Against a backdrop of very low interest rates, squeezing the income statement, CaixaBank has increased its profitability by increasing its banking revenues and reducing the cost of risk. The integration of Barclays Bank, SAU at the start of the year also enhanced our profitability and growth. The Group also maintains robust solvency and liquidity levels.
CaixaBank is continuing to develop and consolidate various value propositions for different customer types − such as CaixaNegocios, AgroBank, HolaBank and Banca Premier − to increase customer loyalty and bolster our commercial leadership. Our share of direct deposit of salaries − a powerful indicator of customer loyalty − increased significantly in 2015, to around 25%.
Our strategic focus on financial planning for customers, through the CaixaFuturo programme, has fostered a significant increase in our market share for mutual funds, pension plans and savings insurance. We have also set up CaixaBank Consumer Finance to foster consumer credit, one of the priority areas for growth in the Plan.
We are maintaining our focus on the companies sector. We have set up the Corporate & Institutional Banking (CIB) unit, a transformational project to develop a market leading banking model at the national level for major companies and institutions.