Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dubai Islamic Bank nine months 2022 financial results earnings call. Please note to all those who are listening to us via the webcast link to kindly refresh their browser link in case of experiencing any intermittent audio issues. As a reminder, please ask your questions by submitting them via email to webcast@dib.ae. I will now hand over to your host, Janany Vamadeva from Arqaam Capital. Miss, please go ahead. Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This is Janany Vamadeva, and on behalf of Arqaam Capital, I'm pleased to welcome you to Dubai Islamic Bank's nine-month 2022 earnings conference call. I have with me here today from DIB management, Dr. Adnan Chilwan, the Group Chief Executive Officer, Kashif, thank you, Janany, and welcome everyone to the third quarter 2022 results webcast of Dubai Islamic Bank. The session is led by our Group CEO, Dr. Adnan Chilwan, accompanied by Kashif Clearly, this has impacted IMF's global GDP outlook, and they have downgraded growth expectations for the upcoming year to 2.7% versus the previously 2.9%. Also, globally, central banks have been adopting tightening monetary policies over the past several months to curb inflation pressures. While the global growth is moderating, the GCC region is witnessing divergence in growth expectations versus developing economies, with GDP expectations reaching 3.6%, which demonstrates a strong resilience to the current environment. This growth is supported by higher oil prices and relaxation of pandemic precautions, which has led to key sectors such as travel and tourism bouncing back to the pre-pandemic levels. As a result, the MENA region is expected to report a combined current account surplus of nearly $400 billion in 2022, 2023, up from 120 billion in 2021. Thanks to, primarily to the region's average break-even oil price of around $60-$70 barrel. The GCC's region's banking sector also remains healthy, with strong capitalization on the back of improving profitability and asset quality trends. The region's banks are expected to benefit from the rising rate environment given their well-structured balance sheets and robust deposit compositions. With that, we now move on to slide five and closer to home. The UAE has been, as you can see, gaining momentum since the beginning of the year and with key performance indicators such as PMI expanding sustainably. Supporting also at the federal level in terms of the ongoing visa reform programs is boding well for the overall economy as it aims to attract skilled talents in the UAE, targeting to boost employment and investment levels over the medium to long term. As for Dubai, during the first half of 2022, tourism exhibited a strong rebound with international visitors reaching 7.1 million, representing a 183% increase from the 2021 numbers. While profitability also improved drastically, with revenues per available room up by 76% higher than the pre-pandemic levels. Since its bottoming out in 2020, the Dubai real estate market is now 22 months into a recovery and expansion phase, which is perpetuating due to the influx of high-net-worth individuals, golden visa programs and other investor-friendly policies. Following also early announcement by Dubai Financial Market to diversify the stock market from the financial and real estate sectors, the market witnessed three successful IPO listings of government-related entities during the year. This has further boosted the market capitalization of DFM, and all IPOs saw massive oversubscription, indicating strong confidence and appetite of investors towards Dubai's new listings. With that, I will now hand over to Dr. Adnan Chilwan, the Group Chief Executive, to take you through the nine-month 2022 financial results. Dr. Adnan, please. Thank you, Kashif. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll take your attention to slide seven, where we will look at the key highlights of the first nine months of the year. Overall, robust set of results across the bank, particularly around profitability metrics amidst the ongoing current environment. Now, this unprecedented rate environment has provided additional tailwind over the reporting period, and the bank has continued to successfully navigate this through exceptional times. In line with the region's operating environment, our core assets, mainly financing and Sukuk investments, have seen upward trajectory, growing by a net 3.3% year to date. Zooming into our earning assets, our gross underwriting, this is something I'll touch upon in greater detail later, has seen in the first nine months around AED 43 billion of new bookings. This, however, was offset by repayments in tune of around 22 billion and early settlements of around 13 billion, resulting in a net growth of 8 billion. Hence, while the business momentum remains strong, even though the net growth may appear to be subdued. Net profits have jumped to 4.1 billion in the first nine months, a notable 34% rise year-on-year, and this obviously has been supported by the rate environment and the bank's franchise strength. Cost to income ratio now has further improved by 20 basis points quarter-on-quarter to 26.7% at the end of Q3, which is the strongest in the market. Overall, positive set of results, which obviously I'll expand onto in the next few slides. On slide 8, you can witness that this has been a strong year from a profitability perspective. That said, our net financing and Sukuk investments, which I have just alluded to on the previous slide, have increased by around 3.3% year-to-date, despite higher than expected repayments, as I've mentioned in my opening remarks. Now, obviously, at the end of quarter two, we had already achieved a net financing and Sukuk investment growth of around 6%, and thereby we had revised our margin upwards full year guidance, sorry, upwards to 7.5%. Q3, we've witnessed very, extraordinary early settlements, and that has obviously subdued our growth. Our net financing and Sukuk growth now stands at around 3.2%. We are not revising our guidance downwards. In fact, we are holding on to the guidance, and we'll try to come as close to, the year-end guidance we've given at the end of Q2. Moving on, the decline in deposits that you can witness in the balance sheet is attributed to the highly competitive interest rate environment that we have seen given the rising rates globally. Now, I've already mentioned this on my previous calls. We manage our liquidity very closely and keep a strong balance between required liquidity and its impacts on margins. A couple of things have happened on this side. One is that we have deliberately let go of expensive deposits, and this is something that I also mentioned on the first call at the beginning of the year. More importantly, what has happened in quarter two and quarter three on the deposit side is that some of the early settlements that we witnessed has come from the deposits that we were holding on account of customers. Both sides of our balance sheet, hence, have gone down. One is the customers that had liquidity with us in the form of term deposits in the rising interest rate environment, decided to prepay and early settle their facilities with us. Hence, you can see that the deposit decline on our balance sheet is on account of, one, the cautious strategy that we had in order to make sure that our cost of funding remains low, hence letting go of a few deposits. Also, on the other hand, the early settlements that we've witnessed is also on account of some of the customers using the deposits that they had on their balance sheet to pay off their financing before time. On the P&L side, the picture is impressive. Our relentless efforts to focus on improving our financial performance has kept the bank strong and profitable. Asset quality and impairments continue to scale lower, and we expect this to further improve as economic conditions return back to normal. As mentioned in the previous webcast as well, the increase in our OpEx is part of the bank's growth strategy. This is the medium-term growth strategy that we have, articulated at the beginning of 2022. It's a five-year plan, and we are now looking to grow and strengthen the group over the next few years. In this regard, the bank has also been investing and strengthening some key functions within the bank, such as compliance, risk, technology, infrastructure, and some of the other key areas. Accordingly, profitability has been rising with an impressive 34% year-on-year growth. A look at core ratios. These remain robust with most key metrics meeting our year-end guidance already, and which we will obviously delve more into, the coming slides. On slide nine, where we look at the operating performance. Heartening to see that our net profit margin continues to be on an upward trajectory, meeting the guidance. This may be further seen that the upside given the rising global rate environment today. OpEx growth is a part of a deliberate strategy to strengthen and enhance the key functions, and I've already mentioned this on the preceding slide. However, the cost to income ratio, which is always a focus, remains well within the guidance. In terms of the key efficiency ratios, return on assets and return on tangible equity, are approaching year-end guidance, and we remain comfortably positioned to our commitment that we made to the shareholders. On slide 10, deployment of funds. We can see that our core assets now registered at around AED 275 billion, majority of which is coming from both financing as well as the Sukuk books. 84% of our assets are earning in nature. The pie chart there will also show you that we've continued to manage our real estate concentration, which now stands at 21%, down from 23% at the end of 2021. A look at some of our key businesses. On slide 11, we look at a consumer banking business. This portfolio now stands at around AED 53 billion, which is up 4%, year to date. It's attributable to a growing mortgage book as well as our personal finance book. In this portfolio, we've booked new business to the tune of around 13 billion in the first nine months. Versus 10 billion in the first nine months of 2021. You can see that there is an upward trajectory even on our consumer banking business, and there's very good momentum even as we move into the next quarter. Despite the routine repayments in this portfolio of around 11 billion, the consumer portfolio has exhibited positive growth for the first nine months, close to around 2 billion. Revenues have also gone up by around 11%, and yields have expanded by around 22 basis points in the consumer banking book to end at around 5.8% underpinning good profitability. The current and savings accounts and the deposits from current and savings on the consumer side are very stable and sticky, seemingly agnostic to the current rate environment. This is a result of our consumer banking acquisition strategy that we have on the payroll side, where we continue to attract the payroll of a lot of corporates, and that allows us to maintain healthy as well as sticky CASA balances across the consumer banking book. On slide 12, we look at our corporate banking business. The portfolio sits at around 144 billion and remains very well diversified, which you can see from the color of the pie in the middle of the chart. The gross corporate new financing close to around 20 billion was underwritten in the first nine months. This is again an indicator of our growing business volumes. This has been offset by strong routine repayments as well as some early settlements, both of which are to the tune of 22 billion. One might feel that the corporate banking business has stagnated. The reality is that in terms of gross underwriting in the first nine months, we've done very well on the corporate banking side. The repayments that I alluded to were on account of the corporate banking business. Revenue trends within the corporate banking continue to be on an upward trajectory given the floating nature of our book, reaching to more than 2.7 billion in revenues during the first 9 months. Government sector continues to contribute strongly now, representing around 18% of the corporate book, and this is up from 12% at the end of 2021. You would recollect that this is a deliberate strategy on account of the bank to grow within the low-risk asset class within the corporate banking business. Given the rate environment we are in, the CASA deposits were impacted as most of the corporate clients are highly price sensitive and would want to keep their excess liquidity within term deposits. On slide 13, we look at our treasury business. Treasury has been a key business for the bank, and this now stands at nearly 51 billion, up from around 44 billion at the end of 2021. Government and FIs constitute around 80% of the fixed income book, and revenues last year were higher, primarily due to the sale of certain parts of the fixed income book in order to manage concentration. Overall, a very well-diversified book allows us to also generate liquidity if required within the repo market. The overall return on this book is north of around 4%. On slide 14, we look at asset quality. Our non-performing financing ratio is continuously on a downward trend and stands at around 6.5%, 30 basis points down from where we started the year. Our non-performing financing has dropped in absolute numbers to around 13.2 billion, and this is down by around 4% from the beginning of the year due to both recoveries on DIB's core book as well as the NMC exposure and the POCI book that we picked up with the acquisition of Noor Bank. Our provision coverage is on an upward trajectory, reaching to around 76% in line with DIB's risk management appetite. Significantly lower impairment charges, and these have declined by 33% year-on-year. Our cost of risk is down by a decent 20 basis points and is standing at around 79 basis points, down from 99 basis points at the end of 2021. When we delve into the asset quality, slide 15, you can see that DIB's core non-performing financing or non-performing loans portfolio has improved by 3% year- to- date to around 11 billion. That's the core non-performing financing that I'm talking about. When you look at NMC and the Noor Bank POCI, which constitutes around 17% of that book, that has also declined, combined to around 10% year- to- date. Between the two of them, they stand at around 2.3 billion, down 3% quarter-on-quarter. Clearly, as we make more recoveries on both those books, the NMC exposure as well as the Noor Bank POCI, the non-performing financing ratio also tends to improve. On slide 16, in terms of asset quality, by stages, stage two loans have dropped by 16% and they stand at around 16.7 billion versus 19.8 billion during the year 2021. Depicting improving quality of the book, also down 5% quarter-on-quarter. When you compare it to quarter-on-quarter, it's down 5%, and when you compare it year to date, it's down around 16%. Stage two coverage ratio has also increased to close to around 7%, and that is up by around 130 basis points. On slide 17, a look at funding sources and liquidity. Liquidity of the bank continues to remain strong, and that can be seen with the LCR ratio at around 123%. Obviously allowing the bank to meet its short-term obligations. Overall, we are cognizant of the liquidity situation in the market. However, it is also important to reiterate, I've mentioned this before, that we will not retain excess liquidity at the expense of net profit margins. We have historically been extremely liquid, and we have also been able to mobilize deposits at will, without paying premium price. Hence, at the beginning of this year, we took a very conscious decision of making sure that whatever concentration that we had on the deposit front, we would not compromise that, you know, when compared to where our net profit margins would be or where our cost of funding should be. I've already explained to you our liquidity situation, but clearly, I think if we have to grow from here on, we are cognizant that we will require to shore up deposits and mobilize them, and we are confident we'll be able to do that. CASA, which is an important component of our liquidity, and also in order to bring our cost of funding down, stands at around AED 77 billion, accounting for around 42% of the overall deposits. On slide 18, capitalization. Our capitalization levels, which you can see are quite robust. Our CET1 has improved by 150 basis points from the beginning of the year. It stands at around 13.9%. It also reflected that increase is reflected in the capital adequacy, the total CAR ratio, which stands at around 18.6%, both well above minimum regulatory requirement. On slide 19, very quickly, our digital strategy continues to support DIB's growth. We've seen these metrics continue to grow by double-digit year to date, and we can see that when we compare year-on-year in terms of percentage, the contribution of digital to our overall business is much more than year-on-year 2021. We've also introduced within our digital strategy also, we had our WhatsApp services and certain services, banking services available through WhatsApp, so we'll continue to kind of enhance the number of services that we can offer through this channel. In addition to that, our voice guided technology within our ATMs is now fully functional, and that would allow us to also manage banking needs with ease and simplicity. On slide 20, where we are talking about sustainability. At DIB, we are very clear about one thing. Sustainability and ESG is not negotiable. We believe that as the world's first Islamic bank, it is part of our DNA in order to make sure that our ambitions therefore are taken locally, regionally and globally. We want to set benchmarks in this area, and we clearly want to be market leaders and to own the ESG space. On slide 22, and this will be the last slide before I take questions. It's pretty much a summary of what I've mentioned. Extraordinary global rate environment. This is putting obviously pressure on you know the cost of funding, but I think we've managed that quite well. We've taken advantage of rising interest rate on our asset side. Profitability has remained very strong. Asset quality continues to be robust and on an improving trend, and we continue to use the strength of our P&L to build cash coverage and provision wherever required. Our cost of risk has come down and stands at around 79 basis points. Annualized 80 is what we have always guided the market to. Balance sheet has been quite robust and obviously it is cushioned with the improving coverage ratio. In terms of shareholder returns and the ratios, I think it would not be wrong to say that we are one of the strongest in the market. We will continue to make sure that we deliver on the guidance that we have set for ourselves at the beginning of the year and also revise a few metrics at the end of quarter two. In terms of the target metrics, growth, as you know, we had an annual guidance of around 5%. Having performed in the first six months at around 6%, we decided to increase that guidance to 7.5%. Obviously we were then met by some extraordinary early settlements, and that has dwarfed the growth. The growth today stands at around 3.3%. We are not revising this guidance downwards, and we'll try to come as close to 7.5%. We've got a very strong pipeline in quarter four across our loans and our Sukuk businesses. We will try and come very close to that 7.5%. As you know, our principles are that we give guidance at the beginning of the year and then revise it only once. At midterm, which is what we've done. Looking at quarter three and since our growth seems to be dwarfed with early settlements, does not mean that we want to revise this guidance downwards. We are putting our best foot forward, and we'll try to come as close to 7.5%. Our non-performing loan guidance was 6.5%. We've already achieved that, and we are maintaining that. Our real estate concentration. Some more work to be done. We are confident that we'll come close to around 20%, which is the guidance that we've given for to the market. Return on assets and return on tangible equity. As you can see, the guidance is 1.9% and 16% respectively. We are holding that guidance because obviously one has to look at a full year. In terms of cost to income ratio, again, 26.7%, with the kind of robust foundation that we want to build. If we also end up with at this close to around 28% or even remain between 26.7%-28%, that'll be a great achievement. Total coverage looks good at 105%, and we are confident we will go close to 110%. Net profit margin, our guidance was 2.9%, and we've already achieved that guidance in the first nine months. With that, I will open the floor to take questions. I'm sure you have many. Use the last five minutes of the hour to kind of summarize everything that I've mentioned this far. Thank you, Doctor. Ladies and gentlemen, we are waiting for questions now, so just bear with us, and we will come back to you with the answers as the questions come. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now start the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please send them via email to webcast@dib.ae. Thank you for holding until we have our first question. First set of questions here from Shabbir Merchant from EFG Hermes. There appears to be strong repayments in the corporate and real estate segment. What drove the repayments, and what are your expectations for growth for the rest of the year? Thank you. I think, thank you for your question, Shabbir Merchant. I think you've asked this question even before I've explained, but I'll just, for the benefit of everyone so that we can summarize this. Yes, the strong repayment that we've seen within the corporate bank, predominantly, you know, has been driven by the fact that in a rising interest rate environment, when the corporates are flushed with liquidity on one side of their balance sheet, and they also have, a loan on the other side of their own balance sheet, they decide to use obviously their liquidity, and pre-settle, you know, the loans that they have on their books. That is part one reason. Second is that some of these corporates are trying to be IPO ready, and in order to do that, they obviously have to reduce their debt on their balance sheet. And thirdly, the point that I've made is that fortunately in the past and unfortunately these deposits that were used to settle these loans were also with us. Hence, the loans have been settled by using the liquidity that used to be with the bank. That's the reason why, you know, our deposit base has also shrunk, partly. Partly it was deliberate on account of the bank to make sure that we do not shore up expensive deposits, which in our opinion, we did not require. That answers your first and the second question. Clearly because of that, we've also tried to you know make sure that the growth that we wanted to manage was funded also partly through the interbank market. If you actually look at what has happened on our balance sheet, one is pre-settlements of loans which nobody was expecting. I've given you three reasons why the corporates have done that. Rising interest rates, being IPO ready and having excessive deposits then means that they are going to use those excessive deposits in order to settle those loans. The good thing is that we've not lost these loans to competition. They have been pre-settled in totality. That has also impacted partly our deposit base on one side of our balance sheet. The last question from Shabbir Merchant. I think doctor already answered the second question, which was on deposits. The last question is around the credit quality trend, which he's saying look good. What do you expect on these trends given the rising interest rate environment? Well, you know, at the time of underwriting these loans, we've always maintained a good, you know, DSCR coverage. All the interest rates that we have witnessed so far have not put undue pressure on the ability of the customers to service those installments. Of course, there are customers that have approached the bank just like they would have approached any other financial institution to kind of reset their margin, if possible, and reduce the margin because, you know, the composite rate that they are paying, the composite pricing is significantly higher than when these loans were underwritten. As such, we've not seen any impact on NPL, and I don't foresee any impact on NPL from rising interest rates going forward. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please send them via email to webcast@dib.ae. We have a couple of questions from Rahul from Citi. One is around any early signs of stress in the economy as the higher interest rates begin to pinch customers. The second is on the indications and guidance on how you think 2023 will look like. I think I just answered the question, but again, just for Rahul's benefit. Any early signs of stress in the economy with high interest rate? No. At least from DIB's perspective, I can tell you that we've not seen any early warning signs or any stress. Our loans continue to be serviced. You know, our asset quality is holding. You can look at absolute, you know, NPLs coming down. Our percentage is arrested at 6.5%. We also anticipate that this would further improve by the end of the year, given that our denominator would also increase. Mind you, the percentage 6.5% in Q3 is the same in Q2. You can see that the denominator in Q2, Q3 has gone down a little, and that has had still no impact on the percentage, which means asset quality definitely is improving. Clearly, no signs of stress as far as we are concerned because of high interest rates. Your next question is on early indications and guidance on how 2023 would look like. I think it's still early days. If we follow the pattern that we are used to while engaging with the market, we do that in the first call of the year where we will talk about our full year results as well as give guidance for the next year. We just have to wait probably for another quarter and we would be very transparent in setting guidance for 2023. The question from Naresh Natarajan. Is the bank hoping to reduce real estate exposure further? By how much? By when? Well, I think real estate exposure as a part of our loan book, we've always wanted to keep it at close to around 20%. We are at 21%. You know, always there is you know there is the strategy of the bank is to try and manage this ratio as much as we can. You know, with regulation changing, you know, the regulator will be looking at real estate ratio and would be calculating it on basis of real estate to total risk-weighted assets. Obviously when that ratio would come into effect, we would be also coming to the market and you know telling the market where we are in terms of you know real estate risk-weighted assets to total risk-weighted assets. Thank you. As another reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please send them via email to webcast@dib.ae. A couple of questions from Janany Vamadeva from Arqaam Capital. How do you expect high interest rates to impact cost of risk trend going forward? I've already mentioned this. As of now, we don't anticipate. You see, interest rates have substantially increased when you look at it from the beginning of the year. Right? If anything, we would have seen deteriorating asset quality, if any. We would have started to feel the pressure. No, we have not seen. I think fundamentally the reason behind that is at the time of underwriting these credits, we've made sure that there is adequate debt service coverage ratio. You know, any increase in interest rates really does not impact our customers to the effect that you are alluding to. Having said that, all of the business macro environment within the UAE is very good. Businesses are flourishing. Clearly revenues also, you know, on the client side are going up across all businesses. I think the ability to service these loans is much better for the clients also. I think given that, we have seen no pressures and no stress of higher interest rates on our asset quality. Second question from Janany is on the NIM expansion, which she says it has expanded quarter-over-quarter, but the pace was slower than Q2 from sequential perspective. What's driving this? And are you able to get the full benefit of higher rates with the borrowers or is there some pressure on NIM stemming from this? I think if you look at net interest margins, Janany, and thank you, it's a very, very good question. If you look at net interest margins, they have gone up by close to around 30 basis points from the beginning of the year. Of course, it's a function of rising interest rates, but also our ability to kind of reprice our portfolios on both sides, right? On the asset side, we reprice the portfolio with new rates. On the liability side, we've managed the cost of funding and the cost of deposits well. I've mentioned that we have let go of a few expensive deposits, and that has helped us to increase our net interest margins. You would appreciate when compared to some of our peers, we are on the higher side and in fact growing sequentially quarter-on-quarter as well as year- to- date. The fact that we have gone up by around 30 basis points is very heartening for us. Where do we see this? We probably would go up even further by the end of this year, given that interest rates are expected to rise at least one if not two. That would also mean that our assets would be repriced faster than our deposits. Clearly, I think we've managed to make sure that our net interest margins in the current environment is quite good, and that's what is, you know, driving our profitability. Because profitability is not only driven by, you know, the top line, but also by our ability to manage our cost of funding, and that is, reflected in our net interest margin. We don't see any pressure as such, on NIMs stemming from this as of now. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you if you have any further questions. Please send them via webcast@dib.ae. All right, we have a few questions from Edmund from Bloomberg. Now, the first one is around the high interest rates, and I think the liquidity, et cetera, and CASA. We leave that as that's been pretty well explained by Dr. Adnan a few times. We'll go on to the next few questions that he has. First, second one is around the collateral revaluation and, you know, have we done this for this quarter or will it be done in fourth quarter? Do we expect lower cost of risk in fourth quarter and next year given recoveries and collateral boost up? The collateral revaluation obviously is an ongoing exercise. Yes, you're right in also saying that we will conclude this by the end of Q4. Again, it happens every quarter, you know, and we do that religiously. Even though desktop valuations happen, we do that religiously. Independent valuations happen twice a year. The second time that it will be happening this year will be in Q4. Do we expect lower cost of risk in Q4? I think at 79- 80 basis points, one would say that, you know, we are low. Do we need to be lower than this, or would we go lower than this? I would like to say that, you know, our annualized guidance is around 80 basis points, so we should be looking at that matrix. I presume you're asking about cost of risk for next year. Again, too early. You know, let us close this year, and when we are giving you guidance for next year, we'll probably give you guidance around three fundamental metrics in asset quality. One would be non-performing loans, second would be provision coverage, and third would also be you know, cost of risk. A couple of other questions from Edmund. One is around the repayments related to the settlement that we've gotten. He just wants to confirm whether these were related to deferred corporate loan exposure or do you expect more such in first half? No, these were not related to deferred corporate loan exposure. I've mentioned this. I think Shabbir Merchant had asked me this, the question, where I have mentioned that these were performing loans, and these were settled because of two fundamental reasons. Let me reiterate. One was some of these corporates were trying to become IPO ready, and they had to reduce the debt on their balance sheet. Second was they had excess liquidity already sitting on their books and a financing or a loan on the other side. In the rising interest rate environment, they decided to use their liquidity and settle their loan. That is also the reason why you see our deposits reducing because that liquidity that they were using to settle the loan was also with us. That probably was the reason why you see the loan exposure being pre-settled. Ladies and gentlemen, please send your questions to webcast@dib.ae. Okay. A few questions from Varun. The first one is around the customer deposits and their downward trend and which has been sort of offset by interbank facilities. How is this playing out? Yes, of course, I've already mentioned that in order to manage our asset growth and the customer deposits decline, which partly was deliberate on account of the bank, how has that played out in terms of cost of funding? The cost of funding from the interbank market is cheaper than customer deposits. Clearly it helps the bank to manage, you know, to pick up money from an interbank market at lower rates. Of course, that cannot be a permanent solution. We need to make sure that, you know, our asset growth is funded by deposits. That is exactly what we will do in the remaining part of this year. In terms of the decline of liquidity ratios, and if we are concerned with the NSFR. No, not really. I think at 103% we are comfortable. We would definitely have an internal threshold of 103% and above. Again, you know, NSFR ratios, they work out a little differently as to LCRs. We have a plan of how we are going to boost this NSFR ratio. Part of that would also obviously be because, you know, we've got some upcoming maturities of the Sukuks that we have issued. You know, when the remaining life is, you know, less than six months, you do not get benefit of that within your NSFR calculations. As you would appreciate, we've got two such issuances coming up in the first quarter of 2023, and hence, we've lost that benefit. Clearly we've got to make up for that. You know, at the right opportune time, you will also see us tapping the capital markets. In terms of higher interest rates and whether they could depress the demand for new financing. No, not really. I think interest rates have been rising since the latter half of last year and even in the first nine months. Despite that, we've done 43 billion of gross new underwriting. Of course, that has not translated on our balance sheet to the extent that you would have liked, because it has been dwarfed by the early settlements that we have witnessed in quarter one, quarter two, and quarter three. You know, interest rates rising has not impacted our demand for new financing, I can tell you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please send them via email to webcast@dib.ae. A few questions from Alok Deshpande from Robeco. Alok Deshpande, I think the first two have already been answered, so there are quite a few questions coming through. We'll just let those go now and come to the third question, which is around can management share the strategy around international expansion? And if this could be of a greater focus area in the coming future? Yeah, our international strategy remains unchanged. If you recall, you know, when we started to grow way back in 2013, we had plotted three points on the map, and we said that we are going to focus on these three key geographies in years to come. These three points were Far East Asia, Indonesia, South Asia, Pakistan, and then Africa would be East Africa into Kenya. These are the three key geographies that we've been focusing on over the last six or seven years, and we'll continue to do that in the next few years as well. Each of these businesses have started to go in the right direction. Pakistan continues to do well for us from a franchise perspective, highly profitable when you look at its core operations on the ground. Indonesia is doing well for us. It's an associate for us. You know, we are at around 25%. We are profitable. Kenya is, you know, we are towards the fag end of the gestation period and, you know, hopefully next year we'll turn that institution into profits. You know, we are building up assets in Kenya as well. I think from an international expansion perspective, these three areas are the three key geographies that we are focusing on, and we will continue to do so. Our objective is to try and, you know, have these contribute to our overall P&L much more than what they are contributing today. That's the medium-term strategy. I've also mentioned that, you know, today they are contributing less than 3%. We would want them to be at least between 5%-10% in the next few years or so. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going through questions again. Vijay, I've got your questions, but I think these have already been answered, so we keep moving. Just to let you know, you're not being ignored. It's just that we've already answered the question, so we're moving on to the next one. Thanks. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please send these through to webcast@dib.ae. Ladies and gentlemen, because they are repetitive questions, so we're just going through them. After taking a few more, we'll take the last five minutes, which will follow a summary from the group chief executive. Question from Devesh Divya from Daman Investments. In the recent GRE IPOs, we've seen a common trend of these companies leveraging and paying one-off dividends to the pre-IPO shareholders. Have you been part of these debt syndications, and is the impact material on your balance sheet? Yes, we've been a part of such debt syndications, and the impact on our balance sheet is that, when these pre-IPO dividends are made, I think some of these pre-IPO shareholders get that liquidity, and then they use that liquidity to settle their debts. That is exactly what has happened partly with us. I've already mentioned that, some of these GREs were trying to become IPO ready, and in order to do that, they had to reduce the debt on their balance sheet. They have come up front and paid some of the debt prematurely. Some of those debts that have been paid were on account of they being pre-IPO shareholders in some of these GREs, and they getting the liquidity from pre-IPO dividends, and then using that cash to come and settle us. Yes, you know, you are right in assuming that, you know, these one-off dividends are used to settle debts on our balance sheet. Thank you. As another reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please send them through to webcast@dib.ae. A question from Mohamed Al Aradi from Value Capital Partners. Could you explain why non-interest income fell significantly, and particularly fee and commission income? Sure, Mohamed Al Aradi. That's a good question. The non-interest income in the past, if you compare it period to period, at that time, markets were conducive, rates were low, which means, bond prices were high. We used that opportunity to kind of de-risk our concentration on our fixed income book in the past, in 2021, and made some capital gains out of that. Those were included in the non-interest income. Now, clearly, with rising interest rates, and bond prices low, we did not have that opportunity, throughout, you know, the first nine months of 2022. Hence, that's the only reason why the non-interest income has been significantly lower when compared to the first nine months of 2021. This is probably the last question since we're getting into the last five minutes mark. It's from Ramachandra has asked a question regarding the guidance on net profit margin, which is seemingly stable when the interest rates are actually expected to go up. Can you give some color on this, please? Sure. I think two ways I'm going to respond to that. One is, you know, we don't revise guidance quarter on quarter. Just because, you know, we've had one good quarter, we don't revise guidance. Right? I think, when things are going down also, we don't revise guidance downwards. When things are going up, we don't revise guidance upwards. We do that twice a year. One at the beginning of the year when we set the guidance, and then we revisit the guidance at mid-year, which is what we've done. Now, of course, interest rates are going up and one might also feel that there is room for, you know, the net interest margins to go up. I agree. There is a bit of room there for net interest margins to go up. Also, let's not forget that, you know, cost of funding will also be key to that ratio. Because obviously, if you want to shore up deposits, we will never be paying premium rates, but we will still be increasing our deposit base. When the deposit base increases, the cost of funding will also increase. I think at this point in time, it's too early to say, you know, what kind of guidance should be revised. I can definitely give you some comfort that there is, a bit more room until the end of this year for this net interest margin to go up. I just don't want to put a number to it because clearly, you know, the challenges that we are seeing with liquidity, and the kind of pipeline that we have on our financing side, and in order to meet that pipeline, we'll also have to mobilize deposits. We just don't need to get ahead of ourselves and give you a number and then at the end of the year, you know, fall short or do exceptionally well when compared to that number. So as of now, the comfort that you should drive is the bank has done well in the first nine months in terms of net interest margins when compared to any of our peers. In terms of the kind of expansion in NIMs that we have witnessed so far. I can also give you comfort that there is still further room for this NIM to go up in the remaining part of 2022. What the NIM guidance would be for 2023 is a discussion for a later date in the first call of 2023. Having answered all these questions, some of them repetitive, some of them unique, I take the last five minutes to kind of sum up so that we don't take the performance of the bank away and don't shadow it with any of the noise that might be going around. One is that the bank has done exceptionally well in terms of net profit up 34% year-on-year. Asset quality continues to be robust, and hence we have made lesser provisions by around 33% when compared to the first nine months of 2021. Net interest margins are expanding, you know, 30 basis points more than where we were at the beginning of the year. Also in terms of financing underwriting, we are extremely happy. We've written some record volumes in the first nine months, close to around 43 billion. Early settlements have dwarfed that to a bit, but despite that, we have grown our financing book by around 3.3%. This exceptional performance in also managing costs and income on both sides has resulted in market-leading cost to income ratio. As a result of all of this, our return on equity and our return on assets are very, very strong when compared to where the peers are. In terms of return on equity, we are at around 16.9%, and in terms of return on assets, we are about 2%. Overall, I think we've had exceptional nine months. We are very, very confident of ending the year on a high, both in terms of volumes as well as in terms of profitability. Until the next time we have our webcast, I wish you well. We will take questions that have not been answered offline. Please feel free to get in touch with our investor relations team. We will also probably do a few non-deal roadshows, you know, in months to come. When we do that, we hope to see you face-to-face. Thank you very much. Thank you, doctor, and thanks everyone again for joining us on this call. Until next time, have a safe period ahead. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation.