Earnings Call: Q4 2025

May 21, 2026

Good ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fidelity Bank 2025 full year earnings call. I will now hand over to Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe. You may begin. Good day. My name is Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe. I'm the CEO of Fidelity Bank PLC. I am pleased to welcome you to our full year 2025 earnings call. On this call today with me are the following executives and principal officers of our bank. Kevin Ugwuoke, Executive Director, Risk. Kenneth Opara, Executive Director, Lagos and Southwest. Stanley Amuchie, Executive Director, Chief Operations Officer. Pamela Shodipo, Executive Director, South. Abolore Solebo, Executive Director, Corporate Banking. Hassan Imam, Executive Director, North. Victor Abejegah, Chief Financial Officer. Akintoye Babalola, Treasurer. Adetunji Mustafa, Divisional Head, Strategy, Innovation, and Business Transformation. Samuel Obioha, Investor Relations. We have uploaded the investor relations presentation on our website for your review. In this session, we will provide a high-level overview of the macroeconomic environment and speak to the facts behind the figures. In 2025, the domestic economy recorded notable improvements driven by far-reaching fiscal, monetary, and structural reforms implemented by the federal government and the Central Bank of Nigeria. Banking sector witnessed significant regulatory reforms, namely the banking recapitalization program, enhanced prudential and corporate governance standards, withdrawal of regulatory forbearance, improved anti-money laundering, and cybersecurity framework. Collectively, these reforms align the Central Bank with Nigeria's strategic vision of building a stronger and more resilient banking sector, capable of supporting Nigeria's ambition to become a NGN 1 trillion economy. Despite prevailing headwinds, the Nigerian economy demonstrated resilience during the year, driven by stronger non-oil sector performance, increased oil production, improved fiscal revenue, and the impact of ongoing reforms. Real GDP growth increased to 3.87% in 2025 from 3.4% in 2024, reflecting an economic recovery and improving macroeconomic fundamentals. Our strategic imperative in the current financial year are to optimize our balance sheet by expanding our earning base, enhancing the net interest margin, increasing non-interest revenue, reducing cost to serve, and keeping the cost-to-income ratio within acceptable thresholds. Despite the end of the CBN forbearance regime, our financial results highlighted the resilience and adaptability of our business model. I will now speak specifically to the financial numbers. Our gross earnings grew by an impressive 45.6% to NGN 1.52 trillion, propelled by a robust 36.6% growth in interest income and a 1.3% surge in non-interest revenue. The stellar performance in non-interest revenue was driven by the substantial gains in assets related income, trade income, digital income, and credit-related fees, among these income streams reflecting the depth of our dynamism of our business model. Please see slide 19 of the investor presentation for the breakdown of the gross earnings. Net interest margin improved to 12.3% from 12% in 2024 full year, as the increase in our average yields on earning assets significantly outpaced the rise in our average funding costs. The main growth was driven by a 29.7 growth in the interest income on loans and a 50.1 increase in the interest income on liquid assets, resulting in an impressive 32% year-on-year rise in our net interest income to NGN 831.4 billion. These results reflect our disciplined asset liability management. Note that the details on this movement of the loan is on slide 20 of the IR presentation. Our operating expenses rose by 33.7% to NGN 443.3 billion. This is primarily being driven by AMCON charges, deposit insurance charges, communication, legal services, and depreciation. These factors accounted for 71.2% of the absolute increase. Despite this pressure, our cost-to-income ratio remains at 54.6%, which aligns with our 2025 guidance. This disciplined cost management underscores our commitment to operational efficiency and sustainable profitability despite the challenging cost environment. The movement in our operating expense is disclosed on slide 21 of the annual report. During the review period, we successfully completed our landmark private placement that raised NGN 227 billion, elevating our regulatory capital well above the NGN 500 billion minimum threshold required to retain our international banking license. This achievement has cemented our status among Nigeria's elite Tier 1 banks and strengthened our foundation for future growth. I want to thank you for your support. I will now take questions. Thank you very much. Thank you, ma'am. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting the question and answer session. Thank you. Our first question comes from Stephen Omoleyebo of Cardinalstone Securities Limited. Please go ahead. All right. Thank you. I have two questions. The first one essentially is, per the results that was released, there was a NGN 194 billion unrealized loss on comparison swap with Central Bank. I would like to see if management could provide more color with the nature of the underlying assets, what type of assets class, the geography, and the approximate maturity profile. My second question is around the non-distributable regulatory reserve. It grew from NGN 155 billion to NGN 299 billion, almost doubling. The IFRS loss expense on the books in the QRL was just NGN 22 billion. I would also like to get clarity on exactly what drove this addition of NGN 144 billion between the prudential guidelines internally computation and the IFRS internal computation. Thank you. Okay. The first question was basically because of the swap, our swap with the Central Bank. I'll have the CFO speak to that. Yes. Thank you so much. Like the MD said, the underlying assets that led to the derivative losses has to do with the swap we had with Central Bank of Nigeria, where about $500 million were changed last year, April, which matured this year, April. The losses we saw there was due to mark-to-market losses due to the recent appreciation of the Naira. That Fidelity Bank, it was not unique alone to the bank. We saw it played out with other Tier 1 banks with similar underlying assets, and we do not expect it to roll over because it has matured and closed. That answers the underlying asset for swaps. The NDR you mentioned from 165 to 299 was the outcome of the forbearance exercise that CBN carried out during the period, and which has normalized. Now we're taking them in, and we are very happy to say that despite all that, we did not write off any of it or the loans that were affected, and we're comfortable that these have been cleaned up. Thank you. Our next question comes from Esther Adeyemo of Direct Capital. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you very much. I would like to know what the bank intends to do in terms of expansion. I know that they've been able to raise fresh capital of over NGN 200 billion. I would like to know what those funds would be used for. Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. At the moment, we have only one subsidiary. We have only one subsidiary, and we intend to do two more in Africa. Two to three in the next two years in Africa. Between two and five in Africa. As you well know, it's on a best effort basis because they're brownfields. We have to first of all get what suits our purpose and then just work our time, and then we'll take it from there. We're looking at three to five African expansion in the next two years on a best effort basis, because we're not doing greenfield, we're doing brownfield. It's on a best effort basis as to what is available and stable. Thank you. The next question comes from Dotun Balogun of Stanbic IBTC. Please go ahead. My first question is, what's the current size and structure of the derivative book? What level do you think would trigger a further material loss in 2026? Secondly, what was responsible for the reduction in net loans despite the guidance of around 10% for 2025? Thank you. The question wasn't very clear. First question was on the derivative book. What is the current size and what is the structure like, and what level would trigger a loss or could trigger a loss in 2026? Did you get that? Your question, to tell you the truth, because the line is not very clear. You asked what is the current size of our derivative book and what size would trigger a loss in 2026. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much, and thanks for the question. In terms of the size, it's $500 million. It's a one-year term transaction, it's not anything complex. It is simple, clear, vanilla. Just a naira cross-currency. It's not anything to really worry about right now. Okay. Thank you. In terms of the call, no. Thank you. The second question. Loans. About the loans. I'll have the CFO speak to that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the question on the reduction in net loans for 2025. As you know, 2025 was a year where almost all banks, and Fidelity inclusive, were focused on raising adequate capital. It was a time to focus on being adequately capitalized. Yes, we planned to grow the loan book, and that plan was a growth of 15%. If you marry the conservatism approach to that capital with the strengthening of the Naira from 2024 year-end, where it closed at around NGN 1.5 to 2024, at 2025, where it closed around NGN 1.4, you find that that also helped to compress our loan book. Over 50% of our loan book is in foreign currency. That naturally, those two things combined to result in the net growth of just about 2% in the loan book for 2025. Thank you. The next question comes from Christie Olsunbo of ASA Asset Managers. Please go ahead. Thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on the results. I just wanted to ask about your current OpEx levels. As you mentioned, there is a bit of an increase in the level in the cost-to-income ratio this year. I just wanted some clarity maybe on some lines. Are these one-offs or do you expect these to normalize in the coming months, in the coming quarters? One line, some lines in particular in terms of consulting and outsourcing or even marketing and communication. Just a bit of clarity and guidance on that would be nice. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Thank you very much for this question. As you well know, there are some expenses that we have to make as a matter of course, and those are the AMCON charges as well as the insurance charges for NDIC. The 33.7% growth that you're seeing is that, it's basically the cost of the insurance, the deposit, like I said, and all of that. These accounted for 21% of that NGN 263. These are charges that we have to make specifically. Then, of course, there's also the cost of leasing and then the staff salary increases, as well as OpEx, regular OpEx. This disciplined cost of management underscores our commitment to our efficiency, operational excellence, and sustained profitability. Yeah. I'll have the head of IR take the question further. You wanted to ask about if these levels are sustainable or it's going to be sustained. What has happened is some of the costs have to do with size. As Eddie mentioned, there's a war on AMCON. If I put that war during our balance sheet, of course, that cost will increase. Our deposit liability growth will also increase the NDIC premium as well. As we experience growth, those kind of costs will grow. What we're doing is also to ensure that our income is growing at the same time so that effectively our cost-to-income ratio, we're monitoring the cost-to-income ratio to make sure that it comes within limits. That's far how we're doing that. Thank you. The next question comes from Emeka Onwu of Bloomberg. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you for the call. I want to ask a question on your PBT projection. You are projecting like 44% increase to NGN 500 billion by the end of this year. I want to ask how you intend to make that money, because I see loan growth is just about 10%. That's my first question. The second question is, another bank, Central Bank Limited, Nigerian bank, offshore expansion to just 10% of shareholders' funds. How do you see that rule, and how will it affect your own expansion? Thank you. Very much. Of course, for the, I guess, the first question was how do we intend to grow our income if we're not going to grow our loan aggressively. As a deliberate strategy, we have decided to moderate our loan growth, and I'll have the CIO speak to it a little bit when I'm done, and that we have tried to focus on e-banking income. That way, we propose to make a lot of our top-line revenues from non-interest-driven activities. Like all the detail loans and then all the payday loans and all the rest of them. We don't want to work our capital so much and then a lot of the increase our loan book. We think we have grown our loan books significantly aggressively and want to moderate it going forward. You can see the moderation even started from last year, because we actually grew by only 2%, and we're still able to meet the numbers. We are deliberately working very hard to raise income from our main play as well as the non-interest-bearing lines, which include the e-banking and then short-term deposit facilities. Basically, our growth will be from the main existing loan book by work making sure that we also reduce our cost of funds by raising our low-cost deposits. That is what I refer to as my main play. Then we'll also try to get trade-related income as well as e-banking income, like I explained. It's most of it is non-interest income. That's where we hope to do the trade. We have demonstrated that we have the capacity to do that, because in 2025, as you can see, our loan book grew by only 2%, and we were still able to sustain our top line revenue. Thank you. On the expansion, I'll have Stanley speak to it. Basically, we know that the implication of the BOFIA 2020 will cycle the growth, but we have a strategy around that. Thank you. Stanley will speak to it. We have just our only subsidiary currently is our UK subsidiary, and that accounts for less than 7%, about 6.3% of our shareholders' funds as at date. What that law, the BOFIA says that you can only do up not more than 10% of your shareholders' funds in one subsidiary, an aggregate of 20%. We still have headroom. Based on our own calculation, we have up to $100 million-$105 million available for us to do expansion, and therefore, we still have that room. We've just done one, and that restriction, it doesn't affect us strictly because we still have room to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to key star and one to place yourself in the question queue. Our next question is Asfala from Esther Adeyemo of Direct Capital. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you very much. I initially had like two questions to ask. I believe that the MD must have addressed the NIM because I wanted to ask why or how the bank was able to achieve one of the highest NIM amongst peers in the industry, given the macroeconomic pressures that we had in 2025. I think she has addressed a bit of that. I would like to know what the contribution of the U.K. subsidiary was to the group. And what's the long-term, short-term pay for the U.K. subsidiary as well? Thank you. Thank you very much. As you well know, our U.K. subsidiary was a loss-making institution before we acquired it in late July 2023. Over the past two years, we have focused on stemming the losses and rebuilding the businesses for sustainable growth and long-term profitability. This we have supported with very well-enhanced risk management practices and, of course, strong corporate governance. We are in U.K., We have to maintain the very high standards of corporate governance, which were used in home parent as well. We are pleased to share that these efforts have yielded results, and for the first time since the acquisition, this bank recorded an operating profit of GBP 930,000 in 2025. They've actually come out from the bank. The current contribution, though it's small and it's negligible, but in the short term, we project that we should be able to contribute between 2%-5% in group profit by next year. Over the long term, we expect that the contribution to increase to about 10%. We have seen a lot of growth in their balance sheet and their businesses, and the reach out is very strong. We have built a very solid management in the U.K. subsidiary. We are very confident that in a very short while, they will be able to contribute at least 10% to our bottom line. Thank you. The next question comes from Ifeanyi Osele of CardinalStone Securities. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your presentation and the opportunity to ask questions. My first question will be around the loan book. I think in 2025, we saw an increase in Stage 2 loans, particularly in the oil and gas sector. If you could just provide more color on the reason for that increase in Stage 2 loans, which also drove incremental Stage 2 loans on the income statement. Based on your guidance, now that you have a lot more in your Stage 2 loans, your guidance for coverage is about 1%-2%. Given the increase in Stage 2 loans, do you think you can still achieve within that 1%-2% band? I have another question on dividends. Dividends for 2025, no dividend was declared. Was this due to capital adequacy ratio, which moderated to about 16%? I know back in the past, around 2024, the capital adequacy ratio was still around 16%, but dividend was still declared in that year. Just to get more clarification on the dividend. Those two for now, and then I'll come up with other questions. Thank you very much for that question. Let me start with the question on declaration of dividend. The bank was unable to declare dividend due to regulatory requirements mandating the conservation of capital as affected by the treatment of significant forbearance loan impact. Basically, to go to the second part of the question that you asked about impact in the top of the CAR, not at all. At half of 2025, it was 16%, but the NGN 227 billion deposit for shares has not been calculated into that because the verification was post end of year. As we speak now, if you add back the NGN 22.7 billion in shares that we verified, we are anywhere under 24%, 23.5%. NGN 227 billion, to add it back to our capital right now, will take us to NGN 543 billion. We're well over the regulatory threshold, and we're happy to announce that we're now undisputedly a Tier 1 bank. No, that was not the issue. Just the regulatory requirement to conserve capital and the fallout of the treatment of the forbearance loans. Thank you. The second question was on the Stage 2 loans. Yes. The increase in our oil and gas Stage 2 loan was caused by a few obligors that migrated from Stage 1 to Stage 2. The major account is an oil producer whose payments were delayed due to an incident in the facility. There was a fire incident that burned down the facility. The good news is that the repairs have been done, and this particular oil producer is back in production. We expect this particular loan to move back to Stage 1 because production has started, and according to the customer, he's going to resume export any minute from now, we want to have the full volume. That problem has been sorted, and we expect to migrate back to Stage 1. Thank you. I will take the last question on cost of risk. Yes. Thank you, Eni. Thanks for that question. It's important that the guidance we gave for cost of risk was 2%. Balancing again the improvement in the Stage 2 loans that you observed. Just like Biondi has explained, the Stage 2 loan migration, we expect that to reverse within the year. The guidance we've given has factored in our total understanding of our loan book. Basically, that guidance will apply. It kind of speaks to all we expect as far as the loan book is concerned for 2026. I hope that answers your question. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Makeni of Leadway. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Once again, congratulations on your results. Most of my questions have been addressed, but just to push the ones that have not been addressed, I have a couple of questions. You mentioned your Stage 2 loan and the measures that you're taking to kind of address it. I wanted to also ask what happens, and we know that oil and gas is in a good position now. I wanted to know what the bank is seeing in order to keep risk low and prevent if oil and gas performance actually weakens maybe subsequently. That would be my first question. Second question will be, does management actually anticipate the need to raise maybe additional capital in the medium term to support goals, maybe, or for the three, four, or expansion plans? Lastly from my side, still on looking at. I know someone actually asked that question, but I need to get a clarification like you mentioned. Looking at other banks and the likes of, we saw how the impairment charges or provisioning was high, but then when looking at Fidelity results, it was kind of low. Should investors actually expect higher impairment charges going forward, or is this what is going to be in short term or medium term? Thank you. That will be all from my side. Yes. Let me start from the question on provisioning, which I'll have my CRO take. We think we have made adequate provisioning for this year, but he will speak to the work we intend to do going forward in the provisioning. Okay. Thank you for that question. I think to answer that, we need to go back to 2024 as well. You will notice there that we took a much higher level of impairment compared to quite a few other banks. If you look at our cost of risk in 2024, it was much higher because we proactively took some charges. Some of those eased in 2025, and that's why we saw that where we are. Looking forward, we've given out a guidance of between a maximum of 2%, and that's factoring all of the dynamics we expect to play out in our loan book, both in terms of migrations, in terms of additional impairments we need to see, as well as in terms of improvements we expect to see in the loan book. We say that the guidance we've given is a full reflection of what we expect to play out in the loan book for 2026. Then, speaking quickly to the oil and gas sector that you spoke about in case there's a reversal. Yes, you're right. We're in a very good place right now with the oil and gas sector, which is good for all things out there. On the flip side, if things reverse, we already have hedges in place for play there. The benchmark price at which we book those exposures and at which we book any current ones there, it's well below the current market price. If it kicks in at any time, we have hedges that will basically take us up and keep us in the black as far as those exposures are concerned. We're not really that worried. Yes, we are aware of the good times, but we're also ready for the bad times if it comes, and we have hedges to help us play that out. Thank you. Okay. There was another question on additional capital. We just raised capital from the capital additional exercise. We figured that the prudent thing to do is to, first of all, focus on ensuring that our return on investment, to promise our shareholders. We're currently at 10.4%, the first thing to do is to ensure that we take it up higher than that, and then utilize the current capital that we have before we think about additional capital. We don't have a set of capital now, as the business grows, of course. We have built a very strong brand, and we have shown that we are a reliable investment at all times. We don't have any doubt that if at any time we have reason to book additional capital, we are actually oversubscribed, if you remember, on the book outings that we did. The confidence is there. We have no reason to worry about it. If at any time our business grows bigger than what we have now, and we do need additional capital, we will do that. For now, we're focused on working on the one that we have and ensuring that we move our ROE from 24, which we promised and which we did the recapitalization, to much higher amount. Thank you. The next question comes from Habib Balogun of WSTC Financial Services. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. I just have two questions. Number 1 is, what's the outlook on the NPL? Are we still expecting that trajectory going forward? Number 2, what's your bit on Seplat case? I understand the significant outright, because from the operating expense, you mentioned over NGN 160 billion charges related to the case. What's the dividend outlook? I understand in 2025 was because regulatory requirements couldn't declare dividends. Are we really expecting or you're basically expecting dividend in 2026 or what's the outlook? What are we expecting? What are we anchoring on? With that note, thank you. Okay. Our outlook for our impairment is maximum 2%, and then I'll have the CRO speak a little bit more to it because I think he tried to explain it earlier on and he spoke of it. Thank you. Thank you, Embi. I think I've spoken quite a bit to it, which is that we foresee a maximum cost of risk of 2% for 2026, which has, in our view, looked at all of the dynamics that will play out in our loan book across all the different kinds of migrations that we might see. That's the outlook that we have. It's in line with our guidance, which is maximum of 2% cost of risk for 2026. Thank you. Okay. One of the questions you asked for is the dividend outlook for 2026. We plan to pay dividend in 2026 financial year. We aim to sustain our dividend payout guidance of 25%-40% of the PAT of the year. Of course, this is all things being equal. Like we said, we promise our shareholders returns on their investment at all times. We will plan to pay dividend in 2026 and our payout guidance between 25% and 40% of PAT for the year. Thank you. Okay. About Seplat, I think you raised a concern about the matter. I think the matter is in the public now. That's been decided by the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court gave their ruling, which is reasonable, favorable. It's not as you mentioned that it is massive. It's not. The number that you saw in the media before is much lower than what the outcome is. We're very happy with the outcome from the Supreme Court. We're very pleased with that. Okay. Basically, initially the news was around NGN 250 billion loss, but it came down to about NGN 13.6 billion calculated impact, which was in 2025 and fully provided for in our books. Thank you very much. We have our first follow-up from Esther Adeyemo of Direct Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I'd like to know what exchange rate was used for the 2025 financial year results and also what the outlook for the exchange rate would be. I don't know what the bank is projecting and what do you think that the impact would be on the bottom line and profits for the bank? Thank you. Thank you very much. We used NGN 1,400 to USD 1 in translating our balance sheet for 2025. On our outlook for the naira in 2026, it remains very positive. This is largely due to the reforms by the Central Bank and the improved transparency in the FX market. Like you well know, the reforms around exchange rate liberalization improved the liquidity management and the stronger reserve buffers. The narrowing gap between the official, you know the gap has narrowed significantly between the official and the parallel markets. Put together has helped to stabilize the naira. We do not anticipate that there will be any surprises anymore. Going into the year, we expect that naira will remain relatively stable with the potential of mild appreciation rather than more like a sharp rebound. We're expecting positive shocks around the naira. Most analysts project on place exchange rate anywhere between 1,300-1,450 range, depending on the oil prices, of course. Then of course, the FX inflows and the policy consistency. We have seen the policy consistency has been very consistent on this aspect, and the Central Bank has done a fantastic job on this. We must give them credit. By our own judgment, we don't think we expect surprises before the end of the year. Thank you. Next is a follow-up question from Iyanu Osoye of CardinalStone Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you very much. Just a few follow-up questions. Earlier you mentioned a potential contribution from FidBank UK, which contributes about 2% in the next, I mean, 2026. What factors are going to drive that strong performance, which is going to enable the 2% contribution? Also from the slides, we saw a jump in your volume of POS transactions. What led to that, and should we expect this level of transactions on POS going forward from 2026? Also on your deposit growth, you have a very impressive current ratio of about 91%, with your local deposits growing by about 14% last year. What do you say are the factors that enable this strong ability to retain and raise local deposits from the market? That's it from me now. To the local deposit. Pardon? I will pick the local deposit growth of 14.4% to NGN 6.3 trillion. Growing the local deposit has been a strategy that the bank has deployed in the couple of years back now, which we call the main play. The whole idea is to minimize cost of funding and then maximize yield on earning assets. Some of the initiatives that you asked that we deployed is optimization of our sales channels, which will consistently drive our value chain and collections. We have very good outings in high volume areas like aviation and several other businesses. We've been a very big player in the SME market. We have also noticed that that has helped us because these companies have actually come back to full-blown trade after the challenges of this devaluation. We're seeing all of that in our collections with the SMEs, with the big aviation industry that was a major player, and then our value chain with our big companies and manufacturing companies. We've actually ensured that our top lines work very well, and then the collections are going on very well. I think that has helped us a whole lot in the local deposit drive, the collections and the value chain optimization. Of course, we also optimized our direct sales. I almost forgot that. Our direct sales agents increased significantly, and we are seeing a lot of progress from that. You also did ask questions about the increased number of POS agents and merchants and all that. This has helped us to sustain our growth. The additional performance is because we've actually signed on a lot of POS agents and merchants. Also the stability of our platforms, which is a direct benefit from our upgrades of our platforms, has helped us a whole lot to increase our collections. This has shown a strong performance on that side. This new level of transaction will be sustained as this aligns with our retail strategy for 2026 and beyond. Who has asked that the first question? Can you repeat the first question? The first question. There was one around FidBank UK. You are projecting that you could see 2% contribution from FidBank UK to entire group earnings. I'm thinking that is PAT. Coming from this 2025 where it was still, I think it was a loss at PBT level. What's going to drive that strong earnings growth that you are expecting? What specific factors will enable that achievement? Okay. Definitely, our subsidiary in London is a very good outing. We have seen very strong pipelines from them, and it's amazing the amount of business that they have been showing us in a very short while. We're very confident with what we're seeing. I sit on the board of the London branch, London subsidiary, and I sit on all the, what do you call that? Committees, especially the Board Credit Committee, and I see the amount of cash flow that's coming. That's why we're very confident that they will be able to achieve that. What we need to do is increase our capital base, and we're working on all of that. Of course, the topic for 2025 was an approaching topic, and then what we could see from there was the goodwill. Let Stanley explain that further. Okay. At a deeper level. All right. Thank you very much, MB. Let me also say this. The issue is that there are some assumptions when we got into the U.K., when we got our subsidiary. One of it is the support that the Bank of England has given to all the banks that have Nigerian origins. They enjoyed that before the acquisition, but they lost it when they were in the acquisition mode, and that is coming back now. If they get that support, which is the risk management, which CBN supports all the banks with Nigerian origin, we believe that will show up a lot of income lines for them. And that is the inaudible to contribute to the inaudible, you know. We've seen a lot of, as Emeka mentioned, the kind of traction we're getting or the kind of businesses we're getting, and the kind of visibility that will unlock for them will also improve their strong I mean, to be able to fill into the strong pipeline to have been some area. That is one important thing, and we believe that that will help them to make that contribution of at least 10% in the short term, and we expect them to make up to 10% in the long term. The final question comes from Dotun Balogun of Stanbic IBTC. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon again. Just to clarify, the loans you mentioned, are they still in the books or have they been written off completely? If they have, why aren't you expecting interim dividends for this year? Thank you. You're not clear. Can you please repeat the question from? My question is on the inaudible loans, the loans that you said was the reason 2025 dividends were not paid. I'm asking, have they been written off completely? If they have, why is there no expectation for interim dividends for 2026? Is that clear, please? First we said we confirmed that we were going to pay a dividend in 2026 financial year. Our dividend payout ratio guidance is 25%-40% of PAT for the year, all things being equal. That's what I said earlier on. Stanley wanted to add something. I just wanted to add on the forbearance. We said we executed forbearance, and therefore, our proposal of dividend payment is based on having taken into consideration that executed forbearance. Therefore, we draft proposed that in 2026, all things being equal, be able to pay dividend. For that question, we are not constrained by any form of forbearance at the moment because we have already executed it. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, with no further questions in the question queue, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now hand back to Nneka for closing remarks. Okay, I want to thank you all for attending this call. Over the years, we have built a resilient and sustainable balance sheet by including different economic cycles in our scenario planning. We are also very strong in corporate governance practices, effective risk management, capital preservation, talent retention, and enhancement of our shareholder value. For that reason, I'm very confident, I assure you that we will deliver our guidance in our IR presentation for 2026. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your line.