Gentera SAB de CV

Gentera SAB de CV

37.25
MXN
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Feb 24Next Earn

Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptApril 23, 2026

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the first quarter 2026 Gentera's conference call. Now I would like to turn the call to Mr.

Enrique Barrera, Investor Relations Officer of the company. Sir, you may begin.

Enrique Barrera

Thank you. Good day to everyone.

Thank you all for joining us and for your continued interest in Gentera. I'm Enrique Barrera, the company's Investor Relations Officer.

I'm very pleased to introduce our management team. With us today are Mr.

Enrique Majós, Gentera's Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mario Langarica, Gentera's Chief Financial Officer.

Enrique and Mario will present Gentera's results for the first quarter period as per the report that was issued yesterday, and will actively participate in the Q&A session of this conference call. As a reminder, now that we are holding the conference call via Zoom, it is important to highlight that if you want to ask questions during the Q&A session, these will only be taken if you are connected via this platform.

Now, please note that during this presentation, Gentera may make forward-looking statements. These do not account for future economic circumstances, industry conditions, company performance or financial results.

Additional information on forward-looking statements can be found in the disclaimer located in our earnings release. If you did not receive a copy of the release, or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Investor Relations department in Mexico City.

If you are a member of the media, we ask you to contact us directly. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr.

Enrique Majós for his presentation. Enrique, please, go ahead.

Enrique Majós

Good morning, and thank you all for joining us in our first quarter 2026 report. At Gentera, we continue to focus on generating economic, social, and human value for clients, employees, and investors.

Overall, our results of this quarter remain solid and consistent. Our performance is in line with the guidance we set for the year.

Our credit portfolio continues to grow at double-digit pace. We are also consistently expanding our client base, and net income is growing as expected.

Also, this quarter, we reached the best efficiency ratio we have had in the past 8 years. The quality of the portfolio remains healthy in most of our businesses.

However, one point that I would like to highlight is the slight increase we are having in non-performing loans in our individual lending product in Mexico. In this regard, we do not underestimate the potential impact of an inflationary environment and lower economic activity that we are having in Mexico if we compare it with last year.

We are monitoring this very closely. That said, our analysis shows that this increase is mainly driven by the strong growth that we had in this product during 2025.

Higher NPLs is something we typically see after periods of rapid growth. Still, this requires action.

We are making adjustments to our origination parameters and reinforcing the discipline in how we manage and monitor this portfolio. Looking ahead, we expect our portfolio quality for this product in Mexico to gradually normalize during the year.

At the same time, our group lending portfolio in Mexico continues to perform with high quality levels, and ConCrédito and Peru also continue to show very strong results across the entire portfolio in terms of NPLs and in terms of growth. Mario will go into more detail on this in a moment.

Overall, we remain confident. We reaffirm our commitment to our business plan, and we expect to deliver on our guidance and growth targets for 2026.

Before moving on, I would like to look at our results from a higher-level perspective. Therefore, I want to highlight five key elements that we believe make Gentera a strong and attractive long-term company.

The first element, our growth and market opportunity. Our growth in recent years, the strong market potential, and a solid value proposition gives Gentera a clear outlook for future growth.

As we have shown before, over the last 6 years, our net income growth rate has doubled, reaching an average annual growth of 17%. In addition, we estimate a potential market of 14 million people in Peru and 50 million people in Mexico.

We estimate that in Mexico, 60% of the 50 million remain underserved, and in Peru, this number is around 40% of the 14 million people that we can address. We have a large market to address yet.

The second element that I want to talk about is our strong customer loyalty. The second key element that makes Gentera a strong company is having satisfied customers, which allow us to achieve a client retention rate above 85%.

This is a very strong indicator, considering that we operate in a business that requires retaining customers with good payment behavior. Having satisfied and loyal customers not only strengthens our ability to generate social value, but also improves our efficiency levels.

The third element is the quality of our portfolio. We know that a healthy level of non-performing loans, depending on the mix of the portfolio, could be around 4%.

We have always aimed to remain below or within that level. Occasionally, we could face challenges like the one we are currently having in the individual loan portfolio in Mexico.

However, we have always managed to eventually return to normalized levels. The fourth element is our financial strength.

We maintain solid liquidity and capitalization levels, and we consistently have positive jaws, we can make sure that the expense growth never exceeds revenue growth. The fifth element is our team.

Our team is probably the most important element to have a solid company. We have talented and committed professionals with an ownership mindset who understand that customer is the center of everything we do.

Everyone in this organization is committed to generate social, economic, and human value for clients, employees, and investors. The key message behind these five points is that we clearly understand the elements that make us strong.

Our vision and future strategy include protecting and making stronger these elements. Now let me briefly touch on two additional topics.

The first one, changes to our board of directors. As part of our governance best practices, we are rotating two of our board members.

After 11 years of important contributions, Toni Rayo Verdugo is stepping down from Gentera's board. Juan Carlos Torres Hisneros is also leaving after more than 3 years in his role as board member of Gentera.

However, Juan Carlos' relationship with the company goes much back further. He was the co-founder of ConCrédito in 2007, and he had been chairman for ConCrédito since 2012.

We are very grateful to both Toni and Juan Carlos for their dedication and contributions to Gentera. After these changes, Gentera's board of directors will now remain with 11 members.

On the other hand, and speaking of Compartamos Banco's board of directors in Peru, Silvia Tapia Navarro and Santiago Casanova Pérez are joining the board of our business in Peru. Silvia brings more than 35 years of experience in audit, compliance, and corporate governance, including senior roles at Citibank, Walmart, and HSBC.

On the other hand, Santiago is the CEO of Grupo Inter, which is specialized in the insurance industry. With more than 28 years of experience in this industry, Santiago will bring Gentera his expertise in commercial management, strategy, and of course, insurance products.

We are confident that our new board of directors will continue reinforcing and energizing our organization. The second topic I would like to mention is an upcoming general shareholders meeting in June.

We believe that the proposals presented on April 10th meeting regarding the increase up to 45% of the dividend payout and the proposals to increase up to 3% the contributions to Fundación Compartamos were not communicated clear enough on our part, which resulted in not obtaining the necessary votes for the approval. For this reason, yesterday, our board of directors resolved to call for an extraordinary shareholders meeting this coming June.

This will allow us to resubmit these proposals after giving more information to everyone with more specific and a clear explanation. More details will be shared soon to you.

With that, I will conclude my remarks, and I will now hand over to Mario Langarica to provide further details on our business results. As always, after that, we will open the floor for you to make any question you may have.

Adelante, Mario.

Mario Langarica

Thank you, Enrique, and good day to everyone. As always, we appreciate your interest in Gentera.

As Enrique mentioned in his remarks, we are enthusiastic about the operational and financial dynamics that Gentera is presenting at the start of the year. We are optimistic about the opportunitics the opportunities that lie going forward.

We're committed to continuing growing in clients and of our portfolio with while maintaining healthy and stable asset quality. In 1Q '26, we reached a new milestone of 6.6 million people actively using our financial services, adding 674,000 people, representing 11.4% growth compared to 1Q '25.

As Enrique described, the strategic pillars and initiatives that we have defined and executed in the past years have allowed Gentera to deliver solid results. Our loan portfolio has grown 14.7% annually compared to 1Q '25, reaching a historic amount of 94.8 billion pesos.

Our three credit subsidiaries, Banco Compartamos México, Banco Compartamos Perú, and ConCrédito, delivered double-digit annual growth in local currency in their specific loan portfolios. We maintain our objective to deliver an annual portfolio growth between 13% to 16% within the guided the guided range.

Now let me jump to talk about the evolution of the different lines of our income statement. Gentera's interest income had a 13.5% 13.4% growth in 1Q '26 compared to 1Q '25, amounting to 12.7 billion pesos, following the growth of our portfolio and our clients.

Financing expenses decreased 6.7%, following following the reductions in reference rates. Therefore, net interest income grew 15.7% to amount 10.8 billion pesos.

NIM amounted to 40% in 1Q '26, and we expect NIM to be around 41% by the end of the year. Regarding risk, and as Enrique mentioned before, we have observed a higher level of 4.13% consolidated NPLs, driven by an increase in NPLs to 4.86% at Banco Compartamos México.

These effects resulted from our last year's decision to accelerate our clients and portfolio growth based on the good asset quality and demand that we observed in 1Q '25. We have implemented actions to control and improve NPLs, such as reinforcing our credit origination, monitoring and collection processes, adjusting the incentives matrixes, fine-tuning training, and targeting commercial strategies.

With these actions, we are now observing improving performance in the affected products and regions. In group lending, we are already observing this improving trend, and individual lending defects lag a little based on the specific characteristics of the product.

On the other end, Banco Compartamos Perú and ConCrédito have shown very good levels of asset quality, as Enrique mentioned before. At this moment, we expect to observe consolidated levels of NPLs around 4% and cost of risk to be moving closer to the high end of the 13% to 13.5% range that we consider normal by the end of 2026.

Gentera's 1Q '26 provisions for loan losses amounted to 3.03 billion pesos, 26.1% growth, which is in line with the growth of the portfolio, its asset quality, and its mix. NIM after provisions for 1Q '26 amounted to 28.8%, similar level compared to last year.

We maintain our view that this KPI will be around 30% by the end of the year. Net fees amounted to 1.587 billion pesos in 1Q '26, growing 15.3% compared to the same quarter last year, mostly driven by the growth of our insurance business.

Operational expenses for 1Q '26 amounted to 6 billion, representing a 10.5% compared to 1Q '25. We expect that by the end of the year, we will maintain the range guided between 12% to 13% for this line.

After all of these effects, net income reached another historic quarter record, amounting to 2.494 billion pesos, growing 12% 12.3% compared to last year. Gentera's controlling participation of net income amounted to 2.429 billion pesos, growing 15.3%, implying an EPS for the quarter of 1.54 pesos and 15% above 1Q '25 EPS.

Gentera's controlling ROE stood at 26.5%, above our original expectation for the year, and the best ROE for a quarter since 2017. For 2026, we should expect Gentera's controlling ROE to move around 25%.

All of these results have been achieved while maintaining solid and healthy liquidity levels, strong and diverse access to funding sources, and robust capitalization. Now to conclude my remarks, as you can see, in this first quarter of the year, we're delivering solid consolidated results as promised.

We expect to continue maintaining double-digit growth in Gentera's loan portfolio in the coming quarters, with a clear focus to improve asset quality levels in the second semester, and a firm control in operation expenses to keep generating positive jaws that should allow us to keep generating strong levels of profitability. To conclude, we at Gentera are very motivated by the fact that we're starting another year with solid dynamics in all of our subsidiaries, which are in general terms in line with the plan that we have defined for the year.

These solid results further commit us to continue working hard in servicing millions of clients in Mexico and Peru, aiming to support them in their different financial needs, they can reach their dreams, and at the same time, keep generating total value for all. That is all for my remarks.

Thank you all for your attention, and we can now move forward to the Q&A session.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session.

If you would like to ask a question, please use the raise your hand button of your Zoom tool.

Enrique Barrera

Our first question comes from Pablo Ordóñez of GBM. Please, go ahead.

Pablo Ordóñez

Yes. Hi, good morning, Enrique, Mario, and Enrique.

Congratulations on your results. I was wondering if you can give us a little more detail on the asset quality for the individual segment.

How could this change your guidance and targets for the year in terms of loan growth? We also observed some deceleration of loan growth in the individual segment for Mexico.

Also for the cost of risk, should we still expect this 13% to 13.5% that you mentioned earlier in the year? Finally, also a question that we have here is how is the competitive environment on the individual segment?

Are you starting to see some pressure from the digital lenders in this space compared to your product? That would be my question.

Thank you.

Mario Langarica

Thank you very much. For the first one, well, no, at this point, we're not changing, as I just said, our expectations for growth for the year.

We have already started doing these adjustments that Enrique and I have just explained. We're maintaining our growth objectives for the year.

Regarding cost of risk, as also as I mentioned, we always have said that a cost of risk between 13% to 13.5%, it's normal levels that we need to adjust as we just mentioned. We think that we're going to close the year closer to the high end.

We feel very comfortable where we are and with the actions that we're taking.

Enrique Majós

Thank you, Pablo. This is Enrique Majós.

Regarding your questions related with the competitive environment, I understand you specifically are asking about the individual lending environment in Mexico, context. As we have explained before, we believe that in Mexico, we're very strong in this product.

That's the reason why we had grown that much in the recent 2 years or 3, maybe. Let me tell you about the competitors here.

We believe and I'm talking specifically about the product that is working capital loan for small businesses. Here, we have another competitors.

We have Caja Popular Mexicana with 200,000 customers. We also have Provident with around that number.

We have more than 340,000 customers in that product, we are the leaders. We believe that we have a good business proposition for our customers.

I understand your questions regarding the new players getting into the market, mostly the fintechs. We have explained before that we are more focused on the C and D segment, and most of the fintechs are more in the A and B segment.

They have not yet proven sustainable business models, specifically in the collection part of the business. Anyway, we are very aware of the environment.

We are constantly looking what kind of credit offers our customers get, and we are working to be the most effective and convenient proposal for our customers. Things are moving.

We believe we are strong, and we are keeping with our marketing strategy that we believe will be successful.

Pablo Ordóñez

Perfect. Clear.

Thank you very much, Enrique and Mario, and congrats on the results.

Mario Langarica

Thank you.

Enrique Barrera

Our next question comes from Ernesto Gabilondo of Bank of America. Please, go ahead.

Ernesto Gabilondo

Thank you. Hi, good morning, Enrique, Mario, and Enrique.

Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions, and congrats on your results. My first question will be on NIMs.

During the quarter, we noted NIM pressure. I'm just wondering is because of business seasonality and also because you have a strong cash position.

Having said that, how should we think about the NIMs evolving in the next quarters? From another angle, how should we think about the NII growth when compared to loan growth?

Then I have a second question in terms of the asset quality. You posted an NPL ratio of 4.1%, cost to risk of 12.9%.

You have guided the NPL could remain at this level of 4.1%, and the cost of risk could be between 13% to 13.5%. This is coming much better from what we saw in the February numbers from the CNBV.

How can you tell us in terms of the early NPLs that you are seeing in the individual portfolio? Can you provide us some of the actions that you are taking to keep the asset quality of this product under control?

I don't know if you can elaborate on the economics of the product and how comfortable you are that if this product continues to show higher NPLs, that you can compensate this trend with lower operating expenses? I think that would be very helpful to us.

Thank you.

Mario Langarica

Thank you very much, Ernesto. As I just said, NIMs will end the year in the range that we guided since the beginning, something around 41% and 30%.

Yes, part of it has to go do with the seasonality and the cash positions that we have today. You explained it very well.

That's it. In terms of NII growth, obviously, the two drivers are portfolio growth and the mix.

Those are the two drivers of, and we should maintain healthy levels of interest income for the next years. Also, if you go to the net interest income, that we will also be observing a little better performance of interest expenses, giving the recent reduction of Banxico.

We should see good trends. Now, regarding early NPLs, etc., that the questions that you asked, we're observing better early NPLs, as you said, from February to March, very, very quickly on group lending.

Individual lending takes a little longer, but we're focusing a lot on being very strict on new origination. During new origination, we have taken back some actions that we had before that are proving good.

Individual lending, as lacks a little bit longer, but the we're already seeing the improvements. We would expect this to normalize, particularly for individual lending, in the second half of the year.

As you said, the economics of the product, the P&L of the product, has the income that is generated by the growth, the interest expenses, and then risk, which we can mitigate with operational expenses. It's a very profitable product.

It's a product that brings very good margins. We think that we have very clear actions for every specific line of the P&L.

Ernesto Gabilondo

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes.

Enrique Majós

Ernesto. Go ahead if you want, and then I can comment on this.

Ernesto Gabilondo

No, I just wondering I have a just a last question if you can give us an updated idea on your digital transformation. I don't know if you can share some indicators on how Gentera has been able to become more efficient.

Enrique Majós

Sure. I just wanted to comment before on what Mario just told us.

I know that one of the main concerns you might have in this report is the quality of the portfolio and the individual lending. Let me tell you a little bit more about this since you asked.

As I mentioned earlier, 2025 was a year of strong growth. Actually, we grew 33% the portfolio of that product.

As a result, we are now seeing as a natural effect that growth now needs to have a more strict control on this portfolio. We are adjusting our origination rules.

New loan officers are still gaining experience, we are putting a lot of attention of the maturity of this loan officers and this sales force. We are also strengthening the training and the supervision processes that we have.

Said that, we are already seeing, as you said, early signs of improvement. We expect to start reversing the trend by the third quarter and normalize these levels by the end of the year.

I think this is a kind of normal kind of dynamic in our business. It is also important to understand that the individual lending has a larger term.

The long-term loans have a longer recover trend. We will have to wait a couple of months to start looking more clear signs on this.

As you said, in general, we have been looking these trends in March. Let me tell you a little bit about that transformation strategy.

As and I talked about this in previous calls, one of the most important initiatives that we have in the transformation digital transformation strategy is our group lending digital platform. Actually, the lending group the credit digital platform for all our credit products.

In Peru, since 2024, we had already deployed the digital platform, and we have had very good results there. Here in Mexico, in 2025, we deployed the individual lending methodology with this platform, and we are having good results in terms of that.

This year, the challenge is to finish deploying the group lending methodology digital platform. With that, we will have a more efficient and more convenient process for our customers.

The other part that also is very important regarding our digital initiatives is the digital tools to improve our risk models and cross-selling capabilities. We have seen improvements in our productivity, the productivity of our loan officers since a couple of years now.

As I explained in another call, but for individual lending, we are in Mexico at 155 customers per loan officer. We expect to get to around 200 clients per loan officer based on this new technologies and platform.

For the group lending, we are around 350 customers per loan officer, and we believe we can get over 400. This will take place in the following, let's say, 1 or 2 years.

Anyway, I think it is a very, very good improvement in terms of our productivity.

Ernesto Gabilondo

No, this is very helpful. Thank you very much, Enrique and Mario, and congrats again on your results.

Enrique Majós

Thank you, Ernesto.

Enrique Barrera

Our next question comes from Tito Labarta of Goldman Sachs. Please, go ahead.

Tito Labarta

Okay. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question.

A couple questions. First, just to follow up on the provisions.

I know, you mentioned early NPLs are trending well. Just to understand the decline in provisions in the quarter, should we think about if these early and you mentioned initiatives to improve asset quality in Mexico, if this trend holds and we don't see the 90-day NPLs continue to get worse, should we think that you could be maybe closer to that lower end of the cost of risk guidance?

Or in other words, is there potential upside from here, right? Because you provisioned a bit less than 13% in the quarter, yet you're still guiding above 13%, and even though there were some mixed trends on the asset quality, just to think about, upside, downside risks from here on the provisioning levels.

Then second question, just on fees. We did see, some negative, I guess, seasonality in the quarter, but overall, year-over-year remains very healthy.

How do you think about fee growth for the rest of the year from here? Thank you.

Mario Langarica

Thank you, Tito. Thank you.

As you explain very well, part of the improvement in provision this quarter has to do with this better early NPLs that we are observing in the new placements. We are seeing increased cost of risk.

That's what I'm saying, that we're thinking that it's going to be closer to the high end. Obviously, we need to be observing very very closely the performance in the next quarter.

I think I'm sure that in June, we will be able to give you a much more specific view on where we will end the year. It's again, it's between 13% and 13.5%, and at this point, we see a little trend towards the higher end.

Now, regarding fees, as we have said and we have explained in previous calls, we have a very high growth in the last 2 years, mostly driven by the expansion of insurance lines and the cross-sell to family members of our clients. That brought a very, very impressive growth and penetration of our insurance products.

As we said last call, we expect that growth to normalize more following the growth of clients. As you have seen, the growth of clients is somewhere around 12%, and still the growth in fees, it's higher.

We think that it should be normalizing in levels close to the growth of clients.

Tito Labarta

Okay. That's great.

Thank you, Mario.

Mario Langarica

You're welcome.

Enrique Barrera

Our next question comes from Arnon Shirazi of Citi. Please, go ahead.

Arnon Shirazi

Hi, all. Thank you for the opportunity of making question.

My question is related to NIM as well. With Banxico initiating a cutting cycle, as we expect something around 25 basis cut to 6.75% in March, how do you expect the net interest margin to compress as your high-yield microfinance loans reprices lower than your funding costs?

Then I have a second question that I can make it later. Thank you.

Mario Langarica

No, as I mentioned, the different dynamics at the interest income and the funding costs will bring us to a NIM of around 41%, as I said, for the end of the year. I don't know if that answers your question.

At Gentera level, obviously.

Arnon Shirazi

Okay. Great.

Moving to the second question, your coverage ratio has trended lower this quarter due to the lower provisions. Do you have any internal floor for coverage that you are willing to reach?

Mario Langarica

The coverage ratio had this adjustment to 187%. That has to do with the increase in the distressed portfolio and then the reduction of the provisions of the quarter.

That 187% at Gentera level should normalize going forward to be above 200 as it usually is. Now it's a matter of the division, no?

Enrique Barrera

Exactly. There is a factor in the numerator, denominator, no?

Allowances and NPLs, no? The NPLs that we have at the bank level are now increasing because they're old NPLs, no?

Once we start to write off those NPLs and with the additional provisions that we will make in the coming quarters, the coverage ratio at the bank level will reach around 200% that will take Gentera to 210%, 220%.

Arnon Shirazi

Great. Very clear.

Thank you.

Enrique Barrera

Our next question comes from Andrés Soto of Santander. Please, go ahead.

Andrés Soto

Everybody, thanks for the presentation. My question is regarding your NPL ratio in the individual segment.

Can you please give us a little bit more of color? What specific areas?

It is geographical? It is new vintages?

Which particular segments are showing this deterioration? What gives you confidence that this will not spread out across other areas?

Enrique Majós

Sure. We feel confident that the main reason of the increase on NPLs in individual lending in Mexico is because the rapid growth that we had last year.

This brings not only new customers, but also new loan officers. When you have new customers and new loan officers, you have to mature the customers, and you have to mature the loan officers.

When we look at the behavior of this product across the country here in Mexico, we see that this is a behavior that happens in all over the country. It is not in a specific region.

That confirms us our analysis that we have to take care on the maturity of the loan officers, the customers, the processes, to adjust some of the parameters of the origination process for new customers specifically. That's kind of the diagnosis that we have.

We have it very clear. That's why we say that we are very comfortable that it is part of the traditional life cycle of this kind of dynamics.

Andrés Soto

Thank you so much, Enrique. Connecting this with your loan growth guidance, you are reiterating the 13% to 16%.

Is there any changes in terms of the composition of that growth? Are you now expecting a weaker growth for that the individual segment to be offset by faster growth than initially expected in the group lending one?

Enrique Majós

Not really. We are not expecting any significant change on our guidance and the growth even by product.

Andrés Soto

Very well. When you look at the economics of both products, group lending versus individual lending, can you give us an idea of how different are they in terms of risk-adjusted NIM?

Mario Langarica

As we have said in the past, the group lending product is it has lower risk, but higher costs, and vice versa with individual lending. We don't provide detail on each one, but the dynamics are those, no?

Higher risk in individual, and lower expenses, operational expenses in individual.

Andrés Soto

In terms of NIM, we can assume that they are fairly similar?

Mario Langarica

NIM is a little better in group lending.

Andrés Soto

Understood. Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Operator

Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the raise your hand button of your Zoom tool.

Enrique Barrera

Our next question comes from Carlos Gomez-Lopez of HSBC. Please, go ahead.

Carlos Gomez-Lopez

Hello, good morning, and congratulations once more on another good quarter. Two questions.

The first one is in terms of competition. If one looks from outside and looks at the profile of your return, it's going up and up and up, and you are now at a 26% ROE at the group level.

If you look exclusively at Banco Compartamos in Mexico, 34%. This has to attract the attention of other players.

In the past, you have had other low-income lenders, Azteca, trying to replicate your model. Is there anybody who is trying to do that today?

I would imagine that this is an attractive business, and somebody, either fintechs or old banks or new banks, might want to come in. The second question is last quarter, you did a clean-up of deferred tax assets at ConCrédito.

You took an extraordinary charge. Is there anything else on the balance sheet that you think you will need to clean up in the coming quarters or years?

Thank you.

Enrique Majós

Thank you, Carlos. Let me address the first one in terms of Yeah, we believe that we attract competition not now, but we have been leading the industry in Mexico, maybe.

We have actually, we re- we don't feel happy about the less number of competitors in the traditional model that we have after the pandemic. We would like to see more and stronger competitors.

Talking about competition, we have to understand that we are playing in the arena of the C and D segment, not A and B. On the other hand, we are playing in the arena of on the working capital loans and consumer loans if we look at the product in ConCrédito, but mostly we have this presence and this leadership in the work working capital loans.

When you talk about the loan process, it is very important to have three different pieces very strong. The first one is the origination process.

The second piece is the risk assessment process, and the third one is the collection process. What we have explained is every time that a new competitors come in, they usually are very strong in the origination process.

They are doing a lot of efforts and things and innovation through digital technologies to build a strong risk assessment process, but they don't have that strong collection process, and we have it. I believe that that's the reason why historically we have been looking this competitors that come in, and at the end, they don't have the strength to remain on the market.

We as I said, we always want more and better competition, but we feel that the key element to really compete on this business is to have obviously the three parts of the process: origination, risk assessment, and collection. The most challenging one is the collection process, which is, by the way, very strong in Compartamos and ConCrédito.

Mario Langarica

Yes, Carlos, hello. Regarding the deferred taxes of ConCrédito last year, there will no be an additional effect this year.

Regarding Gentera, we feel confident comfortable with the 500 million reserve that we created after changing the methodology for calculating reserves. I don't, that was at the bank, at the bank level.

Carlos Gomez-Lopez

That's for the legal reserves, right? That's for legal liabilities.

Mhm.

Mario Langarica

Exactly. We feel comfortable with that, and we will see by the end of the year if there's a need to move it up or down or keep it as it is.

Carlos Gomez-Lopez

No, but that's ongoing business. I'm thinking more of things on the balance sheet like, for instance, some of the goodwill or any other assets that you think you want to impair.

No nothing relevant? Nothing.

Mario Langarica

Nothing there so far, and we don't think that this year we will have impacts like that.

Carlos Gomez-Lopez

All right. Very clear.

Thank you.

Mario Langarica

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

I would like to hand the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Enrique Majós

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your attention to this call.

As you can see, we are starting the first quarter 2026 with the right foot. We are growing our portfolio and our customer base with solid efficiencies and financials.

NPLs will require a special attention in this year, and we cannot underestimate the inflation and slowdown dynamics in the economy, but we feel very confident to deliver our guidance for the year. Thank you for your support to Gentera as a strong and high-value, long-term company.

Operator

With this, concludes the conference of today. You may now disconnect.