Inter & Co, Inc. Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Towards. As of December, we had 18,000,000 users. And this number is growing daily. In July, we enhanced My Piggy Bank, enabling clients to set specific goals for their investments. This UX improvement made investing easier, embodying the core of our customer-centric DNA. Today, we have 1,500,000 active users leveraging this feature, driving strong activation in our investments vertical. Finally, in December, we rolled out My Credit Journey to our entire client base. This new feature recorded 3,000,000 unique accesses in a few weeks, offering our clients smart credit solutions by combining financial indication with an advanced internal modeling process. While I have shared four examples here, 2025 was a remarkable year of innovation across our platform. Beyond these four products, we also launched over 10 new features, including, for instance, the new taskbar, our AI solution to help our clients navigate through our super app. This progress is evident through the brand recognition we received, which I will deep dive on the next page. Bringing new solutions like the ones I just mentioned keeps us closely connected to our clients' needs. This connection translates into recognition and increased engagement. During 2025, we were proud to be ranked as the seventh most powerful brand in Brazil and the third most mentioned brand on social media in Brazil. We also achieved another milestone, being ranked as the number one bank brand among Gen Z. These clients are a key focus for us as we offer products and services tailored to meet their needs. Last but not least, our clients placed Inter as the number one rated financial app in both Apple Store and Google Play. These achievements are clear evidence of the trust and appreciation people have for Inter & Co, Inc. They also highlight the power of word-of-mouth and member-get-member approach, which continue to drive our brand awareness and engagement. During 2025, we hosted for the first time an event dedicated to our investment clients, who now total 9,000,000 people. It was a Saturday filled with incredible content where investment specialists shared their knowledge and insights with over 6,000 clients attending. We firmly believe that a strong brand is built through daily consistent interactions like these, where our commitment to delivering the best experience is the foundation of everything we do. Another topic I have been focused on is our global expansion, which reached important milestones as well. Since 2022, we have been focused on building a strong foundation in the US to offer USD accounts and solutions globally. In 2023, we launched US mortgages designed for Brazilians seeking to buy a second home in the US, a segment underserved by the US banking system. Then we introduced Intersecurities, allowing clients to diversify their investments in US markets. In 2024, we reached a major milestone by securing our Cayman branch license, bringing efficiency to our international operations. In 2025, we launched USD credit cards and announced the partnership with Bind to bring our solutions to Argentinian clients. We are in the final stage of testing and will soon roll out these offerings fully. While delivering these milestones, we have also been working behind the scenes on obtaining approval for our US bank license. On January 6, a few weeks ago, we just achieved this goal. This will unlock significant benefits, such as lower operational costs, giving us greater independence from US partners to deliver products directly, reduce funding costs, allowing us to direct our US deposit base, which stands at $320,000,000, to fund credit operations like mortgage and USD credit cards. Also, the ability to offer our products and services is a major step forward, transforming our global vision into reality. To make everything possible, 2025 was marked by the consolidation of our C-level leadership. Over the past few years, we brought in key talent, whose leadership continues to make an impact. In 2025, we brought two new additions to the team: our new Chief Legal and Compliance Officer and our new CRO, with years of experience in the industry. In addition, we implemented our new leadership framework called DAC: Direction, Alignment, and Commitment. This was done with the support of our board of directors and external advisers Howard Gutman and Ecolo Kallik. This combination of expertise and cultural alignment positions us to build a dynamic, forward-thinking environment and execution, ultimately propelling Inter & Co, Inc.'s long-term success. Now I'd like to pass the mic to Santi, who will walk you through our business highlights. Thank you very much. Thank you, Joao.

Hello, everyone. It's always a pleasure to be here and present the achievements of the quarter. We're proud to share another outstanding year of growth and profitability. Once again, we were the fastest-growing finance institution in Brazil among those with over 20,000,000 clients. This reinforces the strength of our brand and the attractiveness of our platform. Beyond attracting clients, we've seen them deepen their relationship with us. In December, we recorded over 21,500,000 daily logins. That's nearly 15,000 per minute, a significant increase compared to last December's 17,000,000 logins per day. Additionally, we've processed 32,000 financial transactions per minute, totaling almost 1,000,000,000 transactions during the month of December. This exceptional level of client engagement highlights how well our platform performs. With a sustained NPS of 85 points over several years, it also reinforces the value created by the synergy between our seven verticals, delivering a seamless experience for our users. Throughout the year, we delivered a record-breaking performance in both welcoming new clients and activating them. We welcomed 7,000,000 new clients, our best annual performance ever. This is an important achievement given Brazil's mature market where most people are already bankarized. Our focus on quality remains strong. Of these new clients, 4,400,000 became active, bringing our overall activation rate to 58% and our total active client base to 25,000,000. These results are driven by continuous improvements in our super app, from enhancing the onboarding process and client services to refining communication strategies, targeting, and hyper-personalization. We've worked to deliver a seamless and engaging experience for our clients. These higher activation rates are driving significant increases in transaction volumes. In the fourth quarter, our TPV grew 27%, reaching BRL 1,800,000,000,000 in run rate. Transactions made through PIX totaled around BRL 1,500,000,000,000 for the year, leading our PIX market share to 8.5%. Additionally, our transaction mix continues to evolve, with credit card volume outpacing debit card transactions for many quarters in a row. This shift positively contributes to higher interchange fee income. Importantly, our TPV levels across cohorts show consistent improvement as newer clients demonstrate increased activity, transacting faster and more frequently than other cohorts. On credit, before I deep dive on specific metrics, I want to highlight three main topics: portfolio growth, private payroll loans, and credit cards. First, on our portfolio, we achieved a remarkable 36% annual growth, being diligent with ROE targets and maintaining a balanced ratio of secured and unsecured loans, roughly two-thirds secured, one-third unsecured. Second, on private payroll loans, this has been the main highlight of the year, and we keep a positive view on the product. We reached a portfolio of nearly BRL 2,000,000,000 with around 500,000 clients. This shows the strength of our digital distribution and our ability to scale a new product quickly. Third, on credit cards, we're making good progress in moving clients from being pure transactors to our interest-earning portfolio, a process we call reshaping. Interest-earning products now represent over 23% of our credit card portfolio, up from 19% last year. Fourth-quarter dynamics of more liquidity in the market brought stability to the reshaping process. Nevertheless, there is a lot of space to maintain the evolution we saw in 2025. I will provide more details on our strong loan book performance. Moving to the next page, we see another quarter of remarkable market share gains delivered. Our goal of replicating PIX's success in other products is underway, with home equity already ahead of PIX. This quarter, the progress is evident. Market share is expanding consistently across all of our verticals. I am confident that we'll continue strengthening our market position with more products surpassing the growth benchmark set by PIX. To finish, I want to highlight that these outstanding results are driven by our seven verticals and our ongoing commitment to continuous innovation. Each vertical plays a crucial role in fueling our growth, working seamlessly and interconnected to enhance client value and compound profitability. This powerful ecosystem is what sets Inter & Co, Inc. apart and propels us forward. Now I'll hand it over to Santi who will guide us through our financial results. Thank you. Thank you, Shange, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to highlight what has been one of the year's biggest achievements, our loan growth. It grew 36% year on year with quarterly growth accelerating to 10% or 40% on an annualized basis. Now breaking down by segments, first, on the real estate side, mortgages grew 48% year on year while home equity loans grew 35%. On private payrolls, we reached BRL 2,000,000,000 up from nearly zero at the beginning of the year. And third, on credit cards, we grew 29% with solid risk management and continued progress from the reshaping strategy driving monetization and profitability. Overall, our intention has been to deepen credit penetration and as a result, continue increasing monetization. Here, I like to highlight the evolution of our asset quality metrics, which reflects how we are driving the outcome in terms of credit underwriting strategy. The fifteen to ninety day NPL ratio improved 10 basis points by decreasing from 4.1 to 4% while the ninety day past due loan portfolio increased from 4.5% to 4.7% mainly as consequence of the dynamics with a private payroll product in which the earlier cohorts have passed the ninety day mark and now appear in the metric. We anticipated this dynamic by upfronting provisions, which took our coverage ratio from 136 to 146% in the first nine months of the year. Looking specifically at credit cards, NPLs continue to perform well, validating the continued improvements in our underwriting and collection models. Finally, NPL formation and Stage three formation were also impacted by the private payroll portfolio which began appearing in this status as expected. Our cost of risk closed the year at 5.3% reflecting a 10 basis points improvement mainly led by strong performance of our credit card portfolio. Moving here to our funding franchise. We delivered another strong quarter of growth, increasing 32% year on year and 7% quarter on quarter reaching nearly BRL 73,000,000,000. And an average balance of BRL 2,100 per active client. This growth throughout the year was driven primarily by time deposits even given the high level of the Selic rate and the ongoing success of My Piggy Bank account, our product that simplifies fixed income investing for clients. On transactional deposits, we had a great quarter increasing 10% and passing the BRL 20,000,000,000 mark. In terms of loans to deposit, this quarter we were able to deploy more capital in funding growth thus resulting in an increase in our loan to deposit ratio, from 64% to 66% still having lots of room to put our excess liquidity to work. Our healthy funding mix continues to translate into a key competitive advantage: our low cost of funding, which remains an industry leading metric among Brazilian banks and fintechs. This quarter, our cost of funding stood at 65.6% of CDI, an improvement from the 68.2% of the prior quarter. What's notable is how this advantage has persisted even with the Selic rate remaining at high record levels for an extended period of time. This resilience showcases the strength of our funding strategy and reinforces our ability to operate efficiently across different macro and monetary conditions. Jumping into revenues, we delivered strong performance in 2025, with total gross revenues reaching BRL 15,000,000,000 marking an impressive 45% year on year growth. This magnitude highlights the scale and momentum of our business as we continue to expand. Net revenues also showed significant results, growing 31% year on year reaching BRL 8,400,000,000. The standout driver behind this growth is our credit portfolio, which led to net interest income to increase 41% year on year. This acceleration was fueled by strong performance in payroll loans, credit cards, mortgages and home equity loans, all key segments where we have built significant scale and efficiency. On the fee side, net fee revenues grew 9% during the year. This growth was moderated by changes in accounting rules at the beginning of the year and increased monetization of some fee lines like Intershop, through net interest income by the introduction of the buy now pay later product. Jumping here to the unit economic side, higher client engagement is driving faster monetization across efforts, especially to private payroll loans, the reshaping of our credit card portfolio and the higher transactional volumes. As a result, our net ARPAK reached BRL 35.1, our highest level on record. Our mature clients demonstrate even greater potential generating BRL 91 in net ARPAK further underscoring the opportunity ahead. By combining this strong monetization with our low cost to serve of just BRL 13.8, we achieved our best ever gross margin per active client, reaching BRL 21.2 this quarter. Now let's deep dive into our net interest margins. Both NIM 1.0 and NIM 2.0, which excludes the noninterest residuals of credit cards, are consistently showing growth quarter after quarter and achieving new record levels. We have improved our risk adjusted NIM by an average of 15 basis points quarter after quarter. This particular quarter, earnings were positively impacted by two key drivers. First, private payrolls, which was the biggest contributor to this growth. And second, credit cards, which also performed well, as the reshaping strategy continues to show its results. However, we also faced a few headwinds this quarter. The first one being lower inflation, which impacted our real estate portfolio income. And second, a higher number of business days, which increased our funding expenses. With all these results combined, our NIM expanded at twice the level of the prior quarters showcasing how consistency in our great underwriting strategy is paying off by allowing us to extract an increasing amount of value from our balance sheet. Finally, our assets to equity ratio, which increased from 7.9 to 9.4 showcases the optimization of our capital structure which is still highly under levered. Moving to the expenses side, total expenses rose 25% on a year on year basis. On a quarterly comparison, we had three dynamics playing out. First, administrative expenses rose 8% quarter on quarter and 19% year on year, reflecting higher transactional volumes as our super app continues to scale. As our business expands rapidly, we remain focused on renegotiating contracts with major vendors, to further reduce transaction cost and improve efficiency. Second, personnel expenses increased due to seasonal impacts from profit sharing provisions and the annual collective agreement, as well as due to the seniorization of our team. Despite these increases, headcount remains stable at around 4,100 employees through 2025. And third, depreciation and amortization which grew 33% quarter on quarter or 85% year on year, driven primarily by a one-off impairment related to POS terminals. When we look at operational leverage, we had another year of progress. As a result, our efficiency ratio decreased from 48.4% to 45.5% representing a nearly 300 basis points improvement within the year. These efficiency gains are a result of our digital approach, process optimization, and disciplined cost initiatives. And last but not least, I'm truly thrilled about the progress we've made on our journey towards increasing profitability. You can see on the page, this year, we reached BRL 1,300,000,000 in net income and surpassed our remarkable milestone of 15% in the last quarter. What stands out even more is the consistency of our performance which is clearly reflected in the chart. It's an accomplishment that fills us with pride and demonstrates the strength of everything we've worked on with discipline and consistency always in the pursuit of excellence. With our platform running better than ever before, and our virtuous cycle growing stronger and larger, we're very excited about the future that's around the corner. Now Joao Vitor Menin will take the stage for the final remarks. Thank you all. I would like to thank the team for the support on this journey.

And the immense effort they put day in, day out, that made these results possible. I firmly believe our platform is at the best moment ever which gives me a lot of confidence that 2026 will be another excellent year for Inter & Co, Inc. Now I will hand it over to Haf to open the Q&A session. Thank you very much.

Before opening the Q&A session, I'd like to invite everyone here to join us in New York City for our Investor Day on May 11. It will be an exciting opportunity to reflect on our incredible journey and share insights into the future we are building together. An RSVP will be sent by email. For those who can't attend in person, the event will be broadcast live. Hope to see you all there. Now let's start the Q&A session. Our first question comes from Mario Pierry. Mario, please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the results. Joao, let me ask you a question and to take advantage, right, that this is, like, annual results. This is your second year following the guidance that you gave, the sixty thirty thirty guidance. When we look at the numbers for the first two years, the ROE is halfway there, 15%. You're guiding for 30% by 2027. The number of clients also you are halfway there as well. However, when I look at the efficiency ratio, I haven't seen or I was expecting faster progress on efficiency. In this quarter, when we look efficiency deteriorated. So let me ask you, how are you feeling about your thirty thirty plan? Do you anticipate making any changes on this guidance on this Investor Day you just announced on May 11? And what can you do on efficiency to make sure that it starts heading in the right direction? Because that's the main pushback I get from investors: the slow progress in the efficiency ratio. Thank you.

Okay, Mario. Thank you for the question. I will try to answer everything. So first of all, important to mention, we unveiled our sixty thirty thirty plan three years ago. It is still a five year plan, and we're happy that these first three years were a tremendous success. Just to recap what you just said: moving from 0% ROE to 15% today. From 25,000,000 clients back then to forty-three million clients today. The efficiency started at 73% today right at 45%. And also important to mention, since then, Mario, we more than doubled our credit portfolio, from BRL 22,000,000,000 to BRL 48,000,000,000. That said, we are convinced here at Inter & Co, Inc. that the deep banking model, which by the way we invented ten years ago, is ready to produce growth, ROE, and efficiency according to the goals of this plan. This is very important to highlight. I also believe that our fourth year of the plan, 2026, will be a great year in the direction of getting closer to these KPIs. We're very committed to that. Regarding the timing of how we'll get to each of these specific targets—clients, efficiency, and ROE—we will deep dive and explore that more on our investor day in New York, and I take this opportunity to invite everyone to attend, in person or digitally. Connecting to your other question about efficiency, what do we see that could help us on that topic? We mentioned in our earnings presentation some efforts in terms of technology, in terms of innovation, and in terms of AI. We do believe that Inter & Co, Inc. is very well prepared to get all the benefit from these new technologies and innovations that are emerging. We believe that we have all the data, we have the back end, all the cutting edge technology to help us on the expense side. And last but not least, as Santi always likes to say, our goal is to always grow our expenses—we are still a growth company, just remember—but we will grow our expenses less than our revenues, producing operational leverage. Thank you very much. Bye.

Thanks, Joao. Let me follow-up just on what you said at the end. Right? You are a growth company, and you continue to consume capital. So let me ask about the strategy of paying dividends. I know you paid last year as well, but how do you look at dividend payments given the capital levels that you have today? If you're growing your loan book 36% and your ROE is running at 15%, it means that you should continue to consume capital. So can you let us know what to expect in terms of future dividend payments? Thank you.

Mario, that's an excellent question. Just to recap, we have been paying dividends at a 20% payout ratio for the past three years in a row. We believe that this should be the trend going forward, as long as it does not impact execution plan and the growth of the business. Regarding capital, I'm going to pass the mic to Santi who'll cover how we balance growth, portfolio, dividends, and capital at the bank level and at the holding level to keep running the business. Santi, please, if you could jump in.

Thank you, Joao. Good morning, Mario. On the capital, just to reiterate, we have two levels of capital: the bank and the holding. At the bank level, we have 14.4%. This past year in 2025, we were able to optimize that capital structure through the issuance of tier one and tier two instruments. We are in a more evolved position in working with our capital structure. On top of that, we have around BRL 2,000,000,000 of excess capital at the holding level, which is around 4.5 percentage points of CET1, which combined with the local CET1 that we have at the bank, gets us a CET1 of roughly 19%. So we're still in the phase where we consume capital, we agree with that statement, Mario, but it's at a lower pace quarter by quarter, and we are closer to reaching capital neutrality. We want to move the excess capital from the OpCo to the Holco, given that it's more profitable to have it at the holding level. That was done by design back in 2022 when the holding was created. So it's moving as planned. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Tito Labarta. Tito, please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the call and taking my question. Maybe following up—

A little bit on Mario's question because, yeah, I mean, if I think efficiency is one of the key question marks we get also. Particularly, I guess, on fee income: I know for the full year you had the Interpag consolidation. Right? But if we look now on a year over year basis for the quarter, that should be behind you, yet fees did not really grow significantly. We do see fee expenses have been a bit of a headwind. Just to understand why sort of that spike in fee expenses, what should we expect on fee income from here? When do you think it starts to grow back more in line with loan growth? Why are we still seeing some headwinds there? Thank you. Hi.

Thanks for the question. So on fees, I think there are a few topics to talk about. First is the fee income ratio itself. It finished at 25% last year, so that's a compression compared to the 30% of 2024. In a way, I see it as a good problem to have. Net interest income expanded a lot; we had 45% growth in NII, and that ended up compressing the fee income ratio. In nominal numbers, what we saw in the fourth quarter was a solid quarter at BRL 5.79 billion with a few positives. Cards and TPV grew more than 15% year on year. The investments business was strong, with 27% growth in AUC to BRL 8,700,000,000. Active clients exceeded 10,000,000 insurance contracts, so the insurance business is also coming in well. These are positive highlights. As headwinds, we did have some. Intershop was under pressure given competition from some players in the Brazilian market, which impacted revenues, although despite that, we saw a positive number in terms of active clients—Intershop still drove engagement and helped bring primary bank accounts. If we look at the overall numbers, total fee income revenue grew about 9% in 2025. If we take out a few one-offs—capital gains in 2024 and 2025—we would add about three percentage points, which would bring nominal growth closer to 13%. And if we add back the regulatory change (resolution 4966 from the Central Bank) that we had to implement, the normalized growth would be around 15%. So normalized, 2025 would look better. What we're doing is many initiatives to re-engage clients and sell more fee-related products: hyper-personalization, conversational sales both in-app and via channels like WhatsApp to sell more fee-generating products. We see good perspectives for 2026. Thank you.

Very helpful. May just a follow-up there. If we look at interloop expenses and expenses from services commissions, those are a bit of a headwind—interloop was up 34% in the quarter and expenses from services and commissions up 10% in the quarter. Is that where you're seeing pressure from competition on Intershop? And how should we think about that growth in fee expenses from here? Is there room to improve that?

A lot of that is related to Interloop and we see it as a good expense. For example, Interloop is a big engagement power that we're using with our clients, running many campaigns to activate and bring primary bank accounts. Also, in many ways, we're using cashback to incentivize the sale of credit. We keep an eye on the expenses related to fees, but we are optimizing for net income by using these tools to sell more and expect a better bottom line in the end. Specifically on Interloop, we are very enthusiastic about it because it's our loyalty program that is evolving a lot. We're bringing many clients to use it; as they use it, they typically become primary banking customers. That's our view on that number. To summarize: we keep it under control but we'll keep using it to drive sales and growth across different products.

Our next question comes from Yuri Fernandes. Yuri, please go ahead.

Thank you, Rafa, and congrats, Santi and team, for the step by step improvement on margins and ROE. I would like to ask a little bit about maybe the elephant in the room from my conversations with investors regarding provisioning. I know provisions versus bad loss formations in Stage three or NPL can be volatile and I think there was a usage of coverage this quarter that may have helped your EBT. We tried to look by product to see which product Stage three formation is worsening and how you are building provisions for those products. It was not credit cards—usually that would be the 'villain'—this quarter it was a bit personal loans. We saw an increase in Stage three formation for personal loans. Also, you're building a bit fewer provisions for this product. The same is true for real estate, where provisions were low; this is not new but you have collateral there so it feels safer. Can you explain what happened with formation this quarter? How should we see cost of risk and coverage? I'm trying to understand the moving parts because a pushback is that you did less provisions versus formation. My answer has been that you did more in the second and third quarters. Just trying to understand the dynamics. Thank you very much.

Good morning, Yuri. Thank you for the question. First, the asset quality of our loan book is performing as planned and consistent with the credit underwriting strategy that we are executing. We look at mix, growth levels, and how it evolved quarter by quarter. The picture we see now is exactly what we anticipated. Going portfolio by portfolio: private payroll—initial cohorts are starting to mature past the ninety-day mark and that explains how they came into NPLs increasing. We anticipated this and provisioned upfront. The monetization of this product more than compensates this level of delinquency, so we're happy with the ROEs there, though it affects credit quality metrics for that product. On credit cards, as you mentioned, performance was actually pretty good in the fourth quarter. It typically is good in Q4 with more liquidity in the hands of clients and they tend to get more up to date. SMEs show no material change quarter by quarter; invoice discounting is steady. On mortgages and home equity, you flagged it well. We had an increase in Stage three balances due to a more conservative integrated view of clients. Until Q3, we kept mortgages that were paid on time in their respective stage not considering credit deterioration events in other products for the same client. Starting in Q4, if a client has a performing mortgage but more than ninety days overdue in other credit lines, we migrated the mortgage loan to Stage three. This change was implemented cumulatively in Q4 and resulted in an extra BRL 140,000,000 of Stage three balance on the real estate portfolio. This is a catch-up we did to align with best practices and a series of initiatives implemented with our new CRO. If we adjusted that, the Stage three formation factor from mortgages would have been 1.65%, flat versus the prior quarter. Looking into 2026, how should you see cost of risk? Continue evolving with a credit mix in line with 2025. We expect cost of risk to be in the 5.5% to 6% range depending on macro conditions. There is a general expectation of some pressure on asset quality industry-wide which could take us closer to 6% if it materializes; otherwise closer to 5.5%. As we always say, our goal is to maximize risk-adjusted NIM, not to minimize delinquency levels: we do that by offering products that are healthy for clients and accretive for us given attractive ROEs. I hope that answers your question.

Santi, thank you very much. To confirm: the 5.5 to 6% is in line with expectations. Regarding the quarter, there was one impact on the real estate portfolio due to the adjustment in risk models—without this impact Stage three would be mostly stable quarter over quarter. You're not concerned about asset quality: fifty to ninety-day NPLs are improving and risk-adjusted margin behaves well. Is this a fair summary?

Excellent. Spot on. Thank you, Yuri.

Our next question comes from Pedro Ledouki. Pedro, please go ahead.

Thank you so much for taking the question and congratulations on the year's achievements everybody. On private payroll, if I may dig deeper: BRL 1,900,000,000 is a very good number. First, can you help us understand where this growth is coming from and how it has been evolving in terms of channels, average ticket, and rate ranges? Do you expect the origination pace to continue or change in 2026? Second, there was a comment about a high-single-digit to 10% NPL ratio cited earlier. Is that the level you're seeing in 1Q or in 4Q? Which cohorts are these and are you making adjustments? Thank you.

Thank you, Pedro. When we look at private payroll loans, it's a new product in the market and we're very happy with our execution in 2025. We're positioned to be one of the winners. Around BRL 2,000,000,000 in credit portfolio, 500,000 clients, average ticket around BRL 4,000. Interest rates have been relatively stable since the beginning at around 3.7% on average. Clients usually take these loans to pay in about 20 installments. Our market share is about 5% and we see room to increase, which aligns with our strategy to let the product mature. Dataprev, the infrastructure provider, still needs to implement additional steps and we want to see that development to increase originations. The product brings many previously inactive clients back to activity; ARPAK for these clients is about three times the company average, which is very positive, and cross-selling index for these clients is about 20% higher. Regarding channels, it is evolving: initially we saw a lot of volume coming from the CTPS app (the government app) and less from our own app, but now we're roughly fifty-fifty. We expect to keep gaining share on our own channel, especially as people start to refinance and perform other movements. We are also adding conversational channels—WhatsApp and in-app conversational sales—likely in Q1 to increase distribution. On delinquency, since we started the product we planned for delinquency to potentially go up to 15% in early cohorts; we don't see that high, but we do see delinquency converging to higher than 10%. To bring it back to 6–8%, the full introduction of collection solutions in the product design will be important. If that happens, not only will NPLs reduce, but volumes underwritten by the market may increase and rates may compress, making it an even better product for Brazilians.

Our next question comes from Gustavo Schroden. Gustavo, please go ahead.

Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Congrats on recent achievements over the last three years. My question is regarding expectations for 2026. Santi already anticipated cost of risk around 5.5 to 6%. Can you give us any color regarding loan growth, net interest margin, and efficiency ratio performance for 2026? Should we continue to see loan growth around 30–35%? Does net interest margin still have room to expand in 2026? And what should we expect for efficiency ratio improvement in 2026? Thank you.

Hi, Gustavo. Important to note we don't provide formal guidance. I can speak to general trends. Looking at 2025, we were proud of loan growth; we had guided the market to 25–30% and closed at 36% driven by chasing opportunities with disciplined underwriting. NIM or risk-adjusted NIM expansion was also a highlight. The consequence of those two is higher credit penetration per client. For 2026, in terms of loan growth, we still think 25–30% is a reasonable target to chase. The base is bigger and private payroll is now present with a BRL 2,000,000,000 starting balance. We hope to be on the high end of that range and possibly beyond, but we'll see as we go. In terms of NIM expansion, we continue to reprice the back book and allocate more credit towards private payroll and credit cards, which could further expand NIM trends. So we continue to see risk-adjusted NIM moving in the same positive direction. On efficiency, this is a core goal. In 2025 we showed a delta where net revenues grew materially more than expenses—about 10 percentage points when adjusting for Interpact integration in 2024—and that produced operational leverage. We expect a similar dynamic in 2026: revenues should continue growing faster than expenses, driving efficiency improvement. There is upside from AI improvements that are still early stage across CX, fraud, credit underwriting, and coding. We have several AI initiatives: hyper-personalization of pricing, hyper-personalization of the app, and the taskbar to increase cross-selling. These should help operational leverage. So overall: continued NIM expansion, continued efficiency improvement, and loan growth in the 25–30% area as reasonable expectations.

Great, Santi. Very helpful. If I may, a follow-up on private payroll competition: many banks are being aggressive in this segment. What is Inter & Co, Inc.'s competitive advantage to compete and grow without impacting prices or delinquency ratios?

Gustavo, João Vitor here. Our competitive advantages include a large digital client base for distribution, an industry-leading funding cost, and the fact that private payroll is not cannibalizing other revenues—it's additive. Regarding pace of growth and how aggressive we'll be in 2026, we always grow fast but with caution. We evaluate collateralization, delinquency, and improvements in data to ensure portfolio quality. We proceeded cautiously in entering this segment and that approach produced BRL 2,000,000,000 in one semester of 2025. We believe that the inter by design concept—bringing the best price and best collateral—creates a win-win for clients, our balance sheet, and the regulator. We're very excited about the opportunity but will keep disciplined underwriting and measured expansion.

Our next question comes from Neha Agarwala. Neha, please go ahead.

Hi. Congratulations on the steady progress. A few questions. First, on private payroll: in the last six months you've seen strong growth. Since the beginning of this year other incumbent banks have become more active in this portfolio. Has that impacted your January originations in terms of amount or rates? The takers of this portfolio are mostly your own clients—so is growth mostly from cross-selling or are you going after the open market and acquiring customers? Can you give a breakdown to help us understand how much growth can be sustained and at what rate? Second, can you briefly talk about the impact of lower rates and how that could affect different loan segments trend-wise and any impact on margins? Third, Joao, could you give more color on the US license that was approved, how to see global expansion manifest on the P&L, which lines would we see impact, and how competition evolves with peers moving into the US? Thank you so much.

Neha, I'll address rate sensitivity and ALM. Our goal has been to decrease P&L volatility. We manage ALM to minimize volatility and let NIM evolve as we deploy capital. We avoid directional interest rate bets. In the short term, a reduction in interest rates would be positive because liabilities are shorter linked to CDI than our assets. So in the first six to nine months we'd see a positive impact, but then loans would reprice at lower rates and that initial effect would be compensated over time. With loan growth, new originations would be at the new lower rates, so the initial positive effect is temporary. All in all, we aim for relative neutrality to interest rate sensitivity by hedging longer portfolios so volatility is minimized and NIM evolution is driven by how we deploy capital rather than rate directionality.

Regarding the branch license approved a few weeks ago: we're very happy and proud. It's a branch license approved by the Federal Reserve and the state regulator in Florida. With that, we will no longer rely on a bank-as-a-service approach to offer checking accounts and investment accounts in the US. We've been building our platform and ecosystem in the US for two to two-and-a-half years—remittance, commerce, loyalty, investments, checking accounts, debit cards, credit cards, mortgages, and home equity. With the branch in place, we can offer these verticals directly to millions of clients in different geographies: Brazilians, Argentinians, other Latinos, and more. This is an important milestone for global expansion. I expect more volumes and fees coming from our global efforts going forward. We're ready to offer the full stack and to grow internationally without necessarily deploying large amounts of capital locally—it's about client acquisition and scale. The focus initially will be Latinos and international clients who need US dollar-denominated accounts, but US-based clients can also use our platform. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Joao. That's very clear. Just to clarify: the focus and user base initially will be Latinos—Brazilians, Argentines—rather than Americans, at least at first.

Yes. With the branch and the foundation we have built, we can serve millions of international clients with the full stack. We believe the pain point we identified—USD accounts with a super app for immigrants and Latinos—is large. We'll serve them first, but Americans can also use the platform.

We have time for one more question. Our last question comes from Marcelo Mizrahi. Marcelo, please go ahead. Your mic is open.

Aloha. Are you listening? Great. I have two questions. First, regarding investments outside Brazil: how are these investments and needs impacting expenses? How many points could efficiency be better without that? Or put another way, where is Inter & Co, Inc. now in terms of offering products? Is the US account already open and ready for clients to use and start generating revenues? How ready is this product to start contributing to US revenues? Second question: regarding the growth of the portfolio, you adjusted models in credit cards and we've seen an acceleration in credit cards recently. How comfortable are you with the pace of credit card growth, especially given improved numbers recently? Is an acceleration possible? Thank you.

Marcelo, Jean Vitor here. On international expansion: over the past two to two-and-a-half years we've implemented remittance, checking accounts, broker-dealer investment access, mortgage and home equity capabilities, commerce solutions through Intershop US, and our loyalty program. We are nearly ready to offer everything we offer in Brazil through our super app in the US and other geographies. We can grow fast in other countries without deploying local banking capital because we have the onboarding and product stack ready. The expenses to build this foundation have been incurred, so most of the set-up costs are behind us. Future expenses will be driven by client acquisition (CAC) as we scale revenues from these clients. So the initial investment phase has largely been completed; now it's a matter of how much we spend to acquire clients versus the revenue they generate. We are ready to scale and expect revenues to follow as clients adopt the products.

Thank you, Marcelo. On credit cards, our strategy has been the 'reshaping'—improving the risk-reward by increasing the interest-earning portion of the portfolio. In 2025 we achieved a solid evolution: the interest-earning portfolio increased by four percentage points in twelve months, boosting interest income by about 35%. We expected better delinquency as we helped clients through restructuring and we saw better-than-expected credit card performance in Q4—about 10% better than internal expectations. For 2026 we want continuity: maintain the risk appetite but continue to improve modeling, onboarding models, and behavior models, plus increase conversational sales and My Credit Journey activation. Many product launches needed to enable reshaping were completed in 2025, so 2026 begins with those products live and maturing, which supports better performance. We have not yet increased risk appetite materially; growth will come from improved execution and productization. So yes, an acceleration is possible with disciplined underwriting and continued execution.

This concludes our earnings conference call. I'll pass it to Joao for his final remarks.

Thank you, Rafael. I'd like to thank all the employees at Inter & Co, Inc. working harder every single day to help us achieve our goals, improve our platform and our business. Also, I'd like to thank all the shareholders that have been supporting us on this amazing journey. Thank you very much, and hope to see you all at our Investor Day in New York City. Thank you. Bye-bye.