For the past few years, the main question posed to Inter was how many customers the bank could acquire. With 44 million customers, 25.8 million of whom are active, the Menin family 's bank has overcome the phase of proving its acquisition capacity. Now, the challenge is to transform scale into profitability.

In the program "Numbers Speak ," Alexandre Riccio , CEO of Inter in Brazil, says that the answer lies in an asset that still receives less attention from the market than the growth of the customer base or the expansion of the loan portfolio.

"We are very close to having 9% of all Pix transactions in Brazil going through Inter," Riccio stated on the NeoFeed and CNN Brasil program.

In the first quarter of 2026, Pix transaction volume reached R$ 396 billion. This figure helps explain why the financial institution is increasingly emphasizing its definition as a financial platform.

"Inter is a technology platform that offers financial services," Riccio said on the program, which airs bi-weekly on Fridays at 7:45 PM on CNN Money .

According to the executive, Inter registers around 20.8 million logins per day and is close to reaching the mark of 1 billion monthly financial transactions.

Each of these transactions carried out within the platform increases the customer's relationship with the digital bank. And it is this relationship that generates deposits, investments, and financial activity.

The result is a funding structure considered one of the institution's most significant competitive advantages. Today, Inter's funding cost is at 64% of the CDI (Brazilian interbank deposit rate), one of the lowest in the national financial sector.

"With this 64% of the CDI rate, probably the lowest funding cost in the industry, we can choose where we want to compete," Riccio stated.

Credit at Inter

The loan portfolio ended the first quarter of the year at R$ 49.8 billion, a growth of 33% compared to the same period last year. This growth rate is three times higher than that observed by peers in the sector.

According to Riccio, the strategy is to continue expanding credit operations while maintaining risk discipline and focusing on segments where Inter believes it has a competitive advantage. But it is necessary to increase profitability.

Return on equity (ROE) reached 15.5% between January and March of this year. In 2023, the bank internally set a goal of achieving an ROE of 30%. "This is still a strategic objective for Inter," said Riccio.

To track this evolution, Inter created a metric called the "Rule of 50". Inspired by indicators used by technology companies, the rule establishes that the sum of revenue growth and ROE should remain close to 50%.

"The sum of revenue growth plus ROE needs to be in a band close to 50%," said Riccio.

In practice, the metric reflects the bank's attempt to sustain annual growth of around 30%, while simultaneously moving towards the 30% ROE target set by management.