We are not relying, going straight to your question, on additional repricing of our products. But we believe that we will see kind of a shift in mix throughout 2023. I think personal loans — unsecured personal loans on one hand may outpace the growth of credit cards. But conversely, we should also see throughout 2023, the beginning of the consignado or public payroll loans. So the combination of this change in mix should provide us also with an expansion of net interest margin by and large. So I think that is my attempt to address your first question. Basically, net interest margins is expected to continue at a healthy pace, not because we will reprice the product up, but because of the growth of the volume and the continuous lower of cost of funding.
That is the number one. Number two, on the cap on credit cards, we have been hearing and discussing with a few analysts and investors about this question. And this is a question that has been lingering in Brazil for over a decade now, right? So for over a decade, we have seen attempts to restructure and reshape the unit economics of credit cards. We have been investing a lot of time understanding this and actively participating in these discussions. We don’t think that there’s going to be any short-term change to the unit economics of credit cards. It is a very complex product, that if you change one thing in interest rates, you should probably also change other things in interest-free installments. And therefore, it poses for a very complex outcome.
It is our view also that interest rate caps and credit cards will largely lead to lower levels of financial inclusion and lower levels of credit availability to the general public, which seems to be the opposite direction at what the Brazilian Central Bank and the current administration wants. So we any of those risks in the short term, but we are watching this carefully and participating in the debate.
Jorg Friedemann: And our next question comes from the line of Gustavo Schroden from Bradesco.
Gustavo Bradesco: Congrats on the bottom line, strong bottom line. My question is about — is indeed about the bottom line or the net income. I understand that you do not provide an official guidance, and I could hear your answer on the Tito’s question. But my point here is that if we annualized, for example, the fourth quarter results, we could have a sense of a feeling about what would be the net income in 2023, right? So what I’m trying to understand here is that — do you think that it would be reasonable to use the fourth quarter results as a prox for earnings quarter or earnings during the coming quarters in 2023 to have like as a starting point for us? Or do you see some change over the course that could change the dynamics that we saw in the fourth quarter?
Guilherme Lago: Gustavo, thanks so much for your question. It is — it’s a challenging question to address as we don’t provide guidance. But I think 2023 provides for a mix of puts and takes, as I mentioned to Tito. And on average, we expect that we will continue to post relatively healthy levels of returns on equity and bottom line profitability in Brazil. Although we do expect to continue to see seasonality playing its role throughout 2023, as we have seen in 2022. If you take a look on Slide 11 of the presentation, you will see that our adjusted return on equity for the third quarter of 2022 was about 20%, that it went up to 40% in the fourth quarter. So we expect to continue to see those trends throughout 2023, but healthy levels of profitability, nevertheless.
