Mr. Carlos Rojo Macedo, Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Financiero Interacciones, commented: "We reported a strong performance this quarter with a ROE of 17.11% supported by strong commissions and healthy financial margins.
"This performance further demonstrates the strength of our business model, focused on providing financing and advisory services to the Mexican public sector and related SME suppliers. This strategy has allowed us to expand our loan portfolio by 14.92% YoY, mainly driven by our Infrastructure Banking business and with a strong performance in our SME banking unit this quarter. Financing needs in States and Municipalities have increased this quarter and we are expecting a very strong performance at our Government business unit as we conclude 2014.
"Following our internal liquidity strategy, we have focused on increasing stable demand deposits, while decreasing our balance in Time Deposits resulting in a twofold effect: Decreasing our cost of funds while keeping an optimal level of liquidity in line with Basel III. Deposits expanded by 3.77% YoY mainly driven by institutional deposits, which together with the successful placement this quarter of a Ps. 2,500 million debt issuance of Certificados Bursátiles for a four- year term has allowed us to further lower our cost of funding and enhance our financial margin performance.
"GFI’s flexibility to adjust to a changing business environment was further evidenced this quarter by our 14.92% loan expansion for the last twelve months, exceeding banking system growth of 8.12%* In government lending in particular, GFI achieved a 10.13% YoY loan growth compared to 1.84% for the industry.
"As we enter into the fourth quarter, we are very pleased with the increased financing demand we are seeing and remain confident that by the end of the year we will have achieved our 2014 goals for business growth and profitability bringing this momentum into 2015 with great optimism and confidence," concluded Mr. Rojo Macedo.
