The change in the types of our branches, the reduction in size, the adoption of business units for advisory and service to our clients, no longer a branch for back office service or account payment or bill payment. Many processes that we’ve been developing in the bank with negative, or as you saw last week, some negotiations we have with some partners with quantum computing. The structural change we had on Next that is no longer an expense line, or rather a strong investment line, but bringing it into the bank so that it can bring the expense close to zero and make the most of all the synergies between Next and Bradesco, preserving for the clients, especially lower income or heavy user clients or younger clients, to have an option of having a digital bank for themselves through Next, which has a different visual look than Bradesco, the way that they want.
So, there are, in fact, structural changes that may be, that must be and are being implemented. And a good trigger for that was what ended up happening with the pandemic that changed completely these relationships, as well as the entry of new competent competitors that require us to go through substantial change in relationship. And as I showed you, 98% of relationships with clients with us go through the mobile service. So, these are structural changes that we have been evolving and developing, creating through new methodologies for the development of systems through partners, the agile villas, quads, and that is structural and we have been implementing it quite well. Now, in terms of ROE, as you said, well, that was a situation that happened in terms of market ALM and delinquency that affected us.
Market ALM, I believe, as Firetti said, is done, it is solved. The third quarter, fourth quarter, it will be positive again, 2024, with much better expectations in terms of results, interest rates going down, we have portfolios formed with better rates, so that improves the conditions. So, it is hard to pinpoint when, Renato, but we have been working, we are working quarter over quarter to deliver an ROE at the levels we delivered in the past. You can be sure of that and we will continue to pursue the resumption of that ROE that we used to deliver up to two years ago.
Operator: Thank you, Renato. And now we will turn to Carlos Gomez from HSBC.
Carlos Gomez: Hello. Thank you very much for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the tax rate, it was particularly low this quarter, 8%. What do you expect for the rest of the year and what should we expect as a normalized tax rate, without any changes to interest on capital, of course?
Octavio de Lazari: So, Carlos, the tax rate is at a very low level due to the fact that the earnings level is lower, so the effect of the IOC leap this rate to be at a lower level. In addition, as you have been seeing, there is also greater participation of the insurance company in the total of the bank’s results. The insurance company has a lower rate. So, based on all that, we would say that a reasonable range for tax rates would be from 10% to 14%.
Carlos Gomez: So, looking forward, as the results increase and you take on the maintenance of the structure we have today with IOC, the IOC tax shield will cut less from the tax. So the tax rate will normally increase. So, I’d say that when we go back to the levels of ROE that we had in the past, our rate will also go back to the levels we had in the past.
Operator: Thank you. Well, now we have a question by Nicolas Rivea with Bank of America. Nicolas, go ahead.
