Mira Tiyanak
Let me first start with the B2C update. We continue to see growing engagement across our Halyk SuperApp ecosystem, with monthly active users reaching 8.5 million and daily active users at 2.8 million.
Monthly transacting users increased to 6 million, while our active client base expanded to 11.6 million, reflecting sustained customer activity across our digital channels. Transactional activity continued to grow, with the number of payments and transfers increasing by 6% year-on-year, and transaction volumes up 14% year-on-year.
We also maintained a strong position in our core customer base, with active salary cards representing 40% of the country's employed population. Overall, these metrics continue to support the strength and scalability of our digital ecosystem.
Turning to our retail lending business, the retail gross loan book reached 4.6 trillion tenge, increasing by 8.3% year-on-year. Gross dynamics remained more moderate during the quarter, reflecting tighter underwriting resulting from regulatory changes as well as seasonal factors.
Asset quality indicators remain resilient, with the NPL 90 days plus ratio at 8.4% and coverage at 83.9%. Loan issuance totaled 482 billion tenge during the quarter, down 18.3% year-on-year, mainly reflecting the impact of regulatory tightening and its effect on BNPL and unsecured lending activity.
We continue to maintain a solid market position, with 17.7% market share, serving 1.84 million borrowers, while further strengthening digital penetration, with 91% of loans issued digitally by number. Next slide, please.
Our retail deposit portfolio reached 7.9 trillion tenge, up 10.4% year-on-year, and quarterly dynamics reflected a modest normalization following year-end seasonality. We continue to maintain a strong market position, with 27.4% market share, while local currency deposits represented 73% of the portfolio, supporting the stability of our funding base.
Digital adoption remains high, with 94% of new deposits opened through digital channels, and over 300,000 new deposits opened during the quarter, reflecting continued customer engagement across our ecosystem. In B2B, we continued to expand our digital ecosystem and strengthen integration between banking services and everyday business operations.
Online Dukan continues to demonstrate strong traction and further scale up its operations. Since its launch, the GMV reached 50.8 billion tenge, while the number of connected stores increased to more than 17,000, covering approximately 35% of all stores across the country.
Now let me turn to our online bank platform performance. We continue to maintain our leading position in B2B digital banking in Kazakhstan, supported by a large and highly engaged client base.
Monthly active users reached approximately 325,000, with daily active users at around 144,000, and 230,000 monthly transacting users. Clients' activity on the platform remained solid during the quarter.
The number of payments increased by 12.2% year-on-year, while transaction volumes grew by 28%, reflecting continued expansion in business activity across our customer base. Overall, these trends continued to demonstrate the strength of our B2B digital ecosystem and its important role in supporting transaction flows across the group.
Next slide, please. Turning to our corporate lending business, the gross corporate loan portfolio reached 6.5 trillion tenge, increasing by 8.5% year-on-year.
Quarterly portfolio dynamics was impacted by seasonal factors and appreciation of tenge. Our corporate portfolio continues to maintain a well-diversified structure across industries, with no single sector representing a dominant concentration.
This diversification remains an important factor supporting portfolio resilience and overall risk management. In addition, local currency loans represented 57.3% of the corporate portfolio.
Next slide, please. Now let me turn to our corporate business performance.
We continue to maintain strong relationships with our corporate clients, serving approximately 2.9 thousand active customers and demonstrating a high level of product penetration, with an average of 4.5 products per client. Clients' activity across our corporate platform remains solid, with total quarterly transactions reaching 2.8 million.
At the same time, our borrower base continues to demonstrate deep engagement, with an average of 5.9 products per borrower. We also maintained our leading market position, holding a 48% share in loans to legal entities and a 29.6% share in deposits of legal entities.
Asset quality indicators remain resilient, with the NPL 90 days plus ratio at 2.9% and a strong coverage ratio of 114.9%. Turning to our SME business, we continue to deliver strong performance across key lending and digital metrics.
Our SME gross loan portfolio reached 2.3 trillion tenge, increasing by 27.7% year-on-year, while loan issuance grew by 28.9%. Digital lending remains an important growth driver in this segment, and the digital loan portfolio for legal entities increased by 40.3% year-on-year and continued to expand during the quarter, supported by increasing usage of our digital channels and financing products.
We also continue to broaden our offering across the SME segment. Issuance number of digital bonds more than doubled year-on-year, reflecting continued customer demand and increasing penetration of these products within our client base.
Overall, these results demonstrate the strength of our SME franchise and support the continued expansion of our digital ecosystem. Turning to portfolio quality and client activity in the SME segment, asset quality indicators remain strong, with the NPL 90 days plus ratio at 3.6% and coverage at 137%, reflecting our disciplined approach to risk management.
We also continue to see a high level of client engagement across the segment, with product penetration reaching 2.6 products per active client. Customer activity remained solid, with monthly transactions totaling 4.6 million and transaction volumes reaching 13.5 trillion tenge.
Digitalization continues to be a key feature of our SME franchise, with 96% of loans issued digitally by count. Now let me hand over the call to my colleague from IR team, Rustam Telish.
Thank you.
Rustam Telish
Thank you, Mira, and good day everyone. Now I will take you through the financial results for the first quarter 2026.
The group performance in the first quarter of 2026 was in line with our expectations and supports the full-year 2026 guidance communicated earlier. Here you can see the decomposition of the net income in first quarter '26 versus first quarter 2025.
Net income for first quarter 2026 is down 14.6% year-on-year due to the impact of increased minimum reserve requirements and tighter regulations in retail lending. Let me briefly highlight key balance sheet trends.
Today assets of the group increased by 1.4% year-to-date. Average total interest-earning assets in first quarter 2026 grew by 2.5%, at the same time average total interest-bearing liabilities grew by 1%.
Total deposits to total liabilities ratio was at the level of 79.6%. As at the end of first quarter 2026, total equity of the bank increased by 6.9% compared to the year-end 2025 due to the earned net profit.
That led to respective growth of book value per common share by 6.4% as at the end of first quarter 2026. Loans to deposit ratio was up to 91.9%.
For the interest income, it increased by 14.6% year-on-year, mainly driven by higher average balances of loans to customers. At the same time, interest expense grew by 27.8%, primarily due to higher average rates and balances of amounts due to customers, as well as higher share of KZT amounts due to customers.
As a result, net interest income showed positive growth of 2.3% year-on-year, despite the pressure from minimum reserve requirements and tighter regulations in retail lending. Net interest margin declined to 7% for first quarter 2026, compared to 7.5% in first quarter 2025, mainly due to the introduction of new minimum reserve requirements coefficients.
Excluding this regulatory impact, adjusted NIM would have been 7.3%. Net fee and commission income declined by 26.1% year-on-year, mainly due to weaker BNPL transactional income, following tighter underwriting standards introduced as part of regulatory changes.
In addition, the gradual pass-through of VAT on certain banking services to clients also had a negative impact on fee and commission income. On operational expenses, opex increased by 7.8% year-on-year, mainly due to IT development-related costs and increase in VAT.
Despite lower operational income in first quarter 2026 year-on-year, our cost discipline allowed us to maintain low cost metrics. The cost-to-income ratio increased only to 18.2%, and cost-to-average assets decreased to 1.4%.
Year-on-year loans to customers increased by 11.3% on a gross basis and by 11.5% on a net basis. Compare with the year-end of 2025, loans to customers slightly declined by 2.2% on a gross and 2.7% on a net basis.
This was mainly driven by seasonal factors and appreciation of tenge, as well as tighter regulations in retail lending. The share of FX loans in total net loans was slightly lower at the level of 24.5%.
Expected credit losses are in line with our full-year guidance. Cost of risk in first quarter 2026 was at normalized level of 1.5%.
Stage 3 loans increased to 8.2% as at the end of first quarter 2026 year-to-date, as a result of continuing moratorium on the sales of problem retail loans to collection agencies, as well as lower loan portfolio base. On a year-on-year basis, deposits of legal entities and deposits of individuals were up 3% and 10.4% respectively.
Compared with the year-end 2025, the deposits of legal entities and the deposits of individuals were down 5.8% and 1%, partially due to FX translation effects following the appreciation of tenge. As at the end first quarter 2026, the share of tenge deposits in total deposits was 72.4% compared to 71.7% as at the year-end 2025.
In corporate deposits, the share was 71.8%, while the share in total retail deposit was 72.9%. Capital adequacy ratio of the bank increased in first quarter 2026 to 21% due to the net profit earned in the bank during the first quarter and a lower risk-weighted assets base.
Risk-weighted assets were down by 3.7% year-to-date, following the decrease of loan portfolio. Dear ladies and gentlemen, that's a quick through the financials.
We will now open the floor to your questions. Just a quick instruction.
To state a question, you can raise your hand into Zoom, or if you joined via cell phone, please press *9 to raise your hand. You can also enter your question in the written form via chat.
While stating your question, please also mention your name and company. The first question comes from Milosz Papst.
Milosz, please go ahead.
Milosz Papst
Yes, hi. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions.
Firstly, I wanted to ask about your SME loan book, which seems to perform quite well in Q1 despite the seasonal factors and the FX impact, because it was broadly stable and was up 27% year-on-year. It seems that the average interest rate on those loans was also quite robust in Q1.
Maybe you can give us some background to that. You've mentioned of course the growth in the digital loan portfolio, but I wonder if there were any other factors you can mention.
Murat Koshenov
Hello Milosz, thank you for your question. Indeed, the development of our SME business in general is one of the largest priorities of Halyk Bank.
Actually, we, being the largest financial institution in the country, one of our priorities, as I said, is working on SME business, which would include companies which are dealing in B2B segments, in B2C segments, and B2G segment. We also putting work with SME clients in terms of the digital proposition also as one of the largest priorities.
What we see that the lending on the digital side, especially covering small business and micro business and part of the medium-sized business, is less dependent on seasonality, and it performs quite nicely. As you can see, the growth in digital loan portfolio on SME business is outpacing the traditional loan book, and it's already happening for a number of quarters already.
Milosz Papst
Excellent, thank you. Then my second question will be on your Stage 3 loans in the retail segment.
Of course, you provided the guidance in terms of cost of risk for your entire portfolio for this year, but I just wonder what should we expect in terms of the pace of accumulation of Stage 3 loans in the retail segment in the coming quarters? Should we expect something comparable to the last few quarters?
Murat Koshenov
It is subject to different factors. One of the factor is the growth of the loan book itself, we see that the loan book was growing only moderately recently due to tightening in regulatory requirements.
Secondly, we saw that the disposable income of population also depends on the inflation side. We see that on inflation there are some already moderation which is happening, and we see that year-over-year basis inflation reduced to less than 11% level.
We hope that it might bring the disposable the growth of disposable income into positive territory for the for the population. In terms of the regulatory changes, they probably go in line with our expectations, we do not expect any negative surprises on that side this years this year.
That's why we expect that the lending growth would on on the retail side would be in line with annual guidance which we provided earlier. At the same time, we see that the seasoning is continuing to happen on retail side, and there is still limitations on the bank side to sell loan portfolios to collection agencies.
Otherwise, we do not see any, let's say, factors which might materially change our outlook. We see that the quality within overall portfolio and within unsecured consumer lending remains within our expectations.
There might be, as I said, some, let's say, accumulation continuing to happen in coming quarters, but we are working on the work-out, we have a number of initiatives how we can continue to improve our work-out. The cost of risk situation remains, as I said, within our expectations.
Milosz Papst
Perfect, thank you. My last question would be on your dividend policy.
Maybe you can shed some light on the prospective changes to your dividend policy in light of the changes to Halyk's corporate charter approved at the recent AGM in terms of quarterly dividend payments. Thank you.
Murat Koshenov
Regarding the frequency of dividend payments, again, 3 years ago we changed the frequency from once a year to maximum 2-time payments. We, according to recent changes in the charter, put the possibility to potentially increase that payments up to 4 times a year.
To do that, we still need to make one more step in terms of amending the dividend policy. We'll be doing that in due course.
It's not that we necessarily will go to quarterly payments, but we at this point of time just opening that possibility. Again, first we need to make changes in the charter before we moving potentially to more frequent payments.
Milosz Papst
Thank you. All clear.
Thank you.
Rustam Telish
The next question comes from Simon Nellis. Simon, please go ahead.
Simon Nellis
Oh, hi. Thanks for the opportunity.
I guess I just have a question on net interest income, fees, and other income, basically revenue. On the net interest income, you seem to be trending a bit better in terms of your guidance on margin, right?
I think you're guiding for around 6.8% for this year, you did over 7%. Can you explain what's driving that, and if you think this higher margin can be sustained?
Obviously on fees, it was a weak quarter, just wondering if you still feel comfortable with your 5% to 10% guidance of growth for fees this year, because that would imply a quite sizable increase in fees in the coming quarters and where you think those increases are going to come from if you're still happy with the guidance. Then last, I guess the same question in terms of other income, which was a bit depressed this year.
Thanks very much.
Murat Koshenov
Simon, thank you for your questions. Regarding the net interest margin, yeah, indeed we posting better NIM than overall guidance which we provided for this year.
As you can see, we have also provided NIM adjusted for changes in minimum reserve requirements. Saying that, we have to mention that there is another increase in minimum reserve requirement which kicked in in April.
It would start affecting our NIM starting from the second quarter. That's why probably it's a bit premature to amend guidance in that perspective, but so far I think we happy with NIM which we posted as far as the first quarter is concerned.
Regarding the fees and commission income, there were a few factors which actually affected such a dynamic in the first quarter. One thing is, as we mentioned previously, I think a bit slow start of the year economy-wise, partially explained by introduction of the new tax code and some front-loading of clients' operations in the end of last year.
Secondly, our tightening in terms of the underwriting criteria for short-term BNPLs, which is also accounted in the fees and commission income. Thirdly, the introduction and increase in value-added tax for certain banking operations.
These are probably three main criteria and also partial increase in our loyalty program for SME enterprises regarding newly launched transactional products. These are probably four aspects which impacted fees and commission dynamic as far as the first quarter is concerned.
Regarding the guidance for the full year, we expect that fee and commission income would start showing better dynamics starting from the second quarter. In terms of the particular guidance, we would be coming with that when we'll be reporting the second quarter results.
Simon Nellis
You do expect an improvement in fee generation in the coming quarters. Just on other income, do you expect also some pick-up there?
Murat Koshenov
On the other income, actually it was a one-off profit which was recorded in the first quarter last year. It related to some work-out in our stressed asset SPV, stressed asset management company subsidiary.
That was not something which is specific to our core business.
Simon Nellis
In the third, fourth second, third, and fourth quarter of last year, I think other income was almost 90 billion tenge. This quarter it's 50.
Are you saying that the new run rate is closer to 50 than 90? Because that would be a big drop in other income.
Murat Koshenov
Simon, just a moment, please. Simon, are you referring first quarter to first quarter results?
Simon Nellis
I'm just looking at the quarters. In the first quarter 2026, I have other income of 50.6, I guess that's trillion tenge, right?
In the fourth quarter of last year, third quarter of last year, second quarter of last year, it was around 90 trillion. A pretty big drop, not just versus first quarter last year, but also [unclear].
Murat Koshenov
No, other non-interest income, 5.7 billion tenge in the first quarter this year compared to 20.6 billion first quarter last year. The difference is primarily due to one-off gain which we posted in our SPV, as I mentioned.
Simon Nellis
I think I also include the net insurance income in that figure. It just seems quite a bit lower than what [unclear].
Murat Koshenov
Okay. Okay.
On the insurance side, there was indeed reduction in our income from insurance operations. When we talk about the insurance subsidiaries, basically you have to appreciate that there are two types of income.
One is generated from insurance business, and second one the revenue which is generated from our investment activity. Because typically the business of insurance is that they collect premia, they allocate certain amounts in terms of reserves, but also they investing the proceeds and also they can earn from the investment operations.
If we take the insurance business in its entirety, which would include income from insurance portion, but also income from investment portion, overall we see increase roughly by 40% in terms of overall net income which we received from our insurance subsidiaries. The part which was with reduction on year-over-year basis is within one of our subsidiaries there were higher insurance payments, and that affected the net income from insurance operations particularly.
As I said, if you take that in its entirety, including the income from investment business, then it was a positive results.
Simon Nellis
Okay. Thanks.
Maybe we can take this offline. Thank you.
[foreign language].
Rustam Telish
The next questions comes from the chat. Question comes from Daryl Lim.
"How do you manage FX risk in the bank, e.g., deposits vs. loans in foreign currencies like USD?
If USD strengthens/weakens +/- 5%, what effect on profit/equity?" The second question: "How do you manage interest rate risk in relation to your assets and liabilities?
What is the overall strategy, and what does +/- 1% change in interest rates affect your profits and equity?"
Murat Koshenov
Daryl, thank you for your question. Regarding the management of FX risk, typically we as the bank do that through running the limits on the open currency position.
Typically would be running neutral position, meaning that we would match our exposures in foreign currency through asset-liability either on-balance sheet or including some off-balance sheet instruments. Typically we'll be running close to neutral.
In particular cases, we might be running either positive or negative open currency position, but that would be to less extent. Few of our subsidiaries might be having open currency position in foreign currency because on insurance subsidiaries their liabilities are typically in local currency, while the investment portfolio might contain some foreign currency position.
In terms of the volatility, I can refer you to the annual results, because there we would be showing our sensitivity to changes to the FX positions. Regarding your second question on the interest rate risk, we also running certain limits in terms of the interest rate limits in our banking book operations.
Again, within our annual reports, you might find specific section which showing our interest rate sensitivity of our equity and P&L.
Rustam Telish
Next question from the chat comes from Thomas Diaz Gallindo. "Thank you for the presentation.
Could you please comment on the growth in the profit of the investment banking segment? Any one-offs?
Thank you."
Murat Koshenov
Thomas, thank you for your question. It's would include the investment portfolio of our subsidiaries.
It's primarily our brokerage subsidiaries. They are growing, I think with some organic growth, but we do not see any one-offs in that particular business.
If you refer to our segmented reporting, that also would include the investment portfolio of the bank, which would mostly contain the fixed income instruments either Ministry of Finance, Treasury bills, or some other fixed income instruments.
Rustam Telish
The next question comes from Olzhas Auezov. "Any updates on your borrowing plans?"
Murat Koshenov
Olzhas, thank you for your question. In terms of the liability side, we only have programs to attract funding on domestic markets.
We do not have plans to go to the international debt capital markets at this point of time.
Rustam Telish
The next question comes from Ronak Gadhia. Ronak, please go ahead.
Ronak Gadhia
Good afternoon Murat and team, and thanks for taking my questions. Two questions.
A couple of times in the presentation you mentioned the negative impact on buy now pay later from regulatory actions. Could you just highlight to us what those regulatory actions are, and whether you expect the growth in that book to start normalizing anytime soon?
That's the first question. Maybe somewhat related to that is I guess the National Bank QR code payment system is probably been online for now the last, let's say, maybe 2 3 quarters.
Have you seen any noticeable impact on your payment volumes, i.e. have you seen any shift in your payment volumes from the traditional channels to the QR code system, and if so, what sort of impact is it having on your take rate?
Murat Koshenov
Ronak, thank you for your question. Regarding BNPL, I think we mentioned two things.
One is our tightening of underwriting criteria, and secondly regulatory ones. Underwriting criteria depends on the dynamics which we see in particular portfolios.
We saw last year that that particular product needs probably a bit more scrutiny in terms of the underwriting standards. For BNPL, that was probably the primarily reason why we tightened the approval rates.
There was also the overall regulatory changes and regulator do that through various factors, looking at the way how the banks are calculating income, also there were some age limitations, there was limitation in terms of the size when the clients need to get the approval within their family, the approval from the spouse, the first-time approvals. There was a number of measures at which regulator was looking, which we reported in our previous calls.
Regarding the QR, it is running currently in pilot mode, and what was told by the National Bank, they expect to move to more production level sometime during the third quarter. The expectation is July, but we'll see what would be the actual launch date.
Ronak Gadhia
Understood. Thank you.
Rustam Telish
The next question comes from the chat. Question comes from Patrick Pastorelli.
"Hello Murat, could you please comment how the recent changes in the macro landscape, higher oil prices, KZT appreciation, slight decline in inflation, affects the various elements of your guidance for 2026? Loan growth, NIM, fee and commission, CoR, and ROE."
Murat Koshenov
Patrick, thank you for your question. I think, indeed, the first quarter was quite eventful from the macro perspective.
We we saw disruption in oil production during the month of June we sorry, during the month of January, which might be affecting the overall oil production for the full year. Currently expectations are that the production would be less than projected by 4 to 5 million tonnes.
At the same time, the oil prices obviously is on the positive side, and that might be more than compensating reduction in oil production. We also saw the strengthening of tenge during the first 4 to 5 months, and the main reasons are higher rates in tenge.
We saw that the central bank actually halted purchases of dollars to Unified Pension Fund portfolio. There was continuation in sale, mandatory sale of export proceeds by quasi-government sector.
There were some mirroring transactions by the central bank when they were buying gold, and there was some inflow from foreign invest from foreign investors into local tenge-denominated bond market. That overall were the reasons which strengthened tenge during the first few months.
On inflation side, we see moderation. There are a few reasons.
Obviously the strengthening of tenge might help reduce the external pressure from the inflation, but also more disciplined approach from the central bank keeping the rates high, but also from the government. We saw that the transfers from National Fund to the budget remains within budgeted numbers since beginning of this year.
At the same time, central bank looking a bit cautious because they would expect that external inflation pressure might come later this year given the high oil prices, and some pressure might be coming from resumption of tariffs growth and growth on petrol prices, which the government halted middle of last year. We also see that the business continue to adapt to the changes to the tax code, which was the big disruption to business activity in the first couple of months.
Overall, we see the macro environment more or less balanced as far as our business and our initial guidance were concerned, with probably some small exception of fees and commission. As as I said, we see some better picture on the fees and commission starts showing up, and we'll see whether any corrections to the guidance would be warranted when it comes guidance for fees and commission income.
On the cost of risk and overall profitability, again, nothing surprising is happening. Overall, from macro perspective, we see that the picture is in line with our expectations.
Rustam Telish
Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that there are no questions remaining, this completes our presentation. Thank you very much for participation.
As usual, our IR team remains open for any of your further questions. Take care and goodbye.
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