Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the investor and analyst conference call for HSBC Holdings plc's earnings release for the first quarter 2022. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I will hand the call over to your host, Mr. Ewen Stevenson, group chief financial officer.

Ewen Stevenson -- Group Chief Financial Officer

Thanks. And good morning in London and good afternoon in Hong Kong. Thanks for joining today for our first quarter results. I'll run quickly through the presentation and then open up for questions.

At our full year results, Noel and I set out a path back to double-digit returns, strong revenue growth driven by volumes and rising rates and tight cost discipline. Our strategy to get there is on track. All of these building blocks were reflected in our first quarter results, strong underlying volume growth across most of our businesses, with $21 billion of lending growth and lending up in every global business and region. The benefit of rate rises is now being reflected in our net interest margin.

Our net interest margin was up seven basis points in the quarter, our highest quarterly NIM since the second quarter of 2020. And implied consensus policy rates have further strengthened since full year results, with further positive implications for our net interest margin and net interest income in 2022 and 2023. We maintained good cost discipline with adjusted costs down 2% versus first quarter last year, in line with our target of keeping costs flat this year and within a 0% to 2% growth range for 2023. Despite more challenged macro conditions this quarter, we remain firmly on track at this point to deliver double-digit returns in 2023.

While reported profits before tax were down on last year's first quarter, this mainly reflected a weaker quarter for Wealth driven by a combination of weak markets and Hong Kong COVID restrictions, together with a turnaround toward a more normalized level of expected credit losses from net write-backs in first quarter last year. On capital, with a 14.1% core Tier 1 ratio, we're now back within our 14% to 14.5% target range. We've completed the $2 billion buyback we announced at our third quarter results, and we expect to launch our next $1 billion buyback in early May following our annual general meeting later this week. And with the now expected benefit of higher net interest income in 2023, this should strengthen our returns outlook and our capacity to fund attractive growth in distributions.