Welcome to Barclays Half Year 2024 Results Analyst and Investor Conference Call. I will now hand you over to C.S. Venkatakrishnan, Group Chief Executive, before I hand over to Anna Cross, Group Finance Director.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Barclays' second quarter 2024 results call. At our investor update in February, we set out a three-year plan to deliver a better run, more strongly performing, and higher returning Barclays. We are continuing to execute in a disciplined way against this plan, and this is our second progress report. Our second quarter and first half performance keeps pace with our 2024 and 2026 financial targets, which are, first, grow returns with a target return on tangible equity of above 12% in 2026; second, distribute more capital to shareholders with a target of returning at least GBP10 billion between 2024 and 2026; and third, rebalance the bank with a target to reduce RWAs in the investment bank from 58% of Group RWAs at the end of 2023 to around 50% by 2026. Return on tangible equity was 9.9% in the second quarter and 11.1% in the first half of the year, on track for our target of above 10% in 2024. Total income for the second quarter was GBP6.3 billion, and it was GBP13.3 billion for the first half. And as you will hear from Anna, we continue to be focused on the quality and stability of our income mix. We are also increasing our net interest income guidance for 2024 from GBP10.7 billion to approximately GBP11 billion. We continue to control our costs trend and are seeing the benefit of the cost action, which we took in the fourth quarter of last year. Our cost-to-income ratio was 63% in the second quarter and 62% in the first half. We continue to manage our credit carefully. Impairment charges have improved in the U.S. Consumer Bank in line with our expectations, and our overall credit performance is strong, particularly in BUK. We remain well…

Thank you, Venkat, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 6, we have laid out Barclay's financial highlights for Q2 and H1, and you'll see the same throughout the presentation for each business. As before, I won't talk to these slides, but have included them for ease of reference. Turning to slide 7, the headline message is that Q2 remains in line with the plan we laid out in February. We delivered a statutory RoTE of 9.9% despite a circa 50 basis point headwind year on year from the cash flow hedge reserve. Excluding the loss on sales from the business disposals that Venkat mentioned, Q2 RoTE was higher than last year at 11.8%. First half statutory RoTE was 11.1%, and we continue to target above 10% in 2024, or around 10.5% on an underlying basis ex-disposal. Just like Q1, I was looking for four things in these results. Number one, income stability. Number two, cost discipline and progress on efficiency savings. Number three, credit performance. And number four, a robust capital position. Overall, we are where we expected to be, and I will cover these in more detail on subsequent slides. Starting with income on Slide 8, total income was up 1% year on year at $6.3 billion, and was impacted by the $240 million loss from the disposals. Excluding this, income was up 4%. At our investor update in February, we emphasized the quality and stability of our income, and how the more stable revenues that we generate from retail and corporate, as well as financing in the investment bank, provide a ballast to our income profile. Together, these businesses contributed 73% of Group income in Q2. Retail and corporate income included the loss on sale from disposals, and the underlying business income was broadly flat. Financing income was…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Alvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Thanks for taking my questions. Good morning. One on costs, please. And in the roundtable, I think it was in May. You mentioned there would be structural costs in Q2. I haven't seen any many of them called out and it's been the second quarter now that you've done better than consensus. So just wondering what the underlying sort of run-rate cost ratio will be reducing the cost for the full year. That’s the first one. And also UK in Investment Banking doing very well. I had a question on the revenue performance in U.S. cards. NII is down. You reached that 12% margin during your scripted comments I just wanted to see if you can give us any color around the path to that top 10 NIM over the next few quarters and how much of it is rate dependent. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you Alvaro. Good morning. Okay, first question. Just starting with one off cost. We did have a few structural cost actions within the IB. not really that significant. And certainly, over the full year, we don't expect to spend more on SBAs as than we have done historically, which we said was a GBP200 million to GBP300 million run rate. So for the full year, the thing that's really important here is the delivery of our growth efficiency savings. We've done another 0.2 in the quarter so it’s 0.4 in the half year. We got really good line of sight to that GBP1 billion. So that’s really what’s underpinning the cost results that you're seeing. And I just to reiterate, our cost guidance for the year is circa 63%. The consensus of total cost is there or thereabouts. So that's how I'd guide you there. In terms of the U.S. Consumer Bank, you're right, NII has fallen off a little bit in the quarter. There's a few things going on in there. Firstly, remember we did the Blackstone deal in the first quarter. So you're going to see some switching out of and into non-NII. Secondly, I would say seasonally sometimes a little bit lower in the second quarter than the first, just because of the amount of customer repayment that we have. And thirdly, within that, there is a little bit of lumpiness in terms of customer reward monetization, that ultimately is a really good sign because it means we're growing the book, but the way it can sort of chunk itself to counter our revenues it can be bit lumpy. So that’s all that's happening. So we haven’t changed our charge rate to a 12% NIM. That’s really around pricing optimization. It's around increasing our proportion of retail within the book and also really focus on our funding costs, and you'll note that our retail deposits are now 67%. We're really pushing that towards greater than 75% to deliver that 12% NIM. But thank you for the question.

Thank you.

Can we go to the next one, please? Thank you.

The next question comes from Joseph Dickerson from Jefferies. Please go ahead, Joseph. Your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess my two would be, is there any follow-through in 2025 and 2026 from this upgraded UK NII? As you mentioned there's an implied GBP2 billion of structural hedge income growth, assuming that you reinvest 75% of the maturities, but it seems like your NII upgrade today is based in part on more stable deposits. So would it be unreasonable to assume there's some upside to that GBP2 billion based on greater than 75% of the maturities being reinvested? That's number one. And then number two, one of the issues that investors have with your 2026 targets is that the high single-digit revenue growth in the CIB is on the flat risk-weighted asset base. And it looks like in the quarter, you needed GBP3 billion of incremental risk-weighted assets to grow revenue. So I guess, how do we square the circle in terms of maintaining the RWA balances relatively flat on 2023. I mean, it was nice to see the revenue productivity picked up year-on-year, but still, we've had a few questions on that today. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Joe. I'll take both of those. So on the first point, what we've seen and observed over the last quarter is a real stabilization in our deposit position. And that really led us to upgrade our NII today for the UK and for the Group to circa GBP6.3 billion and to GBP11 billion. The way we think of that is really an underpin to what we are doing. This is a plan of many parts. We set out really detailed targets and plans in February of this year really to sort of guide you towards what was important to us and allow you to track our progress. So as we continue through the plan, we're pleased to see this progress. But as I said, a plan of many parts, and we have more things to deliver around our efficiencies and obviously around our capital allocation. So that's the reason really why we’re not upgrading 2026 at this point in time. Of course in isolation, the movement in rates, you would expect to have some impact on that GBP2 billion number. But we're not going to mark to market our 2026 targets on a quarterly basis because we're just very, very focused internally on disciplined execution against the targets that we've given already.

Thank you. [Indiscernible]

Yeah. Thank you. On the second one, in terms of RWA, I mean, there's nothing really to call out here, and that may not any change in intention. What we saw, particularly towards the end of the quarter was some increases in RWAs that we would say are largely temporary and certainly not an indication of a change of direction or intent. Our objective here is twofold. Firstly for home build RWAs, they are broadly flat. And again, you can see that and you called out the RWA productivity. We're pleased to see that go up year-on-year while also growing the other side of the balance sheet. So I would say largely temporary in nature and nothing really to call out specifically. But thank you for the question. Can we go to the next caller, please?

The next question comes from Benjamin Toms from RBC. Please go ahead, Benjamin. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. First one is on the RoTE is tracking slightly ahead of guidance for this year. I appreciate your guidance is not greater than to extent you are your plan [Technical Difficulty] I think portion would reconsider your cash dear years or should be whatever the. And then secondly, [Technical Difficulty]. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much, Ben. In RoTE terms and in terms of delivery of our plan, we are on track versus where we would expect to be at this stage after two quarters. So we're firmly in line with our plan, and therefore, it wouldn't cause us to change either our rate of guidance for this year or the longer term or indeed our capital distribution plans, and that's why we've reiterated them today. In terms of deposit trends, you're right, we've seen greater stability or that stability come a little faster than we expected. Perhaps that's how to think about it. And we do, however, expect the structural hedge notional to continue to fall broadly in line with broader deposit trends. Customers continue to seek yield even though they're doing so at a much sort of slower level of migration than before. But we reassessed that structural hedge very carefully with each passing month. We regard it as a key way in which we manage the interest rate risk in our income line. So we'll continue to monitor it and update as we go. But at this point, I wouldn't change the sort of overall pathway. Okay. Thank you, Ben. Perhaps we can go to the next question, please.

The next question comes from Guy Stebbings from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, Guy. Your line is now open.

Hi, good morning, all. I have some questions. And just some questions around Slide 10 and the hedge. Firstly could you confirm how much of the notional is attributed to the locked income component you referred to 4 in ‘25 and 3.2 in 2026? So presuming it's sort of an order make of 75% in 25% and 55% in '26, but any color there would be very helpful. And then in terms of the 1.5% maturing yield, which I think is consistent with prior disclosure, could you remind us sort of how that breaks down between each year? And just a sort of final one on this slide. Maybe I'm reading too much into dotted lines and sort of putting a rule context it, but it looks to me like it's near sort of 2.5% in 2026, the gross yield in that dark blue dotted line. I would have thought given prior disclosure and comments we might be near 3%. So can I just check I'm not reading too much? Maybe how about that line dotted cross. Thank you very much.

Okay, thanks, guy. And on your first question. We probably need to come back to you in relation to start. On the second question around the 1.5% maturing yield. So the way I think about this is that coverage, the sort of tenor that we've got here is between 2.5% and 3%. But there's actually a range of maturities within there, and that really reflects. How we think about the composition of our deposit book and the varying behavioral sort of trends that we see within there. So we haven't guided or given you any clarity consistent about how that actually breaks down between those tenors. But just to say, over the next few years, we expect that will mature near within our 1.5% which is consistent over that period. And then on the final question, which was around the gross yield. Again, we don't guide to gross yield. We've given you some mass in February, which is really how we expect that structural hedge income over time. What I would just say is you can see that it continues to grind higher and I think this slide shows us that well. So at Q1, we were at GBP9.3 billion of locked-in income. Now we're at GBP11.7 billion of locked in income. And obviously, in the current year, that is 4.5 locked in already by the half year versus the total we have for last year of 3.6. So that's really how we focus on it, less about the overall yield and more about how much are we locking in base as a combination of the notion of but also obviously the yield and hedge it fast. So that’s how we think about that. We’ll come back with a bit more color.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Perhaps we can go to the next question, please?

The next question comes from Amit Goel from Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thank you. So my two questions. Maybe they follow on a little bit from Joe's but first one is, I think, consensus outside of the IB now already largely reflects the 26% target. So again, I'm just wondering how much hope there is to be both levels. I mean, especially in the UK where rates the better. And I guess by extending the duration of the hedge, I suppose that the point a bit more sticky. You're talking about stabilization. So the '25 again reduction in hedge size, I'm not sure if that does seem a bit too conservative. And then the second question is again just on the capital allocation. So I appreciate you commented that some of the RWA increase in IB has been a bit temporary in the quarter, but that is where we've seen most of the increase year-to-date and quarter today. So just curious when we'll start to see the allocation trend towards that 50% target, which could be important for seeing further re-raising. Thank you.

Okay, thanks Amit. In terms of the pathway on NII, not only for the UK Hey, but for the other parts of that core part of corporate banking, international corporate Banking and indeed, our private banking and wealth business. I mean, obviously, the trends that we're seeing around deposits and indeed rates are helpful, but we do see them as an underpin and hopefully an indication of our confidence in reaching those '26 numbers. And as it relates to the hedge as I said not on a mark-to-market hedge income on a quarterly basis. We gave you some moving parts and just to remind everybody, we've got 170 billion maturing over the three years. We've got a maturing yield of about 1.5%. We expect high to roll about 75% of that. And at the time of the investor update, when swap rates were around 3.5%, we though that would probably yield around GBP2 billion. Again, there are some movements in the yield curve that might in isolation, push that number up a bit. But this is a plan of many, many parts. So we're very focused on delivering the greater than greater than 12% RoTE in the round. On your second question around capital allocation, I want to reiterate, we think those are largely temporary and there's obviously also a natural seasonality to the RWA path within the IB. I think more fundamentally, though, what we're talking about here is the two-part strategy: firstly, holding that broadly flat. And secondly, growing elsewhere. So you're going to see this meaningfully change as a percentage really from the fourth quarter onwards. And that in the first part comes from the completion of Tesco, which we now expect to happen on the first of November. But also, but also really the organic progress that we're making in terms of the balance sheet. Now you can't see that yet coming through a strong balance sheet growth. That is what we expected. You might remember that in February, we said that we expected that the UK balance sheet would get smaller before it got bigger and that indeed is what's happening. But we're seeing good growth momentum. The mortgage market is up. We're taking a greater share of that. And we're also taking a good share of high loan-to-value mortgages. Our cards balances are up quarter-on-quarter and in corporate lending, whilst we haven't seen the balance sheet move yet, you can see the RWAs going up because we've extended balances to clients. So I think it's really sort of quarter four onwards that you're going to start to see this move meaningfully but just to reiterate on the RWAs and the IB our intention is still for this to be broadly flat and really for the work to be done elsewhere in moving that percentage But thank you for the question. Perhaps we could go to the next one, please.

The next question comes from Edward Firth from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Good morning, everybody. I had two questions, please. The first one was U.S. consumer cards, credit quality. I think you said to see the provision charge has turned. But if I look at your non-performing loans in the quarter, they were up, I think, 7% or 8%. So just trying to get a sense as to where we are in that price and how we should expect that to progress from here if that's okay. And that’s the first question. And then the second question I'm just trying to sort of square the BUK performance with some of your targets and with some of the revenue coming through from the hedge because you're making around a 20% return on equity in the first half and even if I normalize impairment but when you when you take your share of the hedge benefit it's going to go in there that's probably closer to 25 or even high 20s returns as of today. And yet in your target -- I think you said greater than 15% return on tangible by ‘26 and I know it's greater than 15% encompasses an awful lot but I guess mid to high 20s there's a long way ahead of that. So I'm just trying to think what should we be thinking about in terms of the difference between the greater than 15 and the mid to high 20s? And how do you think about a mid to high 20s return in a sort of we had to listen to the FTA talking about consumer duty yesterday. I mean should we be expecting some of this GBP2 billion hedge to actually go to depositors or are you we should be confident that we can hold the bulk of that thanks so much.

Thank you, Ed. I'll start on cards and Venkat might want to add something on USA quality also and then and then we'll go into the UK performance. Then really the U.S. CB and impediment pathways is panning out as we expected. The last year when we saw the macroeconomic variables particularly around unemployment start to increase what we expected was first delinquencies would increase, and secondly real if you like non-performance and write-offs would follow. And that's exactly what's happening here. And you can see it quite clearly in the charts which I think is on Slide 13. And so this time last year we got ahead of this in a couple of ways, the first was by building our reserve proactively. And so you can see that reserve build through the second half of last year and that was in anticipation of the write-offs and that movement of non-performing loans that you're now seeing. So from here what I expect is consistent with what we thought at the beginning of the year which is actually we'd expect impairments in the second half to be lower. Now the composition of that is going to still look a bit like what it does in Q2. You're going to have relatively high levels of write-offs and you can have lower levels of provisioning. And then overall for ’24 it's going to be lower than ‘23. But we did take actions last year in credit lines also in anticipation of this. And that certainly helped. And just to remind you, this is a high-quality book. Venkat, anything to add?

Yeah. I’d add everything Anna said. And I think the other thing to look at is, in credit cards, as you know, one of the most important factors driving performance is employment or unemployment. The Fed's statement yesterday pointed, even though they didn't change rates, pointed to a balance in their concern shifting a little away from inflation into softness and employment. That is speaking to the thing that we put in and anticipated. And we've, as Anna said, tried to risk-manage the portfolio in advance of that. And so we hope we're prepared for what could be a softness. But the charges -- non-performing piece is exactly as Anna said. It's following upon a provision bill, which was earlier.

Okay. Then on your second point, just around BUK performance, we take confidence from the quality and the stability of the balance sheet. But that balance sheet is going to change from here. We are anticipating asset growth. So obviously we expect NII to grow over time, but I'm also expecting that the RWAs here are going to grow over time. And clearly we haven't seen growth in assets in BUK for a couple of years now. So that will moderate it. And it's just a reflection of, really, if you like, the emphasis moving from profit being in liabilities to really trying to grow the asset books for when the curve turns. So that's really what we're thinking about here. Think of it as an increase in equity rather than a reduction in returns. And that's really what's led to our RoTE thought process. Venkat, anything to add about that?

Yeah. I completely agree. You have to look at this business, as Anna said, over a cycle. And the composition of the revenues shifts from liabilities to assets over that period. And as assets revenues increase, so does your equity. And that will have the effect of moderating the RoTE. And then impairment. Impairment has remained fairly low. And the UK, we'll see what the Bank of England does later today, but the UK employment picture has remained strong. There's really only one way this thing can go. And so you've got to be careful about where impairments go in the long run. And that would be the other moderating influence.

Yeah. And I think you sort of called that out in your remarks. So we're still expecting the sort of longer-term trends here. To your specific point on the FCA and the consumer duty, there is nothing specific in our RoTE guidance that relates to that at all. We feel we have the right ranges both across savings and indeed elsewhere, and they're in compliance with it. So there's nothing there that would mitigate or moderate that RoTE.

Yeah. And look, this is an important protection measure for consumers. We fully support it. And I think it's important for the large financial institutions, all financial institutions, to be fully in conformance with the requirements of those practices. And they're good practices.

Great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Can we go to the next question, please?

The next question comes from Chris Cant from Autonomous. Please go ahead, Chris. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have one on the UK and one on consumer, please, the U.S. consumer. So on the UK, in your remarks, you referenced the stabilization in deposit books coming off the back of pricing actions that you've taken earlier in the year. I mean, you don't give us much disclosure around your deposit costs. But if I look at the interest expense you're disclosing in the UK financials, I think that's down half on half, i.e. lower overall interest expenses in the first half versus the second half of last year. So I just wanted to understand a little bit more what pricing actions you've taken, and if there is any color you could give us around the level of your average deposit rates, which some of your domestic peers do provide, that would be very welcome. And on consumer, obviously, income down, you've spoken to that in terms of the amortization and various other things, bits of lumpiness, I guess. How should we think about the progression of income for that segment from here? Should we be expecting growth to be coming through in the second half, or is more of the progression you're expecting to that 12% NIM back-end loaded within the plan? Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. So we don't disclose our deposit costs. Obviously, within the interest costs and the P&L, there are more things going on than savings within there. However, what I would say is we've made good progress around not only our range of savings, it's much broader than it was, but you can also see, and I think it's probably on Slide 16, the continued progression that the customer had towards yield. So fixed-term deposits continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace. We have a lower proportion of fixed-term deposits than the industry more broadly, which is what you would expect, but still a significant change there. And I would just say, really, it's about range. It's about pricing consistently. It feels like we've performed well in the first quarter, sorry -- first and second quarter. The savings market overall has grown. And we initially lost share last year, but I would say that's very much stabilized this year as we've seen those benefits come through. And current account share has actually been flat throughout. So it feels like we've managed that well. In terms of consumer in the U.S., there is a bit of seasonality to U.S. cards. Typically, you see slightly higher income and slightly higher impairment in the fourth quarter, so we'd expect those trends to be the same this year. It's a bit the converse of what you see in the current quarter. There's a seasonal down in Q2, and you tend to see that go up again for holiday spend in Q4. So that's the seasonal element of it. More broadly than that, obviously, we do expect to grow. Cards growth takes a while, so you're going to see this happen over time. There are also some headwinds to NIM, an income that we called out, so specifically around late fees, although that appears to be delayed at this point in time. We'd expect to take some actions in response to that in terms of our optimization. We're continuing to build our deposits in the U.S. So I'd expect these to manifest themselves gradually over time, the implementation of that. But you're going to see some lumpiness from, for example, the implementation of that late fees whenever it comes.

Thank you. On the UK deposit piece, I know you don't disclose, you don't give us a specific number. I guess the reason for the question is, when I look at data we do get for 2023, which we can at least see on an annual basis, Barclays in the UK was paying meaningfully lower rates than large incumbent peer banks in the UK. I guess off the back of that we saw deposit volumes compress for Barclays to a far greater degree than for those peers, so customers moved elsewhere because you weren't keeping up, I guess, with even the large incumbent banks. We've seen that stabilize in the first half. Is it just that the customers who were going to move have now moved and actually you've retained a meaningful pricing differential to large peers, or do you feel like you've substantially caught up with large peers in terms of your rates?

So as I said, we've seen that market share trend really stabilized in the second quarter. And what that tells me is that two things are going on. Firstly, our range and pricing performance is better, and secondly, there is some moderation there more broadly across the market, so I think it's both, Chris, actually.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Perhaps we could go to the next question, please.

The next question comes from Robin Down from HSBC. Please go ahead, Robin, your line is now open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a couple on the businesses being disposed of. With the German business, you've called out the kind of revenue contribution that that's making, but I don't think we've seen the cost and the impairment contribution. Is that business kind of a break-even business? I see most of the impairments in the head office relate to the German consumer finance business, so is the gap there just kind of costs for around GBP30 million, GBP40 million a quarter? Is that how we should be thinking about that? And the second question, I guess, is probably more for Venkat. I think you quoted on Bloomberg this morning saying that the sales and merchant acquiring unit is underway. I was just wondering if you could give us any kind of updates on that disposal. Thank you.

Thank you, Robin. So on German cards, I mean, you're broadly in the right ballpark. It's not a significant PBT contributor to the bank, and therefore, on sale, the meaningful difference that you're going to see in the P&L or balance sheet is actually the release of their RWAs, and that's really what drives that 10 basis points of CET1 accretion that will happen either in Q4 or Q1 is our expectation. So you're in the right ballpark. Venkat?

Yeah. So I think, Robin, what I said earlier on a media call is that we had three acquisitions or three acquisitions and three disposals and to one acquisition stated for this year. The acquisition was Tesco, of course. The disposals were German cards and Italian mortgages, which have one been announced, German cards, Italian mortgages announced and completed. And then the last one was merchant acquiring. And on merchant acquiring, what I had said is in a way of all the things, it is the most complex one because of the technology involved, because of the kind of financial arrangement we would want and the kind of service we'd want. So that process is still ongoing. And what I said also on the call is that, we have nothing to say about it now. When we do, we'll tell you. But it is the most complex of that list of four.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Perhaps we can go to our next question, please.

Our final question we have time for today comes from Andrew Coombs from CitiGroup. Please go ahead, Andrew. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. A couple of strategic ones, please. Firstly, on U.S. consumer, I've noted the delay in the IRB inflation until Q1. But we're now in an environment whereby it looks like for the U.S. banks, the delay in Basel 3.1 could potentially be much longer. I know when you gave your investor today, you talked about the risk rate density go from 100 to 160, and then through mitigation back to 145. And you thought that would be comparable to the U.S. banks post Basel 3. But in an environment where Basel 3 doesn't get introduced in the U.S., or Basel 3.1 -- sorry, in the US, how do you feel about the competitive positioning of that business? If a co-brand deal comes up for renewal, do you think you can still price competitively versus the U.S. peers given a higher risk rate density? And then second question, similar theme, strategy, but investment bank given, I know you said the IB RWA increase is temporary this quarter. But if somebody comes to you and says, I'd like an extra GBP100 million of RWAs, I think I can generate more than 12% RoTE on that from your investment bank. You've always said your North Star is the RoTE. So do you say, yeah, fine, please go ahead? Or is it a case of reducing the RWAs from 63% down to 50% a Group in the investment bank by holding them stable as a more of a priority? Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Andy. I'll start and then I'll hand over to Venkat. So on consumer, you're right, these regulatory models are complex to implement. We've just seen a movement over the quarter end really that takes us from Q4 to Q1. That has always been an acceleration of the Basel requirements for us. And we talked about that in February. So we always expected there to be a gap. Obviously, we'll have to see what happens to the U.S. rules. And it's very, very difficult for us to comment on that until we see both that and indeed the final UK rules. In the meantime, we're focused on the things that we can control. So we're focused on the commercial actions that we said we would take, which are really around improving the capital efficiency of the business through doing trades like the one that we've already done with Blackstone. We continue to work on the NIM, as I alluded to before, through pricing, through deposits, et cetera. We've got a big program here of efficiency and digitization. All of those things will improve the returns of the business. So we're really sort of focusing on execution of the piece here that we can control and which we have line of sight to.

Yeah, I'll just add to what Anna is saying, which is that we will control what we can control. And we try to do that in a very efficient way. And we're doing things in capital management which try to alleviate what could be the impact of these changes. So more broadly speaking, of course, we have the view, which we've shared publicly, that we think the changes in the UK and the U.S. ideally should be similar and should happen at roughly the same time. That would be our wish. And then if I come to your point on the RWA and the increases, what I would say to you is the strategic ambition or goal of this bank is to keep IB RWAs roughly flat, absorbing some of the capital impacts we've spoken about, and then growing RWAs outside of the IB, and therefore shrinking the relative proportion of the IB. Now, if somebody comes with an interesting high RoTE trade, we would, of course, consider it. It would have to be shorter term, right? It's not something that can affect the broader strategy. So the broader strategy is that relative reduction. And if there are shorter term opportunities that we can take, of course, we would consider them, but at the secondary part of the broader strategy. All right?

And just to remind you, Andy, that the areas that we want to grow our RWAs in, so that GBP30 billion, they are in the areas of the bank where the returns are meaningfully higher than the Group average. So across BUK, across the corporate bank, and indeed across private banking and wealth, they are at least high teens, if not into the 20s. So that's the trade-off that we are really thinking about here as we consider the capital allocation for the firm. Okay. So I think that was our final question. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for your continued interest in Barclays. We're pleased to give you the results today. We look forward very much to seeing some of you on the road over the next few weeks, or indeed, if you've got a holiday, we'll see you in September. But thank you very much and see you soon.

Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes today's conference call.