solution. Among those, first, in Colombia, Aval Di- Digital Labs has been working to redesign popular existing websites such as Carulla, Metro Cuadrado, and Elempleo.com, and to add to those ecosystems additional products, including banking digital products to further our goal of adding profitability to digital growth. Being part of these ecosystems afford our banks the opportunity to increase digital clients through auto loans, mortgages, payroll loans and other products. These ecosystems currently serve over 10 million users. In Central America, we recently launched Kash, with a K, a transactional app available across the region that already has 100,000 digital clients, 70% of which are not bank clients, with more than 350,000 transactions to date. Soon, family remittances will be available through our Kash app. This will allow us not only to acquire at least 500,000 additional profitable digital clients by year-end, but also to increase our remittances' fee income and to make our app profitable. Finally, in Colombia, we're improving our digital channels to better fit our customers' needs. Banco Popular launched recently its banking app at the beginning of the year, and we expect Banco de Occidente and Banco AV Villas to launch their new apps in the next couple of months. These apps have a more modern, intuitive and secure design that will contribute to a better customer experience. In Central America, our focus has been primarily on customer service. In 2021, 54% of client interactions have been conducted through digital channels and 46% through our call centers and others. Customers have quickly adopted the mobile channel as the preferred means to make the requests. Almost 20% of those queries- queries are picked up and handled by chat bots and resolved without human intervention. To finish regarding our financial results, Diego will refer next in detail to our financial performance during the second quarter of 2021. However, allow me to highlight the following. To start with, Grupo Aval registered its best results ever for a quarter with attributable- attributable net income of approximately 950 billion pesos. Aval's attributable net income for the first half of 2021 was 1.74 trillion pesos. This resulted- resulted in a, in a return on average equity for the quarter of 18.2% and of 16.7% during the semester. Among the principal reasons for these results, I would include the following. First, 2021 has been a year with excellent results in the pure banking business, where we have been able to defend our intermediation spread mainly through pricing discipline while successfully growing our loan book. Our loan portfolio has been behaving better than expected, resulting- resulting in better cost of risk. In fact, cost of risk has moved to near pre-pandemic levels. Thirdly, we have benefited from a well-structured fixed income portfolio in terms of durations and yields. Fourthly, our non-financial sector was able to quickly regain momentum and return to pre-pandemic activity within a very short period, resulting in the recovery of significant income contribution to our bottom line. Next, our pension fund manager has been successful in defending its market leadership, in managing costs, and in obtaining healthy yield from the portfolios it administers. Lastly, throughout all our companies, we continue to stress the importance of a cost containment and/or cost reduction culture. I do thank you for your attention, and now I'll pass on the presentation to Diego who will explain in detail our business results. You have a good day. Thank you, Luis Carlos. I will now move to the consolidated results of Grupo Aval under IFRS. Before covering the following pages, bear in mind that, as of June 2021, MFG no longer affects the comparison of our volumes relative to a year earlier, given that its acquisition was completed on May 2020. However, the year-on-year comparisons of our P&L lines are still affected given that the second quarter of 2020 only included one month of MFG's operations. Now starting on page 9. Our assets grew 2.2% over the quarter and 3.4% year-on-year. Colombian asset growth continued strengthening, recording 2.3% increase during the quarter and 3.4% year-on-year, while Central American assets recorded a 0.1% quarterly and a 3.6% year-on-year growth in dollar terms. Quarterly depreciation of 1.9% and a 12-month appreciation of 0.2% take quarterly and annual growth in pesos of Central America to 2% and 3.4%, respectively. The share of Central America in our book remained at 36%. Moving to page 10. Loan growth continued to show a positive trend that now includes a rebound in Central America. In Colombia, the sustained growth of high-quality retail lending products was partially dampened by a still sluggish growth of commercial loans. The social unrest experienced during April and May in Colombia temporarily held back loan origination. Our total loans grew 2.1% over the quarter and 2.2% year-on-year. Colombian gross loan portfolio increased 1% during the quarter, slightly slower than the quarter earlier, while 12-month growth was 1.5%. Demand of consumer loans remained high in Colombia, resulting in a 1.7% increase during the quarter and 11.3% year-on-year. Competition remains high in low- risk products, such as payroll loans. However, as a new development, unsecured products have started to regain traction over the past couple of months. This may signal an increase in the risk appetite of banks. Payroll lending, that accounts for 61% of our Colombian consumer portfolio, grew 3.1% over the quarter and 21.3% year-on-year. In contrast, although performing better than a quarter earlier, credit cards contracted 1.6% and personal loans remained relatively stable. These products account for 12% and 20% of our Colombian consumer portfolio, respectively. As seen in other secured retail products in Colombia, mortgages remained dynamic, expanding 3.1% over the quarter and 12% year-on-year. Our Colombian corporate portfolio continued its mild recovery, growing at a still shy 0.4%. Our growth versus that of our peers continues to benefit by our pricing discipline where we privilege profitable customer relationships over market share. Cumulative 12-month growth was negative at minus 4.4% with a still high comparison base a year ago. Moving to Central America, our gross loan portfolio increased 2% over the quarter and 3.6% year-on-year in dollar terms. Quarterly performance in Central America, the strongest since fourth quarter 2019, was driven by a 2.9% growth of consumer loans. This performance resulted from a 4.4% growth in credit cards and a 1.3% growth in payroll loans. Quarterly growth in credit cards took the year-on-year growth to 5.8%, the first positive figure since second quarter 2020. Commercial loans and mortgages grew 1.7% and 1.1%, respectively, during the quarter in Central America. Looking forward, fundamentals for loan growth continues to strengthen in both geographies. We ex- expect commercial loan growth to be supported by improvements in economic activity and business confidence. In the retail lending front, we expect that the improvement in employment outlook will continue to allow an increase in our bank's risk appetite in products that were deemphasized during the shock. On pages 11 and 12, we present several loan portfolio quality ratios. The COVID-19 credit juncture continued unwinding- unwinding favorably for our banks during the second quarter, driven by a stronger and faster recovery in both economies than initially forecasted that has translated into a better evolution of reliefs