Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody who's on the call.

With me today, I have the MD of the [Guaranty Trust?] Bank, I have Banji who's the CFO, and then me.

I think we've all had a couple of days. We put the investor presentation out, I believe Thursday or Wednesday last week.

We will just go into questions and answers, I'm ready to take the first question.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have a couple of questions.

The first one is just to say on the capital that was raised, I just want to know how the money has been deployed so far. Then, my second question, I see that your loan guidance for 2026 is going to be 25%.

I'm just trying to understand, out of your top five sectors—

Hello?

Can you hear me clearly now?

Yes, it's better. Thank you.

Apologies for that. My first question was with regard to the capital that was raised.

I'm just trying to understand how it has been deployed so far. Then my second question is just looking at your loan guidance of about 25%, I want to understand the top three sectors that will drive that particular growth in 2026.

Then I noticed that the effective tax rate for 2025 was up by almost 10 percentage points to 29% in 2025. I'm just trying to understand if this is a new norm going forward, and that is what we should expect in terms of effective tax rate.

The next question I have is on dividend payout ratio. I noticed that based on the reported EPS, they are now at 54.2% of being paid out as dividend.

I want to know if we are also reverting back to pre-regulatory levels of above 50%, seeing that that's how the bank has always been prior to 2023 and 2024. My final question is on the growth strategy for the bank or for the financial institution.

I just want to know, over the next 5 to 10 years, should we still expect largely organic growth or there will be some level of inorganic growth as we go on through the years? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Lots of questions.

Some require a whole day like strategy, forgive me, I'll be very short when I get to that, but I'll try my best. I will also try to expand.

I'm hoping most people are on the call already, I will try and expand on each one. Very good questions, by the way, I'm sure other people would want to know.

In terms of capital raise use so far, as we said, we would be deploying this capital as it comes in. Sorry, can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you. Okay.

All right, great. A lot of the ones we said we'll use for technology has gone into technology already.

The branch expansion is at very advanced stages in Ghana. We've also done some in Nigeria.

We haven't started the ones in East Africa and Cote d'Ivoire yet. Obviously working capital, which were the real three reasons we went out to raise the capital.

If you ask me, what have we deployed? We've probably deployed about 60% of what we raised, and we will slowly deploy the rest over the course of probably this year.

You said 20 26 loan guidance, you wanted to know the top three sectors. If you look at our loan book today, you will see that 85% of it is in the corporate space.

We will probably not be doing a lot of oil and gas, but you will see that we will do manufacturing, we'll try to do retail, we'll try to do SMEs. I think those are the three places we would go.

If you push me on what manufacturing, I think we would always have a preference for food and beverage. Tax rate: I'm going to spend some time here because I think a lot of people want to know what happened to the tax rate if I take 2024 versus 2025.

If I take 2024, you must remember that about 46% of our income in 2024 was fair value gains, and you don't pay any tax on fair value gains.

The other thing is you used to be able to deduct interest income on treasury bills, which you cannot do again. Come 2025, there are no fair value gains.

The quality of earnings is a lot stronger than 2024, which is why we've been able to pay a higher dividend. You also are not able to deduct interest on treasury bills, so that's again why the tax rate is higher.

If I look at where we are today, there are only really two items that you can deduct today: interest on bonds and interest in foreign income. Therefore, to answer your question, you would be hard pressed if your quality of earnings is good not to have an effective rate of about 27 to 28%.

While we're at 29, 30, I think we can do some work to bring it down to about 27. I never like to use the word new normal because every year hopefully you get better at what you do.

If we change some of the mix of our investment securities and put some bonds into it, hopefully we can bring it down to about 27%. That maybe the kind of tax rate you would like to hit for 2025.

Look, in terms of strategy, I could go on. 10 years is a long time.

We will continue doing what we're doing. The banking business will continue to grow both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria.

We showed you how we think the income distribution will be for this year: about 65% Nigeria, 35% outside, about 3% non-banking subsidiaries, we'll continue to grow that way. Most of our growth will be organic.

Obviously out of respect for the regulators in the country which I'm looking at, we're hoping that by the end of this quarter, we will have another country open in Francophone West Africa, then we might look again. I think there will be more importance for us outside of Nigeria to gain market share and become stronger in the countries which we are and try to be one number one, number two, or number three in profit in those countries.

Very broadly, that's our strategy going forward. Hope I've answered your question adequately.

Yes, thank you. If I have more, I'll come back in queue.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Segun and team. Congratulations on the very high quality of numbers put out in 2025 and obviously the dividend.

Ahem. With that being said, I have maybe two or three questions.

The first two questions maybe would be a bit of a follow-up. You mentioned loan growth of 25%, you mentioned the sectors.

Given where monetary policy rates are, where interest rates are, could you talk about the underlying asset quality risk of growing by 25% in an environment where interest rates seem to be in the high 20s? What kind of risk are you taking from an asset quality perspective?

The second question, again, somewhat related to loan growth. When I look at the guidance, loan growth guidance is 25%, deposit growth guidance is 40%, but we're also seeing the loan-to-deposit ratio guidance increase from 24% to 35%.

Could you just help us understand how that comes about, because if deposits continue to outgrow loans, and so LDR should be dropping, if anything. Then I guess the final point, again, related to guidance, capital adequacy ratio declining from 43% to 35%.

If I look at your ROE guidance, it's 30%. Loan growth guidance is 25%.

If anything, just based on those numbers, the capital adequacy ratio should be relatively steady just looking at your ROE and loan growth guidance. Just try to understand what's driving that significant drop in CAR ratio.

Are you seeing some significant increase in risk-weighted assets intensity, or is it a higher payout ratio that we should expect going forward?

Thank you. Thanks very much.

I will try to take these ones. When you look at loan growth, and again, I'm going to spend a bit of time, please forgive me.

One thing about us, if you watch us historically, we're not obsessed with loan growth. Our obsession is really more portfolio yield on the asset side and the NIM.

Our guidance, we will give you 25% loan growth because we hope that will happen. We're not going to sacrifice our conservative posture and take on high risk just because we want to grow loans.

We take the asset side of our balance sheet and we see three items. We see placements, we see investment securities, we see loans.

We're going to play those three things together and maximize the portfolio yield and maximize the NIM. Even though we think we will try and grow 25%, if the risk is too high, we're not going to.

If the interest rates remain elevated and we can make our money of placements, investment securities, then we're going to put more there, and that is why this is a guide. For us, our guidance, we stay very very agile.

In terms of loan-to-deposit ratio, part of what you must always remember when you look at our loan-to-deposit ratio is that there's CRR. You're not going to be able to put all your deposits in loans, you got to take out CRR and put some loans, and then you balance it.

Hopefully, if you do that, you will arrive somewhere about where we are in the loan-to-deposit ratio. Capital adequacy, we will continue to pay dividends.

Sorry, I forgot to address the other person's comment. This is the kind of dividend payout ratio you're going to start to see.

We're going back over to 50%. At this kind of high capital adequacy ratios, we think we're comfortable.

The type of risk we're taking, how de-risked the balance sheet is, we think we can pay more. We will try to work the capital more slowly, but I think yeah, you will see a high dividend payout ratio as long as we can continue to make money and the quality of earnings are high.

Please, we try to guide what we believe is our minimum expectations so we don't come here and have to start to explain ourselves. Even though we've given you an ROE of 30%, hopefully we'll do better than that, and then some of those ratios will readjust.

Understood.

Just maybe one final one,

saw

some recovery on NPLs last year, pretty decent recovery. Can we expect that momentum to continue, especially there was that one big write-off in 2024, any prospect of recovery on that?

Just like we had promised at the time, thank you very much. The one you might be referring to is Ikeja, because we have provided for Ikeja at the end of 2024.

Any money that comes in goes to the bottom line. Yes, I think that is the one big one left.

There was another one we took in 2025. That's one-off and that's done, and we've kind of shaken hands with the debtor and he's gone his own way.

I believe as long as Ikeja continues to perform in this banking industry, then every year, I think they restructured a 13-year loan, if the restructure works, it means that for the next 13 years, we'll have more recoveries on Ikeja, yes.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you.

Right, good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. My first question is on the bank's FCY equity instruments, right?

We've seen the past impact of naira appreciation on these instruments, and how is the bank looking at managing this? Are there plans to liquidate these positions and realize these gains or losses, as the case may be?

Secondly, we looked at the performance across geographical segments, and we liked what we saw from the rest of West Africa, the contribution from the rest of West Africa to total gross earnings. However, we noticed a decline in contribution from East Africa and Europe.

I don't know, could you speak to the drivers of this decline? Lastly, on loan growth again, right, given the significant deviation from the actual loan growth versus guidance that was given for 2025, I was wondering, could there be some high-level macro signals that probably limit in credit growth for banks just to help us think through what to expect for 2026?

Thank you.

Thank you very much. No, we're not going to change our position.

I think when you're an organization and you're long-term, you don't make short-term decisions. Yes, we're in an appreciation scenario today, but it's too early to tell that that's what will happen over the next 5 years, no, we're not going to get out of that position.

Any losses that arise in an appreciation situation will take it, and hopefully, loan growth or what we deploy into in terms of loans will help cushion some of that. Now, you talked about, thank you very much, I wish we too wish East Africa and UK could grow like West Africa, but we're going to focus on those two regions.

We now own 100% of our East Africa franchise, we think we're more empowered to start to derive the potential of the region. It's 0.9% today.

I think you will see it do better in 2026. We'll do the same with the UK.

We're going to pull all the levers. We are happy with West Africa, not as happy with East Africa and UK, but there's nothing sinister happening there.

Sometimes the business and the macros, if you're in the UK, interest rates dropped in 2025 over 2024, some of the yields were lower. In East Africa, like I said, we're rebalancing, there's nothing out of the ordinary going on there other than interest rates movement.

Also, if you're very familiar with East Africa, also the yields in government securities dropped. It's a change in interest rate environment.

The only way to deal with it is to scale up the business, and once you scale up the business, hopefully, what you will make will outweigh what you lost in the yields on both the loans and the fixed income. In terms of loan growth, look, like I said to the one of the earlier speakers, we would like to grow the loan book 25%.

We think that there is runway to do it. The corporate space has it, retail has it, SME has it.

The thing that can stop us from doing that is that we are not going to be emotional or irrational. If a corporate wants to borrow between 400 basis points below the SDF rate and the T-bill rate, then we are not going to grow the corporate book aggressively because then that dampens the portfolio yield, reduces the NIM, and reduces the profitability.

There's nothing wrong with the macros. We can grow the corporate number, but we got to make sure it's appropriately priced when we compare it to our other asset classes where we can deploy our funds.

Honestly, if the 25 is there, we will. The two segments we're comfortable growing right now when we look at the pricing is retail, SME.

When we balance the risk versus the yield, we think those are two areas we'll try to grow. Corporate, if it can be priced appropriately, we will.

Again, we are not going to grow the loan book just because we want it to be 25 if the pricing is not correct. No, we don't see any macro headwinds in terms of risk, but we want to be very mindful of the pricing of the corporate loans we go into.

Don't know if that answered your question. Yes, thank you very much.

Congratulations on your results. I know, like, obviously you start to declare payout is quite impressive.

My first question is I was looking at the deposit growth guidance of 40% and reading historical deposit growth levels and deposit cost of around for taking time deposit so as to ensure that cost of fund remains low. Trying to wrap my head around that number, kind of a bit aggressive.

Can you just shed more light on that? Also, for capital adequacy ratio at around 43% %, my view has always been that it's kind of at that level, the bank is carrying excess capital, I wanted to ask regarding that, like, what what was your view regarding excess capital for banks?

Do you do you think that it is ideal? My final question, regarding the POS terminal, I think on that last year, I think that earlier last year and later announced that 0.5% 0% fee for POS terminal, I want to ask how is that going?

Is the strategy working? What where where where is where is that development?

Where where is it at now? Thank you.

Thank you very much. On the first one, you're right, the deposit growth based off on our philosophy is aggressive, but we're going to go for it.

We did 25% anyway in 2025, you always try to do better. One of the things that is going to drive our deposit growth, you've already hinted, maybe I should just answer the question now.

One of the things we're going to use to drive our deposit growth without taking time deposits is our POS strategy, and it's working very well for us. When we announced this in February, we were doing about 22 billion collections a month.

Right now, we're about 250 billion, from our perspective on a monthly basis is working, and some of that will stay in the system and will drive deposit growth. We have different things that we're doing.

Also, the regions are getting bigger. The first question, the first caller asked me actually what we were doing with the capital we raised.

Some of the capital is going into additional branch network. Additional branch network will bring additional deposits.

If we didn't have those branches in 2025 and we have them in 2026, we think that's going to bring some deposit growth. The POS strategy is also going to bring some deposit growth.

Yes, while it is aggressive, we have things in place which we didn't have in 2025 where we did 25%. The only guess we will both have to guess is these new things, will they give us the 15%, and only time will tell.

POS strategy is working. Look, capital adequacy, it is what it is.

I don't think we can ask that question again whether it's good for banks or not good for banks. It has happened.

We have the capital, we only need to deploy sensibly. We must not get into the temptation to try to bring an ROE that's very high too quickly, because if you do that, the easiest way to do it is a loan book and you're going to pick up NPLs.

We just have to be patient. The capital adequacy is now what it is because we've all raised capital, and we'll try to deploy it over the next 2, 3 years in a nice way without destroying the capital we raised.

That's kind of where we are. We're not in a rush.

For lenders, if you look at it, we raised the capital just last year, we still did 28% post-tax ROE, 40% pre-tax. We're pretty comfortable that at that level of ROE, we can deploy the capital and not over-worry about whether it's too high or too low, and that over time, it will get back to the levels we're comfortable with, which is around 23 to 24%.

That's kind of where we get comfort based upon current volatility. We're fine.

It's there, we have to deal with it.

Thank you.

Good day, Segun, and thank you for the time to take our questions, and congratulations on your results. I have questions, please come follow up.

First is to get your overall view on the interest rate environment.

Sorry, you're a bit muted, I can't hear you very clearly.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, I can hear you. Thank you, yes, much better.

Thanks Segun. Congratulations on your results.

First question is, I suppose your overall view on the interest rate environment, given the geopolitics and I suppose how you think monetary policy decisions go given likely change in direction for inflation, where do you get your overall stand? Secondly, also on the regulatory environment, there was a recent stress test being conducted by the central bank.

Trying to get a sense of where you think systemic risk is and where suppose the sector could be lagging from that point of view. Look at your slide and we saw a big jump in natural gas, your credit exposures to natural gas.

Just want to understand what's happening there and how you think things evolve over the next year on that particular exposure. I think I'll pause here and then maybe come back to

if

there's more questions, please.

All right, no problem. Let me take the first one.

Look, interest rates, but the geopolitics is moving so fast that even I'm struggling to keep up. Going into the year, and we try to do our worst-case scenario, and I'm not sure it's changed much.

First, let me tell you, I think the central bank is doing a great job with monetary policy because you and I were both here when we lived in negative interest rates, and today at least we're in positive interest rates, which is why you've seen inflows into the country. I still think that at the very worst or best, depending on which side of the divide you are, we will have a year of two halves, which means in the first half of the year, we'll have elevated interest rates.

We're already in April, we only have May and June to go. 1-year OMO bills last week came out 21.9%.

Elevated interest rates, positive above inflation. I think you will see that till at least June.

If interest rates start to temper, I think it will be in the second half of the year, and we'll deal with it then. If you held me to a prediction now, I would tell you that the interest rate environment which we're in now will continue till June and that we should reassess in July.

The stress test, I think it's worked well. You're de-risking the banking environment, forbearance has gone, you still have maybe some forwards that people have to deal with.

It's better to stress the balance sheet of banks now, especially since a capital has just come in. The capital allows you to do this now, so as Guaranty Trust Bank, we've done our own stress test in the bank, and yeah, we're prepared for it, and I think most banks should be.

Natural gas: maybe call it luck, with what has happened in Iran and Iraq, you see what's happened to the price of gas, and it even means that most of the loans we've booked are looking much better. Even when we did the stress test, it wasn't this good.

We were trying to diversify away from just crude and PMS in the downstream, but it seems to have worked because we've seen natural gas as a growth area in the oil and gas sector. The one thing I will say before anybody asks that question is that if these elevated prices remain, we will not fall into the trap of letting the money scale, we will actually accelerate repayment of these loans.

From a natural gas perspective, it looks like we made a great bet, the current prices in natural gas are very good, and that if we look at the book in the oil and gas sector, it is probably the best and the lowest risk at the moment of all sectors.

Understood. Thank you.

Very clear.

Good afternoon. My name is Habeeb from WSTC Financial Services.

Congratulations on the financial results. Done.

On a quick one, my question is on technology adoption. What is the plan or what is your projection on how you to get a larger customer market using technology?

Then the second question is you plan to grow a loan book about 25%. What strategy are you looking to put in place to minimize bad loans?

Then the last question, despite the lower EPS, you maintain a dividend payout ratio of about 54%. Should we expect this to continue, or just a one-time thing that will happen?

That's my question.

Sorry, I missed the second one, but you'll tell me again. Look, I already mentioned it: dividend payout 54%, we're going to continue.

The reason we couldn't reach these levels in the last two years was because of the quality of earnings. A lot of those earnings were revaluation gains, fair value through P&L, which the central bank rightly does not allow you to pay dividends on because it has no cash implications.

Come 2025, we don't have that kind. We then have the high quality of earnings that allows us to pay that kind of dividend at that sort of level.

Yes, the intention is to continue. I think the 50%, 54% dividend payout is to continue then.

Technology adoption, if you look at the presentation, going very well. 3.1 million users of GTWorld.

If you're a customer, hopefully, you will tell us you like it. It's working well.

The cards are doing well. When you look at what's happening in our card business today, do it with instant transfers, because people are changing behavior.

People on POSs today use cards and then transfer. Our technology bets, which made in 2024 where we went through a bit of hell, seem to have paid off.

Technology has stabilized, it's working for us. Technology for us is not only going to be used also for what you see as a customer.

Technology for us is going to give us cost optimization, because we're going to be able to optimize our processes and create cost efficiencies. So 2025 we started, we'll continue to optimize the use of technology going forward, and it's going to allow us to serve a much larger customer base without throwing bodies and a lot of the processes.

I think your second question was on loan growth. I think, Habeeb, I really said to everybody who's asked me about this, 25% loan growth, we're going to aspire for it, but we're not going to do it if it's going to sacrifice the quality of the loan book.

The good thing is when we sit, we play with three different asset classes on the asset side, and they're all in it. We take our placements, we take our investment securities, we take our loans, and we play with those three to optimize the portfolio yield.

We do not feel any crazy pressure to grow this loan book. If it is safe, properly priced, then we'll hit the 25.

Hope that answered your question.

You do answer my question. Then, is there, rightly priced, do you have a benchmark bandit for the interest rate when you say rightly priced?

Sorry? Oh, do I have a benchmark?

Personally—well, personally, but not my personal opinions and not what Karl—Banjo is on the phone. In my personal views, you shouldn't be doing any loans below the SDF rate at 22 today.

That's my personal view.

Hi, hello. Can you guys hear me?

Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Hello.

Hi Segun, thank you for the call and then congratulations on the results. My questions are sort of an extension of three topics that have been discussed earlier.

Firstly is the NIM, especially around the liability structure. There's been a 73% growth in your term loans over 2025, which also saw your huge sequential growth in funding liability interest in Q4 increased quite significantly.

How should we think about term loans growth going into 2026, and is there any sort of change in the CASA and the funding ratio that we should be for 2026 and 2027 going forward? The second question is around asset quality.

There seemed to be a divergence between your corporate book and your retail book. The stage 2 portion of your retail book saw almost a six-fold increase.

I'd like some context around that. Is that product-specific?

Is that broad-based retail stress, or just conservatism? Is there any evidence of migration over what you've seen in Q1 in the retail category?

My final question is around Ghana. Ghana has become quite significant for the group.

I'm trying to unpack to what extent the growth is driven by underlying franchise value, currency effects, and high interest rate environment. In a normalized environment, what should Ghana be for the group?

Thank you.

Okay. Let me start with Ghana, since you just asked for that.

We're very very happy with Ghana, and if you drill down and we try to be very transparent, Ghana is growing, it's not currency. Ghana today is 23%, I believe, of loans, 30% of deposits.

Ghana's loan growth was 54%. That is real growth.

West Africa's contribution to the group from a profit perspective is 28%. We are also investing more in Ghana in terms of a branch network.

I think where in 2025 we opened six branches. In Ghana, we're up to about 42 branches.

We're going to start doing in Ghana more of what we're doing in Nigeria, which is a retail play. It will up the deposit base, it will up the loan book, it's not benefiting really from an exchange rate, it's benefiting from real growth.

I'm trying to understand your question on NIMs, but I will try to make an attempt to my understanding. Our NIM is 12.3%, portfolio asset yield 14.6%.

You talk about term loan growth. Honestly, for me, I really don't see the relevance of why you should be concerned about term loan growth, because anyway, even when you grow term loans, very few of them are fixed, there's no interest rate risk.

When I'm growing my term loans, I can reprice the customer, I can reprice. I don't have a focus on term loans or ODs or IFs.

Loans are loans. Most of our loans in Nigeria, 90-something percent, are flexible.

The place where I would be worried about term loan growth is if I was a fixed interest rate environment and I was going out 5 years where there is interest rate risk. That can have very adverse effects or positive on my NIM because of my portfolio yield.

In Nigeria where everything is floating, doesn't really make a difference. Whatever grows, I don't really have a fixation whether it's term loans, overdrafts, or IFs on that one.

In terms of segmentation, yeah, the retail book is growing, and I've mentioned earlier on that we are very comfortable with the pricing of the retail and SME loans where we can control the risk. Then what we would like to see is take more from where we're at 85 corporate and put more in retail and SME and reduce the corporate.

In 2025, '26, we've started that, and you'll see some reallocation of the loan book between corporate, retail, and SME, and we're doing this very mindful of not putting more risk on the loan book. I hope I answered the questions, because that's how I kind of understood them.

Just two clarifications. The first question on the NIM was focused around the liability side.

The 73% growth in term deposits and then I think interest expense for Q4 was about 114 billion,

and

I think prior was about run rate was around 90, there was a step up there.

Sure.

I'm trying to understand if we should analyze the Q4 numbers, or is there any underlying trends driving your CASA ratios lower? That's the first question.

Oh, all right. Then

the second is around the asset quality on the retail, because there was about 5.6 times increase in your stage 2 loans on the retail portfolio. I wanted some clarity.

Is that product-specific, is that broad-based retail stress, or just a reflection of the fact that that book has grown relatively to the other portions of the loan book? Actually,

okay, let me answer the first one. The term deposit growth you've seen is not in the bank, that's the asset management company.

It's about 6.7% of total deposits, what is growing is not the bank. The bank's low-cost deposit is still 90-something percent.

The growth you're seeing is not bank, it's asset management company, which as you can see, AUM is about 1.5 trillion, growing very well, so that's where that is coming from. In terms of what you see that went to the retail, it was historical as you're cleaning up, charges.

One of the risks of retail is sometimes people abandon their accounts or you have disputes and charges. We went back and basically wrote off and provided for charges that have been in the system that the customers had not paid.

Certain agreements were made in certain cases for full and final, it wasn't the core loan book facing any other significant risk. Thank you.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you, Segun.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. This is on current exposure to cocoa industry.

I'd like to know how the recent downfall in cocoa price and all the industry how it has affected your outlook.

No, we actually don't. We're very bad at things like cocoa.

No, the place that we have cocoa is not in Nigeria, it's in Cote d'Ivoire. The cocoa season and cocoa trade is very different in Cote d'Ivoire.

It's a major crop for them and so far, we haven't picked up any NPLs. The cocoa exposure is not Nigeria, it's Cote d'Ivoire.

All right, thank you.

Dele?

Not very clearly. You're very low.

I am now.

Apologies. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions.

Can you speak up, please?

Can you hear me?

Yes, now I can. Okay.

My question is on your view of the fintech space. I wish I had comments on how the fintech is doing, and also what you think the market is seeing the competition that has been arising from other financial technology companies.

Thank you.

Oh god, we love the fintech space, and if you look at our investor presentation, Habari is doing very well. TPV 81 trillion, profit 9.7 billion.

It's growing at over 100%, which means we've positioned our own speedboat fintech against one of the fintech threats we see. It has become for us, our innovation hub and our speedboat.

Yes, the fintechs are here to stay. I don't know why anybody thinks they're not here to stay.

They're here to stay, they're going to compete with the banks, they're going to make sure the banks are agile, they're going to make sure the banks are efficient, and so my simple advice to every bank would be to have a competitive strategy to compete with fintechs and not focus only competing with banks. I don't know if that answered your question, sir.

All right, understood. Thank you.

Good afternoon, and thank you so much for taking my question, and congrats on your results. My question is more like a follow-up on what you had said and your answer to that.

You mentioned that going into the second half of the year, you expect interest rates to basically go down, if not significantly, right? If I look at your current balance sheet structure, investment securities basically currently accounts for at least 9% of your total assets, right?

How quickly does the blended assets basically change, right, as risk environment basically unwinds? Because I'm just quickly looking around the fact that you have a lot of exposure on this investment securities, right?

How quickly can you basically deploy these assets in other more yielding instruments so that if I may use that, right, maintain your NIM? Yeah.

A couple of things. I'm not sure I said in the best-case scenario.

I think will remain elevated, we might drop in the second half. Another simple thing is you've assumed that all our investment securities are 90 days.

Our investment securities could be 365 days, which will take us almost to the end of the year. If that asset class we don't like as much, we might pivot into loans.

Loans might not be dropping as fast, and that is why I keep emphasizing that for us, the agility and the ability to go between the three asset classes I keep mentioning is what is going to help us preserve the portfolio yield and the NIM. If you look at our guidance, we have built in the fact that the portfolio yield might come down, and that is why even though in 2025 we closed with a NIM of 12.3, we have actually advised a NIM of 11% for 2026.

We have taken that risk into our guidance for '26.

No, that's fine. What is the average tenure of your current book if something like that is something that is disclosed just for us to model?

Look, let me be honest with you. I'm not sure it's really relevant, because I've already dropped the NIM by 130 basis points, which means I've already modeled for you a drop in interest rates.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, team. Can you hear me?

Yes, good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Thank you again for hosting this call, and congratulations on the excellent results.

Just looking three, five years out from now, can you just please speak to just the overall country mix and how you're thinking about this? Is the overall strategy to diversify significantly outside of Nigeria, and which of the existing markets that you're in are prioritized for growth?

Just to tack to that question, are there any other new markets that the group is considering entering over the next couple of years? If you can just speak to the strategy with regards to that.

Thank you.

Nigeria must remain very relevant, no matter what we do. I'm also hoping that Nigeria is not going to give in to the other regions as quickly.

We would like three regions to continue to grow. We would like Nigeria to remain extremely relevant.

Even if the contribution drops, I don't believe Nigeria should ever drop below 55%. West Africa must continue to grow.

Because we haven't done as well in East Africa, we think there's a long runway to take it from 0.9 and have it go up. The reason I don't mention countries is because sometimes regulators are not very happy when you mention their countries and they haven't given you a license.

Yes, we do have some growth plans, and I had said earlier in this call, hopefully by half year, we will be opening another Francophone West African country. We might then look at some other countries in West Africa, but Nigeria still has to be 55% of this business, and whatever we pick up outside Nigeria should be no more than 45 or maybe 40, and then the non-banking subsidiaries which are also doing well should be around five.

That's excellent. That answered my question.

Thank you very much.

Right, hello again. I'd like if you could speak on the non-banking businesses, right, the pension business as well as the asset management business.

We noticed the bank is guiding for non-banking business contribution to PBT at 3%, just to get a sense of the strategy around pension business and asset management business for 2026. Thank you.

I don't know why you only think we have those two. Everybody forgets Habari.

Habari was actually our most profitable non-banking business last year. Habari did 9.7 billion profit, asset management did 9, pension did about 1.7.

Our strategy is those three will continue to grow. Habari is going very well, payment business.

Asset management is going extremely well. This was a business we bought four years ago, had assets under management of 22 billion.

At the end of the year, I can't tell you what it is today because it's not yet public, we were close to 1.5, it's going to continue to grow. The pension business, which we bought at 40-something billion, which is all AUM, is now 150 billion, all RSA.

Everything we did outside the non-banking subsidiaries has worked and it's working. Then apart from the numbers you see, one of the benefits you cannot quantify is the ecosystem play it gives us.

It allows you

Are we back?

Sorry, I'm really sorry. Apparently, we lost the operator.

Just like I was saying, I'll have to summarize and not go into too much. You asked about two, but when we look at non-banking subsidiaries, like I started to tell you, we look at three.

We look at the payment business, we look at PFA, and we look at asset management. Last year, the payment business was actually the most profitable at 9.7, asset management was 9 billion, PFA was about 1.7.

They'll go from 1.7% of the group to 3% of the group. They are growing very very well, very very fast.

When we bought the asset management business, it was 22 billion assets under management. As of the end of last year, it was about 1.5 trillion.

Habari was complete star though. Volumes last year was 81 trillion.

Even the PFA, we're very happy with, because we are growing the PFA from the RSA side, not the AES side. Honestly, do we think 3% is doable at the current great growth rate?

Absolutely, and they give us a total ecosystem play. I've said it.

I think I've finished for that question.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Thanks for the call. I think you gave a bit of clarity on the market expansion.

I wanted to know if along the line of expansion, there will be any need for extra capital, especially on the debt side, and if you'll be coming to the Eurobond market.

Not at all. If you remember, one of the callers even said I should sell my long position.

No, we will not be coming to the Eurobond market, and we will not be borrowing our equity positions. I think we have enough.

If you look at our placement line in our financial statement, we have enough dollars not to have to come back into the Eurobond market.

Thanks.

Okay.

Yes.

Thanks. Just wanted to get your own sense from your customer interaction of what's happening in the downstream oil and gas sector, particularly the disruptions that Dangote Refinery has created, to try and see if there's any asset quality concerns you'll be having, especially about all the movement that's happened, particularly with the importers and the marketers, and how I think there's some concerns that there could be asset quality issues that could come up in the future.

Selfishly, we don't have to worry about that, because if you see, it's only 1% of our loan book. We've always been very gun-shy about the downstream sector because of the volatility, even before the Dangote Refinery.

It is the sector where the volatility is so high, and when you look at the capital of the players, it has always been an area of oil and gas that is high risk. It will remain that.

Because it's a commodity and it's susceptible to movements like any other commodity, and when you look at the size of the cargos and the profit margin, it will always be a high-risk area. I'm not sure whether we have the Dangote Refinery or not, the downstream sector is a high-risk sector because of the volatility of the pricing of the commodity.

Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.

thank you very much. I wanted to know, aside 2026, if we'll be getting 2027 and maybe 2028 guidance?

No, I won't be. [laughter] I think I would rather stay in 2026 and even deliver that, and then when we get to the end of '26, we'll talk about 2027.

It's not where the complete strategy planning as opposed to an investor call. No, the polite answer is we've put 2026 guidance out, and I want to end with that.

All right, sir. Thank you.

For everybody who came on the call, thank you very much. For all those who are shareholders, investors, thank you very much for all your support.

I guess we'll try and go back to work and make sure we deliver the 2026 numbers. Thank you.

Have a good day.