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Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and I'd like to welcome you to Banco Santander Chile's second-quarter 2025 earnings conference call on August 5, 2025. (Operator Instructions)
So with this, I would now like to pass the line to Patricia Perez, the Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Patricia Perez - Chief Financial Officer
Good morning everyone. Welcome to Banco Santander Chile's second quarter 2025 results webcast and conference call. This is Patricia Perez, CFO, and I'm joined today by Cristian Vicuna, Head of Strategy and IR; and Andrés Sansone, our Chief Economist. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today to review of our second-quarter performance and results.
Today, Andrés will start with an overview of the economic environment, and then Cristian will go through the key strategy points and the results of the bank in the second quarter of the year. After that, we will have a Q&A session where we will be happy to answer your questions. So let me hand over to Andrés.
Andrés Sansone - Chief Economist
Thanks, Patricia. On slide 4, we have our current outlook. Since our last podcast, the tariff agenda has seen several developments. After postponing the implementation of new tariffs from July 9 to August 1, the US reached trade agreements with multiple economies. This includes tariffs of around 20% on several Asian countries and 15% on the euro zone. For Chile, the 10% rate will remain in place, which corresponds to the minimum threshold established.
Although there were initial threats of a 50% tariff on copper prices, the Trump administration ultimately decided not to apply it to input materials such as concentrates, cathodes, anodes, and copper crafts, all of which were excluded from the final decision while market reaction has been relatively mute so far, trade and geopolitical uncertainty has increased.
During the quarter, the peso briefly reached CLP1,000 per dollar following the announcement of -- on [liberation] date before returning to the CLP930, CLP940 rate. However, renewed trade tensions have led to depreciation of the peso, currently trading around CLP970 per dollar above our model-based estimate of approximately CLP940.
Long-term interest rates in Chilean pesos have declined, narrowing the spread against the US counterparts. On the activity side, preliminary Imacec figures suggest GDP grew 2.9% year on year in the second quarter or 3% when excluding mining.
While we await the full national account report on August 18, which will also include first-quarter revisions, the better-than-expected performance in the first half introduced upward bias to our full-year 2025 growth forecast, currently at 2.1%.
In terms of inflation, the second-quarter inflation surpassed on the downside, due to a drop in food prices and discounts associated with Cyber Day, with the annual change reaching 4.1% in June. We expect this inflation process to continue during the softer demand environment, both globally and domestically. Additionally, global trade diversion triggered by tariffs could reduce the prices of imported goods, supporting faster disinflation.
We maintain our forecast for the US at 3.6% for the end of 2025 and 3% by year-end in 2026, in line with the Central Bank expectation, with the risk tilt to the downside. Last week, the Central Bank made its first policy rate cut of the year, reducing the benchmark rate from 5% to 4.75% and signaling openness to another cut later this year. In our basic scenario, the policy rate will grow in 2025 at 4.5% and reach 4% in 2026, which is close to its neutral level.
On slide 5, we present recent developments in the regulatory framework. In the context of the fiscal fact, the government announced the submission of a proposal to amend the income tax with a focus on SMEs. The reform exempts most SMEs from the first category tax and also includes benefits for the middle class.
The estimated cost of the measures is $1 billion annually to be offset by higher personal income tax rates for the upper income brackets. The proposal does not include changes to the corporate tax rate for large companies.
On the housing front, the mortgage subsidy bill was approved on May 20, 2025. The legislation targets individuals purchasing new homes valued at up to USD4,000. It includes a 60-basis-point subsidy on mortgages rates, as well as a state guarantee of up to 60% for half the long term, covering up to 50,000 new homes.
On June 18, the first auction was held with 12 financial institutions participating and a total of USD10 million awarded. In this initial auction, Santander secured 18.3% of the total, the highest among our peers and just below our national market share in this product.
Finally, regarding the political landscape, 2025 is a presidential election year in Chile. Elections will be held on November 16 with a potential runoff on December 14. Primaries took place on June 29, with only the ruling coalition, Unidad por Chile, participating. Their candidate, Jeannette Jara, was elected.
Right-wing parties choose not to participate in primaries. According to the latest current poll, right candidate José Antonio Kast leads the race with 30% support, followed closely by left-wing candidate Jeannette Jara; and central right candidate Evelyn Matthei with 14%. While the presidential race has gained visibility, we must not overlook the parliamentary elections where the entire lower house and nearly half of the Senate will be renewed.
Polls show that the Chileans remain highly concerned with crime, security, and the business environment. Simulation suggests the right wing candidates may gain ground in Congress, driven by local campaigns emphasizing security. This implies that even if the left-wing candidate wins the presidency, Congress could lean right, potentially moderating more radical policy initiatives. As such, while some electoral related volatility is likely in the near term, we believe the longer-term market impact will be limited.
However, rising political polarization will likely continue to hinder the possibility of reaching meaningful agreements on legislation aimed at boosting long-term GDP growth. And with that, I will now hand it over to Cristian.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Thanks. Andrés. During the year, we have continued to make important advances in achievements in 2025 that we are very proud as we can see on slide 7. As we mentioned in our last call, we completed the milestone of migrating our legacy mainframe servers to the cloud in the project that we have named Gravity within Santander.
So since the first quarter, we are now operating 100% on the cloud, an important stepping stone for digital part of our strategy to become a digital bank with branches or Work Cafés in Chile. In this line, we have launched some interesting initiatives in recent months.
Firstly, we have enhanced the functionality of our smart POSes, allowing merchants to carry out banking transactional services such as receiving deposits and cash withdrawals, top-ups, and payments of utility bills. It is even possible to open a simple digital account through these points of sales.
We have also launched Santander en tu Comuna, a small transactional hub near local district authorities where we can offer financial services to the community. These efficient service points are extending our footprint in communities coming even closer to our clients in their day-to-day life.
With a longer term view of expanding our client base, we have enabled a simple savings account for children from birth, looking to compete in this product that up until now has been mainly centralized through the State Bank in Chile. Overall, these initiatives aim to increase transactionality and strengthen our funding base going forward.
During the first semester of 2025, we have continued to issue debt actively on the local and international market, issuing in Swiss francs, Japanese yen, and US dollar. We have also been highly recognized on several fronts. We continue to be highly ranked in terms of sustainability with an A grade in the MSCI Sustainability Index and 19.2 points in Sustainalytics with low risk. We are proud to have won the Best Bank in Chile by Euromoney and Best Private Bank.
And we also won the Top Employer certification for the seventh consecutive year. Furthermore, the mutual funds that we broker won over 40 awards in different categories.
On slide 8, we can see that yet again, the bank produced impressive results, reaching an ROE of 25.1% in the first six months of 2025 with a net income of CLP550 billion and an ROE of 24.5% in the second quarter of the year with a net income of CLP273 billion. This is the fifth consecutive quarter with an ROE above 20%. As we will see on the coming slides, this is a result of sustained strong profitability in our main income lines, good cost control, thanks to our strategy focused on a detailed branch with Work Cafés.
On slide 9, we can see how our rapidly expanding client base is leading to higher fee generation. We currently have 4.5 million clients of which around 60% actively engage with us and some 2.3 million are digital, accessing the online platforms on a monthly basis. The number of current accounts is increasing 10% year on year, driving the 7% and 8% growth of our acting clients and legal clients, respectively.
With this increase in the client base, we are seeing a 12% yearly increase in credit card transactions and a 19% increase in mutual funds that we broker. Overall, our clients maintain high satisfaction levels with the bank and our product offering.
Furthermore, we continue to expand our footprint among companies where we have increased the number of business current accounts by 25% in the last 12 months. This is explained by the simple business accounts we offer to smaller companies and the integrated payments offered through Getnet. We now have more than 212,000 Getnet clients, representing an annual increase of 21%. And Getnet now has a market share of 20% in terms of numbers of transactions.
As we can see in the table on the right, the increase in our client base and product usage is translating into high fees and results from financial transactions, growing 16.3% year on year. Our main products such as account fees, mutual fund fees, and Getnet continue to show strong results in the quarter while card fees follow similar trends to the first quarter this year.
On slide 10, we can see how our net interest margin has been improving over the last 12 months to stabilize in levels of around 4.1%. In the last year, our NIM has improved some 100 basis points. Firstly, when we compare the first six months of 2025 to those of 2024, we have a slightly higher US variation, which, as you know, directly affects our readjustment income.
The first half of 2024, our net interest margin was negatively affected by our balance sheet position related to the FCIC, the credit line given to us by the Central Bank. However, after the final payment of this in July 2024, we have seen a [marked] improvement, representing 60 basis points of NIM in the period.
Our tight control of our cost of funds has led to a further 50-basis-point improvement in our net interest margin. This has been compensated by a contraction of interest earned on our assets related to the decrease in our available-for-sale portfolio due to the payment of the FCIC and a stable loan book year on year. In the quarter, our net interest margin remains stable, following the solid trends of the first quarter of the year.
On slide 11, we can see how our recovery of income generation and tight cost control has improved our key performance metrics. Our efficiency ratio reached 35.3%, the best in the Chilean industry in 2025 so far, and our recurrence ratio reached 62%, meaning that over 60% of our expenses were financed by our fee generation.
During the first half of 2025, we have seen an increase in our operating expenses related to the [migration] of our mainframe server to the cloud, leading to an increase in administrative expenses, mainly in the first quarter of the year. However, overall, our costs grew below inflation in the year so far.
In the quarter, we continue to look for efficiencies in our branch network, closing some traditional branches while we remodel and refurbish to ensure a more efficient usage of space while upgrading steady appearance in line with our Work Café look and feel. It is thanks to these adjustments to our contact points with clients along with the evolution of our digital platforms that we have been able to achieve this impressive levels of operating efficient performance.
On slide 12, we show an overview of our cost of risk and asset quality. As we have seen in previous quarter, our cost of credit has been higher than our historical levels due to an increase in non-performing loans in recent quarter. Also, it is important to note that in June 2025, similar to the previous year, we adjusted the evaluation of guarantees in the commercial loan portfolio as part of our review of the provisioning models.
This year, we mitigated this impact by using CLP20 billion of voluntary provisions established in previous years. From the graph on the right, you can see that our NPL and impaired portfolio showed a reduction in absolute value and also a ratio in terms of total loans despite the stable loan book, demonstrating tangible improvements in our asset quality and early signs of asset quality recovery.
On slide 13, we can follow the improvements by product. Firstly, in our mortgage loan book, we can see that in absolute value, the non-performing loans have now stabilized while impaired loans increased marginally as more delinquent clients renegotiated their mortgage. Overall, we have seen clear signs of destabilization of the asset quality of this portfolio.
Regarding commercial loans, the bank focused efforts on improving the portfolio with several renegotiation initiatives and writing off some individual clients. With this, we have seen an absolute value of non-performing loans and impaired loans fall relevantly, and our NPL ratio is now at 3.6%. On the other hand, our consumer loaning has remained healthy during this cycle, thanks to our positioning of consumer lending to the mid to high income sectors.
On slide 14, we can see the CET1 ratio reached 10.9% in June 2025, far above from our minimum requirement of 9.08% for December 2025 and demonstrating some 30 basis points of capital creation in the last 12 months. This was driven by our income generation in 2024 and '25 and compensated by the 70% dividend payment of our 2024 profits and the current 60% dividend provision of our 2025 profits accumulated so far.
As we mentioned in our last call, we have a 25-basis-point Pillar 2 charge of which we have fulfilled the 50% required by our regulator in June 2025. Recently, at the beginning of July, the CMF published the definitive guidelines for Pillar 2 in Chile. The regulation adjusts the metrics related to a market risk in the banking book and the definition of when a bank qualifies to be a prioritized bank.
According to the CMS report, 10 banks could be classified as priority banks. This is the same number of banks who currently have a Pillar 2 charge. Banks will have to start reporting the new metrics related to the market risk of the banking book in December 2025, and the other aspects will be implemented starting with the self-assessment of regulatory capital report to be submitted in April 2027.
So let's start -- let's look at our outlook for the rest of 2025 on slide 16. Firstly, we are considering a macro scenario of GDP growth of around 2.1% with the US variation of 3.6%, and average monetary policy rate of 4.9%. Given the demand dynamics that we have seen this year so far, we are lowering our expectations for loan book growth to low single digits.
At the beginning of this year, we were expecting a reactivation of the commercial loan book with stronger trends coming from the consumer loan book too. However, now we are starting August and we continue to see weak demand. And given the upcoming elections and the global uncertainty in the background, we expect our loan book to grow low single digits.
On the other hand, our net interest margin should remain within guidance, with the third quarter impacted by the lower expected inflation. We expect our non-NII guidance to grow high single digits with further interchange fee regulation not expected until the end of the year.
Our efficiency levels should remain around the current levels so mid-30s, considering that we now see better trends in terms of asset quality, but the cost of risk was 1.39% year to date. We expect the cost of risk to improve slightly during the second semester to finish the year around the 1.35% area. Overall, we continue to see solid profitability in what remains of the year, so we are expecting ROEs of 21% to 23% range.
With this, I finish the presentation, so now we can start the Q&A session.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Ernesto Gabilondo, Bank of America.
Ernesto Gabilondo - Analyst
Thank you. Hi, good morning, everyone. Patricia, Andrés, and Cristian, and thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I have a couple of on my side. The first one will be on your culture risk. So as for the second quarter, consumer loans represent 15% of the total loan book. So what do you see its contribution in the future and how do you -- would you see the sustainable cost risk for Santander Chile?
And then my second question is on your long-term sustainable ROE. As you guided, it could be between 21%, 23% for this year. But how should we think about it in the medium term and what would be the common equity Tier 1 ratio that you will be assuming on that scenario. Thank you.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Hi, Ernesto, thank you for your questions. So regarding the cost of risk and the consumer part of the portfolio, so we are seeing some healthy growth demand from credit cards that will translate into consumer loans in the medium horizon. So we expect that the consumer lending demands continue to be a little bit above our average growth of loans, right?
So with that in mind, we are seeing very healthy metrics from our cost of risk of the consumer-lending portfolio. And this is what makes us believe that we will be in this 1.35 range, so a slight improvement in the second half of the year for the full portfolio. And we expect to increase slightly the contribution of the consumer portfolio within the total loan book.
So regarding your long-term ROE, so we reviewed our long-term ROE recently, about a couple of quarters ago from a range of 17% to 19% to above 20%. So what we have seen after the pandemic period and the high interest rate environment is that most of the transformation decisions that we have implemented in terms of our structure and the evolution of our DDoS stack are allowing us now to deliver very, very efficient levels for our retail universal banks, so mid-30s. With having that in mind and allowing us our fees and non-NII income to grow handsomely as we are expanding our customer base, we're confident we're going to be above 20% ROE for the long term.
Ernesto Gabilondo - Analyst
Excellent. No, thank you very much. Just to follow up in terms of the cost of risk, so yeah, I understand 1.35 that area for this year. But looking maybe to the next years, are you expecting this ratio to remain relatively at that level considering this slightly higher contribution in consumer loans, or how should we think about this ratio in the medium term?
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
As we mentioned in the call, we are going slightly above our long-term average. So we should have a normalization. It's not going to be a fast normalization, as if the issues were coming from the consumer lending portfolio. Those issues tend to solve faster. Issues in the mortgage portfolio tend to digest more slowly. So we're going to gradually go back to levels closer to 1.2% cost of risk. So that's going to take a couple of periods.
I'm missing the part of your CET1 assumptions. So that should be closer to 11% area. So where we are now, we feel like comfortable.
Operator
Tito Labarta, Goldman Sachs.
Tito Labarta - Analyst
Hi, good morning. Thank you for the call and taking my question. A couple questions also. I guess first on your loan growth, as you mentioned, it seems mostly weakness in the commercial book maybe partly going into the elections as well. So I mean, do you think going into next year, once you're past the elections, do you expect the loan growth to potentially accelerate? And if so, how much? And the consumer, you mentioned auto credit cards are doing fairly well. But should the rest of the consumer portfolio also accelerate sort of after elections? Just to think about you know what kind of loan growth we could think about for 2026.
And then a second question on fees, good performance there, continues to grow at a fairly healthy pace. Also kind of thinking more beyond 2025 since you have your guidance for this year, but is this high-single-digit growth that you're seeing, do you think that can sustain as well into next year? Do you -- I know you said that there shouldn't be any impact, I guess, on fees into year end, but do you expect some new regulation to potentially impact '26 as well just to think about longer-term fee growth? Thank you.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Let me take the fee question and I'll pass the word to Patricia for the loan book expansion. Well, first, it's a little too early for us to start into the 2026 guidance, but let me try to give you some clues of what to expect.
So this year, performance has been driven by the increasing fees explained by the expansion of our customer base. So that dynamic should continue and that's why we are aiming as part of our core strategy to grow the non-NII lines handsomely and above our asset growth. So that's something that should be expected.
There are a couple of moving parts that we are seeing for next year and the first one, and maybe the most important one is the impact that can come from further interchange fee limits on prices that we might suffer in the final quarter of this year, right? So there are some studies being done by the Ministry of Finance and the commission that is assigned for this decision, and we expect that to come to a ruling by year end.
So if you remember, our initial assessment of these two movement interchange fee cap, it was about CLP50 billion of total impact, and we only have seen half of that. So that's one thing to consider moving on to 2026.
Having said that, we are still expecting that our non-NII income grows faster than the loan book. And with that, I'll pass the word to Patricia.
Patricia Perez - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Tito for your question. Regarding the loan growth, we are seeing like on the retail part of our portfolio, as Cristian already mentioned, quite healthy growth on the consumer loan. Consumer lending shows -- already have shown signs of a pickup, with credit card loans growing around 10% year on year. And this should lead to more demand for installment loans. And regarding SMEs, we continue to grow strongly.
On the mortgage portfolio, we are seeing that this subsidy bill that was passed on May should help to activate the real estate market and mortgage loans as well going forward. And as you already mentioned, large corporate has grown lower than were expected -- we're expecting at the beginning of the year, and this is our big question mark.
We think that this is too early to say something regarding loan growth for next year. But obviously, the political landscape could help to reactivate all the investment projects and demand from larger corporates.
Operator
Pietro Nobili Ruz, BTG.
Pietro Nobili Ruz - Analyst
Hi, thank you all for the presentation. My question is very related to the last one, but I would like to know, given that the economic situation in the last year, your total loan portfolio changed the structure in the [portfolio], and what are your initiatives to change this and for example, come back to a 17% in the commercial -- no sorry, consumer portfolio? And how long can take this to come back to the numbers of [the years] before?
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Thanks for the question, Pietro. So organically, we will try to grow our consumer lending book but without rushing it because nothing good comes from rushing growth in those portfolios. We have to be a very smart and conservative lender in that area. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to achieve growth with a good deployment of our capital there.
There are some other initiatives that we might tap into, like we might try to rotate some risk or try to securitize some part of their portfolio if some changes in regulation are implemented that we are currently discussing with the relevant players and regulators in order to reignite the securitization system within the country.
So that could help, but it's going to take a while. It's not going to be a fast movement that will, let's say, we're going to converge in 24 months to that ratio. It's something that's going to be gradual, but we're taking the steps one by one.
Operator
Neha Agarwala, HSBC.
Neha Agarwala - Analyst
Hi, congratulations on the results. Very quickly, what are the main risks that you see around the business? With the upcoming elections, we are definitely seeing muted loan growth. But beyond that, do you see any other risks from the macro side or from any other risks on the asset quality that we should be mindful of for the rest of the year? Thank you so much.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Thanks for the question, Neha. Maybe Andrés, do you have something to say here?
Andrés Sansone - Chief Economist
Yes, from the macro perspective, the main ways to Chile's outlook continue to stem from abroad, particularly US-China trade dynamics. And in that sense, a sharper-than-expected global slowdown, especially in the US could have a meaningful negative impact on Chile's domestic economic momentum.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
So as Andrés mentioned, most of our risk, Neha, are currently being assessed from abroad. We are seeing a relatively positive scenario for the political elections given the surveys that we are seeing that suggest a more market-friendly environment. But having said that, the results from the primary rounds of election actually increased the central scenario but also increase the tail scenarios, right? So a more extreme probability. So that's also something to monitor.
Operator
Daniel Mora Ardila, Credicorp.
Daniel Mora Ardila - Analyst
Hi, good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I have just one question regarding to the NPLs. I would like to understand where should the NPL normalize in the coming quarters or years? Because if you compare to the industry level, Santander's NPL is quite high. And due to this situation, I would like to understand what exactly are the reasons behind having a commercial NPL well above the industry level and also a mortgage NPL well above also the industry level. I would like to understand if this was related to the bank's strategy, just the loan needs. I would like to clarify that situation. Thank you so much.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Thank you, Daniel. So let's take this part by part. So regarding our NPLs in our consumer lending portfolio, actually those NPLs are really above the average of our peers and show a very healthy performance. This is the most asset part of the portfolio. So a deterioration here is what impacts the NPLs, also the P&L the most.
Then regarding why our commercial portfolio shows some structural higher NPLs compared to the peers and industry, this is mostly because we have a higher penetration of SME lending within our total commercial loan book. So about a third of our total loan book is concentrated on SME lending, and this is something that is very related to our strategy to become a universal bank.
We cater to the retail customer. That's our specialization and that's expected to continue structurally, right, to having a higher NPL ratio, but that's mostly explained by how we view ourselves as a more retail-oriented operation.
And finally, regarding the situation on the mortgage portfolio, we have explained this in the past, but we have about 30% of our mortgage book that reprices on a variable rate and this is higher than the average of the industry, right?
So the typical lending mortgage will be originated on a 20- to 25-year fixed US product, and we have about a 30% that it's lent on a yearly US rate portfolio. That's the part that suffered the most during 2023 and early 2024 where real rates in the US were high and that repricing damaged the payment capability of some of our customer base. And that's reflecting in the 2.7% NPL that we are seeing as of now.
The good news is that that real rate scenario of US is now below 2%. So the repricing problem, it's not happening anymore. And we are now focused on providing solutions to our customers, so they can renegotiate and start paying again.
So what we're seeing now is that that part of the portfolio is going to remain stable at levels of 2.7%, and you can see that in absolute terms, it has remained for the last six months pretty much stable. And that's what we expect to start improving on the next quarters, but that's going to be a very gradual recovery.
So all in all, we are still expecting some better improvement of the total NPLs for the portfolio in the second half of the year. Most of the improvement will come from the commercial portfolio further improvements that we are expecting. But as a whole, we should still be slightly higher than the average of the industry, especially because of our composition of the commercial loan book and our SME orientation. I don't know if this helps.
Daniel Mora Ardila - Analyst
No, perfect, very, very clear. Just to understand, so the normal level of NPL will be very close to the industry level, just to understand how far are we from a normalized level of NPLs.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
I think it's a little too soon to tell for ourselves where we are seeing the long term, but there are still some improvements to the current levels. We should be below 3% by early 2026, and then that depends on how the evolution of the mortgage and general macro scenario environment evolves, right?
Operator
[Andrew Garry, Morgan Stanley].
Andrew Garry - Analyst
Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions here. I wanted to drill down on the net interest margin a bit more, and I realized this isn't an easy exercise to do. But can you try to walk us through how you're thinking about the path of NIM at least directionally, considering your macro expectations for inflation rates, possible loan mix shifts, and then obviously your deposit beta? I know you said during the call 3Q will be impacted again by lower expected inflation, but how are you thinking about 3Q versus 4Q this year and then 2026 in terms of the direction of NIM? Thank you.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Sure, hi, Andrew. So let's first review our general sensitivities of our balance sheets. So we're still carrying a long inflation $8.5 billion on our NIM sensitivity to inflation. And regarding our inflation to -- so this translates of something about 12 basis points of inflation per 100 percentage points of US variation. And then we have about 4 to 5 basis points of sensitivity per 100 percentage points of average monetary policy rate variations on the sensitivity to interest rates.
So with that in mind, we, in the third quarter saw a negative [0.4 UF] CPI news in July, and that's going to impact the July performance within the quarter. The rest of the quarter looks more normal. So in the end, we should be at very high 3s of NIM for the quarter, and then we expect to come back to levels of above 4.0% NIM in the final quarter of the year as the inflation path suggests for the market expectations for year-end. So with that, we will be very close to 4.1% for the full year, so around about 4% for the year.
And we expect something similar for next year as there are between one to two interest rate cuts to be performed by the Chilean Central Bank in the second half of the year, additional to the one that we saw recently. And we are expecting a monetary policy target, reaching 4% by the final part of 2026. So with that and inflations converging to 3%, we should be able to sustain NIMs in the current area.
Daniel Mora Ardila - Analyst
Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you so much.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Thank you, Andrew. So we have some feedback questions that we will like for you to answer after the final questions. I don't know if, Luis, we have any other questions.
Operator
Yeah, we have no further questions. So we just shared the survey on your screen, and your feedback will be greatly appreciated. (Operator Instructions)
Okay, it looks like we have no further questions. So I'll now hand it back to the Santander Chile team for the closing remarks.
Cristian Vicuna - Head of Strategy and Investor Relations
Thank you all very much for taking the time to participate in today's call. We thank you also for the answers you provide to our five-question survey, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Have a great day.
Operator
That concludes the call for today. Please note that the survey will remain open for a few minutes after the call closes. Thank you and have a nice day.