cial system in Europe, in the world, but also in Poland. We've managed to tackle these challenges thanks to our great effort, experience, and our position. Thanks to that, we've managed to maintain our position as PKO BP, as a universal bank in Poland. The proof of this strong standing of our bank are numbers which characterize our financial results. First of all, net profit at the level of PLN 3.3 billion. ROE at the level of 9.7%. We've had a very satisfactory growth of core revenues at the level of 17.6% year-over-year. We didn't implement higher interest margin. Thanks to our discipline, we also managed to maintain a good NIM and cost of risk ratio. The next slide.
As regards the financial highlights, we've consolidated our leading market for this position at the level of PLN 431 billion. We've managed to increase the number of clients within our bank. We've also had a very good Tier 1 capital result at the level of 16.65%. Record low level NPL at the level of 3.80%. We also had a lot of achievements as regard the development of our key businesses. What we are glad of is the increase in corporate financing and especially as regards last quarter, our market share in mortgage loans, home loans. As regards our deposit offering, there has been a lot of success, so we can report good growth there too.
As I said, the growth customers to 11.7 million. We have new deposit offering. We have a growing share of digital clients. A very good results. + 38% as regards the increase in number of IKO transactions and very dynamic growth of new IKO applications. We are socially responsible. Within our strategic goals, we've included ESG. We have also the financing of green products. This is a part of our priorities. Those elements, we will continue developing them in the following years. I've already talked about our mobile app. Now I will move on to our new product, PKO Pay Later. Buy now, pay later. First service of this kind in Poland fully automatic process, very customer friendly.
It's also possible to have a delayed payment with the use of the popular BLIK app. We've also started with the implementation of a new process of creating a Digital Mortgage. This is something very important to us because it allows us to create a loan process based mainly on digital elements and components. Our experience from the preparation of Digital Mortgage will be used in the digitalization of other elements and other elements of our offering. AI is, of course, something which is now really important for every business. The use of new opportunities is also done and important by financial sector. We have 16 bots and a lot of million of talks and calls performed by bots.
This has allowed us to have savings and also to redirect our human resources towards some other, more valuable processes. Thanks to that, we freed 115 full-time jobs, and we've had robotized a lot of processes. This is for sure the future of banking. Now, I would like to give the floor to Marcin Eckert. He will outline the key financial results.
Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm really glad that I can present in my new role, the financial results of our bank for 2022. Traditionally, net profit in 2022, it was at the level of PLN 3,333,000,000 . A very good Q4, PLN 1,070,000,000 in Q4.
ROE reported at the level of 9.7% and cleaned for, from extraordinary events, much lower. This is the result of the efforts of our teams and also the result of a better result as regards our core business. What had an impact on the final result was a series of extraordinary events. Thanks to that, we've achieved more than PLN 4 billion result. We can have here look at the list of significant events affecting the group. First of all, credit holidays, which had a great impact on our result. They were at the level of PLN 3 million. Legal risk related to mortgage loans, PLN 1.9 billion.
What is really important is the protection of a commercial bank. Result related to the Getin Noble Bank resolution is about PLN 1 billion Borrowers Support Fund, PLN 314 million. The provision recognized for reimbursement of increased margin. There is no mortgage guarantee, so this is at the level of PLN 46 million. In total, all these significant events and externalities account for more than PLN 5 billion, which has had a great impact, of course, on our financial result. As I already said, the core result, core activity results were very good and income growth grew by 17.6%, and they've reached more than PLN 17 billion. Assuming the effect of, and the impact of course, repayment holidays.
This was generated not only by the interest profit, but also by fees and commissions. On the next slide, there is the net interest income. Net interest income, considering the effect of repayment holidays, it's grown by 19% to PLN 12 billion. It's thanks to a better interest margin, which increased to 3.09%. Disregarding the repayment holidays, it's higher. The quarterly margin was important. It was at the level of 3.06%, and in Q4 it was higher. Our loan portfolio has a bigger share of loans which adapt to the WIBOR ratio in a slower manner. This had a negative impact on the increase of interest rates, but now it's supporting very well our results.
We've reported also steady changes as regards bonds and collaterals. In Q3, we've also introduced new policy in deposit financing, concentrated things on retail deposits which had a positive effect on financing cost and our deposit structure. On the next slide. Slide shows the Retail segment. As you know, the Retail sector was under a strong pressure. The retailers were under the strong pressure, it decreased by 4.7%. In Q4, we saw an increase and acceleration in the tendency of growth. Our new sales growth by almost 7% quarter-to-quarter, which means we have kind of acceleration of our bank in this regard. I believe that this retail sector, under the supervision of our president, will be developing so well in next quarters.
It's worth mentioning, this is very crucial to us because we want to give loans on mortgages for Poles. The significant increase in the sales of mortgage loans. In 2022, we had a share in the loan market at the level of 21%, and in the Q4, it increased up to 35%. We are very happy about this result because it shows that our products are well received by our consumers, and this share is increasing significantly. In terms of deposits, year-on-year, it was 9%. Quarter-to-quarter, 6.4%. As I've said.
The strong increase in the deposit, retail deposit let us have a stronger policy in terms of corporate deposits, because we've improved the dynamics of cost of financing them and the dynamics of growth of more expensive deposits in total. Finally, investment deposits grew also by 6.4%, which also let us increase share of the market in this aspect. The following slide shows the results of the Corporate sector. It increased the financing involvement by 13% year-on-year. This is the new sales that runs Polish economy. We are very proud of it. We would like to congratulate on the division of the strategic client as well as corporate client division, managed by the Director, Marcin Majewski.
The fourth quarter showed a certain slowdown like the rest of the market. What we are happy about is that, within the scope of the corporate client development, we've developed very much green transformation, energy transformation, and I believe that this area will also be a driving force in the following years in terms of our development. As I've said, corporate deposit decreased year-on-year. It was the policy that we've planned, and it shifted our ambition towards deposits as they balance better our activities. As far as the fees and commission is concerned, it grew over 13% year-on-year. The improvement of big aggregates, except for the stock exchange activity. It is due to the higher activity of our clients.
The fourth quarter was a little bit weaker in this regard because of the activity of the capital market as the seasonal activity, the high impact of the foreign exchange. The high dynamics of the operational cost was determined by what we call in bank regulatory costs, especially the costs related with the Getin Noble Bank resolution, as I've said before, over PLN 1 billion in our case. When we have a look on the costs that are under our influence, our board's influence, these costs remained under the control. They grew only by 9% year-on-year, which is much below the inflation. The cost of the fourth quarter reflect also the increase in wages of our employees that we carried out in the fourth quarter.
The cost also increased in the aspect of the denominated loans in foreign exchange. The COR ratio was at 45% level and 32% only in the fourth quarter. The cleaned the ratio freed by the loan holiday was only 35%. The slides regarding the risk.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I think that we always show you the very good quality of the portfolio of PKO BP bank. In the macroeconomic environment, it is worth saying that we surprise you such a good quality of our loan portfolio. What's more important, as you can see on these slides, this tendency is still positive. It's growing. Is this tendency going to stay?
Well, I think that in this macroeconomic situation and high interest rates and inflation and the decrease of activity, we will see a little bit more of reserves in the loan portfolio. However, I would like to draw your attention to kind of strange thing, because with the low employment rate and the deceleration of economic development, we would rather expect more problems in the SME segment or mid-corporate. Today, we don't see any alarming signals. These portfolios are working very well, but we see some alarms in the de-detailed retail portfolio. This is not an alarm. I think that we will return to levels before the pandemic.
Because we want to understand the future, we are analyzing thoroughly the operations on our accounts, and we can see that the balance of income and dynamics of income is lower comparing to the dynamics of spending, which might say a higher risk on the retail portfolio, especially in the consumer loan aspect. The following slide shows that this is a good confirmation of the good loan portfolio. As you can see, it is historically the lowest loan for unemployed as well as we are recuperating the reserves. In 2022, we've opened a lot of reserves for many industries of increased risk related to the higher demand for energy, construction, motor industry.
We are entering the 2023 with a lot of reserves in our portfolio, which can be seen in these slides. As far as the second, the subsequent slide is concerned, this is one of the most important thing in the financial sector in Poland, namely the legal risk in the portfolio of the franc exchange loans. Here we can see a very good tendency, even improving tendencies, because the ugody is the settlements, the legal settlements are increasing. We have over 20,000 settlements. As we can see in the bottom, at the bottom of this slide, the blue line shows that this tendency is improving. We could see the confirmation of this fact in January and February. What's more important, after the publication of the spokesperson publication, this tendency continues.
We have more and more lawsuits and submissions, but we are assigning more and more settlements. I think this is good information for our consumers because they can quickly solve their franc problem. Also the bank can, you know, close these risks. We hope to continue this tendency. The last slide, our capital position. As we can see, the position is very solid. We have a lot of surpluses over the dividend minimum, so the bank is very well capitalized. To sum up, we don't worry the, about the loan risk. Maybe it will slightly grow, but we are entering this new period with the good quality of portfolio, of risk portfolio.
However, we are really preoccupied about the legal risk, and not only because of the PKO position, because it's very comfortable for us, but because of the entire financial sector in Poland, because this risk is really one of the highest in the sector. Thank you very much.
Thank you. It is with great pleasure that I would like to sum up all the effects of regarding the issuance of senior preferred bonds related to MREL. We issued EUR 750 million of bonds. The interest rate was at the level of 5.62%, which was slightly better than the previous results done by entities from our regions. It proves that our customers trust our bank, and we are very proud of this issuance. I would like to remind you that this is an event which took place as of the end of January 2023. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The last slides will outline our goals for 2023 and the following years.
Last year in Rotunda, we presented our strategy for the years 2023, 2025. One of the main elements of this strategy was our ESG policy. We have very ambitious goals regarding not only supporting the Polish economy in energy transformation, but we do not forget the remaining letters S and the G, where we also have ambitious social goals. Next slide. Aspirations for 2023. Of course, growth of our revenues by keeping our cost discipline at a good level and a good risk factor is going to be maintained. To sum up our presentation and last year, I would like you to remind you, reported net profit at the level of PLN 3.3 billion with a good ROE at the level of 9.7%. Double-digit growth in NII and fee and commission income.
High level of cost effectiveness with dynamic of non-regulatory costs other than regulatory one, up by 8.9% year-on-year, well below inflation. We stressed it. Balance sheet strength, cost of risk at 53 percentage points and high level of coverage ratio and solid capital base with Tier 1 at the level of 16.65%, which allows us to look at the year 2023 with optimism and also to maintain, to keep PKO BP's very important role, which is to finance Polish economy. Thank you very much. I would like to move on to the Q&A session. We've already got a couple of questions which mainly concentrate on risk and on CHF loans. Let's start with the simpler things, which is the loan risk.
The first one concerns our policy, changes in our policy regarding these loans. Will this have an impact on our loan action in Q4? Mortgage loans in Q4, our increasing share in the market of these loans results from many factors. Sales effort, our offering, but also from our capital position, which allows this kind of financing. The second question concerns the extension of repayment holidays and the introduction of other types of payment holidays, for example, for farmers. So, repayment holidays for farmers. Well, this is not maybe a question to our bank. I think it would be good to ask the Ministry of Agriculture and the European Commission. It would be up to them to decide about the introduction of this instrument.
As regards the rest of remaining part of the question, Piotr, please?
It's about the risk of extending repayment holidays. Of course, the risk is related to the fact that we will pay a specific price, in terms of our provisions.
Well, another question also to Piotr. Why, you freed the provisions in the mortgage loan segment?
We had a quite conservative approach to those moratories and which were in place, and all the loans which had a slightly higher risk and had this trigger are now in Stage 2. The risk has not materialized. We haven't seen any overdues. We've stopped with this kind of classifications. Stage 2 in this segment was reduced, and we freed all the provisions related to this segment.
At the same time, we also introduced other changes because we implemented repayment holidays. We had to reclassify all the positions which are characterized by a higher level, risk level.
Another question related to risk. The drop in the NPL ratio, was it related to non-performing credits, non-performing loans, the sale of these kind of loans?
I would say that it didn't have any impact. It didn't have any impact on the quality of this portfolio. We sold at the level of PLN 400 million. In the balance sheet, it was reported at level of PLN 200 million.
What, at what level, the risk would be reported if it weren't for the credit holidays for mortgage loans?
I think that these moratoria did not have a significant impact on this portfolio, this loan portfolio and its quality. I have a couple of questions concerning the opinion by the European Court of Justice and what will be, in fact, the impact of this decision on our provisions. It's really hard to answer this question because it was published recently and our models of creating CHF provisions are based on behavioral models. This is how we test the model. As I said during my presentation, after a dozen of days or so, we haven't seen any changes. Settlements are still being signed. The tendency is positive, but it's hard to predict really what will happen in the future and what impact it will have on court's decision, in fact.
I do hope that it will not happen, it may be a trigger that will undermine the financial standing of Polish banks. It's very hard to say now. It's something which will impact the finance sector, I do hope that this decision will be taken wisely. Thank you very much.
We have another question related to the 2023. Could you please have an outlook on the operational cost in 2023?
I will answer in such the way. Of course, the operational cost, it's also regards the personnel costs. We as the board advanced the wages increase related to inflation, we already did it in December 2022. We expect to see growth in operational costs related to the situation of operationality of loans denominated in foreign currencies.
This is a legal aspect that we as a bank, especially in terms of settlements and also net legal operations, we bear such costs. Of course, we will be observing whether such costs are also the costs related with inflation and the labor market will influence our operational cost in 2023.
I think these are all the questions that we've received so far. Thank you very much for participating in this meeting, and I would like to invite analytics and investors for the-