Good morning, and welcome to the SpareBank 1 SMN fourth quarter presentation. I will give a brief walkthrough of the presentation that is issued on our websites. This is my 110th and last presentation of all the quarter figures since 1994. As I will show you, this is a very, very good final lap. We have been through a year with a great transition and modernization of the bank. Despite all that, we deliver record results and good figures in every respect of both the growth and capitalization. We have reduced loan losses that has been halting us for some quarters and have a significant improvement in asset quality.
We are also able to distribute 56% of the profits, which is NOK 7.5 per share. That is also, as you can see from this slide, we have good return on equity in every quarter, and we are also being rewarded on the stock exchange. As a savings bank, which is a very good position to be in Norway, savings banks are the growing part of the Norwegian banking area. Savings banks are improving market share both in retail and corporate banking, and are among the best performers when it comes to return on equity. Our bank is among the best in this system as one of the best banks in Nordic countries as we aim to be.
We deliver our net profit of NOK 703 million in the last quarter, NOK 2.9 billion for the full year, which is 12.7% return on equity for this quarter and 13.5% return on equity for the year as a whole. CET1 ratio is 18%, so the bank is significantly solid and above the goals for the bank. We have over the last years delivered a good return on equity, and I think it's to be mentioned is last year where we had 10% return on equity in a year with NOK 1 billion in loan losses. This year, lower loan losses, as you can see from the slide, and then we come back with 13.5%.
This has been a year of transition and modernization, and we have also aimed to do a lot of other activities. Most important is what I will come back to in the end, that they have found a replacement for me, which is not an easy job, but it has been very successfully fulfilled. The macro situation, after a period of the corona pandemic, we see a very favorable climate in our region and in Norway as such, with very, very low unemployment. Actually, the biggest problem is lack of a workforce in different industries and increasing house prices, which we see as a signal that the economy for the individuals is performing very well.
The industries presented here, I will not go through each and one of them, is reflecting what the industries our region is preoccupied with and is also reflected in the loan books. They are performing well, and as I mentioned, the biggest problem is lack of workforce. The customers, as you will see from the growth figures, which I soon will come back to, is into an increasing degree choosing our bank, and also very lucky to see that the market share is steeply increasing, showing that our concept is working very well and we are able to compete. We stick to our goals and deliver on all of them.
The strategies is the same as it's been for some years, is to build on SMN, taking advantage of our broad income sources and the different business lines, increase digitalization, take a active part in the restructuring of Norwegian banking, integrate sustainability in the business processes, and take advantage of our ownership model. Over many years, we have built very strong subsidiaries in non-banking activities, but very closely related to the banking business as real estate broker, as accounting services, a market operation, and a leasing and car funding operation, which has turned out to be market winners and very profitable and in participating and making the bank's profitability improving.
As a consequence of the strategy of integrating and take out the synergies between the subsidiaries and the parent bank and the banking operation, we also plan to open an Oslo branch to follow our customers that we already have in the Oslo area, and taking advantage of a very strong position in the capital market operation in SpareBank 1 Markets. This will be a very quiet startup taking, of course, risk consideration with us, but we expect this to be a long-term improvement of the bank's profitability. Digitalization has been a topic for several years.
We are pushing even more efforts into making the processes more effective, making it possible for the customers to self-service in order to improve the customer experience and improve the efficiency, of course, and reduce the cost level of the bank in the long term. Sustainability and social responsibility is also an important part of the bank's strategy. We have committed ourselves to sustainability ambitions, and we plan to, and we are working for being a driver for the green transition of the economy. There is lots of activities as you can see from this slide, and here there is more to come.
There will be development in views of how to gain it and what our role in this transition will be. First, we have to see to that the bank is, and the bank's own operation is performing in a green way, and then we have a role in helping our customers to go on the same path. 36% of the bank is owned by the community as equity share type of bank. Their part of the dividends is invested in order to improve the region and improve the reputation of the bank. We have launched a new strategy to invest in community activities, sports and outdoor, art and culture, innovation and value creation, and sustainability.
Last year, we spent NOK 200 million in these activities, and for 2022, we plan to use NOK 250 million. Return on equity for this quarter, 12.7%, sustainably high level above our goal of 12%, on a very high capital base, 18% CET1, and of course, very much helped by the fact that we have much lower losses and improved asset quality. Even though we have losses, so the figures is made without any paybacks. Over the last years, there has been continuous growth in income, especially in the subsidiaries, as I presented earlier on, and a very controlled development on the cost side, especially in the parent bank.
Our bank is focusing on the different customer groups and the biggest and most important part of the bank's area is serving the retail customers with the retail division in the bank and the real estate brokering. Figures are performing very well. I think the most important part of the cooperation with the real estate brokerage is that when we sell 35% or our broker sells 35% of the homes in our region, we are funding 55% of those homes, which is significantly higher than for other homes sold by other brokers. That is an important contribution to the very high growth in mortgages, as I will show you later on.
Serving the corporates in our region and the corporate division has, after the wave of loan losses, come back with very healthy profits. Here we have some very successful subsidiaries, SpareBank 1 Markets, which is the winner when it come to the IPO market in Norway, not in the region, but in Norway. And SpareBank 1 accounting services , which is having 25% or something of the accounting in the area. Here, there is some path to go to improve the synergies, but there is a huge potential for both getting more SME customers and more accounting customers.
As a SpareBank 1 bank, we have the product companies, especially in the SpareBank 1 group, Fremtind Forsikring and SpareBank 1 Forsikring Insurance, which is performing extremely well, as you can see from this slide. In addition to these profits that we get as dividend from these companies, we also have a big contribution to the business lines I presented earlier here as commission from selling the different products. New thing from this year is SpareBank 1 Asset Management, which is a good figure of NOK 12 million here. Most important is this is our vehicle to develop a new savings platform for to offer our customers the absolutely best platform for savings.
The bank is growing, which we have been doing for the last 10 years, substantially more than the growth in the total lending in Norway. 6.8% in the retail area, mainly mortgages, and 7.1% in the corporate side. Over many years, we have had a fairly low corporate growth due to capital considerations and unfavorable risk weights. Now we are back again and can see that we have had NOK 10 million in growth over the last years. We are in a period of increasing interest rates.
After the National Bank's interest rate of 0% due to the corona pandemic, we are now in a period of increasing interest rates, which is, in my view, good for the economy and reflecting that there is room for increasing interest rates. It is challenging when the interest rates is increasing and therefore you can see a drop in interest rates over the last quarters. Mainly we can see this is a delay effect on that the market interest rate, the market rates is increasing faster than we are able to increase the interest rates for the customers rates. Deposits has been growing very much in the pandemic, in the corona period, reflecting the liquidity situation for Norwegians.
We are happy to see that we are taking our share and more than that when the savings is increasing in the degree that we have seen here, and we are very curious to see what the development will be when the society opens up again. Coming to margins, here you have the flip side of the declining margins on the deposit side. Increasing deposit margins, decreasing interest margins, and increased return on the equity itself, we see that that will have a positive impact on the net interest income. Cost has been an important topic for the bank to control the cost. This is especially when it comes to the retail part of the bank, it's very much a cost game.
We have had, over the last year, a fairly flattish development in cost in the parent bank. In Q4 2020, we had some restructuring costs, and that's the reason for the decrease. When it comes to the subsidiaries, Markets and broking, industries, accounting and so on, the cost is more volatile and following the success of these companies. Asset quality back to seven basis points. We have been through a wave of costs or credit costs of loan losses, fairly much due to problems in the offshore industry. We have seen very little corona-related loan losses. Now we are back to an ordinary level.
This quarter, there is no offshore oil and offshore industry loans, so it's on a more ordinary loan loss level. This is a long story about the capitalization. It's 18%, as I mentioned. Our goal or target is 16.9%, which is including management buffer and a full countercyclical buffer, which we use this for planning, and we have a relatively good distance to this target. As this slide shows, there has been a very long over the last 11 years a buildup of capital from what we today consider as very low capital levels. In this period, we also have had a lower payout ratio.
As you can see from the return on equity over the years, this has paid off for the investors. The distribution of profits for 2022, NOK 2.7 billion is what's there for distribution. We follow our distribution policy, of course. NOK 13.31 is the return per share, and we pay out NOK 7.5 per share, which is 66% of the dividend of the return on the profit. The same percentage is also used for the community dividend. We have no dilution effect this year, which is according to the dividend policy. As this is my last presentation, I have chosen a slide here, which is the selection of all lines is slightly subjective.
Even though there has been very fine period for the investors, continuous growth in profitability. When we have a very bad year when it comes to loan losses, we have a substantial profit. We come back with NOK 7.5 with NOK 13.3 per share this quarter. We are sticking to the payout ratio of about 50%, above 50%- 66% this time, which is telling the story that we are focusing all the interests of the investors and the owners.
What I would say is that we have the reason for this very good profits over time, of course, in addition to operating in a very favorable banking area, we have had continuous focus on profits. Profitability is the main driver, and that is down through heavy focus on sales efforts and control of cost. That is and control of risk, of course, is the main drivers for doing business and we have been very successful with that. Also I will add on that we have high courage to do a transaction when that is needed and step forward when there is something that should be done.
For instance, when we bought BN Bank 13 years ago, that is an example of the ability to be courageous. Therefore, as we have been focusing on over the last presentation, this is a good investment and the stock exchange has also shown that they agree to. As I am retiring, the Managing Director has been looking for my replacement, and then he went to BN Bank, which is a bank we own 1/3 of. Found Trond Søraas, who has been the CFO of the bank and is a guy we know very well. I think he will be a very good replacement. Please, Trond, come here and introduce yourself.
Thank you, Kjell, and thank you for the kind words. Although the image that you have chosen could indicate otherwise, this is of course something that I'm really looking forward to formally take on the role as CFO from the end of this month. Of course, as expected, you leave your position with a record high result, as you have just described and explained in detail. You also leave me with a very strong team, a team that I'm very excited to start working with and make sure that this transition is as frictionless as possible. Thank you so much for passing the baton to me. I should take very good care of it. Thank you.
Thank you. There will be a possibility to pose some questions on the chat, which will be answered, not live, but you will get an answer to the questions. Thank you.