Cristian Vicuna
Analyst · Bank of America
Thank you, Lorena. On Slide 7, we outlined our strategy to create value for all our stakeholders entered in our vision of being a digital bank with Work Cafe. Our focus remains on attracting and activating new clients, understanding their needs and deepening engagement. We continue to target more than 5 million clients by 2026 while steadily increasing our active customers. At the same time, we're building a global platform that leverages artificial intelligence and process automation to scale efficiently. This supports lower cost per active client and reinforces operational excellence. Our goal is to sustain an efficiency ratio in the mid-30s or better, reflecting a disciplined and digital operating model. We are also broadening our transactional and noncredit fee-generating services. This supports double-digit fee growth and best-in-class recurrence, defined as fee income over structural operating expenses. As our client base grows, activity levels continue to increase, particularly in payments. Our digital ecosystem encourages frequent and seamless interactions, strengthening engagement and loyalty. This growth is supported by strong CET1 levels, ensuring that expansion remains sound, responsible and aligned with regulatory expectations. Together, this strategy position us to deliver attractive value creation with ROEs above 20% and a dividend payout ratio of between 60% to 70%. On Slide 8, we can already see how our strategy over the last few years has succeeded in changing our income mix and creating a more efficient and profitable bank. Our key measure of value creation has been the strong growth in ROE, which has increased by more than 6 percentage points, more than double the improvement seen in the industry while maintaining solid capital ratios throughout the implementation of Basel III. This has been supported by a 4 percentage point improvement in efficiency compared to 1 percentage point for the industry, reflecting disciplined cost control and the successful execution of our digital transformation. At the same time, fee income has increased from 15% to 21% participation of our total revenues, driven by client growth and the expansion of noncredit services, including digital accounts, cards, asset management, brokerage and acquiring. Industry revenue composition has remained broadly unchanged. This shift has driven our recurrence ratio to the best-in-class levels now above 63%, well ahead of peers. We're very proud of the success of our study had so far. As you will see later on, we are enthusiastic about the evolution of our results in the coming year. Now in Slide 10, we will take a closer look at the results this year. As of December, the bank generated net income of CLP 1,053 billion, up 23% year-on-year. This resulted in a return on average equity of 23.5% and an efficiency ratio of 36%. Growth was supported by a 9% increase in fee income and an 8% rise in financial transactions. Mutual funds grew 7% and the recurrence ratio reached 63.7% year-to-date. Net interest income, including the adjusted income increased 11% year-on-year, while NIMs remained stable at 4%. Our capital CET1 ratio stands at 11%, and we are provisioning a 60% dividend payout to be paid in April next year. We also began 2026 with a successful $500 million 5-year 144A issuance at a rate of 4.55%. During the year, we received several important recognitions, Euromoney, Latin Finance and The Banker named us the Best Bank in Chile, while Global Finance recognized us as Best Bank for SMEs. We also strengthened our sustainability profile with our MSCI ESG rating improving from A to AA and our sustainability score improving to 15.4 levels. On Slide 11, we show the evolution of the quarterly ROE. We have consistently maintained ROEs above 21% even in quarters with lower inflation. In the most recent quarters, new variation was 0.61% and ROE reached 21.9%. On a yearly basis, net interest income increased 10.9%, driven by a lower cost of funding, which improved by approximately 100 basis points year-on-year. As a result, year-to-date NIM reached 4%. Slide 12 highlights the continued expansion of our client base and its impact on fee generation. We now serve close to 4.6 million clients with 58% active and approximately 2.3 million digital clients accessing our platform monthly. Current accounts increased 9% year-on-year, supporting 5% growth in active clients and 7% growth in total clients. This translated into a 15% increase in credit card transactions and a 7% increase in mutual fund volumes. Client satisfaction remains high across our products. We also continue to expand our corporate footprint, increasing business current accounts by 19% over the last 12 months, driven by simple business account and integrated payment solutions through Getnet. As shown on the right-hand table, higher client activity translated into 8.5% year-on-year growth in fees and financial transaction income with cards, Getnet, account fees and mutual funds showing strong momentum. On Slide 13, the income growth and disciplined cost control supported strong operating metrics. The efficiency ratio reached 36%, the best in the Chilean banking industry in 2025, while the recurrence ratio reached 63.7%, meaning more than 60% of our expenses are covered by fee generation. Operating expenses increased temporarily in early 2025 due to cloud migration costs. For the full year, operating expenses grew just 1.6%. In the quarter, total core expenses declined 1%, driven by lower administrative costs, reduced data processing expenses and the appreciation of the Chilean peso. Overall, we continue to deliver best-in-class efficiency and recurrence. At the same time, we are evolving our branch network towards the Work Cafe format, improving efficiency and customer experience supported by continued enhancements to our digital platforms. On Slide 14, we show an overview of our cost of risk and asset quality. As in prior quarters, cost of credit remains above the historical average. The bank has been actively managing different parts of the portfolio, increasing loan duration that is reflected in increasing the impaired loan ratio, while our nonperforming loans with 90 days over or more has stabilized. On Slide 15, we can see that the CET1 ratio reached 11% in December, far above our minimum requirement of 9.08% for December 2025 and demonstrating about 50 basis points of capital creation since December 2024. This was driven by our income generation in '25 and considers a 60% dividend provision of our 2025 profit and a 2% increase in risk-weighted assets. Our capital ratios are now fully loaded with complete implementation of capital deductions in the Basel III Chilean framework. In January of 2026, the regulator published the current Pillar 2 charges for the Chilean banks, where we were assigned a Pillar 2 charge of 13 basis points. This is a reduction from the original 25 basis points that were assigned last year, demonstrating our solid management. Of the 13 basis points of Pillar 2 charges, about 8% must be met with core equity Tier 1 capital. So on Slide 17, we show our guidance for 2026. For this year, we're expecting a GDP growth of a low 2%, as Lorena already mentioned, with a UF variation just below the 2.9% and an average monetary policy rate of around 4.3%. We anticipate a more favorable business environment this year, supporting mid-single-digit loan growth with a stronger rebound in the second half of the year. Despite the slightly lower inflation, loan growth and slightly lower rates will help to sustain our NIMs on 4% levels, while our fees and financial transactions should grow mid- to high single digits. This does not include any impact for a further interchange fee reduction, which is yet to be defined by the interchange fee commission. Our efficiencies should remain around the mid-30s, while our cost of credit should continue to improve gradually to reach around 1.3% for the full year. Based on these assumptions, our expectation for 2026 are for an ROE within the range of 22% to 24%, highlighting the strong profitability of Santander Chile. With this, I finish the presentation, and we can start the Q&A session.