Good morning. This is Dominik Prokop. On behalf of Alior Bank, may I welcome everyone to the results conference. We'll talk about the first quarter, 2026. In the first part, the bank's results, as well as the trends, they will be discussed by members of the board, President Piotr Żabski, who will sum up the most important trends and will tell us about business results. Deputy President Marcin Ciszewski, who will tell us about risk, and Deputy President Zdzisław Wojtera, who will tell us about finance. After the end of the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. Before I hand over to Piotr, may I encourage everyone to ask questions already during the first part of the conference, which will help us smoothly move into the Q&A session. Piotr, you have the floor.
Good morning, everyone. The presentation will be composed of four parts.
Firstly, operational activities with two business lines, the corporate and the individual customers, then the risk result, and then financial results and other issues. Let me move on to the operational activities and about the first quarter. What you can see here is a slightly changed makeup of the presentation. We wanted to refer to our strategies. There are three pillars on the left, scaling up, high resilience, operational excellence. It's within these categories that I'd like to tell you about what went on in the first quarter. Before moving on, let me just sum up. This was a good quarter for Alior Bank. Our results were PLN 1.5 billion with a 2% growth year-on-year.
Taking into account that we have lower interest rates in the country, this kind of growth is really in revenue is really making us very happy. This is a real scaling up result. As far as net profit is concerned, we have PLN 403 million. This is a drop of 15%. The corporate income tax is the main result, the main cause of this result. We will hear from our colleague later about more details. As far as the gross profits are concerned, we are on more or less the same level. As far as other parameters are concerned, very good return on equity, 13.8% increase. The corporate income tax is important in this regard. Very well-managed costs, 37.8% cost to income ratio, and we believe that this good level will be maintained.
NPLs at a low level, even lower than last year. This downward direction in the NPLs is maintained. What is crucial is what you can see on the left-hand side and the first pillar, the scaling up. We grew in the deposit portfolio by 9% year-on-year, which is making us very happy. We want to grow in this particular area. As far as the loan sales are concerned, there are two elements that I want to mention. Mortgage loans in the first quarter, 2026, in relation to the previous year, namely the first quarter, 2025, is an increase of 84%. PLN 1.8 billion was the value of the loan sales. There's been a very good quarter as far as the development of relational customers is concerned. We grew by over 100,000 in the number of relational customers.
They have to meet a certain level of requirements. It is not obvious that you already become a relationship customer while being a bank customer. It's been a very good quarter for Alior Leasing, which is our sister company. That's part of our scaling up process. As far as high resilience is concerned, I want to draw your attention to our rating. We received an investment rating from S&P, which is important for us because we will be issuing bonds in the Euro market. We hope to receive a good rating level there. Our costs are stable. The credit risk is going down. We are recommending for the third year running the payment of dividend to the tune of 50%, PLN 8.93 per share.
In the third pillar, the operational excellence, I want to draw your attention to our mobile app development. There's been a new launch of it in the current year, and compared to the previous version, it's on a much higher level. We're growing in terms of the users' numbers. It's the highest dynamic in the market, 90% growth at the end of March 2025. Very good capital position, which gives us the opportunity for further growth. Liquidity is on a good level. New elements in the area of technologies. We have adopted an ambitious AI strategy. We want to be even more dedicated to this high-end use of AI in the bank, and we have very ambitious plans for the next years. That is all as far as the general summary is concerned. Now, a bit more about the numbers.
If you look at our balance sheet, the assets is almost PLN 105 billion. PLN 85 billion of that is deposits, which is a 9% growth. Assets grew by 8%, and the gross performing loans grew by 7%. That's the performing loans, basket 1 and 2. These increments, which we announced in the strategy, are taking place and allow us to realize higher levels of growth in spite of the dropping interest rates. This particular slide, some more information about our customers. The relationship customers grew by 6% over the year, and there's a 19% growth in mobile app users. What you can see on the right-hand side among the relationship customers, which is 50% of the users of our application, and the customers are banking with us quite efficiently.
In the mobile app, we have 44% sales in the general framework of our sales channels. As for the balance sheet, on the left-hand side, we have the loan portfolio and the deposits on the right-hand side. Let me say a few words about the loans. The customer loans are stable in the growth. The general effort goes to maintain the portfolio and recreate the sales levels. There's a considerable growth in the burgundy part, namely the real estate loans. These are important. The whole portfolio has grown by 8% over the 12 months. As far as the deposits are concerned, all the constituent parts in these bars are growing. That's a good result. The whole of the growth is 12% year-on-year, and we are very happy to see the growth in each of these constituent parts.
We are improving the results, and that coincides with our strategy plans. As far as retail customers are concerned and the mortgage loans, there's been an 80% growth there. There's a lot of activity in the market as a whole, but on our side, the market shares in mortgages, for instance, is definitely higher than the Alior Bank share in the banking sector. This is something that makes us very happy, and we are catching up there. As for the other loans, non-mortgage loans in the burgundy part, you have the installment loans. They have performed slightly worse in the first quarter, but the result was the fact that there's been some carryover of the business partner negotiations, and we haven't managed to do something in the first quarter. I can be confident that it will be made up in the subsequent quarters.
As for the cash loans quarter-on-quarter, there has been growth in spite of prepayments, in spite of the churn and short tenors. The effort that we put into the recreation of the balance is quite efficient, and the balance will grow in the subsequent months. As far as the retail customers are concerned, I want to draw your attention to two types of activities, our brokerage house on the left and our TFI sector on the right. What we announced in this strategy was for the second pillar of our strategy to make our results stable by use of the commission. One of the strong players in that department is the activity of our brokerage house.
As you can see, there's been a 52% rise in the commission year-over-year, which is considerable, with 38% growth of assets and FIO, and a considerable rise in the structured products sales. On the side of Alior TFI, we are approaching the PLN 5 billion level of assets. We've even crossed over it, but March has not been a good result for that type of activity as there's been a lot of redemptions. We hope to come back to the level of PLN 5 billion, but the 34% year-over-year rise is not to be sneezed at, and we are definitely on the right track. It is with these activities that we will be helping to stabilize the commission result.
Now, the business customer, the left-hand side is the business loan portfolio, which is quite stable if you compare year-on-year results. Within the portfolio, there's been some changes. The first one that needs commenting is that the non-performing loans dropped down to PLN 2.4 billion year-on-year, and this drop is mainly in the micro businesses sector. We had quite a big historical baggage of non-performing loans in the micro companies sector, and this part is diminishing. What is important is the growing part in the middle are the segments that we want to develop, namely the small and medium-sized companies. Here we've seen an 11% growth. However, in the portfolio, we also have big consortia and the biggest players in the market where you can have slight movement.
The mix of the portfolio in the middle is changing, but in the general terms of its value, we have stability, and I can safely say that the mix of the portfolio is changing for the better. There is more of the healthy parts of the portfolio, which makes our business aims more viable. As far as business customers are concerned, there's been a 5% growth year-over-year in the deposit volume. The last quarter has been very important. We've had 22% growth in the current accounts sales. This is a good offer. It's been readily picked up by the customer, and over 70% of the sales is online sales.
The new type of banking that we have launched for business customers, and this is bringing profits in terms of current accounts sold. One more slide devoted to the corporate sector. Let me draw your attention to our leasing company activity. Alior Leasing has seen record growth in sales both in terms of leasing and loan sales. 27% is the rise year-on-year, and the whole portfolio grew by 12%. This is the kind of growth which is considerably above the level of the whole of the market. Our activity focuses on financing cars up to 3 tons. We are very strong in that particular area and the share of the market has grown by 6% from 2.9%.
You can see that the leasing is an alternative form for small and medium-sized companies, and these can readily obtain financing from our bank when they've been at least two years in operation. We catch up the gap, we can sell it in the banking channels, and we're very happy with the growth that has been observed there. Some other type of information, we are being appreciated in the market. We've been on the podium in the Golden Banker plebiscite and in the mobile banking, our application reached the first prize. We have been a leader in the institution of the year rankings, so we've been appreciated there. We've received six statuettes. We've been appreciated in the Top Employer title. We've received the certificate for 2026.
What is crucial, but let me stress that again, the investment rating of the bank represents the appreciation of our efforts which we put into building a quality portfolio, and this translates into the payment of the dividend, generating new sales. This all creates a situation where Alior Bank is a bank with an investment rating, which makes us very happy. That is all from me about the first quarter, and I will hand over to Marcin for his comments about the risk management.
Thank you, Piotr. Good morning to all of you. The first quarter of 2026 has ended with a very safe capital position. Tier 1 and TCR ratios are at the level of 17.85%, with a huge excess PLN 3.9 billion, which makes it possible to implement all the strategic endeavors. Concerning the tier ratio, it's been at 21.60%, which is also a very safe position as far as liquidity is concerned. LCR is also at a very high level as well as NSFR, which is definitely higher than required by our regulations, 236% and 155.52% respectively. We are working on the transformation of our loan portfolio, and we are successively reducing the non-performing portfolio. NPL is at 5.39% at the end of the first quarter.
We are maintaining our strategic goal, which is to get below 5% with this ratio at the end of this year. The Cost of Risk measured with the CoR, 0.67%, slightly higher than during the previous period. Here we can see the impact of our approach towards the sales of non-performing portfolios, which can be seen in the upper right graph, where we can see that at the end of the second and fourth quarters of every year, we are checking the level of the non-performing portfolio, and we are getting additional revenues, improving our CoR ratio. The non-performing portfolio went down from PLN 4.29 billion to PLN 3.64 billion. As far as the NPL indicator is concerned, in segments for the retail customers is at 2.41% at the end of the first quarter market level.
Concerning the business sector, we are reducing it consistently, but it's still higher than expected. At the end of the quarter, we are at the level of 11.35. We confirm that as far as the cost of risk of our bank, it should not exceed 0.8, which is also reflected by our strategy, which is implemented consistently. Thank you very much. Now Zdzisław has the floor.
Thank you, Marcin. Good morning. I am going to discuss about the financial results right now. If we look at our income base, as Piotr has mentioned in the business part, we are glad to see that the number of the clients and the level of loans and deposits are all increasing. With the interest rates getting down, this makes it possible for our income to grow by 2% year-to-year.
Of course, the division of that results differs because on the interest rates, we are 0.3 points down, but on the commissions, we are 6% up. If we look at the net result, we can see that it's definitely lower. As all the banking sector did, we applied a new approach for banking. What is important is that the gross result is almost the same as the one we have obtained last year in the first quarter of 2025. When we look now at the income statement, the P&L, so we can see the total income, net interest income, and also the commissions. We have got dedicated slides I am going to discuss in a moment. We've got also results on other activities.
Let me mention that we have got also the hedging transactions, plus PLN 18 million, and also on the transactions with financial instruments, PLN 6 million. In particular, the hedging transactions assessment is positive in this quarter, and it contributed in a good way to the result. It can change in the future, as you know very well. That's a positive one-off. If we look now at the total costs, they're also under good control. The costs of our activities increased by 2% only, and I'm going to discuss it more precisely on the dedicated slide. What is also important is that the legal risks costs, well, we have identified PLN 37 million of risks due to foreign currency loans, and this is mainly due to the model modification.
When we extended the horizon from two to five years, the provision for that topic has increased. We do not see a major influx of mortgage in foreign currencies claims, so this is a trend that is not deteriorating. As far as the gross result, the gross profit is almost at the same level as last year, which with lower interest rates and higher costs is quite a good result for this quarter. Concerning the net profit, we've got the impact of the corporate income tax. We have 37% of rate that has been applied to the whole year here. Getting down to more specific elements of the interest rates results.
We can see a decrease by 1% quarter -to -quarter, but taking into account the fact that in February, we have two days less, so we can say that this is quite comparable as far as the interest rates results are concerned. When we look at the interest rate margin, which is probably more interesting for you, we can present with a level of satisfaction this decrease. Because when we look at what happened as far as the reference interest rates of the National Bank of Poland is concerned, they went down by 200 basis points last year.
As we have already been saying for some time, we are changing the structure of our sales. We have a huge growth of the mortgage loans, which is stabilizing the income of the bank in the long term, but it has got a negative impact on the margin. Taking into account those two basic elements, the fact that we went down from 588 to 519 only, this can be considered a huge success when we look at the general trend of this decrease. Concerning the deposits and loan ratio, it's 78.5, which is quite a good result. Concerning the fees and commissions, it has increased by 6% year-to-year.
When you look at its development in the past quarters of 2025, we can see that every quarter it has improved, and I believe that this year the trend should be continued, which would mean that the number of the clients will increase. The sales of our products will also result in an improved commission income. When I look at the first quarter year-over-year, there are two things that needs to be commented. First of all, the increase of the brokers' commissions by PLN 10 million, and this is connected with a higher volume of the investment funds and to a higher activity of our clients at the stock exchange. We've got also a second item, the sales of insurance connected with the mortgage loan sales. We have also seen here a huge growth by PLN 7 million.
My last slide on the operating expenses. As mentioned in the strategy, we want to maintain them at a comparable level, and we want to maintain them in a regime that we have adopted. In order to present it better, we have split the costs, the operating expenses into bank operating cost and BFG costs, which are above it. As you can see, every quarter is getting slightly higher, but it's still comparable. When you look year-to-year, quarter to quarter, we can see that there is a slight increase in costs. When we look at the last quarter, we can see that we have mainly HR costs that have increased, but this is due to the structure and to the charges we need to pay as employer for the social security.
That's for the first quarter, and then it's getting down in the next quarters. When we look at the general governance costs, so usually in the last quarter, there are additional activities such as the marketing activities, IT projects, consultancy services, and this all resulted in higher cost in the fourth quarter. Now we have a decrease in the first quarter of 26%. What is important is that when we look at the cost-income ratio being 37.8% for the bank. For a bank with our structure, which is a growing bank, it's a very good value.
The most important information for you, I think, we would like for the general cost of governance, once BFG included, to be maintained at the level of the inflation, so that it would not exceed the inflation ratio this year. Thank you very much. The floor is back to Piotr.
Thank you, gentlemen. The, on the last slide, I would like to comment as follows. We had a quite a good quarter, I mean the first quarter of 2026. We are changing the structure of our balance sheet, of course. It's moving progressively, but in the good direction. The P&L is increasing and, even, faster than expected in some segments. Mortgage, consumer loans are increasing. Concerning the business clients, the portfolio is stable, but the structure and the mix, is improving.
We are reducing the non-working part. We are improving the segments in which we would like to be active. Concerning the P&L, well, all this results in higher income. PLN 1.5 billion that has been mentioned here is due to the increase of our volumes, and we are very glad because of that. Of course, our P&L is highly impacted by all kind of costs that seem to be very well managed. They're not increasing. They're not growing. We may say that, in some areas, we are even able to reduce them. That's why we have a very good position on the risks. The P&L is at a very good level. It's very stable, very solid.
PLN 403 million of our results impacted by the corporate income tax mainly is very good. It's one of the best return on investments on the market currently. Cost to income, I have already mentioned that, and the NPLs. We consider that this quarter has been a good one. It's a good opening of the year.
The dividend is paid and our rating, investment rating have been a strong element of this first quarter. I think that, I will end here, and we'll be glad to answer to your questions. Well, first of all, what we are observing is a much better situation in terms of winning the lawsuits. That is why the reserve level is as it is. We are being much more efficient in the litigation process, and that's been the main reason for the drop. Thank you very much.
The next question. In the first quarter, was there a reserve for the legal risk related to SKD? And if yes, what was the amount of the reserve?
Well, in the first quarter, we did not set up a reserve fund for that. We simply decreased because of the incidents of higher success rate that Piotr Żabski mentioned. What about the MREL at the end of first quarter 2026? At the Capital Group level, we received 11.5%.
The next question. Does the board see an impact of relational customers to the provision result? And what is as regards the commission result for 2026?
Well, I think this question is not so much about relational loans but relational customers. Yes, we see an impact. The relational customers give us a better level of banking. The relational customers bank more readily and use more of our products. Our aim is to increase the commission result by 4%, and we are on a good track as far as this is concerned. There's a growth trend, which Zdzisław Wojtera showed us.
What was the WFD result at the end of the first quarter? 44.7%. What's your assessment of the ECJ ruling about the parabank loan results?
Well, what is this ECJ ruling about? ECJ said that banks can provide credit for commission but cannot receive interest from it. However, the fact that they cannot receive interest, so the loss from that can be set off by higher interest. These are three important constituent parts of this ruling. We are analyzing what's going on. This is a very fresh ruling. We're very active in the Polish Bank Association, and the whole of the sector will be very active in limiting the results of that ruling. Because in our view, this is about the mechanics of the calculation of the bank's remuneration. This mechanics should be modified.
ECJ said simply, the potential losses that occur because you do not take interest on commission can be set off by higher interest. ECJ agrees that remuneration is due to the bank because of that type of activity.
The next question, what part of contracts contains the cost of commission of insurance?
As far as new sales are concerned, we're talking about marginal level of value. We have one, as far as I remember, open line, but it is practically being wound up. As far as the other part of the portfolio is concerned, we are analyzing this. This is a fresh issue, so we cannot respond giving you any figures.
Historically, we realize that this has taken place, and we are assessing the situation because there's been many changes in the contracts, and it's too early to provide a definitive answer on that.
Thank you very much. The question from Jaromir. Piotr mentioned about the rise of SMB volumes by 11% year-on-year. In slide 30, you show the drop by 16% year-on-year.
Well, the drop is in the micro companies, but in other segments, we are growing. So I don't know what this is about. In one slide, we're talking about a working portfolio, the one that generates stable growth, and there we have increased results. But in the subsequent slide, we have the total portfolio and the gross value, which includes the non-performing loans.
Another question about the ECJ ruling about SKD. Can this impact the bank's reserve levels?
Well, I want to be quite definite. This particular ruling did not refer to SKD. Let us not introduce any confusion here. This ruling was about the right of the bank to obtain interest on the cost of credit, like commission, or whether this can be compensated. ECJ said that it can be compensated by a higher level of interest. This is not an SKD case. There is no sanction related to a free loan. This is about the mechanics of the calculation of revenues due to the bank stemming from commission on loans. Thank you.
That was the last question. Thank you all very much for the questions, and thank you to the board.