Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Grupo Supervielle first quarter 2022 earnings call. This is Ana Bartesaghi, treasurer and IRO. A slide presentation will accompany today's webinar, which is available in the Investors section at Grupo Supervielle's investor relations website. Today's conference is being recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today's presentation. If you want to ask a question, you know, you need to be connected to a Zoom platform from any device. We will not be able to take your questions if you are connected from a phone line. Also, please make sure your name and last name appear in the Zoom platform you are using. To ask a question by voice, please press the Raise Your Hand button located in the Zoom platform, and press Raise Your Hand again to withdraw your question. You can also send questions in written form via the Q&A box in the Zoom platform anytime during the call. We will ask you to limit yourself to one question and a follow-up, and then you raise your hand again in another round. Speaking during today's call will be Patricio Supervielle, our Chairman and CEO, and Mariano Biglia, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us are Alejandro Stengel, the First Vice Chairman of the Board and Bank CEO, and Sergio Mazzitello, our Chief Technology Officer. Alejandra Naughton, Board Member of several of Grupo Supervielle subsidiaries, will also be joining us for today's call. All will be available for the Q&A session. As a reminder, today's call will contain forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and I refer you to the Forward-Looking Statements section of our earnings release and recent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. Patricio Supervielle, our Chairman and CEO, will start the call discussing our key highlights for the quarter. Afterwards, Mariano Biglia, our CFO, will take a different look at our performance and near-term perspectives. Sergio Mazzitello, our Chief Technology Officer, will then provide an overview of our digital transformation strategy. Patricio, please go ahead. Thank you, Ana. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Now please turn to slide five of our earnings presentation. While we saw continued growth in economic activity driven by a statistical carryover following the rebound last year, market conditions remain challenging with accelerated inflation, industry loans at historical lows, while central bank regulations continue to weigh on net interest margins. At the same time, the government's recent agreement with the IMF was a positive development that requires political consensus to implement it. Our bottom line remained negatively impacted by severance and personnel charges in connection with headcount reductions to capture operating efficiencies at the bank and at IUDÚ Excluding these charges, we would have reported a net gain of ARS 446 million and an adjusted return on average equity of 2.9% compared to breakeven profitability in the fourth quarter. Other factors putting pressure on profitability includes this seasonally low credit demand, which is at historic lows, as well as regulatory flows on interest rates on time deposits. While the banking business reported positive return on average equity, results at IUDÚ were affected by high inflation and loan loss provisions together with a deep personnel reduction. Mariano will discuss this in more detail shortly. On the expense front, the efficiency ratio improved 200 basis points sequentially, although it remains highly impacted by a low revenue base. We also maintain an adequate capital base with a Tier 1 ratio of 13.8% at quarter end, up 110 basis points sequentially. While liquidity remains strong, allowing us to navigate the current environment and implement our strategic transformation, supporting long-term sustainability. As a reminder, our capital base remains hedged against inflation through real estate investments, mortgages, and sovereign bonds. The digital and operational transformation that we have been undertaking is core to our goal of delivering long-term value creation. This explains lower profitability in the short term as we incur in higher costs, including rightsizing operations, capturing efficiencies, cross-selling and acquiring customers. We are encouraged by the sustained progress on this front. Let me share a few highlights. For example, total digitized clients were up 54% year-on-year as we continue to see increased digital adoption across personal loans, time deposits and insurance sales, while asset management retail customers doubled during the period, also showing higher engagement. This quarter, we also launched the first end-to-end digital onboarding in the market for entrepreneurs and SMEs, and continue to add new features across the platform each quarter. As usual, we have included in the exhibits of our earnings presentation, the progress we are making on our key digital and operational KPIs across the company. We are pleased to have Sergio Mazzitello, our Chief Technology Officer, joining us on today's call. He will share his views on the initiatives he has been leading on our digital transformation. As you may recall, Sergio joined our company towards the end of 2019. Before joining Supervielle, he was Chief Information Officer at Naranja, a Grupo Financiero Galicia subsidiary. Before turning the call to Mariano, let me provide an update on our status as financial agent of the Province of San Luis. As a reminder, in early 2017, the government of the province terminated this financial agency agreement and retained us to continue providing these services until now. On May fifth, we were notified by the government that they designated state-owned Banco Nación as financial agent for the province. At quarter end, the share of payroll loans made to the province of San Luis employees amounted to 0.26% of the bank total loan portfolio, while deposits made by the government of the province were only 0.7% of the bank's deposit base. We have been operating in San Luis for the past 25 years and have built a strong franchise in the private sector business, which we plan to continue serving. More information on this can be found in our earnings report. With this, let me turn the call to Mariano. Please go ahead. Thank you, Patricio. Please turn to slide five. Several other facts impacted our loan book this quarter, resulting in a sequential contraction of nearly 11%. At the bank, we saw seasonally weak loan demand from factories where we have a higher market share and a drop in loans to SMEs at subsidized rates. Accelerated inflation also eroded consumers' purchasing power, while corporate clients held strong cash positions. As we do, we tighten credit standards in a more challenging environment, resulting in a sharp reduction in loan origination. Now moving on to funding on slide six. Total Argentine peso deposits increased nearly 3% sequentially as we exercise liquidity management, increasing institutional funding, as well as the balance of central bank securities at quarter end, benefiting from higher spreads. Total liquidity levels were strong, both in pesos and dollars, with the loan-to-deposit ratio at 49%. Core peso deposits posted a 4% seasonal decline, but increased over 8% year-on-year. Turning to slide seven. Total net interest margin increased 90 basis points sequentially to just over 19% in the quarter. A couple of factors contributed to this improved sequential performance. First, the yield of peso loans increased 230 basis points as we repriced our loan book and lowered subsidized loan volumes. Second, the increase in the spread from central bank securities, reflecting monetary policy rate hikes in the quarter. Lastly, higher inflation also drove higher peso yields. These were partially offset by a 70 basis point increase in peso cost of funds, reflecting rises in minimum interest rates ruled by the central bank. Moving on to asset quality on slide eight. Our total NPL ratio remained stable at 4.3% sequentially, with coverage at 107%. Banco NPL ratio remained steady at 2.6%, in line with pre-pandemic and pre-recession levels, with cost of risk at 3.1% and coverage of 145%. By contrast, IUDÚ posted a 70 basis points sequential deterioration in the NPL ratio, reaching 20.4%, reflecting the impact of inflation on consumers' disposable income. Note that these high NPL ratios reflect mainly the aging of delinquent loans that were deferred during the pandemic through regulatory easing. During the second quarter, we expect to write off delinquent loans of customers who did not receive payment after the expiration of the 12-month grace period ruled by the central bank. Now moving on to capitalization on slide nine. The Tier 1 capital ratio increased 110 basis points sequentially to 13.8% at quarter end, mainly explained by the inflation adjustment of capital, where risk-weighted assets increased below inflation. On slide 10, we share our views on the main drivers of our business for the full year. As we navigate a more challenging environment with accelerated inflation, we now anticipate loan growth to slow down and remain in line with inflation in 2022, vis-a-vis our expectation of slight growth in real terms on our previous earnings call. However, growth in real terms could be lower if annual inflation were to accelerate above 65%. In addition, given foreign exchange restrictions and interest rate floors on time deposits, we now expect deposits to grow in line with inflation. Our views on asset quality remain unchanged from our prior call, with loan loss provisions expected to grow above 2021 levels, reflecting loan growth, while cost of risk is anticipated to remain at similar levels of last year. Likewise, the total NPL ratio is expected to remain stable at 2021 levels. We also continue to expect NIM to increase slightly above 2021 levels, with the margin increasing in real terms. Several factors are expected to contribute to this performance. First, a sustained improvement in the funding mix observed since the close of last year, a key pillar of our strategic plan. Second, margin should also benefit from the impact of higher inflation on inflation-adjusted assets, including government bonds and mortgages. Lastly, the continued net positive effect from the increase in interest rates by the Central Bank. As a reminder, more detail on central bank regulations can be found in our earnings report. Our perspective for fees is also unchanged from last quarter, with fee income from individuals anticipated to grow in line with inflation, while insurance income is likely to increase in real terms as premiums recover from the lower levels of the past two years. Similarly, we also maintain our views on operating expenses, mainly increasing above inflation, reflecting the combination of incremental costs from the implementation of our digital transformation strategy, continued headcount efficiencies, and customer acquisition costs. During 2022, we plan to invest approximately ARS 5.1 billion and ARS 1.2 billion in connection with digital and network transformation initiatives, respectively. Finally, views on capital and liquidity for 2022 are also unchanged, with the Tier 1 ratio anticipated at adequate levels ranging between 12% and 13%. As a reminder, 100% of our capital remains hedged against inflation. Now let me turn the call to Sergio Mazzitello, our Chief Technology Officer. Thank you, Mariano. Please, let's go to slide number 12. As you may know, at the bank, we continue with our full agility scale transformation process. It means a customer-centric focus and also a technology as an enabler of our business. That's why we think in many cases in technology with purpose. This transformation is complex and includes much more than what we can see on the surface. Mainly, it's a cultural transformation, a new way of doing things that involves processes, managing risk, people, technology, data, innovation, et cetera. Today, I want to focus on the technology strategy we are following this year and the results we've got, and how this strategy leverages agility scales business to the creation of value for our clients. Please, slide number 13. We have been taking many IT decisions based on the objective of accelerating our time to market or time to value. That's why we reorganized, and today we have more than 50 squads working in multidisciplinary teams, grouped in 11 tribes, and also including 6 centers of excellence. To accelerate, it's a key success factor is the empowerment and the autonomy that we have given to the teams, all the Supervielle teams. Our strategy of microservices, building APIs, continuous integrations or continuous delivery, and the cloud migration are the enablers for this operating model. Currently, we have more than 340 APIs that were developed in the last year and a half. I would say that better than that, we have the teams and the talent to continue with this strategy. The data lakes that allow us to become a data-driven organization under the 360-degree customer view and support by advanced analytics and artificial intelligence models applied to the business and to the strategy. Today, we can say that we have more than 19 machine learning models implemented. For example, the best offer for each of the clients, the next product to buy, or to implement campaigns to retain our clients when we detect any, for example, probability of attrition. All of this couldn't be possible without the digital channel availability. That's why we also focus on our operational and technology contingency program, getting as a result more than 99.9% availability in our digital channels. We continue executing our journey to the cloud and implementing a continuous migration of solution and the a multi-cloud strategy with the aim of achieving greater agility and flexibility, but also, as a consequence, reducing operating costs. This is not a lift and shift of application. This is a path of re-architecting applications to be cloud-native, to really take advantage of this technology. Our objective is to have 70% of our volume in cloud by mid-2024. Finally, I want to talk about talents and partners. We have made contact with the best IT partners that have given us the best ideas, technology, and practices such as AWS, IBM, and Microsoft. Digital talent is a key to our transformation process. That's why we have approached a comprehensive talent program which goes along with the IT strategy and, for example, reskilling our teams, bringing people from the market when we think it's necessary. Today, we are one of the most attractive banks for digital talents here in Argentina, and we compete for resources with technology companies, which of course has given us a new challenge. Please let's go to slide number 14. Today, we can say that we have a digital bank within a traditional bank. We can multiply the number of clients at a low operating cost, thanks to the different technological enablers and a team of people that we can say they have a human banking mindset. Our app includes almost all the services we provide to individuals and companies, but also can be considered a digital wallet that let our clients perform every day-to-day transactions, such as, for example, to pay with a QR code at the merchant with a simple and frictionless client experience. Through our digital wallet that we have today more than 350,000 users, or through our self-service terminal, our clients can solve concerns through a video call, for example, making their day-to-day life easier. All these features have enabled a bank with national presence without the need of having physical branches. Our virtual hub is a reality, including many points of contact to assist our customers. For example, virtual chat integrated to the channels which facilitates the introduction of frequent problems with an artificial intelligence structure behind it. But also, our virtual hub invited us to rethink our service model, making it possible today to access to one of our 50 account executives virtually with a video conference solution integrated to the app, to the home banking, and to the ATMs. We are the only one offering this solution here in Argentina. From your home, business, or anywhere with connectivity, our clients can make transfers, service payments, investments, check balances, among other and any other operation. Having more than 230,000 introductions since we launched it allow us to reach more customers at a quicker way. Next steps, we will continue to evolve our data-driven organization, joining more information of our clients, understanding them with new capabilities for the introductions of our virtual hub, continue with our API banking strategy, and our payments-as-a-service or embedded finance strategy, behind the B2B business there. Also improving and continuous, working on our user experience, digital marketing, and architecture as an enabler for expedite. Of course, our teams are also working on innovation, as you can see before. This goes along with an IT strategy plan that goes together with the digital transformation. That's all from my side. Thank you, Ana. Thank you, Sergio. Now we can move to the Q&A session. Our first question comes from Ernesto Gabilondo from Bank of America. Please, Ernesto, go ahead. Thank you, Anna. Hi, good morning Patricio, Mariano, Sergio, and good morning to everybody. Thank you for your presentation. My first question is on the political outlook. Can you share with us what are the latest political events or any potential regulation that could be impacting positively or negatively the banking sector? Also related to this, I know that it is still soon, but I would appreciate your thoughts on who, on whom are you seeing as a potential presidential candidates. And then just a second question on IUDÚ and the consumer finance segment. Considering the higher rates and the high inflation, when do you think IUDÚ could start to show positive numbers? Thank you. Okay. Good morning, Ernesto. I will try to answer the first question and maybe and then ask Alejandro to complement. After the agreement with the letter of intent of the IMF with the government, which is a positive step, it's becoming more clear that in the government there are two factions and this is giving I think some concern in terms of the how swift and how drastic implementation and how yes swift implementation of the IMF agreement will take place. In particular, for instance, when you have a scenario of higher inflation. This is straining a little bit the policy implementation. Medium term, I think personally, this is my personal view. I think it's positive to have, let's say, for the next election, a clear division of views, whereby you have on one side a view of let's continue dragging the feet, dragging the structural reforms and not implementing structural reforms which is unfortunately something that has happened in the last decades in Argentina. In the other side, another view, which is let's tackle the inflation, let's reduce the size of the government, let's reduce the taxes. I think this is gonna become more clear and the tension in the government, in my opinion, will help this clear division of views next year for the electorate. I don't know if you want to comment. Ernesto, good morning. Please, Mariano. This is Alejandro. I think Patricio sort of summarized this tension we see, but the general trend is that we think that there will be an effort from the current administration, and we see it in the president's backing to the finance minister, Mr. Guzmán, in trying to be as close as possible to the IMF targets. Your second question was about potential presidential candidates. Basically, the opposition is talking about several candidacies and we think it's still a bit early to determine which of these will actually make it to the finishing line. We've seen declarations by Patricia Bullrich, and to some degree, Mr. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and within the opposition coalition, Governor Morales. On the side of the official party or the incumbent, we've seen declarations from the current president, Mr. Fernández, and also some insinuation on Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, as well as some ideas around the governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, and other alternatives. Frankly, it's very early to say, to be able to determine which of these will be presidential candidates. As you know, elections will take place on October 2023, and we hope that by that time, before that time, the political candidates will be more clear. No? Third question was on IUDÚ The third question, yes. Concerning Iudú. We are going through a higher inflation scenario, and this is reflected in the expected inflation consensus in the different sectors. This is negative for the industry and particularly negative for the consumer finance because it affects the capacity of individuals to take loans, affecting their disposable income. Also, tenors are not high because of high nominal rates. So, this is in combination with higher, stricter underwriting standards that we implemented in 2021 and continue to implement in 2022, this makes more challenging to Finding, let's say, new customers taking credit cards in the IUDÚ business. This is one side. The other thing is that we have in 2022 implemented in the first quarter a very deep reduction in personnel. Around 25% of all personnel has been. Basically, there was a severance of above 25% of personnel. We will continue this capital efficiencies during the rest of the year. We hope in this sense in order to have a much more efficient franchise. Looking forward, the scenario is challenging and we are trying to make sure that this franchise turns profitable. In one way or the other, we will take measures in order to make it profitable by 2023. Perfect. Thank you very much, Patricio and Alex. Very helpful. Okay. Thank you, Ernesto. The next question comes from Carlos Gomez- Lopez from HSBC. Good morning, Carlos. Hello, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. First of all, thank you as always for the quality of your financial presentation and the detail in your numbers. I noticed that you have included even all the retail requirements and all the obligations to lend to particular sectors, and that is very detailed and very useful. Thank you very much for that. My question is again about profitability. Obviously higher, as you mentioned, higher inflation makes it more difficult to run the business. We have seen that your result has been worse with a higher inflation this quarter. From what you're describing and what the market expects, we could see higher inflation going into the rest of the year. Should we therefore expect that because of the inflation adjustment, your reported number will continue to be negative and perhaps larger and negative than it is today? My question is, in the future, if you know the situation continues for another couple of years, are the shareholders of Supervielle willing to, if necessary, recapitalize the bank, if it needed capital to maintain while we wait, to maintain the capital until we wait for better times? Thank you. Okay. I will ask Mariano to answer the question, but first, give me my view. First of all, yes, it's true. We don't have, we're not happy with the profitability. Since we decided in 2020, and this was implemented already in 2021, to take a hit on short-term profits. Because of the implementation of this transformation of the franchise and also the transformation of the network, and the capturing of efficiencies, in 2021, all this is continuing in 2020, 2022. We expect that the results will take place. We will obtain all the rewards of all these efforts in terms of short-term profits in 2023. You might say that it's possible that in 2023, loans will start to grow, so there will be also a consumption of capital in 2023. We believe that, combining all the two things combined, in 2023, we might have a reduction of Tier 1 capital to 12%. That will allow us still to continue competing and growing, with this Tier 1 capital. We believe that all the measures we're taking are in order to execute a much more efficient franchise in the next two years. This is what we do. Mariano, do you want to comment on 2022, on your views? Yes, sure. Yes. As you said, inflation is never good for the business as it reduces purchasing power of individuals and their disposable income. It's a headwind both for loan growth but also on the cost side, particularly personal costs increase with inflation. How are we tackling this? Well, first, it's important to highlight that we are hedged against inflation. The loss that we have on the net monetary position is offset through different means by the adjustment for inflation of non-monetary assets, mainly real estate. Also, the bonds and mortgages that are adjusted by inflation through UVAs. Also as interest rates are increased by the central bank, we are taking profits of higher margin and a higher spread through liquidity management. As Patricio said, we showed negative results this quarter. If we deduct the non-recurring costs, it would be positive. These non-recurring costs refer to efficiencies we are making in our headcount, where we reduced 7% at the bank level and almost 9% for the whole group headcount. That's including IUDÚ, where we made a major efficiency of 25% reduction in the last twelve months. That will allow us to work with a lighter structure going forward. Also, we're incurring costs in acquiring customers. You know, in this context, when you acquire customers, you not only have the typical acquisition costs of related benefits or cash backs or marketing expenses, but you also typically start the relationship with credit cards, which is at the beginning, the entry-level product, particularly in this environment with high inflation and caps on interest rates in these products particularly. As we work on this front, and we acquire more clients and start to cross-sell them and start having also deposits that will allow us to increase our margin and have positive results through higher NIM and a lighter structure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. Our next question comes from Yuri Fernandes at JP Morgan. Hello, everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have one here regarding the margins. This is actually a follow-up, I guess you were already discussing. What is the outlook for rates you see? Everybody knows, like, the Leliq has been increasing every month almost. Where do you see the Leliq and how that benefits your business? What should we expect? Because I see loan growth being somewhat like lackluster, and I guess it makes sense, right? Decreasing in real terms while your deposits are growing, and most of the bank's liquidity has been allocated to government securities. My question is, what is the level of the Leliq, and how the Leliq help your margins for this year? Also on margins, the second question here is regarding the products. I recall there were several, you know, mandatory lending rate caps, and we start to see some flexibilization, and you discussed this in the release. How that can help you to improve this profitability in the second half in 2023? Thank you. Mariano, you can answer. Yes. Hello, Yuri. Well, regarding the Leliqs, as inflation increased during the first quarter, the central bank started to increase rates as they had been flat for almost all 2021. Now the central bank has started to increase rates with the last increase last week or very recently. They are trying to catch up with inflation. That at some point that can benefit us because we also have increasing cost of funding. So that will benefit on the liability management side. Also, right now, there's a difference between the interest rates at one day and at 30 days. That allows us to increase the spread and at some point offset, as you said, the decrease in the loan growth in the first quarter. First, there is some seasonality where the fourth quarter shows higher loan volumes that decrease in the first quarter of the following year. We decreased the loans at subsidized rates. That's why decreasing volumes but increasing the interest margin. We believe, although we now estimate a higher inflation than originally expected, we expect now the inflation around 65%. Although that's very high, we expect inflation, monthly inflation to start slowing down. In that context, probably the central bank will have this last interest rate hike to be the last of the year. If that's the scenario, of course, we cannot assure that, but if that's the scenario, although we might not see interest rate decreases, we won't be also increasing. In a more stable interest rate environment, we should be able to increase our loan portfolio also with decreasing inflation. Let me complement what Mariano said with a couple of things. First, one of our strong pillars is the cost of funding. We are focusing with all the technological transformation, we have expanded and providing cash management services to corporations. With a lot of impact in terms of the transactionality companies have in the bank. With this, we started to see last year a huge impact in terms of collections and payments made by corporations, our clients in our bank. We start to see, and we are focusing on our share of checking accounts at our franchise, which we saw that in the last quarter of 2021, we already started to increase our share. The focus in 2022 will continue on this focus, and we believe that it's gonna help us to achieve a better cost of funding and therefore help in our financial margins. The other thing is concerning the senior citizens. Senior citizens are our largest individuals in terms of segments. With these individuals, with senior citizens, they are typically depositors of savings accounts and time deposits. Time deposits, they have a floor because of regulation, and this is very punitive for our franchise, because these time deposit floors, they don't allow us to basically to reduce the cost of funding. When you have a scenario when there is no loan demand, typically the bank would pay less, particularly for very minor and atomized time deposits, which is what we typically would do, and we've been doing in prior years. As long as this continues, this will, of course, continue to affect the cost of funding for this particular franchise. We believe that at a certain point in time, this regulation will disappear, and it will make it more sustainable for us, and provide more scope for a wider financial margins. Someone, do you want to complement Alejandro or Mariano? No, you can go. Thank you. No, thank you, Patricio. Mariano, just to follow up, loan growth, I guess that Mariano's message was that margin should slightly improve, right? Like, keep these slightly improving the margins. I guess that was the message. Just checking loan growth, so we can assume like maybe NII growing slightly above volumes or something like that, right? I guess that would be a base case. Yes, correct. Yes, inflation, as I said, is a headwind for loan growth. That's why we expected on prior quarter to grow above inflation. Now we are seeing a growth of the peso portfolio in line with inflation, because at 65% inflation, the loan demand will be, we believe, definitely weaker. We expect, as demand starts to recover very slightly with this inflation levels to recover the downturn we had in the first quarter. It will probably be in line with inflation not growing in real terms. Okay. No, thank you. Thank you, Mariano. Thank you, Patricio. Thank you. Thank you, Yuri. Our next question comes from Rodrigo Nistor from R Partners. Please, Rodrigo, go ahead. Hi, how are you? Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. You are undergoing a restructuring process, reshaping your consumer finance business and investing in technology and assuming to be ready for a brighter future. What kind of Argentina do you have in mind when you invest? What should Argentina look like, so your current strategy is successful? A follow-up related to my previous question. How do you maximize profitability or maybe reduce the overall negative impact of these non-recurrent expenses while your transformation matures? Thank you. Do you want Alejandro to answer that? Good morning, Rodrigo. I love your question. Let's start from the current situation of Argentina. I'm sure you're aware that the level of loans to GDP is very small. It's around 9%, when you would typically find many of our neighbors at least 50%, and in the case of Chile, even beyond that, up to close to 90%. The starting point is from a very low level of loans to GDP, which gives you an idea of the huge potential we have. Historically, we've been closer to levels in recent history, up to 25% of loans to GDP. I'm always referring to loans to the private sector. The first thing you consider when you look at the Argentine financial system is that it's extremely transactional and very, very small, and it has a huge potential to grow and to be a great dynamic force in the growth of the Argentine economy. With this in mind, and with this perspective in mind, is that we've been undergoing significant investments, as you've mentioned, and we've tried to focus on a couple of key dimensions. The first is to improve the customer experience and make sure that our customers, both individuals and SMEs, have the best possible experience in our digital transformation. The second is that we've increased our capability of customer acquisition with all our onboarding initiatives, digital onboarding initiatives. This is allowing us to scale quickly on what we call our digital channels, and also increasing significantly, the potential of serving them in areas where we don't have a physical network. Through innovation also, as Sergio pointed out earlier, reducing our time to market, while at the same time, we make considerable investments in our network to increase the possibility of self-service and cross-selling. All this is leading to increasing efficiencies, which when times get better, will allow us to capture all this in very positive long-term value creation. Thank you very much. That was really clear. Thank you, Rodrigo. Our next question comes from Juan Recalde at Scotiabank. Please, Juan, good morning, and go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. One is a follow-up on loan growth. I see that you are expecting loan growth around 65%, so in line with inflation for 2022. That would imply an acceleration in loan growth. My question is. What segments do you expect to lead this loan growth acceleration? Is it going to be corporate loans, IUDÚ, or the retail portfolio at the bank? That's the first one in terms of loan growth per segment. The second one is related to the FX or the exchange rate. In terms of the blue-chip, how do you forecast. I know this is hard to forecast. If it was easy, it would be a different story. How do you see the blue-chip evolving over the next year or even up to over the next 12 months or even before into 2023 before the elections? Do you think that the government can do something to keep the blue-chip FX at close to ARS 200? Go ahead, Mariano. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Hello, Juan. Thank you for your question. Regarding loan growth, we expect to see loan growth both in the commercial portfolio and the retail portfolio of the bank. The commercial portfolio, we saw a decline. We saw weak growth last year. We expect that to start gradually recovering. We also, as I mentioned earlier, we have seasonality, particularly in the factoring portfolio and the short-term finances, where we typically grow more in the last quarter of the year. In the retail segment, also the retail segment of the bank showed a decline in real terms in the last two years. We also expect that to gradually recover. You mentioned IUDÚ. At IUDÚ, we are being cautious on the loan growth because we want to grow healthier instead of just growing in volume with a higher risk. You know, in this particular segment, inflation can reduce significantly the disposable income of individuals. So we are having tighter credit standards. So loan growth on that side will be lower than what we would expect last year. Regarding the blue-chip rate, my view, as you say, that's very difficult to forecast. First let me tell you about the official exchange rate. At the end of the day, you have the evaluation of the official exchange rate and the gap with the blue-chip rate. The official exchange rate, we think that it will be lower than inflation. We will see a devaluation of the peso. Although at a higher rate than last year, we are seeing now devaluation of around 4% monthly. For the year, that will be lower than inflation. On top of that, you have the gap with the blue-chip rate. That is hard to forecast. I believe the main component of that gap is the confidence in the government and the domestic currency. Based on the confidence, we saw some moments of very low confidence where the gap went to 100%. That was reduced to 70%. We are seeing inflation devaluation, but the blue-chip swap rate being steady. Whether it will keep shortening or widening, that will depend on the confidence in the government and what will come for 2023. Let me comment on that a couple of things. Of course, if the noises in the government concerning the implementation of the IMF are being solved, and then you see an implementation of the measures that were agreed with the IMF, this will improve confidence. On the other side, there are also what is happening today in world markets in terms of pricing in inflation and commodity prices. We've seen increase in commodity prices last year, and that continued this year. The terms of exchange, that is the difference of price of exports to price of imports for Argentina's economy, have improved. According to recent publication by the World Bank in terms of terms of exchange, we have the. You have to go back to the Second World War to see the same terms of exchange than today. This with this focus of the World Bank, Argentina this year should increase its foreign exchange reserves around $10 billion by the end of the year. They will be able to achieve one of the commitments they had with the IMF. I think this will help reduce a little bit the tension in the market and maybe help with the 2022. But of course, we cannot make any predictions. That's helpful. Thank you. One follow-up if I may. In terms of the bank branch rationalization, I see that the number of branches has been stable, but my understanding is that you intended to close some branches. Are there any updates related to the central bank authorization for branch closures? Alejandro, if you want to answer that and also start talking about the plans we have. Yes. What we are doing actually is a consolidation of brands. As you know, we started a process where the two networks that we had, one focused on senior citizens and the other one, the typical traditional branch, we brought these two branches together, and in that process, identified a series of branches that were relatively close within the relevant market area of each other. This led to a first stage of consolidation, and as you pointed out, we have a request to the central bank to consolidate 16 of our branches, which is standing for already some time. Moving forward, we see similar opportunities in the second stage during this year, where we continue to observe that there are several branches that we could consolidate, basically also leveraging a hub and spoke model that we think would be useful. This will be rolled out during this year and is always pending central bank approval. In addition to that, there are also, as you know, because of the transfer of the business in San Luis that we are basically announcing on this call, I mean, this transfer of business to Banco de la Nación that has been basically requested by the government of San Luis. This is giving us also an opportunity to, in that particular province, maintain all our private business franchise with clients, which is very strong. All the, let's say the franchise, the small branches in the provinces that were linked to basically to maintaining the finance, the financial agent contract will probably in the case the negotiations go forward and succeed with Banco de la Nación, we will transfer those. So in other words, you will see, we expect that 2023 will be a very have a much different franchise in terms of network for Grupo Supervielle and a more efficient one. Understood. Thank you. That's very clear. Thank you, Juan. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of today's Q&A session. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your questions. We appreciate your interest in our company. We look forward to meeting more of you over the coming months and providing financial and business updates next quarter. In the interim, we'll remain available to answer any questions that you may have. Bye and have a good day.