And mainly also transactions involving small- and micro-sized companies. But we’ve already experienced some growth, which you could notice from the presentation. There was an important origination growth both in terms of individuals and also companies. Therefore, from now on, I mean growth has been resumed, is returning to normal levels, throughout the fourth quarter I think this should continue. And the same thing goes for the year 2024. It’s also natural that as there hasn’t been any strong growth in the loan portfolio, it was a very modest growth of our loan portfolio, and this is something that happened maybe across the board amongst all financial organizations. So client NII is a bit hurt and it takes a longer time to resume that margin.
I mean, based on all the operations that we are generating. But as I was saying, we didn’t stop to operate. We are still operating with clients with a better score, with a better risk profile. And this gives us a certain comfort in terms of the results. This will pick up with time. And in addition to that, there are also some other growth levers in terms of client NII. And it’s important to mention the underwriting performance that we had this third quarter that has been performing well. It grew almost twice as much. Therefore the work we’ve been doing at Bradesco Asset is already showing some significant results, more than BRL770 billion of assets under management. And this is also posting positive results to our company in addition to Bradesco Financiamentos, Consorcio and the insurance company which remains an important lever.
And it is certainly contributing to the results of the bank. All of these different levers as we move them, they are here to improve our final results in addition to all of our work in terms of cost control. Therefore the expectation going forward is to see the growth of this portfolio. Thank you.
Carlos Firetti: Our next question is from Mario Pierry with Bank of America. Good morning, Mario. You may proceed
Mario Pierry: Good day. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I’d like to focus a little on the guidance. You had provided a guidance in August. And you are below the guidance in several lines, particularly margin, fees, the loan growth and revenue. And I would like to understand why is it that you’re below the guidance, particularly regarding credit? Do you have the perception that the problems are greater than what you thought in August and you had to make a more dramatic adjustment, and whether you’re going to maintain your guidance for the rest of the year?
Octavio de Lazari: Hello, Mario. Thank you. Good morning. Indeed in some lines of the guidance, we are below the expectation. We are in perhaps in the low range of the guidance. But it was absolutely to make an adjustment in loan granting, particularly for small and midsize enterprises, Mario, because like I said, these are the loans that give us the best margins with best rates and you can add new services. So that became a little tighter for us to pursue the guidance. But we have an expectation also given the growth of loans in the recent quarter. The evolution of credit, as I mentioned, our expectation is to grow. We should target, I have to tell you, for the lower range of the guidance, but we are working on it. Well, credit, I think we can talk about this.
We had to adjust the market NII, as we mentioned, and this was solved, it’s water under the bridge. And this will be solved in 2024. We still have a large delinquency in SMEs and also for individuals. This bothered us. We had to make some necessary adjustments for that. And when we make these adjustments, we reduce the speed of loan granting. We had to slow down. We continue to operate, yes, but with companies with a better risk rating and better guarantees. But we kind of hold back those operations that have no guarantee and that offer a credit NII that is better. So that’s an ongoing work that we do to maintain the loan book at a normal acceleration. Q4 should show a credit acceleration in all lines, for large corporates, individuals or even SMEs. So it was necessary, it was responsible on our part to make that adjustment, Mario, so that we could control delinquency.
In the 90-day delinquency we could see a reduction. When we look at shorter delinquency, we can also see a reduction in all lines, significant reductions in the shorter term delinquency in all lines. And when the shorter delinquency will become an over 90-day pass due delinquency, the expectation is that this will improve. And this will improve all the interest rate curves. That is the word that we tried to do. Two days ago, we ended the month of October and we can see SME’s delinquency reducing it. We posted a lower delinquency than in Q3. So our expectation is to continue to work hard to achieve at least the lower range of the guidance.
