Yuri Fernandes: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Carlos Firetti: Thank you, Yuri. Next question from Anahy Rios with Santander.
Anahy Rios: Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. My question goes back to the guidance. But speaking more about fees, you were somewhat distant from the guidance. I’d like to understand which fee lines will drive growth so that you can meet the guidance in Q4.
Octavio de Lazari: Anahy, good morning and thank you for joining us. All I know of fee income, it’s improving quarter-on-quarter and quarter-by-quarter. This quarter we are still slightly below the guidance that we provided, but we have an expectation to increase this fee income line due to a number of aspects which I believe are important. We are having a substantial improvement as we showed you. In the wholesale bank, in underwriting operations, you saw the amount that grew, the percentage that grew. We have quite a good pipeline for Q4 and also for 2024 of these operations. We have a good expectation that companies will be renewing their debenture operations, the ones they have in the market and new operations that we’re also doing.
It is a natural movement by companies. They’ll wait for a better market moment. The cost is still high, but operations are maturing and the companies will need to adjust. So there is a good outlook for the fees related to underwriting. There’s a good expectation that is materializing regarding fees in Asset, in Bradesco Aset and now at Tivio, our new asset, that we have more geared to structured product performance. And there’s good expectation there. Also a good expectation in Bradesco Financiamentos. Again, the loan lines are growing and also our loan book is improving. So it’s again operating in a normal range. These are just some of the aspects, but I believe that there are a number of lines. Even the insurance company, the Bradesco consortium.
So there are a number of companies, many businesses of the bank that will bring improvement to the fee income line item.
Anahy Rios: It is clear. Thank you very much.
Carlos Firetti: Thank you, Anahy. Very well. We are going to have our last question by Pedro Leduc with Itau BBA. Pedro, good morning. Go ahead.
Pedro Leduc: Thank you, Firetti. Two quick questions. First, robust growth in the other business lines, if you could elaborate on that. Greater share in the crop plan. And my second question, going quickly back to SMEs, Firetti mentioned the concentration in small enterprises. Do you see acquiring as an important tool for you to have best cost to serve and to better manage delinquency in this segment? Is this well-oiled or would you have room for improvement?
Octavio de Lazari: Pedro, good morning. Thank you for joining us. Well, Pedro, you know this really well. You’ve been following us for many, many years. And agri, the agribusiness was always a flagship for Brazil. Also given the origin of our bank, 80 years ago, Bradesco grew following the growth of the agribusiness of Brazil, particularly in the countryside of Sao Paulo in the north of Parana state. So we were always focused on agribusiness. Among the private banks we are leaders in agribusiness. And if you get BNDES, we are also leaders in disbursements for agribusiness operations via BNDES. And agribusiness is a part of the Brazilian economy, which is an excellent growth driver for the Brazilian economy, not just today, it has been so for some years now.
So more and more, we are giving special attention to the agribusiness industry in Brazil, particularly given the increase in the agricultural frontier. There in the Midwest, they are expanding. They are growing the Amazon biome and other Brazilian biome [indiscernible] and competition is moving fast now because agribusiness is not a small business. Agribusiness is a big, big business in Brazil with the volume of resources which is huge. So we specialized our team. We had 955 branches that were trained specifically, the whole team of these branches was trained in the last three to four years to serve our agribusiness clients in any of their needs, for their position of machinery, for planting their crops, in talking with agronomist engineers.
So 955 specialized bank branches all over Brazil. And we have all of the agricultural regions being served by specialized people to serve the needs of agribusiness clients. In addition, we have a constant presence in all the main agricultural trade shows in Brazil. This year, the business volume that we captured was double that of last year. And delinquency in farm loans is very, very small. So there is a moment when the farmers, they need to exchange the machines, their equipment. And equipment is becoming more and more sophisticated, the combined machines and — all driving the business. And another initiative we had, we had about five to six separate business platforms, that was two to three years ago. And then we were located basically in the Midwest, in the countryside of the state of Sao Paulo.
The platforms, few platforms that we had, we expanded those to about 14. And in the main agricultural production nuclei in Brazil, whatever the commodity they are growing, we have a platform there with a specialized team. And we grew this team of specialists. All of these platforms have agronomist engineers to give comfort to our farm clients. So this is a little bit of the growth we had in agribusiness. We’ll continue to grow these platforms. Like I said, there are 14 platforms, will be opening another four. Next year they should grow even more because there are other areas that are posting a lot of agribusiness growth. And with the change of the crops, they are moving from livestock to soybean to corn, and we’re studying these moves so that we can provide the right advice to our clients.
