interest margin.
That's very clear. Thanks very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Mehmet. And there's one written question, and basically, it's the rationale behind your AT1, given already your high capital and high liquidity. Türker, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Yes, you're right. So we are the best positioned bank in terms of the capital ratio, both in total capital ratio as well as CET1. But as you know, like, we operate in emerging markets, and, you know, like, keeping the, like, capital ratio at the highest achievable level is always really is quite important. Also, in order to, like, hedge it against currency fluctuations, we did it in the past with our Tier Twos, but AT1 is also helping for CET1 protection. And on top of it, like, at the beginning of this year, there was a regulation change.
Legal lending limits were calculated based on total regulatory capital up until end of last year, but now we are calculating them, which, in accordance, taking into account only Tier 1 capital. So this AT1 will be also helping in managing our legal lending limits. And not to forget, actually, first quarter, actually, like, the global market developments have also given a really, a very supportive environment, and we wanted to benefit from it. And I think the pricing we have achieved is also quite advantageous.
Okay, thank you. There are no further questions. We, as IR, are always at your disposal, so you can reach out to us at any time you want, and we are looking forward to seeing most of you, hopefully, in the upcoming months. I leave the floor to Kaan Gür for closing remarks.
Thank you, Ebru. Thank you, friends. With our experience in the many cycles, I'm fully confident in our people's capacity and execution to deliver sustainable shareholder value. Once again, I would like to express my ample gratitude to all our people for their outstanding efforts. I would also like to thank all our stakeholders for consistently placing their trust and confidence in us. Keep well, and look forward to meeting you.