Thank you everyone for joining this session with Anna Cross, Group Finance Director for Barclays. Anna joined Barclays in 2013, having previously worked in both banking and retail across several large U.K. companies. Prior to moving to her current role as Group FD in 2022, she'd obviously held a range of senior roles across finance in Barclays. Anna, I think this is your first time at the GS Conference, if I'm right, so let me extend a very warm welcome. It's my second. Is it? Yeah. Well, then, noted. Sorry. Sorry to disagree with you at the outset. We're 40 seconds in and we're already going so far. I know, but it's lively. I went to Rome. 2022? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. That was my first outing. The reunion after COVID. Yeah. Okay. Good. This is being webcast, everyone's heard me get that wrong. We have 35 minutes, we'll obviously leave some time at the end for audience Q&A. I guess let's just start with one of the questions I get a lot, which is about the U.K. The U.K. backdrop does look quite challenging, yet lending across the three businesses grew at around 5% in the first quarter. There's some good data out there at the moment, 15% growth in the U.K. corporate bank. Can you talk us through what's driving that growth in what remains obviously an uncertain environment? What gives you confidence in sustaining that greater than 5% U.K. lending CAGR? How are you competing to achieve that growth? Yeah, sure. I think sometimes from the outside in, the U.K. looks pretty challenging, but when you get into the fundamentals, it's actually incredibly resilient. The start point is really what's the capacity of the economy to absorb that lending. If you look at, for both households and for corporates, the debt to GDP ratio is at historic lows. The capacity and capability of the economy to take on more lending is definitely there. When we look at the intents, particularly of corporates, we see a remarkably resilient intent to borrow. We do a Business Prosperity Index every month, and what we're seeing is that more than 80% of businesses across the U.K. have confidence in their business model and have confidence in their investment plans. When we look at what they're actually investing in, that is skewed very, I would say, favorably towards things that will improve their productivity and their resilience. Specifically technology, specifically AI, and actually about 70% talking about some investment in the cyber environment. Great capacity, great intent. The credit environment remains benign. What we've been doing is, particularly on the retail side, focusing on actions which fill in capability gaps that we had, whether that be higher risk or higher complexity lending within Kensington, open market lending with Tesco. All of those things are really improving our reach and our breadth with consumers. When you get into corporate, it's actually about the intent to lend. I I t's not about price, it's not about risk, it's actually about technology capability and product capability that we're just bringing into the market. When you combine, if you like, that supply side with the demand side that we're seeing from both corporates and consumers, that's what gives us the confidence we can keep going. Got you. Turning to returns, your group return on tangible equity targets greater than 12% and greater than 14 in 2026 and 2028 respectively. That follows a Q1 print of 13 and a half. How should we think about the trajectory through the rest of this year versus that 2026 target I mentioned? What are the key building blocks to take you from there to the greater than 14 in 2028? Yeah. I think, in principle, I would start from the fact that our aim is to not stop at 2028, but actually what we're doing is we're putting in place building blocks now that will take us beyond that 14% in 2028. Specifically, what we're doing at the moment is not only driving the strategy, which is about greater revenue momentum and driving efficiency so that we can invest in the business, but we're disproportionately investing in technology and in fee income that we believe will take the returns beyond 2028. When I think about 2026, in Q1 we generated 13.5%, as you say. That was after taking 170 basis points from motor finance and a single name. The underlying momentum is very strong. That's coming from the fact that we have skewed even more of our capital towards more stable, higher returning sources of income. That's about 70% now. The fact that some of the macro environment was obviously very helpful, particularly around the structural hedge. That's not flowing through now, but you will see it in subsequent years. Because we've been investing in the investment banking franchise, you're seeing that being able to perform in the current volatile environment. That sort of diversification, if you like, gives us the confidence for 2026. 2028 is more of the same. It's more lending growth. It's the same discipline within investment banking. It's incredibly simple, the strategy. It's driving revenue momentum across the businesses while keeping capital discipline and particularly driving efficiency so that we've got the capacity to invest in the top line. More of the same gets us to that greater than 14. In 2028. On the topic of returns, you said that you'd expect to generate more than 200 basis points of capital organically this year t hat increases to more than 230 basis points in 2028. That level of capital generation does suggest additional capacity beyond the distribution targets of greater than GBP 15 billion. I appreciate it's a more than target. How should we think about any additional upside or flexibility you may have versus that 15 reference point? You're right. If you triangulate between the capital that we expect to generate, the amount of additional investment that we are doing, and the distributions target, even given it's a greater than, there is clearly more capital than that in the plan, and we're really open about that. Our intention is to distribute greater than GBP 15 billion. That's clearly a meaningful step up. In so doing, there's a faster cadence to it, so we're now on a quarterly buyback. We've increased the dividend from GBP 1.2 billion to GBP 2 billion. All of those should underline our confidence in our ability to generate and return capital. We want to create a bit of flexibility within the plan. We do see that there may be opportunities to invest organically or inorganically. As we've spoken about many times before, we've got a clear hierarchy. Reg first, we are planning to stay at 14% until we have full regulatory clarity in the U.K., all of our returns and distribution targets are based on that. The second is obviously returning capital to shareholders, the third is investing in the businesses. To do that, our expectations around returns are very, very high because we're comparing it to those distribution returns, if you like, particularly around the returns on a buyback. If we can't deploy it sensibly in a way that is the right thing for the shareholder, we'll return that excess. Okay. Clear hierarchy. On cost, you delivered 56% cost income, in Q1 versus the guidance for high 50s for this year, and the low 50s by 2028. How should we think about the evolution of cost from here, particularly in light of the inflation trends that we're seeing? Also, how are you balancing the additional investment opportunities that you probably see, but also the requirement to start delivering on the efficiencies as well? Yeah. Cost is the thing that we and everyone else has most within their control, even sort of accounting for inflation. Specifically, what we're focused on is efficiency. Cost is an output. We want the organization to deliver more efficiently because that's better for our clients and for our customers. It's the thing that Venkat and I focus on every single day. It's important not only because of that client lens, but because it creates more operating leverage, more resiliency in the bank. Particularly in an uncertain environment, that's exactly what you should be doing, and particularly in an environment where you've got inflation. At the same time, what it does is it gives us the capacity to invest. The way we think about it is we have a gross efficiency target. That gross efficiency, it was GBP 2 billion, our initial target from 2024 to 2026. We'd actually done GBP 1.7 billion across 2024 and 2025 alone. The next three-year horizon, which is 2026 to 2028, we're saying we'll do another GBP 2 billion. That's essentially to allow us to absorb inflation and invest in the businesses without the absolute level of cost elevating too much. Ours is not a cost-down strategy, but it is an efficiency strategy because we want to invest in the businesses. In the first sort of three years, we've been very focused on property, people, technology costs coming down. How we're thinking about it is much more horizontally across the firm and thinking about journeys, client journeys that are common end to end, and really how we deploy that more efficiently in the bank. For example, at the moment, about 70% of our data is on the target enterprise data platform. By the end of 2028, that will be 100%. That opens up many, many opportunities to deploy digital and AI in the organization. Those are the types of things that we are thinking about. We are also accelerating model development like everyone else. Our ability to get code into production is probably about 15% faster than it was and obviously driving automation through scale AI. We are thoughtful about that, both in terms of the investment return and really how we use AI to augment what we're doing. We do think that there's opportunities to do things more efficiently, but also reinvest our colleagues' time, if you like, into more meaningful, productive client and customer discussions. Yeah. Then maybe if we pivot slightly into the operating divisions, starting with Barclays UK. 20% returns in Q1 g reater than 20 for this year. Now that's supported by the GBP 8.1+ billion of NII. Can you walk us through, I know we touched on the macro at the beginning of the discussion, but just the puts and takes for this year, and also just how sustainable is that rate of return in the context of what is a competitive banking market in the U.K.? Then maybe as a follow-up, how should we think about the ability to leverage the links between Barclays UK and then the Private Bank and Wealth Management opportunity set as well? Yeah, sure. I would say that our Q1 experience has been slightly biased to the positive. Neutral or positive versus our expectations. Deposit growth or deposit stability was actually pretty good in Q1. Normally, we see a seasonal downturn as everybody pays their tax, but it was broadly stable. We saw good momentum in current accounts coming from real wage growth, which was good to see. We had a good ISA season, all of that is good. I talked about the structural hedge before. We were able to reinvest at 3.9 as opposed to 3.5 and l ending growth continues. It's not just mortgages and cars that you've seen for the last few quarters, but actually for the first time, we're starting to see business banking moving, actually gross lending was over GBP 1 billion in a single quarter, really pleased with that momentum. All of those things are positive. A key point for BUK is its efficiency, though. BUK is the one division in the bank where we expect absolute cost to fall over time. This year in particular, there's a lot of work for us to do to integrate Tesco, and to walk those costs out of the building. That is what we're doing right now. You're going to start to see those impacts by the end of the year. In terms of the link to Private Bank and Wealth Management, we think this is a big opportunity actually for both of those businesses. On the 30th of April, so please don't ask me how it's going because it's pretty new, we launched our wealth advisory business, which is focused from, such as business in Private Bank and Wealth Management. What that is advice for people who have GBP 150,000 or more to invest. That makes it sort of mass affluent. There's about 400,000 customers in Vim's world who we believe would really benefit from that kind of advice. A clear link to Premier. What it means is that, if you come to see me as a wealth advisor, you have your first conversation with a human, that is fee free. Thereafter, your interaction with us is digital in terms of the way you track, the way you monitor, the way we manage your investments. It really has that dual benefit, if you like, of combining human and digital together. That really completes the continuum in that business that goes all the way from Digital Investing, which is an execution-only Digital Investing platform, Private Banking at the other end, which is a real high net worth and ultra-high net worth business. This is the piece in the middle that we think is truly right for now, which is a combination of human advice and digital execution. Just to follow up on that, how much of this is a bit of a chicken and egg? On the one hand, you have the mass affluent product offering and the technology to deliver it at an appropriate rate of return for the scale it will be. You find the business opportunity, then you need to find the technology to solve it. Does that make sense? Yeah. No, it does. I think there's a few things coming together here. I think there's clearly activity in the market about the advice guidance boundary. I think there's an expectation that there is an advice gap in the U.K. That perhaps some of the regulatory changes of the past have created some issues. Our perspective is that there's probably GBP 600 billion of savings in the U.K. that would be better served in savings. Actually taking that with our focus on Premier and the digitization, if you like, of wealth and private banking, you bring all that together and it just feels like the right time. Okay. Turning to the IB, you've made really good progress showing the more stable income streams such as financing, which was plus 23% or so in the first quarter. Looking ahead, how does that revenue mix look like by 2028 in order to support a more consistent returns picture on a through cycle basis? How are you positioning the business to frankly compete with the U.S. peers, both given the differences in capital framework and also, as we've discussed before, the scale differences in some instances. Yeah. I think the point to start with is just as we are rebalancing between, if you like, the investment bank and everything else, so we're rebalancing within the investment bank to try and get greater diversification of income and greater stability of income within that business. It's not just about getting the returns to those levels, so around 12% this year and greater than 13% in 2028. It's actually about delivering those quarter in, quarter out, year in, year out for it to be a structural change in the profitability of the business. Income's a big part of it. Specifically, the stability comes from growing financing, as you said, but also growing the International Corporate Bank. Specifically what we've been doing there is focus on transaction banking. The growth in our dollar deposits has been very strong, particularly as we look at U.S. corporates. We're really pleased with that, and that's coming from what we call our treasury coverage model. Also within global markets, greater diversification. All of the focus that we've put around equity derivatives means that equities is now a much bigger part of our business. Barclays of old was very fixed income driven. This is about diversifying so that we've got more chance of being successful in a range of environments. The same is true within banking. Again, diversifying away from just being DCM to greater capital and ECM and M&A. Equally important is the costs in the IB. We've had eight successive quarters of positive jaws. That's not going to happen every quarter, but we are very focused on that operating leverage there. The last is capital discipline. What we don't do is allocate capital within the investment bank. When Venkat and I think about it, we think about they've got broadly GBP 200 billion to invest in the business, and the team are flexible and nimble enough to move that around. From our perspective, we've seen balance sheets grow for the U.S. banks for several quarters now. It's not just Q1. The businesses have not been capital constrained or leverage constrained, and yet we continue to make structural progress, and we continue to hold our own. That's what we expect to continue doing. Okay. Maybe one last divisional question from me before I open up to see if we have any in the audience. By process of elimination, USCB. We've seen clear progress. Returns moved from 4% three or four years ago to close to 20% in the first quarter. That business is continuing to scale. How should we think about steady state returns for USCB? Is that mid-teens returns ambition still the right medium-term target, given the number we just printed in Q1, and what are the key levers to get there? Yeah. There were factors in Q1 that did mean that it over-earned at the time, partly about running down the AA portfolio. Just stepping back for a minute, we called it the consumer bank for a reason, and not the cards business. We've got 20 years of experience, 20 clients, 24 million customers and cards, but we've added to that a completely digital deposits capability, which has grown by over 50% since the end of 2023, completely digitally. The good thing about that is it's roughly 50 basis points cheaper than the funding we had previously. Now, as of the 1st of May, what we've done is we've brought Best Egg, which is a top 5 direct-to-consumer unsecured lending business. Within 10 of our 20 clients so far, we have the opportunity to take that unsecured lending directly to their clients. Actually, we think of this as an integrated consumer business. We think of it as a disruptor, a challenger, a completely digital business, and you can see that in the returns it makes or its efficiency in terms of its cost base. It's the most digital business that we have. We see it as mid-teens within the context of the current plan, but we are ambitious for this business in terms of its digital footprint and in taking those three, if you like, products and bringing them to our client set more holistically. Expect us to continue expanding the margin, both from funding and from continuing to expand out in retail. Expect us to continue to drive the capital efficiency by bringing Best Egg onto the platform and also the digital story here. What's really interesting now is the way we're able to take learnings in terms of AI and digital deployment in the U.S. and take them to the U.K. retail bank and vice versa. That to-ing and fro-ing is becoming stronger here. Super clear. Any questions from the audience? I have one on the operating environment just more broadly. We started at the beginning on the U.K., but maybe we think a bit more global. In the first quarter, you did notice, or you noted heightened uncertainty. You reflected that in the impairment models. The underlying credit performance actually appears to be relatively benign. Which areas, if any, are you watching more closely and more broadly, I guess, what are your thoughts on the operating backdrop outside of the U.K.? Yeah. As you say, we were mindful of the backdrop in Q1, and so we topped up our impairment models in U.K. cards, US Consumer Bank, and specifically in the IB. The way we think about impairment is it's clearly a blend of two things. It's a blend of our real risk experience and what we think is going to happen in the future. That's what IFRS 9 is about. As we look at our real risk experience, there is nothing to see. Our delinquency rates remain very low in retail. Our delinquency rates in U.K. mortgages are 10 basis points. They're 30 basis points in cards. They're about 300 basis points in U.S. cards. They're low and they're benign and they're very stable. That shouldn't surprise us because of that deleveraging point that I started with. The same is true in corporate. Where we see corporate failures, they are very idiosyncratic. The thing that we're very watchful of is that if there's a deterioration in the expected economic environment, then IFRS 9 can be pretty pro-cyclical. The thing that we're very watchful of is how could an extended uncertainty period lead to inflation and ultimately lead into unemployment. That's the thing that's probably most damaging in impairment terms, not only for us, but for the industry as a whole. In terms of our sort of risk appetite, I've gone through U.K. lending. There is very little change there unless we saw a change in outlook. The two slight changes we've made are around where we see non-investment grade, highly leveraged businesses, in the current environment with a softer backdrop, with the rates backdrop, with the inflation backdrop, trimming our risk appetite around those. That's not a large part of our book either in terms of exposure or income. Similarly within securitized products, but more with a fraud lens, where we don't have the right, if you like, confidence from the outside in around their internal control processes. They're probably the areas that we've been thoughtful about. More generally, I would say areas that are exposed either to discretionary consumer spending or indeed energy costs are areas that we would be watchful of if this situation were to persist. Yeah. Then maybe one Oh, sorry. There's a question? Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Just the microphone is just coming to you for the webcast. Oh, thanks. Maybe just to follow up on Chris' question, but maybe just honing in on the investment bank. What are the businesses in the investment banks that you're watching more closely? Maybe if you could just give us an idea of the quantum of the Level 3 assets in the investment bank, and what do they consist of? I don't have that Level 3 disclosure right at the back of my mind, but I'm sure we can come back to you. From our perspective, we do obviously monitor that level very closely over time and how it's moving. Just to reassure everybody on the outside, the valuation that we go through on those assets is obviously a very regular matter for us, not just at quarter end. We actually have the capability to do intra-month valuation. That facility sits with me within finance, so it's completely separate from the business. I think within the investment bank, look, we've had a view for a long time that the environment is very uncertain, and therefore we've been very mindful of risk. We've been deploying macro hedges across the businesses in their entirety. You see the costs of those rolling through our corporate lending book. They have been helpful in protection in the current environment. You can see, I guess, the results of us managing that risk well, because in Q1, our VaR was pretty flat, and we had one trading loss day. We're very mindful of the risk environment in IB, just because of the volatility of the backdrop. I think sort of more meaningfully, the two areas that I called out for risks are sub-investment grade, leveraged finance. The very tail of securitized products where you have less visibility of those internal controls from the outside in. I think the only thing I would add is one of the kind of overlays, if you like, we made in terms of impairment in Q1 was an uncertainty provision basically focused on the investment bank. What we did in terms of our IFRS 9 provision was we really put a downside skew for the investment bank in particular, just to reflect a more macro uncertainty point. At this point, there's nothing more specific. We're just very watchful. In the corner. Thank you. Thank you. One follow-up question on the IB, please. In the U.S., we've seen significant regulatory sort of relief for the IB peers, they're U.S.-based. How do you expect that to translate into sort of the strategic picture going forward? Do you expect changes in pricing, market share? Any other changes would be helpful to give your thoughts on. Yeah, sure. I think my start point was kind of what I was referring to with Chris, which is we don't perceive that the U.S. banks have been either capital or leverage constrained over the last few quarters. Actually, what we've observed is that balance sheet build sort of pretty consistently over the last year or even beyond that. We have confidence around our strategy and in our ability to navigate that and stay focused and stay disciplined. That's our view. That said, we are, again, watchful of what's happening in the U.S. I think the thing that we observe is that there are many opportunities depending on which peer you might consider. It's not just the IB. They might consider more distributions, consolidation within U.S. retail banking. The U.S. remains a highly fragmented system. I think the opportunity to extend corporate lending perhaps into areas where private credit has been more prevalent, the regulatory changes sort of perceive that to be more likely, I think, in terms of the emerging regulation in the U.S. We're sort of watchful about where that additional capital might go. It could go in any of those directions as well as the IB. In the U.K., we are really supportive of what the FPC is doing, which is not just considering the capital regulation, but the way the capital regulation interacts with leverage, interacts with stress testing, and thinking about it in a very holistic way. That's not just about relative competition between jurisdictions, but it's actually about the ability to leverage capital in the U.K. to drive growth and solve some of the more systemic points that we've been talking around productivity growth, job expansion, et cetera. We're sort of as focused on it for those reasons as the relative competition. Okay. Well, I think that note on U.K. productivity and leaning in is as good a note as any on which to conclude. Anna, thank you so much for traveling out here and making the time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thank you.