Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the presentation of Pekao S.A. Bank, focused on our last year's results. At the beginning, I will introduce our presenters: Leszek Skiba, CEO; Vice President for Finances, Paweł Strączyński; and Head of Analysis and Transformations, Mr. Pytlarczyk. Over to the CEO.
Thank you very much. Welcome cordially to our conference. We are happy to have achieved very good results in financial terms; you will hear more on that in a moment. In this slide, you can see four important pieces of information: excellent sales results in mortgage loans, strong position related to our involvement, participation, and Safe Credit 2%, which ended at the end of December. Secondly, high pace of growth in digital channels; we introduced some novelties, some improvements to our mobile applications. Cost of risk is under control and low, below our target set in the strategy.
We pursued our strategy on plan. We supported our customers and funded green projects. The key achievements include increase in profit levels, almost threefold to over PLN 6.5 billion throughout 2023, which, let me remind you, if we convert it to one share, that is slightly over 25 PLN per share. That is earnings per share as for 2023. This profitability resulted from our interest rates, from our business activity, and from the lack of any one-off events, non-standard, atypical one-off events, low cost of risks, but we have high coverage with provisions of our loans, and we are very happy about the lack of regulatory costs. The entire effect of credit vacation was consumed in 2023. As for the accounting of our strategy performance, we are close to achieving the target of 3.2 million active customers of mobile banking. That was 3.1, so we are very close to the target, 37 points.
Cost of risk below the level planned in the strategy; cost to profit below 33%. The benchmark from the strategy was 42%, and ROE close to 25%, which was higher than the goal set in the strategy, which was at 10%. Mortgage loans: the entire sales over PLN 10 billion in 2023. That is three times more than in 2022. Indeed, a large portion of the sales resulted from this government program, but there was also a significant increase in cash loans, up to over PLN 5 billion in 2023. What is extremely important to us is that the SME segment also recorded a 13% growth in funding to over PLN 10 billion in 2023. The number of active clients of mobile banking increased 14% annually. Digitization rate is close to 100% at the end of December, and presently it stands at 84%.
We continually improve our sales of cash loans and digital channels; the share is now at 83%. This year, or the Q4 of last year, also was marked by new functionalities in our new application. We added new gaming skins in the PeoPay Kids application, subsequent models related to education. We now have the possibility to offer demos of this application, and we can sell housing accounts to children under 13-plus parents' panels. T he offer that is related to the safe 2% program, meaning a very attractive interest rate, personalization in Pekao24. So that is our channel of mobile banking offered on our website. Corporate customer: here, the changes in the profile of corporate customers, new data available from POP, Pekao24 level.
We improved complaints handling processes, new ways of authentication of identity of clients in mobile channels, which is very attractive in terms of preventing fraud portals related to payments for companies and for e-commerce, some improvements as well. This year was also very important in terms of corporate banking, new projects, funding of Baltic Power over EUR 4 billion. We participated in this project. There was also the issuing of our eurobonds, green bonds, also syndicated loan for the American Heart of Poland. Our customers in the corporate segment, Kronospan, Promenada, or others, to whom we offered either investment loans or bonds, those transactions got wide publicity. We were awarded Banker of the Year award by The Banker monthly from the Times Group. That is recognition for the best bank in Poland. Global Finance is also another award of which we are proud.
It is also worth remembering the improvement of our position in the ranking by Parkiet. The ranking in which our brokerage house was positioned as number 1. Last year, we were number 10. So from one year to another, we leapt those 10 places. We improved our position. We invested in the development of our brokers. We have the broadest possible expertise, the best possible advisory services. And indeed, the year was very good because not only the brokerage house was awarded this first place, but also our analysts from the brokerage house, whom I greet right now, were mentioned in this ranking. As for ROE, the target level of 10% exceeded clearly. We are close to 25%. Also, cost-to-income ratio below 33%. Number of active customers of mobile banking: 3.1. Digitization rate: 84%.
But also, performance of the strategy, ESG strategy, is on track to be finalized by the end of this year. So in this regard, we have no doubts whatsoever the goals from our strategy will be achieved. In terms of the dividend, Paweł will talk you through that. We offered over 19%, to be exact, PLN 19.20 per share. We are waiting for the decision of the general meeting to confirm the payment of the dividend in this amount for the profit achieved in 2023, and the part of profit that was not distributed from the previous year. As for our ESG strategy, it is on track. It is important to us that we have actually exceeded the funding of sustainable projects: PLN 9 billion, and the target was PLN 8 billion. So we are close to the funding at PLN 22 billion in terms of ESG bonds for customers.
Here, we are close to PLN 16 billion, but we see no problem in achieving this target. The share of green funding: over 7%, higher than the target. The share of high-carbon financing in the bank's portfolio is decreasing, below 1%. In the pillar of engagement, we have a very high share of the number of hours worked as part of volunteering projects. This is very important to us. We encouraged our employees to volunteer. That is attractive from the perspective of our employees, who are strongly engaged in a variety of social climate-related issues, and they are willing to dedicate their time to pursue those objectives. Digitization rate also falls into this category. And in governance, that is the third pillar, we have very good standards in terms of ratings. We are very happy in ESG. CDP, especially, we improved from D to C, and our ratings are good.
We continue to reduce the payment gap between men and women. In the field of key activities in 2023, we reduced our carbon footprint very clearly so, and that was related to the replacement of our car fleet, moving to the new office, syndicated investment funding, issues of bonds, publication of finance framework, payment cards on ecological material, and striving for our own climate neutrality, something that was already mentioned. We are becoming greener, and we modernize various branches of the bank in order to achieve the lowest possible emissions and get close to climate neutrality. As for engagement, we were strongly involved in education on finance and ecology. We cooperate with the Warsaw Banking Institute. We continue the offer to citizens of Ukraine. We offer new solutions, including protection against spoofing in our mobile banking. As for the corporate governance, we support simple, understandable language.
Also, the code of ethics was developed, so the criteria of responsible business is included in our purchasing and procurement procedures. A lot happened last year in terms of our improvements of the apps. We finalized our collaboration with Tpay, and that was also the time when PeoPay Kids was opened. In the upcoming months, we will have a thorough renovation of the architecture. We managed to ensure that the new developments do not affect the user experience and to make sure that users do not have to disconnect the application. We will also merge open banking, PeoPay Kids, PKP tickets, Parking tickets, Public Transport tickets, also other functionalities, including PeoPay Kids for the customers of the brokerage house. 2023 was also the time when we invested in new customers.
We developed heavily our exchange functionality to make sure that the strategy of Bank Pekao S.A. for the Young is attractive by offering functional solutions in the PeoPay app. We improved the efficiency of our processes, leap improvement, and digitization. In this slide, you can see the key parameters of our achievements. The number of customers per employee increased over 60%. The number of operations performed by robots 3x increased between 2021 and 2023. It was also important for us to make sure that the credit process, loan decision process, is streamlined to shorten the time before a credit decision is made. So you can see how it functioned in individual segments: mortgage loan, micro enterprises, SME. You can see a clear shortening of the time.
That's easy.
Which means that the decision-making takes less time, fewer working days.
So we are happy to see that the process is more convenient for our customers and safer for the bank. Right here, we see key financial parameter indicators. ROE: we were better compared to the last 2020 x 2.7, cost-to-income ratio improved by 14 percentage points, and the net interest margin slightly over 100 basis points. It is important to see that the valuation of the bank increased over that time, and the price-to-book ratio is more or less at 1.5, which is significantly better than in 2020. And on the left-hand side, you see that if you compare our stock price against the weak bank index, we are growing at a much better rate than the population of the Polish banks, especially when you look back to 2020. And over to Paweł, oh, sorry, over to Ernest.
Okay. So I will provide a brief macro update.
Well, overall, we have a fairly positive outlook when we look at the economy. Well, it's not to be like a vibrant recovery, but we believe that the robust recovery will be demonstrated in 2025 because this is when we are going to see the impact of the recovery funding. So in 2023, the dynamic will be less dynamic compared to 2023. So at some point, this is the calendar over which we are going to absorb EU funding. And on top of it, the cost of loans is still expensive, and given the inflationary environment is slightly less pressing, well, that's not going to be very conducive. In the prior year, the dynamics in the nominal terms were more substantial than in 2024, and 2024 was actually expected as the recovery year.
There are many voices out there that 2024 is going to be the year of consumption boom, that we shall see unrestrained consumption. We take a skeptical view. We believe that people would rather try to rebuild their savings that were eaten up by the inflation. We see that the trend has already started. We see that this rebuilding of savings is actually underway, and a fairly high interest rate is supporting this process. So the consumption is over 4%, but it is not 6%. It's far from 6%, and that will matter. In terms of nominal rates, I already mentioned that the inflation will be lower. The fast disinflation pathway has come to the end, but we are going to touch the central bank inflation target. However, later on, we will see the inflation bounce back.
We are expecting the increase in VAT charge over food products, and there will be other price increases along the way. But given the current macro parameters, we are not necessarily predicting the sustainable reduction of the current inflation. So the current inflation is going to be higher for some time, and the central bank's projections will be showing over time that the current inflation is not getting near to the target of 2.5%, and that will affect their policy, the central bank policy. So the interest rates will stay in place. And what are the implications in macro terms? As I said, it will support the buildup of savings. It will curb demand for investment loans. And ourselves, we are more pessimistic than our peers when we look at the new output, new production, and also in the volume of lending in 2024.
We believe that the mortgage loans will grow max at the rate of 5% volume-wise. And the beginning of the year shows that it's actually getting weaker, especially that, well, this designer drug, if you may call it, the Safe Credit 2% has been closed. So the interest rates that are still high will actually have their impact. So the banking boom will continue. As I said three years ago, 2024 will show strong performance, especially that Swiss credit mortgage provisions have been declining steadily. Ladies and gentlemen, net profit for 2023 PLN 6,578 million compared to PLN 1,717 million last year. And obviously, there are two different factors that made an impact here. One is our regular operational measures plus macroeconomic environment and the situation of the interest rate. We do see the improvement of the interest income by over PLN 6,100,000 at each interest of over PLN 500 million.
At the same time, we see that the costs are correlated with the inflation, and they were higher by over PLN 640 million year-over-year. Another group of events is, well, the elimination of one-offs. One-offs were affected us in 2022, and they disappeared in 2023, which means that the sort of lending holiday or credit holiday of 2023 was no longer eating up our profit. And then another part of that group is provisions for the Swiss franc mortgages. Cost was PLN 1.2 billion lower compared to 2022 when we were actually finalizing the total write-off and provisions for the CHF mortgage loan portfolio. And as far as I remember, at that time, we were at 80%. Now, the net profit dynamics have been humongous. Nearly 300%.
When you compare Q to Q , we see that we nearly doubled the net profit compared to Q4 of the previous year. If you look at the Q4 of 2023, the result for Q4 2023 is higher than the total result for 2022. Obviously, this is all in nominal terms. If we actually show it in real terms that are more comparable, this picture would be slightly different. Now, the growth of the operating income in gross terms is also over 50%. Now, on the income side, we see that operating income is up by 38% and operating costs increased 16%. We will continue to discuss operating costs in detail on one of the next slides, and we will explain how operating costs correlate with inflation. Now, the improved interest margin, the net interest income improved without loan holiday, it's 44%.
When we exclude that, we are almost at 16% net interest margin at a very high level, 422 basi points, much higher. And in comparable terms, we were 12 basis points higher compared to 2022. Now, when you look quarter by quarter, we see that this is a similar level when we compare in real terms. Now, I presume that you will have questions about our projection of the net interest margin in 2024. As Ernest said, our presumption is that there will be no interest rate cuts in 2024. If we top that with some news or speculations that we see in the media that the cuts may be coming, but they would be rather minuscule, obviously, we reject the extreme projections of high interest rate cuts like 200 basis points. Well, our expectation is that the net interest margin will go down in 2024 below the level of 400 basis points.
However, we are going to monitor that and report that QoQ. Here, a lot depends on consumer behavior and customer behavior and what products will be in demand, specifically what kind of deposits will be sought by our customers. Now, the retail loans. Year-over-year, they were growing by 4% volume-wise, and corporate loan volumes stayed stable. We had a slight decrease by 0.2 percentage points. Now, despite the very high dynamics of sales, we see a natural volume of depreciated loans. In case of the retail loans, we do see that there are quite many mortgage loans that are being paid back early. Perhaps this is not a massive event, but it does have an impact on the net volumes of loans. Now, when we look at deposits, we see similar dynamics in the retail sector and in corporate sector.
Both are more or less at the level of 10%. In retail, it's nearly PLN 132 billion. In terms of the corporate sector, it's mainly PLN 113 million. Now, we see the increase in net fees and commission by almost 3%. Where we've seen some decline was the bank account fees and the forex transactions margin. So it was a reverse situation compared to last year because last year, we had declining commissions and fees on brokerage and asset management services, and we've seen the growing margin on foreign exchange transactions. So the situation is self-explanatory. In 2023, we had less volatility in the market compared to 2022. As a result, our customers decided to revisit the brokerage services and asset management services that generate commission and net fees. So to summarize that, this is like the inversion of the trend compared to the past year.
Operating costs were up by 16.2%. This is PLN 44 million on a year-to-year basis. And here, we see the impact of the inflation. There is a high correlation between our operating cost and the inflation level and the dynamics of the wage growth. Now, the personal cost is highly dependent on that and also the prices of services that we need to buy from the third-party suppliers. There is a group of services that are priced to a large extent based on the minimum wage. And the minimum wage has been growing at the higher rate than the inflation rate. Overall, the wages across the economy were growing at the higher rate than the inflation rate. Therefore, when you look at the operating costs, we do see that the dynamics is similar to the last year's reading of inflation for 2022.
So let me remind you that our remuneration cost is dependent on the level of the inflation of the prior year. So in 2023, we were signing a bargaining agreement with the trade unions based on the inflation rate of 2022. And this year, we will have the same situation. Very soon, we are going to start negotiating with the trade union organizations. And again, our benchmark will be the inflation rate for 2023. But at this point, it will be at the level of 6%+. Invariably, we have a very good capital position. We stand here very robustly, Tier 1 and TCR at high safe levels, additionally increased by 50 basis points by retaining a portion of profit for 2023. Tier 1, after this operation, 15.7%, and TCR, 17.3%. We are after very successful issuances of bonds to meet MREL requirements. MREL requirements are fulfilled and exceeded.
MREL requirements are met at 20.3% versus 18.9% as a regulatory requirement. In the following years, well, of course, I cannot say that for sure this will happen in 2024. But in the following years, we expect new issuances of securities, both subordinated and non-subordinated, to the tune of about PLN 4 billion. Let me remind you that when we started the project of issuing bonds to meet MREL requirements, we estimated the total value of the issuance would be about PLN 7 billion spread over the following years, 2023, 2024, 2025.
Of course, decisions regarding individual issuances, their nature, whether they will be in PLN or under the EMTN program from which we have already issued EUR 500 million at the end of 2023, here, the decisions will be made depending on capital ratio developments, liquidity situation of the bank, and obviously, conditions in the market conducive to successful transactions of this nature. Cost of risk at a very low level for the Q4 . They amounted to 24 basis points. For the whole year, slightly over 40 basis points. They are below the target assumed in the strategy. That was the range between 50 and 60 basis points. Invariably, high levels of coverage with provisions of baskets 1, 2, and 3, almost 9%. NPL ratio 6.4 at the end of the year.
You know perfectly well that the bank received the dividend recommendation from the Financial Supervision Authority recommending payment of profit at a level not higher than 50%. Here, the main factor was this high level of NPLs exceeding 5%. Please notice that in our base operations, NPLs of 4.1%. Then we have Idea portfolio, which is covered by BFG guarantee entirely, and 1% is Swiss Franc portfolio entirely covered by provisions. Those two last factors, that is Idea portfolio and Swiss Franc portfolio, make our NPL ratios stand above 5%. But 2024, here, we will use the standard method to calculate the indicators for the capital requirements. And specifically, in terms of NPL ratio, we will take into account the program of settlements. I will talk about that in greater detail in a moment.
But as a result of this program, the share of NPL in our Swiss Franc portfolio will decrease as binding decisions are made or settlements with a bank assigned. And of course, this year, we will aim to drive NPL ratio to a level allowing us to return to the upper level of dividend payment as assumed in our strategy. And of course, we will do that through a variety of steps. In fact, we have already started talking with the regulator with regard to this ex-IDEA portfolio and covering it with BFG guarantee. But the regulator has not recognized our arguments. So this part, 1.3%, remains in our books as part of regular level of NPL. To sum up, well, maybe before I go to summing up, let me say I just confused the slides. Okay. So that was to the previous presentation.
I would like to say a few words about the settlements, which we are concluding. We started in October last year with a program of settlements, which is addressed to all customers who have active Swiss Franc loan agreements ends of March. And until yesterday, we addressed this offer of settlements to about 50% of our customers. That is about 9,000 customers who have active agreements of this type. The refusal rate is in our assessment at a low level of about 10%. We have a very satisfactory level of acceptance because now we have concluded, or we are preparing to conclude, agreed settlements in over 3,000 cases. Let me just remind you that before this program of safe settlement 2% had been launched, we had a pilot. And the purpose of this pilot was to find out whether there was interest in this type of solution based on.
The chairman of the Financial Supervision Authority. They were just individual cases. Now, we are dealing with thousands of customers who are signing those settlements. This is not a mass phenomenon yet. However, we hope that this rate of clients agreeing to sign this kind of settlement agreement will grow. Also, customers who have already gone to courts will withdraw their cases if they choose to sign the settlement agreements with us. It is not a massive phenomenon yet, but about 100 cases like this have already happened. To sum up, I can say that we have very good sales results.
Of course, the Safe Credit 2% program helped us enormously, in particular in the retail segment, in terms of sales and profitability, very high growth rate in digital channels, new improvements, new functionalities in mobile apps, cost of risk at low level, below the range assumed in the strategy between 50% and 60%, and ESG strategy pursued in accordance with our plans, decrease in the share of high emissions portfolio of the bank with very high probability. This target of getting below 1%, which we set in our ESG strategy, will have been met by the end of this calendar. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Let's start the Q&A session. Please feel invited to ask questions. And this invitation is addressed to both those present in the room and those following us online. A question from a private investor.
What is the level of participation of employees of the bank in the PPK program? And what is the trend, and what are the costs for the bank?
Participation of the bank's employees in PPK is several dozen percent. Let me check this number exactly. I will try to find the precise figure. Together with the cost give me just a second. Okay. So maybe I will go already. That is, participation is at the level of 60%. Last year, we had the cost of PLN 19 million. Year-on-year growth stands at about 20%. Paweł has already talked a lot about dividend. We have a few questions regarding dividends, so maybe I will group them. On top of the explanations we have already provided, could you say a few words more about payment of the undistributed profit from 2019?
Paweł has already said what activities we are taking to reduce the NPL parameters below 5% and how this will affect our dividend this year. More, the interest is in this undistributed, non-distributed profit from 2019. We already informed you about this officially, but maybe we can add something. Okay. So on one hand, there was no objection from the Financial Supervision Authority to the payment of undistributed profit from 2019. On the other hand, we received a recommendation from the Financial Supervision Authority, the recommendation to pay out the dividend at a level not exceeding 50% of the profit.
So taking into account those factors and considering all the other circumstances, that is, macroeconomic forecasts, capital situation of the bank, level of fulfillment of MREL requirements, forecasts regarding subsequent issuances, capability of dividend payment, regulatory authorities' consent, and the adopted dividend policy, we adopted a resolution, which was also given a positive opinion by the supervisory board, to pay out the dividend for 2023, which will be equal to 24%. That is slightly over PLN 5 billion. And per one share, that is PLN 19.20. So if we compare it to yesterday's quote, that would be 4.4%. We have a few questions regarding our forecast for 2024. This is the last year covered in our strategy. And we have financial parameters, which did not take into account the increase in interest rates. So our ROE should also be interpreted in this context.
But would we like to give any outlook regarding the parameters for 2024 in terms of the results? So the question rather goes towards the real question, whether the sustainable financial performance is a realistic goal. Well, our financial projections and income situation of the bank in 2024 is positive. Personally, I don't want to be overly optimistic. Therefore, I don't think that we are going to break another record unless the market situation would change abruptly and dramatically. I don't really want to come up with any ad hoc projections here. I'm just sort of sharing my thinking. We are expecting the net income margin to go down, which will have some implications on our interest income compared to the previous year.
We need to remember that our cost base, despite the fact that the inflation is going down, we do not really see the prices to decline in nominal terms. We just may observe that the prices are not growing at such a fast rate as they used to increase. So even if we keep the current cost base, which is also a very optimistic assumption, the other two factors that I mentioned make it very clear that it will be extremely difficult to replicate the top financial performance of 2023. But if the net interest margin is still at 370-380 basis points, then the decline in the interest income, provided that we maintain the production of loans and the lending action continue, then we will not lose that much on the interest income. And therefore, it should not have a major adverse impact on our overall performance.
Again, we need to see what kind of volatility we are going to see in the market in the current year because all these things clearly determine other revenue streams beyond interest income. We do not have any drastic plans. We don't intend to change substantially our tariffs or commissions on the income side. If there are any modifications made, I think that they would rather align us with whatever is needed in the light of the regulatory requirements. So we do not presume that we are going to transform our pricing policy substantially. However, as the management board, we are going to stay alert, and we will respond to any change in the market environment once it presents itself. So we are going to see what's going to happen in 2024.
If our projections well, again, I talked about it on many occasions, but my projections about net interest margin for 2023 were off the chart completely. I was thinking that the interest net margin would be going down to 350 basis points because when we were looking at our pipeline of deposits, to me, it was quite a natural development. I thought that our customers will decide to shift some of their deposits to the products that were offering higher interest rate. But we didn't see that movement. And hence, we were able to have such a high net interest margin. If the situation continues throughout 2024, then it would certainly offset, in major terms, any potential decline in our interest income.
Okay. The next question. Do we plan to reduce the headcount because some of our peers announced such plans?
No, we don't have any plans like that for the current year. We do have a natural process. Some people leave, and this seems to be sufficient. In the prior years, we had the layoffs. On top of it, we had voluntary leaving plans. Last year, actually, some trade union organizations requested us to revisit those voluntary plans. I think that this is something that we may review because for some people who are approaching their retirement age, it could be a more beneficial option. But overall, I may say that we keep the process sort of at a natural rate, which means that some people decide to change jobs. We recruit some younger employees, and it seems that such a natural turnover is sufficient. Well, if I may follow up on that, please don't read that as any kind of announcement of what our CEO said.
But let me highlight the fact that 2024 is the final year of our strategy that was adopted for 2021 through 2024, which means that in 2024, we are going to work on the development of the new strategy for the years to come. So as Leszek said, in 2024, we do not have any plans to reduce our headcount. But when we are going to develop the new strategy, 2024 through 2028, possibly 2030, we need to look at natural demographic trends in the bank. We will have to really look it up to see what is the natural trend of people leaving the jobs due to the retirement and otherwise. And we are going to see how the mobile apps are going to develop.
So I believe that the better solution would be to correlate the natural turnover with the slightly lower rate of new hires, and then the delta will be growing. But this provided that our digital growth would be continuing at the rate that would keep the bank safe against and from any reputational risk, or there would be no risk whatsoever that we would compromise our reputation or the trust of our customers. So in my view, that would be a more suitable approach. We certainly do not intend to make any abrupt decisions or restructuring processes that might have been announced in the market by our peer organizations. Okay. The final block of topics is about mortgage loans. So slide 35 shows the success rate for the Q3 and Q4 in terms of new mortgage loans, obviously driven by the Safe Credit Program.
The Safe Credit Program has come to the end. The new program has not been launched by the government. So any final comments about that? Do you expect any new volumes from the Safe Credit Program that is coming to the end? And what is our outlook on the housing market and the mortgage market? Well, yes. Q2, both quarters of the year, brought nearly PLN 8 billion, and to a large extent, the credit goes to the Safe Credit Program. And what we see in the market right now is that the market has been really saturated by the Safe Credit Program. So the demand is sluggish. We believe that some customers may put their decision on hold, waiting for the new government housing program. And the new program is likely to be more complex and diversified with many more criteria.
So, 2024 and the mortgage loans, well, I think that the new government program will sort of resolve this question. We don't know when the program is going to be launched. We don't know what kind of budget is being planned for that because at the end of the day, the fiscal effect is the main determinant for the decision-makers. So until we see that new government program, we believe that the demand will be sluggish. And no surprise because that's what happens in the high-interest-rate environment. When you have high-interest rate, people tend to delay their decisions to buy their homes.
But over the next years in the future, as the interest rates go down, we believe that the mortgage loans will be one of the key drivers, one of the leading products, especially when you look at the migration data and the demographic data, where the mortgage loan is certainly the banking product that has a bright future ahead of it. So if experts claim that even after the interest rate cuts over the next 10 years will continue to be higher than back in 2019, so nevertheless, we believe that mortgage loan will be still an attractive product. So this is a motivation for us to fight for this piece of the market.
Okay.
When you look at the Safe Credit Program of the past year and what percentage of sales accounted for that program, and that you compare that to the total production of mortgage loans for 2023, well, we estimate that in 2024, we should still be around PLN 7 billion new mortgage loans. So we expect the sales to be in the vicinity of PLN 7 billion. So that's our preliminary assumption. But as we know. We don't know much about the upcoming government program that would support housing and mortgage loans. And therefore, it's hard to say whether it's going to make up for the gap that was created once the Safe Credit Program has ended. Under the Safe Credit Program, we were the leading bank. But I still believe that the PLN 7 billion is a safe target, reasonable. There are many detailed questions, but let me come back offline.
Let me just explain one thing. The operational risk and the capital requirements, well, we revisited the previous method. This is explained in detail in the report, and the impact has been actually shown at the end of the year. So this is in line with the requirement that regulates the regulatory risk, and we should not really expect any dramatic changes in the future. Well, this is the annual report, mainly. There are many new disclosures in there, like taxonomy disclosures, ESG disclosures under Tier 3. So we do recommend the reading. Thank you for your questions and attention. You may always contact us whenever needed. Thank you.