[Non-English content]. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders and receipt holders, I hereby declare today's meeting open. A very warm welcome to everyone at this fully online Annual General Meeting of shareholders. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, we have the whole board with us. Arjen Dorland, Deputy Chair of the Supervisory Board and Chair of the Remuneration Committee. Tjalling Tiemstra, Chair of the Audit Committee. Jurgen Stegmann, Chair of the Risk and Capital Committee. Laetitia Griffith, Michiel Lap, Anna Storåkers, Mariken Tannemaat, and myself, Tom de Swaan, Chair of the Supervisory Board. The whole Executive Board is also with us today. Robert Swaak, CEO. Tanja Cuppen, Chief Risk Officer. Christian Bornfeld, Chief of Innovation and Technology Officer, and Annemieke Roest, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Robert Swaak, myself, and the Secretary of the company are physically present at the location. Hanneke Dorsman will be the Secretary for today's meeting. Lars Kramer, planned for nomination as the new CFO of ABN AMRO, is with us today online and will be introducing himself later. For EY, our auditor, we have Wouter Smit also present online. For the Employees Council, we have Arlene Bosman with us also via video link. The notary, Clumpkens of Zuidbroek Notarissen, is with us today in order to ensure that the voting takes place correctly. Before we embark, ladies and gentlemen, on the agenda for today's meeting, I would just like to take a moment to talk about events of last Monday. On Monday, the Public Prosecution Service and ABN AMRO announced that the bank had accepted a settlement offer from the Dutch Public Prosecution Service in connection with shortcomings in our role as gatekeeper on money laundering matters. As part of that settlement, ABN AMRO has paid EUR 480 million. The Public Prosecution Service identified a number of shortcomings in the period of 2014- 2020. Some of them are grave ones. This means that the bank's customers, in some cases, were able to abuse ABN AMRO Bank accounts. That is a very grave matter. ABN AMRO did not fulfill its task as gatekeeper to a high enough standard. That is unacceptable. This is distressing because society has expectations from the bank and expects us to play a role as gatekeeper, and we have not been able to satisfy those expectations. We realize that this has damaged confidence in ABN AMRO, and this touches us very deeply. This is not what ABN AMRO is about. We want to be a bank which makes a positive contribution to society now and also in the future. On many occasions in the past, the bank has identified shortcomings in our fulfillment of the gatekeeper's role, and programs have been launched in various parts of the bank in order to improve the situation. I have no doubt that ABN AMRO is currently doing everything possible to achieve what everyone expects from us. That is to say, every day embarking on the battle for a safer society and a financial system which can live up to the highest standards. Well, I could imagine there will be questions about this settlement with the Public Prosecution Service, and you'll have the opportunity for questions under agenda item 2 (g). Now, I'd like to ask you to bear with me for a number of practical announcements. In order to minimize health risks, ABN AMRO has decided to have a fully online Annual General Meeting of Shareholders today in accordance with emergency legislation currently in force. This means that there are no visitors, shareholders, or receipt holders present physically today. Another measure is that you can cast your votes in writing or electronically. The meeting will take place in Dutch and as normal, is being sent out live as a webcast in both Dutch and English on the ABN AMRO website. The whole meeting is being sound recorded for minuting purposes. The minutes of the meeting will be available on the ABN AMRO website no later than the 20th of July 2021 and will be open for comments for a three-month period. I conclude that the shareholders and receipt holders were invited to the meeting in accordance with the law and the articles of association, that the meeting can therefore take legally valid decisions, and that share and receipt holders have not themselves presented any topics for today's agenda. I'll now tell you something about how today's meeting will be taking place. You received the agenda in the notice convening the meeting. A number of agenda items are broken down into several sections. For example, agenda item 2. What we will do is go through all the items and presentations for each agenda item in succession, and at the end of the presentations, we will answer any questions regarding all those presentations together. Under agenda item 2, this means we will deal with questions after the presentation by EY. Agenda item 2 (e) is an advisory voting item, which means that we'll also give you opportunities to ask questions on agenda item 2 (e) in as much as they deal with the remuneration report for 2020. You will therefore have a clear, good overview to enable the meeting to run coherently. All shareholders and receipt holders who registered on time for today's meeting are invited to ask questions and make comments. Prior to today's meeting, we received a lot of questions sent in. It goes without saying that we will be happy to respond to them in the course of today's meeting. At the same time, we have to keep an eye on the clock to make sure everyone can speak if they wish. We want to invite you, first of all, to restrict yourself to three questions per person per agenda item. If you want to ask a question using the chat in today's meeting, please ask your question as swiftly as possible, and we will attach each incoming question to the corresponding agenda item as much as possible. More general questions will be dealt with at the end of the meeting. Where the practicalities of the meeting require it, we will bundle questions by topic, and some will also be answered bilaterally after the meeting concludes. When answering questions on each agenda item, we will first deal with the questions sent in advance. After that, we will go through the questions asked on the chat in the course of the meeting. Finally, receipt holders who asked in advance of the meeting are able to speak live at today's meeting, and they can ask follow-up questions using the telephone connection. Prior to this meeting, these participants were sent instructions for doing this. Our request to these people is as follows: If you have any follow-up questions, please phone on the telephone number given to you in due time, and certainly no later than the relevant agenda item has begun. Participants can cast their vote at any time during the meeting. As you see, voting is already open, and you will be able to continue voting until the end of agenda item 8, which is the last agenda item requiring voting. Voting results will therefore only be shown at the very end of the meeting. As you've seen on our press report and website, the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board have decided that the agenda item on granting discharge to members of both boards should be scrapped from the agenda. You therefore cannot vote on those agenda items. This is a virtual online meeting, and that's one reason why most shareholders and certificate holders have already sent in their voting instructions. The important new information regarding the Public Prosecution Service that I mentioned earlier, obviously came through after they had already cast their votes. That is why we decided that this agenda item should not be on the agenda today. I'll come on to that at a later stage. This brings us to the end of agenda item 1. We now have the next item on the agenda, 2 (a), the annual report of the Executive Board, and here I'll give the floor to Robert Swaak. Please go ahead, Robert. Yes. Thank you, Chairman. On behalf of the Executive Committee, I'll be running you through our activities and results in the past year. It was a lively year dominated by COVID-19, but it was also a year in which we made important choices regarding the future. Firstly, I'd like to come back to Monday's announcement. ABN AMRO has accepted a settlement offer from the Dutch Public Prosecution Service. EUR 480 million has been paid because of shortcomings in our performance of our duties as gatekeeper and in preventing money laundering. We did not do it well enough, and our customers and the general public expect better from us. We take full responsibility for this very distressing situation. There are more than 19,000 of us, and this is not what we wish to achieve every day. We want to be a bank which makes a positive contribution to society, now and in the future. As gatekeeping activities have been centralized, we have carried out long-term structural changes with guidance from the public prosecutors and the Dutch National Bank. I have no doubt that we're currently doing everything we can to fulfill everyone's expectations of us. Every day, we renew the struggle for a more secure society and a financial system which can meet the highest requirements. Coming back to 2020. Last year was a challenge. It was also a very exciting time at which to start work as CEO. When I joined this position, the bank already had a strong capital position, strong liquidity, and a strong market position. With all the events of the past year, I worked together with the ExCo and ExBo and set four clear priorities. One is navigating the bank through COVID-19, another is a strategy review, another is our license to operate and find new bank's culture. I'd like to start off by saying that I am proud. I am proud of our good bank, and above all, of how the staff have got us through the crisis. 95% of the staff have been working from home since last March, and most customer relations take place on video link. This is possible because of all our staff's great commitment and energy. Last year, there's about 90,000 customers who enjoyed our support, including payment delays and so on, to help them cope with difficulties. We have set up a number of bridging loans for companies. I'll tell you more about our strategy review in due course. First, I'd like to talk about our license to operate and our culture, which are priorities. We want customer needs to be at the heart of the matter. We want to think and act from considering the joint interests. Those are the choices we make, and these are the things we need to do in order for our bank to shoulder its responsibilities and create long-term value for all our stakeholders. The strategy review, including the CIB review, was one of our priorities. More than ever before, last year showed that our purpose, banking better for generations to come, is inspiring our staff. We got good presence in all banking sectors. This is a unique range of products. We've had conversations with a great many stakeholders, and this has strengthened the bank's position. I also got a clear message. The strategy needs to be tightened up further. Our position wasn't always as clear as it might have been either. The strategy review's position was to start with building on the strong foundations and choices already made back in 2018 in order to bring the bank further into the future in a rapidly changing world. Well, we made clear choices. We want to be a personal bank in the digital age, serving our customers in markets where we have scale and presence. We're working also in terms of sustainability, making the bank simpler and more efficient. All of this rooted in a culture of shouldering our own responsibilities. These clear choices gave us a firm basis on which to grow in a number of segments, to cut costs and enhance profitability. Of course, to get a return on capital for our shareholders whenever possible. Let me run through some of those changes. In order to service customers in segments where we have presence and scale deals with a matter of focusing ourselves on Europe and the Netherlands, Northwest Europe and the Netherlands. We said that we would be withdrawing from all corporate banking activities outside Europe, apart from clearing. In the Netherlands, we want to build on our existing strong presence for SMEs by, for example, by having MoneYou present. In addition, we're investing in the mid office services in order to speed services up, and we have leadership positions in all client segments, which means we can have a life cycle proposal for entrepreneurs and businesses in the Netherlands and in Northwestern Europe. What do we mean by a personal bank in a digital age? In the digital age, a great deal of things are possible only digitally. Customers expect simple and perfect digital solutions to their problems in a single channel. This means that we can play to the bank's existing strengths. We have our personal relationship of trust with our customers. We want to be there for our customers when they need us, with expert personal advice for them. This is essential in order to keep our bank relevant. Our second choice is sustainability. In the last year, we've seen that sustainability is of increasing commercial importance for the bank. For all our customers in the Netherlands and Northwest Europe, we are leading in circular growth and enhanced sustainability activities and social impact. We are making sure that sustainability is rooted in all our segments. As a bank, we are taking a leadership role in the sustainability movement. The third choice is making the bank simpler and more efficient. We will be serving our customers with digital first as a principle. We will be a future-proof bank by computerizing our processes further. We also continue to centralize our activities and reduce red tape. This means we'll have more time available for focusing on our customers. In addition, we'll also be in a position in the coming four years to keep costs down to the tune of EUR 4.7 billion. This strategy should lead us to an 8% return on equity in 2024. As long as interest rates remain so low, our income flows will remain threatened. Before I tell you a bit more about the financial side of things, I'd like to run quickly through the Dutch economy, our main market. The last year, of course, has been the COVID crisis. Here, once again, the Netherlands was able to show its strong economy. We've got broad, strong support for business from the government, and that meant that we suffered much fewer blows than some other European countries. That does not alter the fact that COVID-19 is having a very hard impact in some sectors. Regarding 2020, we had a small loss, EUR 45 million. We therefore did not achieve our targets for 2020, particularly because of increased credits. Our rent income is still low because interest rates remain so low, but also because we are building down our non-core activities. Costs remained under control last year, and we met our target for cost-cutting in 2020, EUR 5.1 billion. Across the whole of 2020, our credit provisions were present throughout because of three major client losses and the COVID-19 crisis, et cetera. Now, these are a problem. In the last year, we've taken the necessary action to strengthen our position. I'm pleased to say that we remain a very capital-strong bank. We can cope with a blow or two. Regarding dividend policy, 50% of profit to be paid out means that this year, sadly, we will not be able to pay a dividend because we made a loss. As I said, the final dividend for 2019 last year was also not paid out accordance to our guidelines. This EUR 639 million is still set aside. Because of our strong capital position, we have a good starting position to make the payment in due course when circumstances permit. Cutting down on CIB non-core. This also has an impact on our risk profile. You can see that clearly in this slide now on the screen. Apart from non-core, trading profitability in 2020 was 5.4%. I'm delighted to see the progress in dismantling our portfolio. Last week, we sold some of Trade and Commodity Finance. At the end of this year, we're expecting something like 60% of our portfolio to have been dismantled. Regarding our non-financial targets. Well, again, this year, we've got good progress to report. Diversity is a very important topic as I see it. Getting more women into senior management. Well, we've got 30% now. Sustainability, again, has been rewarded with a good score on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. I'm pleased to see that our employee engagement rate is now up from 80%- 84%. Customer satisfaction for private banking and CIB both went up last year, but slipped down slightly for retail and commercial banking. We are going to be working on trying to improve that score in the coming years. Finally, 2020 was a dynamic year dominated by COVID-19. It was also a year in which we made some important choices which will affect the future of the bank. We are working flat out to be a personal bank in a digital age. We've got a clear strategy and set out clear targets to achieve that. In accepting the Public Prosecution Service's settlement offer, we can draw a line under a painful and disappointing chapter for ABN AMRO. In Detecting Financial Crime, according to the Dutch National Bank and the Public Prosecution Service, we have made some real steps in the right direction, which means that by the end of 2022, we hope that all our shortcomings will have been fully addressed. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all our staff. The past year has been a difficult one for everyone. Sometimes difficult circumstances, teleworking from home. We've all put our shoulders to the wheel in order to assist our customers as well as possible. I very much appreciate this, and it makes me full of confidence for the bank's future. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Robert. Thank you for that introduction to the Executive Board report. We'll now move on to agenda item 2 (b), the Supervisory Board. You can find a full version of that in the annual report, and I'd just like to run through that briefly. An important topic in 2020 for the Supervisory Board, and Robert mentioned that a moment ago, was, of course, COVID-19. In particular, its consequences for customers and staff in the bank, and for the bank itself. When the COVID-19 crisis began, the Supervisory Board decided to continue meeting to discuss this topic every week until further notice. These meetings were also attended by the Executive Board. We had the CEO, the CRO, the CFO, and the CITO, and they would give weekly updates on the impact COVID-19 was having on all the parts of the bank. In addition, every meeting was attended by a CEO of one of the business lines in order to give the Supervisory Board a business update on the subject. In 2020, we saw the findings of the review of Corporate and Institutional Banking, and we approved them. In addition, ABN AMRO published the findings of a strategy review, and the board set out its vision for the future, including financial targets. In addition, in 2020, there were a number of other topics on the Supervisory Board's agenda. Some examples would be, of course, the Public Prosecution Service investigation, succession planning for the Executive Board, particularly including the planned nomination of Lars Kramer as CFO. The re-nomination of Tanja Cuppen as Chief Risk Officer, and of Christian Bornfeld as Chief Innovation and Technology Officer. In addition to nominating a new member of the Supervisory Board, Mariken Tannemaat, and the annual evaluations. Now, there are four committees in the Supervisory Board. That is to say the Audit Committee, the Risk and Capital Committee, the Selection and Nomination Committee, and the Remuneration Committee. They also all discuss a wide range of topics, including preparing meetings and decision-making for the Supervisory Board. The Audit Committee, for example, was involved with the financial results. Risk reports covering the whole bank and funding and capital plans were important topics for the Risk and Capital Committee. In addition, the Risk and Capital Committee was regularly kept updated by the Detecting Financial Crime department. The Selection and Nomination Committee was working hard on the succession processes and developing talent and leadership. An important topic which the Remuneration Committee discussed was the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on our staff and the consequences for allocating the variable part of remuneration in 2020. We had active contacts with a number of stakeholders throughout the year, including the Dutch National Bank, the European Central Bank, the Financial Markets Authority, the STAK ABN AMRO, and last but not least, NLFI. The Supervisory Board's objective remains to ensure that the bank is in a sound position to create value in the long term for its shareholders and for society as a whole, with a strong focus on customer interests and soundly weighing up the interests of all our stakeholders. Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity to address you. Last Monday, on the day the results of the investigation by the Public Prosecution Service were disclosed, my coworkers and I had a very moving day, a day of disappointment, frustration, shame, but also relief. We waited a long time for the outcome of the investigation. It hung over our heads like a Sword of Damocles. Although in recent years, ABN AMRO took a great many measures to prevent money laundering, unfortunately, they have not been sufficient. That is not good. It will take a great amount of effort to restore our credibility and trust, in part because the bank received negative disclosures and announcements in the news. For example, partly that we are no longer a company publicly listed on the stock exchange or the ruling by Kifid about consumer credit, and that is also on our minds. I have more than negative news to tell you about. There are a lot of good things to tell you about ABN AMRO. Things that my coworkers and I are very proud of and energizes because we need energy to implement our strategy, being a personal bank in the digital age. We're proud of how we managed to keep the bank going during the corona crisis for our customers. Most of us worked from home, but because the bank has such a pivotal social role, 1,000 coworkers did come to the office. They had to come to the office, and everything went off without a hitch. The corona crisis demonstrated that coworkers are perfectly capable of working at home, whereas prior to the crisis, the emphasis was on physically working with each other at the office. Now we have focused mainly on working from home. Following the crisis, we'll transition to a hybrid arrangement, combining working from home with working at the office. Work at the ABN AMRO will never go back to what it was before the crisis. Much needs to be arranged to achieve this. Important steps include adjusting our Collective Labour Arrangement for the new method of working, and also adjust our buildings to a different way of meeting each other, and we'll also have to modify our conduct. Let's keep that in mind. We're learning. We need to improve our digital skills and reach agreements about optimal hybrid work, optimal for the bank and for the employee, because although much of our work can clearly be done perfectly well from home, it's not the ideal situation for every employee. One size fits nobody matters here. Every job and every employee requires a custom-based approach. Employee participation has worked hard in recent years to ensure that within the bank, employees are dealt with more sustainably. We're transitioning from classical restructuring to sustainable change. From a shocking change with forced redundancies to transitioning to the desired situation that gives employees the opportunity to train for new positions that benefits the bank and the employees. Employee participation is delighted at this trend, and this helps us learn together in the best possible way. Nonetheless, undeniably, our company will continue shrinking because of the ongoing digitalization. Wouldn't it be nice if the employees could retrain for positions outside the bank, for example, in education, healthcare, or construction? Finally, I'd like to mention another positive development that is excellent for employees, and that's that we are moving from a fragmented customer service to an all-of-us-for-the-customer approach. Employees no longer serve the customer based on their specialization, but bring this about altogether. It may sound obvious, but it gives the concept of focusing on the customer interest a new meaning. We don't do risk management to obstruct commercial coworkers in the work. We do this to protect the interests of our customers. Overall, plenty of things and reasons for pride that are not always given adequate disclosure. Nice things that fill us with energy and give us that desire to go the extra mile. Thank you for your fine words, Arlene. On to agenda item 2 (d), which is corporate governance. In the leadership and governance section in the annual report, you'll have read an extensive explanation of the ABN AMRO corporate governance structure. On 22 April 2020, the Supervisory Board appointed Robert Swaak as the new CEO at ABN AMRO. The terms of the Executive Committee, who are not members of the Executive Board, were extended by two or four years in March 2020. The terms of Frans van der Horst, CEO Retail Banking, and Pieter van Mierlo, CEO Private Banking, were extended by two years. The terms of Daphne de Kluis, CEO Commercial Banking, and Rutger van Nouhuijs CEO Corporate and Institutional Banking, were extended by four years. The bank has opted for distributed terms to ensure that Executive Committee members do not all need to be reappointed at the same time. Gerard Penning was appointed new Chief Human Resources Officer and member of the Executive Committee from 1 August 2020. On 17 November 2020, ABN AMRO announced that Clifford Abrahams, CFO at ABN AMRO and Deputy Chair of the Executive Board and the Executive Committee, would be leaving the bank on 28 February 2021 for a position closer to home in the United Kingdom. The Supervisory Board then started a search for a new CFO, and we're delighted that Lars Kramer has been nominated, and he will introduce himself to you later on in this meeting. His appointment is subject to approval by the European Central Bank. Until then, Annemieke Roest, Head of Controlling at ABN AMRO, will serve as interim CFO. Finally, please know that ABN AMRO, in the annual report from 2020, accounts for compliance with the Corporate Governance Code in 2020. ABN AMRO meets all Corporate Governance Code provisions, except for those described in the chapter Corporate Governance Codes and Regulations in the 2020 annual report. In addition, on our website, you will find a detailed description of how the bank applies the corporate governance code. On to agenda item 2 (e), the remuneration report for 2020. Please see the remuneration report as it appears in the 2020 annual report and added as a separate meeting document. I'm pleased to give the floor to Arjen Dorland, Chairman of the Remuneration Committee, on the Supervisory Board, for a brief description. Arjen, you have the floor. Thank you. During the previous Annual General Meeting last year, ABN AMRO presented the remuneration report for 2019 for an advisory vote. Over 99% of the votes cast supported a positive advice. ABN AMRO was pleased to note this and elaborated on this in structuring the remuneration report for 2020. One important topic in 2020 was the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employees in general. For example, there was a question whether the COVID-19 crisis would affect allocating variable remuneration given the COVID-19 crisis, the financial results, and the social role of the bank. It has been decided that all performance-related variable remuneration for employees in the Netherlands will not be allocated for 2020, and those abroad will be curtailed. Other topics in 2020 included the bank-wide global reward policy, retention packages related to divestitures with a view to the adjusted strategy of corporate and institutional banking. ABN AMRO has based the principles of its remuneration policy on its purpose, banking for better for generations to come, and the three strategic pillars: customer experience, sustainability, and a bank that's fit for the future, as described by Robert Swaak. ABN AMRO has a moderate remuneration policy that meets all rules for public-listed and financial institutions. These include restrictions concerning variable remuneration for some employees and in senior management. For example, there's a prohibition of bonuses. These are also established in ABN AMRO's global reward policy and in the remuneration policy of the Executive Board and Supervisory Board. At the Annual General Meeting in 2020, an important opportunity was provided to all shareholders and depositary receipt holders to share their opinion about the remuneration policy for the Executive Board and Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board is responsible for allocating remuneration of the Executive Board within the limits of remuneration policy. As long as the Dutch State is a shareholder of ABN AMRO, no variable remuneration can be granted to members of the Executive Board, and there's also a prohibition on individual adjustments of annual base salary. In 2020, there were no deviations from the remuneration policy. The CLAs of ABN AMRO apply until 1 January 2022. That's why negotiations for the new CLAs from 1 January 2022 will start in the course of this year. The current term of the banking's CLA ended on 1 January of this year. On 9 March 2021, a new banking CLA was agreed and applies from 1 January 2021 through 31 December of this year. The agreed structural wage increase is 1.4% from 1 July 2021. The ratio between the average annual employee remuneration and the annual remuneration of the CEO was 10.2% in 2020. The ratio equals the remuneration of the CEO, including pension charges divided by the average employee salary, including pension charges in 2020, and was regarded as a fair reflection of the current position within ABN AMRO that fixed salary for the five positions in the Executive Committee who are not members of the Executive Board is based on the salary of the Executive Board, taking into account the different responsibilities of these Executive Committee members. Remuneration for the members of the Supervisory Board is determined by the General Meeting. ABN AMRO does not grant variable remuneration or shares or options to members of the Supervisory Board. Finally, the auditor has checked whether the remuneration report contains the legally required information, which it does. Over to you. Thank you, Arjen. Ladies and gentlemen, as I indicated at the start of the meeting, we will now move on to answering questions relating to the remuneration report for 2020. Other questions concerning the annual report, corporate governance, and financial statements will be answered after the following agenda item. All questions will be supported by a moderator. We kindly request participants to curtail the number of questions for each agenda item to a maximum of three. We did not receive any questions about the remuneration report in advance. Now, I'm pleased to give the floor to the moderator for any questions received via the live chat. No questions were received via the live chat about this item. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first agenda item for voting, and as expected in these circumstances, the vote will be conducted electronically. If you vote in favor of this agenda item, you are in favor of a positive advice. If you vote against this item, you are voting for a negative advice concerning the 2020 remuneration report, and the result will be the advisory non-binding vote. I need to tell you the numbers of shareholders present. I'll receive this now. Issued share capital of ABN AMRO comprises 940,000,001 share. At this meeting, we have present or represented 1,701 shareholders and depositary receipt holders present or represented, whether online or otherwise, who represent 762,576,662 votes, which equals 81.11% of the issued share capital. Prior to the meeting, shareholders and depositary receipt holders had the opportunity to exercise their right to vote online. That's e-voting, and these votes will be included with the electronic votes cast during this meeting. As I mentioned at the start, participants may cast their vote throughout the meeting, and the result will be announced at the end of this meeting. This takes us to the end of 2 (e). We will now move on to 2 (f), which is the presentation by the external auditor, EY, about the audit duties performed during the 2020 financial statements process. I'll hand you over to Wouter Smit from EY for this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this opportunity to present our involvement as external auditors. I'm Wouter Smit, and since 2016, I've been the External Auditor at ABN AMRO on behalf of EY since 2016. In this presentation, I will address the following segments of auditing the bank over 2020: the scope and the timing, and the audit of the bank and the main risks we identified, the impact of COVID-19, the materiality that we applied, communication and interaction with the bank, some considerations relating to the Wirecard file, dealing with fraud and non-compliance, and finally, the outcomes of our audit. On this slide, you'll see the scope of our audit. This is what we audit. Perhaps back one slide, says the speaker. The corporate consolidated financial statements for 2020 of ABN AMRO. We check whether the annual report meets all legal requirements and assess the half-year figures for the half-year report, and we perform a review of the quarterly figures for Q1 and Q3 for the ECB. We examine the integrated report and issue a separate statement about that. We audit the report from the regulator, De Nederlandsche Bank, and the ECB via the COREP. When do we do this? This is our timeline. Throughout the year, we are very busy working for ABN AMRO, and we signed the auditor's opinion on nine March, and you can see the prudential audit is still pending. We'll be performing that in May. Our approach is consistent with last year. Understand the business and the environment based on global sector knowledge within the EY. We take a top-down look at our audit approach, also risk-based in accordance with Dutch and international standards. Our risk assessment and scope assessment results in an audit plan, which we discuss with both the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. In the audit plan, we describe where we want to rely on internal control measures by the bank and where we aim to do a substantive, complete audit ourselves. We include certain countries in our scope because we're not only the auditor of ABN AMRO in the Netherlands, we're the auditor of ABN AMRO in all other countries. Based on our risk assessment and the relative extent of the operations and the scope, we determine the depth of our audit. The results of local audits is assessed and discussed with our teams on site and with ABN AMRO. Our team and the specialists has sector knowledge and is independent and meets all relevant training requirements. Our experts are deployed to audit the valuation of financial instruments, IT environment, hedge accounting model of the bank, as well as fraud and corruption risks. Now, what's changed with respect to last year? COVID-19 and a stronger focus on other aspects of compliance or non-compliance, as well as more specialist disclosures than in the past, in part because of the implementation of IFRS 9. Now the COVID-19 impact. I can see we're moving on. Now, one slide back, please, says the speaker. What are our focus areas? You'll see them at the right. I'll tell you more about COVID-19 in a moment. The estimation uncertainty figures prominently in several items. For example, impairment allowances, which because of IFRS 9, is subject to even more models. We audit substantiation and documentation by deploying modeling specialists, and we consider the adequacy of the financial statements extensively. In addition, there are the model overlays, which are additional provisions beyond the model outcomes, because the models cannot accurately calculate the complete impact in these exceptional circumstances. Another estimation uncertainty concern other provisions for claims and compliance-related topics. A provision needs to be taken. If as a consequence of an event in the past, the chance is greater than 50%, this will result in a payment and a reliable estimate is possible of the impact. A subsequent focus area is the investigation of the public prosecutor. ABN AMRO, as you know, has been the subject of an investigation by the Public Prosecution Service since 2019. Upon completing the 2020 financial statements in early March 2020, the timing of the completion of this investigation and the outcome were so uncertain that a reliable estimate of the impact was not possible at the time. That's why in the 2020 financial statements of the bank, no provision was taken. As EY, we analyzed the relevant documentation, and we received legal letters from the bank's external legal counsel that represents the bank in this case, and we spoke directly with that same lawyer and checked that the financial statements were complete and accurate and discussed them with the ExCo and the Supervisory Board until the date we signed off on our statement on 9 March 2021. The final focus area you see on this slide concerns reliability and continuity of the IT environment, and we have access to cyber risk and change management procedures for this. In our auditor's opinion, the detailed one, you can read about our audit approach for each individual item here, as well as our key observations. On to the COVID-19 slide, please, says the speaker. The restrictions resulting from COVID-19 led us to conduct a lot of our audit by remote. Several years ago, this might have been a problem, but thanks to modern technology, this year, we were able to obtain adequate audit information by remote means. This concerned internal audit measures, the impact on credit risk as by issued loans, IT security, and the explanatory notes in the financial statements. We summarized our duties and conclusion in our auditor's opinion. The most important aspects of the COVID-19 impact concern lending losses based on historical data assumptions and expectations for the future, and they are inherently subjective. We assessed the methodology of the bank and reviewed the expectations based on our own expectations and external benchmarks, and considered assessments based on asset impairment analyses and summarized this in our auditor's opinion. Next slide, please. Fraud and non-compliance were an important part of our activities. Based on our standards, we assess whether there is any non-compliance concerning law or regulation that could have a material impact. To this end, we assess the Systematic Integrity Risk Analysis known as SIRA. We examine the structure and existence of internal audit measures, the risk of material error, and the risk of external fraud. To this end, we assign specialists. These are forensic auditors who check all risks and audit information provided to us by the bank. We read these letters together with them, and we assess whether the fraud and risk factors by assessing the overall audit system of the bank, as depicted on this slide, has a total of detective and preactive and reactive measures. We also assess the tone at the top and overall governance of the bank. We test the journal entries with analytics, assess the approvals and to determine accuracy, also to identify entities that would not be expected in normal operations. We review possible preferences by management and bias in determining any significant aspects. Finally, we discuss these with internal audit, legal compliance, and the Supervisory Board. Materiality is based on international standards, and the objective is an accurate depiction of the financial statements based on our professional opinion. We determined this at EUR 145 million comparable to last year. As I say every year, we don't use the same materiality for all items. For remuneration of the board, for example, we do not consider materiality because the accuracy of that explanation requires such. All observed deviations exceeding EUR 7 million are reported to the Supervisory Board. The topics discussed with the Supervisory Board were as follows. We confirm our independence every quarter, and our plan is approved by the Supervisory Board. In the management letter, we describe our observations about the internal audit environment. Important estimates and assumptions by management in the financial statements are assessed as to whether they are reasonable within the context. This year, we considered COVID-19 expenses. We report quarterly to management about our findings concerning the annual reports and in our audit report about continuity and IT-specific audit observations of difference, and as well as the findings by our auditors' report. Any significant difficulties would also be reported to the Supervisory Board. In the past year, we did not need to report anything. In keeping with corporate governance rules, we regularly have face-to-face discussions with the Chair people of the Risk and Audit committees, as well as the Supervisory Board. Last year, we faced the bankruptcy of Wirecard in Germany. Part of the reported cash balances turned out not to exist. Based on published facts, we evaluated our audit impact and determined that no adjustments were required. As of end year, we were able to confirm all ABN AMRO cash balance. We received written confirmation, and this primarily relates to the confirmations for ABN AMRO by DNB and the ECB. We evaluated independence and determined that we remain fully independent of ABN AMRO, and we discussed this and reported it to the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. Finally, the outcome was an unqualified auditor's opinion for ABN AMRO 2020, confirming the other information in the financial statements. We also performed a review of each quarter and provided a review statement for each quarter. We provided a statement for the integrated report 2020, as well as the statements from the various subsidiaries of the bank, and will also provide a similar statement concerning other measures concerning COVID-19 in 2020. This is my fifth and last year as the external auditor of ABN AMRO. I will be succeeded by my coworker, Bernhard Broeders. I'd like to thank the management and Supervisory Board and you as shareholders at the bank for the excellent working relationship in the past five years and for your confidence in EY and me personally. Thank you very much, Wouter, you're not free yet because you don't leave us until the end of today's meeting. We're not saying goodbye till then. You'll be with us for as long as this meeting continues. Thank you very much for your presentation. As I mentioned when dealing with the previous agenda item, the next agenda item, 2 (g), is where we're going to deal with questions relating to the settlement with the prosecutor, annual report, corporate governance, and the financial statements. We'll now go on to agenda item 2 (g), adoption of the audited 2020 annual financial statements. Could I refer you to the financial statements as set out in the 2020 annual report and duly scrutinized by the external auditor, as you've heard just a moment ago. As he said, they have approved the financial statements. Adopting the financial statements is a voting matter, and as I said at the beginning of the meeting, participants can cast their vote at any time during the course of the meeting, and the results of the vote will be displayed at the end of today's meeting. We'll now move on to deal with questions dealing with the settlement with the public prosecutor, the annual report, corporate governance, and financial statements. As I said before, we'll start off by looking at questions submitted in advance. What I'll do is I'll read the question out and then nominate someone who I think is best positioned to provide the answer. That might sometimes be me. I'll start off with PGGM. They sent a number of questions in before the meeting, and I'd like to thank them for their questions. Quoting the question, In the 19th of April press release, it is stated that ABN AMRO has accepted a settlement which draws a line under a painful and disappointing section in ABN AMRO's history, and lessons have been learned. PGGM would like us to tell them what lessons we have learned. Robert, could I ask you to answer this question from PGGM? Yes, certainly. Be happy to. Well, it's true that as I said earlier, we've got structural, sustainable improvements that we put in place. We've been looking to see what didn't work out in the period under investigation, and one of the main lessons we learned from that is that we can't go through improving things on a business line by business line basis. No, you've got to carry it out across the whole scope of the bank. I think that is the main lesson that we've learnt from all that. Thank you. Next question from PGGM is about the Detecting Financial Crime program. ABN AMRO has set out a program called Detecting Financial Crime. This is quoting the question, DFC, This is a substantial investment in the number of full-time employees dealing with ABN AMRO's client life cycle processes. Could you tell us whether, and if so, how, you're working on a culture change? How is compliance embedded in the organization? We'd like to have more and more explicit information about this in your report, dealing with whistleblowers, code of conduct, and so on. Could you please tell us more about this? Robert, again. Well, culture and strategy, obviously, are inseparable. We can only achieve our ambitions if we really live our culture. Culture could only mean who we are and what we're about. Our purpose is the guideline here. Our purpose helps us to achieve our strategic ambitions. It's important for us to listen to our customers, our staff, and all our stakeholders. We're working together to construct a bank which will be future-proof. Finally, you create a culture where all of us share the same ambition, which is a purpose that unites us all, that we're working on for many years, Banking for Better, for generations to come. Of course, in our culture, compliance is of the greatest importance. We express that from the very top, the tone from the top. All our staff have an important role to play. Our three lines of defense are the model that we all operate in the bank. Taking ownership, setting clear objectives, this is all part of our license to operate, and of course, risk management and compliance are very important components. We are committed to our moderate risk profile and also to our role as gatekeeper of the whole financial system. Our code of conduct, as a final point, gives guidelines for day-to-day work and dilemmas we encounter. We've got a permanent education program with compulsory training activities dealing with financial and economic crime. We also demand that individual members of staff notify us of any strange events they find, have a speak up program, a whistle-blowing procedure, which is also available in the bank and for outside parties as well. Thank you. I'd also invite you to pay your attention to page 32 and 63- 65 of the annual report. A final question from PGGM regarding the public prosecutor and the settlement we found with him. This is, what moral task does ABN AMRO see as being one of the main banks? How can it protect the financial system from misuse by criminals? Robert, again. Well, I repeat again, I've said many times, we must fulfill our role as gatekeeper, and that is our moral task, in order to make sure the financial system can be honest, and we can have a more secure society. Our last question from PGGM on agenda item 2 is remuneration. PGGM is asking what role the variable remuneration plays in the bank and what impact the decision had that there would be no performance-based variable remuneration in 2020. Arjen, could you answer this question from PGGM? Yes, I'll be happy to. ABN AMRO has a moderate remuneration policy, as you know, and a variable component part is an important part of that. Sometimes in other countries, the variable component is a major part of the remuneration package. ABN AMRO greatly reduced the performance-related component in 2020. You can see that in the annual report. The effects of that are fairly limited. In 2019, the total was 3.4% of the bank, and this time it's 0.9% of the total remuneration. The impact has been limited, but it's an important decision and it's sending out a clear signal. Thank you. We can move on to questions from the VEB Association of Shareholders submitted in advance. Thank you for your questions, VEB. The first question from the VEB is whether ABN can say whether the reduction in AML high-risk cases is compatible with the agreements previously reached with the supervisory authority. Robert? Well, I can say, be very brief say, yes, we have a factual report telling you about that. Thank you. Next question is what does ABN AMRO consider as being the main practical risks when scaling down the Corporate and Institutional Banking, CIB division? Well, any possible risks have been carefully mapped out and are being managed. We've got good momentum for this downscaling, downsizing. The underlying markets are developing well. We're on schedule. We report progress regularly. Recently, we also said that our loan portfolio in TCF had been sold, and this brings us one step closer to the total dismantling of these activities. After this transaction, TCF will be 70% of the whole TCF exposure will have been dismantled. Thank you, Robert. Next question from VEB is whether ABN AMRO can shed more light on what risk framework shortcomings have been identified, partly because of the CIB evaluation. What control mechanisms have been tightened up as a result, and what improvements remain to be made? Tanja, could you answer this question? Yes, certainly. Robert mentioned this a moment ago. The strategic decision to take some Corporate Institutional Banking non-core activities and to remove them from our portfolio, that's had an impact on our risk profile. Secondly, we had a look at the activities we're carrying on with, that is our core activities. Here we've set on individual limit, tightened up the limits on sectors and individual loans and geographies. We also looked at ABN AMRO Clearing, where a number of steps have been taken, partly by tightening up on limits for extreme stress situations. Thank you. Next question from the VEB is the mortgage market. How does ABN AMRO think it can compete successfully in the mortgage market with non-banking parties such as pension funds and insurance companies, which have a different finance mix and can therefore offer lower tariffs? Robert. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your question. Well, for some time now, we've been playing a successful role in the mortgage market. As you know, it's a matter of price. We are very familiar with the market. We know the market segments well. We've got very good distribution system for mortgages. We are a very strong position to provide a reliable and flexible service to our customers and take necessary steps when addressing our mortgage portfolio. Thank you. Another question from the VEB. Acquisition policy. ABN AMRO is always proud to announce acquisitions in private banking, in particular, as a point of strategic attention. The last takeover in this segment was in mid-2018. What does ABN AMRO consider to be the main obstacles in its path here? We are still open to make further acquisitions, particularly if they fit in with previous strategic choices that we've made in the past. Yes, we are keeping an eye on opportunities in the market, and when we make a decision, of course, we'll let you know. Next question from the VEB. Whether the board can shed light on why the market risk in calculating economic capital has increased so greatly, while this is not visible in the calculation of market risk regarding the risk-weighted assets. I can refer you here to page 90 of the annual report. Robert. Well, yes. The ABN AMRO risk taxonomy underlies the determination of market risk. In this case, in fact, for RWAs and for economic capital. However, when calculating the RWA market risk, the trading book carries a great deal of weight. The increase in market risk of economic capital in the past year has largely been driven by the bank book. Thank you. The next question came in from the VEB, is very similar to a question also raised by Mr. Van den Bos. We have combined the two questions. Is ABN AMRO willing to recover the cost paid in fines in the settlement regarding the money laundering scandal on members of the board? Reply, no. This is a corporate responsibility. The next question from the VEB was also very similar to one raised by PGGM. The European banking sector is characterized by a large number of players and low level of profitability. This leads to misgivings regarding it as earnings model for banking institutions. Why does ABN AMRO take the view that its readjusted strategy is a good answer to these concerns? That's a very interesting question. Very interesting question. Thank you. This is exactly why we had the strategic review and took time to make clear choices. In ABN AMRO, we want to build on our existing strengths, market segments that we know well, market segments that we've got experience of. We combined this with a very thorough analysis of how ABN AMRO can interact with its customers. This led us to the conclusion that the bank's convenience level, the customer's online experience, is a very important part of ABN AMRO. We can see that particularly in the COVID-19 circumstances. At the same time, we've got a great deal of expertise and knowledge. What's interesting in this strategy really is that it's building on what the bank has shown itself to be good at in the last years. Building up more scale and really making ourselves in a position to be effective. We've got individual segments where we can grow. We look at the market circumstances, but we're also making the bank simpler and more effective. That has led to the costs that we incur as a result of that. We've seen that the costs go down over time. By way of conclusion, as I said earlier, you could have an ROE of 8% by the end of this period that's currently under plan. We have no doubt that the choices we have put in place, the geographical focus, Northwest Europe, the choices regarding customer segments that we're good at, mortgages, SMEs. Those are the bank's strengths. It's where we can provide an across-the-board service to all our customers. These are segments that we, as the bank, really are good at, and that gives us lots of confidence to face the future. Thank you, Robert. The last question submitted in advance by the VEB is a question to EY. I'll read it out. EY has a key audit matter regarding the current Public Prosecution Service's investigation and said this year that ABN AMRO is now also suspected of money laundering. When did EY become aware of this, and in what way have they taken actions on it? Wouter, please, EY. Yes. Well, we were informed when looking at the end of 2020. That was beginning of 2021, it actually happened. This had an impact on our audit approach. Now, the problem identified was already a key audit matter, so we already looked into it a great deal. We looked at the legal people in ABN AMRO and talked to lawyers in the bank in order to map out what was happening. We also had a talk with our own legal specialist. We made sure we had all the relevant documentation, and we could see that satisfactory attention was paid to it in the financial statements. We talked about this, and we talked about this to the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. Finally, we built the matter into our key audit matter in our annual audit statement. Thank you, Wouter. Well, this brings us now to questions put forward by the VBDO, the Association of Investors for Sustainable Development. Thank you very much for your questions. This takes up a lot of time, but these are important issues, so I'm happy to read them through. What steps exactly is ABN AMRO going to take in order to foster biodiversity? Can the bank report in future on how it lives up to its Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, which it signed? ABN AMRO says that in the second quarter of 2021, it will publish a science-based target referring to its investments in the energy sector, mortgages, commercial real estate, and the investment portfolio. This is a quote from the annual report, page 145. What climate scenario, that is to say, the maximum global warming, is this target being set for? Will ABN AMRO look at the 1.5 degrees scenario as advised by the Science Based Targets initiative for financial institutions? When can the VBDO expect to hear about interim objectives being set? Finally, the VBDO is aware of ABN AMRO's diversity policy and its active approach to its own staff regarding diversity and inclusion. ABN AMRO's ethical principles should largely be reflected in its investment strategy. VBDO, however, can see that diversity is not taken on board in ABN AMRO's sustainable policy on investments, matters such as engagement and voting policy. Is ABN AMRO prepared to make diversity a more explicit part of its investment portfolio and communicate on the subject in the coming year? Robert, can I give you the floor on this? Yes. Thank you, Tom. My thanks for the questions. I'll try and answer them as fully as I can. Well, ABN AMRO is fully aware of the great importance of biodiversity, as we've made clear in recent years. We can see the financial sector has a role to play and a responsibility to assume in this. We do report on that very extensively. In order to give you an even better overview of the actions to be taken, as a result of the dialogue with stakeholders, which we have on this topic, we, among other things, have agreed that a biodiversity statement will be development and that we will work further on integrating biodiversity into our sectoral policy. The second question, climate. Our target eventually is for our loan portfolio and investments for our customers to be in line with the scenario wherein global warming is restricted to comfortably under two degrees Celsius. Climate scenarios which we follow come from the International Energy Agency. Those are in line with that target, and we have no plans to tighten up on this matter. We deal with our progress on Science Based Targets initiative in our recent publication called Guiding a Bank's portfolio to Paris. At the same time, we're not only looking at long-term objectives. No, the only way in which you can put things into practice is by specifically saying what you're going to be doing in the coming year. For that reason, therefore, we have set out interim targets, for example, the energy portfolio and the commercial real estate and mortgage portfolio. In ABN AMRO, we are very much involved in further developing Science Based Targets for the financial sector, and we are always watching where we can improve our policy further in order to help our customers transition to sustainability. Diversity has always been an important topic for me personally and for the bank as well. It is a topic for the whole bank in future, and it's part of a broader approach for investing on our clients' behalf. In the past year, we specifically investigated the bank through a gender lens. Here we found gaps in opportunities across the whole range of the bank, including our customers' investment portfolios. Plugging these gaps and availing ourselves of opportunities are part of diversity. We've already carried out a great many interviews with NGOs, trade unions, and also with many of our larger customers in order to get a clearer view of how our policy across the bank can be more specific to do with matters such as sex equality. We also had a word with Federated Hermes to have further engagement in the companies that our clients invest in. Diversity is an integrated part of all these talks. Thank you, Robert. Now we have questions from Mr. Van den Bos on the subject of the annual report. Firstly, Mr. Van den Bos is asking what has happened to the growth in client numbers and asking about the customer experience. Fine words, but where's the action? Says Mr. Van den Bos. He would like to hear more about the operating result of 9%. Robert, could you deal with that? Yes, certainly. Firstly, the question about the operating result in commercial banking. Well, that is a result of the low interest income. That's just the situation. That's the way it is at the moment. Your question about customers. Well, we are working hard to improve our customer experience and as we said in our investor update, we want to be a personal bank in a digital age. What that means is, well, we fully recognize that online service provision must be developed further and taken further. It's up to us to make that personal. It might be like nowadays we have a lot of banking work going on video. 95% of our conversations are on video link these days. It means that in those interactions, we need to express the bank's personal commitment to our customers, as we have shown when the COVID-19 crisis erupted and still are showing. It also means that once something happens in a customer relation, we are there to deal with it. Now, you might think when we talk about computerization, you say, well, how can computerization be personal? No, you see, that's exactly what we have shown in the last few months. We are there for our customers, and we can be there in the digital world, too. Finally, are we always successful in this? No, not always. Of course, there are times when our service to the customers is not up to the client's wishes. That means that we have to spend a great deal of attention at the moment evaluating our complaint management to make sure that we always take steps within our organization to see what's happening. We want to be the personal bank in the digital age. Thank you, Robert. Mr. Van den Bos then asks when there's going to be a large-scale reorganisation from senior management and board level down to middle management. Well, Mr. Van den Bos, I think that in past years we've had a great many senior management positions and middle management positions which have been changed. Last year, when we published the second quarter figures, we announced the reorganization of CIB. In late November we had the strategic refresh. It seems to me, by way of answer to your question, that we are constantly looking to see whether the bank's organizational structure is fit for purpose on the basis of the strategy that we've told you about. As you hear, first we have to get the strategy in place and that is the basis on which we can then address our structure and look at our senior management. I think in the past years we have amply performed that task. Mr. Van den Bos has a question about auxiliary matters and I'll give Robert the floor to deal with this. Why are there discrepancies in lease car expenses? Because an electric bike is good enough. Mr. Van den Bos also asked a number of suggestions regarding an alternative head office. Robert, please. Yes, thank you very much for your question once again, Mr. Van den Bos. I'll start with your last point. As you know, ABN AMRO will be selling the headquarters on the Gustav Mahlerlaan in Amsterdam and then rent some of it back again. I said the property on the Foppingadreef address is going to be completely rebuilt, and it's going to be a wonderful, sustainable building. Regarding mobility, well, a few years ago we did make some very conscious choices to travel responsibly. Arlene said this a moment ago when she was speaking. Teleworking from home is something that people have done a great deal of in recent months. We can see that teleworking is going to be more and more the norm. This can be combined with a sustainable method of traveling. We've been dealing with that for many years now already. ABN AMRO can get a public transport card, and we encourage them to buy bikes and e-bikes. I'm very happy to tell you that there's a new position, a new situation whereby members of staff in ABN AMRO can lease a bike or electric bike. Just if I could add something on there, Mr. Van den Bos. For many years now, I have been taking my e-bike to work daily, and I haven't leased it from the bank. Mr. Van den Bos has a number of questions on the auditor's report. The questions are as follows: What are the main issues identified by EY? In the priority list of points for attention, have some things already been dealt with, and are there any new items of importance added to the list? Have you, as EY, found the ABN AMRO and its staff were satisfactorily cooperative? Finally, is it true that in the past shareholders' meetings, you sometimes said that internal auditing is not up to scratch? Wouter, could you respond to this, please? Well, I'll try. I'll start with your last one. Now, I know that Mr. Van den Bos is a very critical shareholder, and in the last five years he's raised a large number of questions at shareholders' meetings. I can't recite them all from memory, but I certainly remember him. Regarding the management letter, well, we've got these important topics that we raised in the management letter. We talk about what we've come up with, and we make recommendations regarding the bank's internal audit as part of our auditing activities on the financial statements. In 2020, we identified a number of topics in our management letter. The bank is certainly making progress. We're looking at completion matters, models, a risk control framework. These are items we discussed. Did we in EY find that the bank and its staff were cooperative enough? Yes. I can reply yes to that. Our relationship with management is open and frank. Management certainly is willing to listen to our criticisms and respond to what we say. We've got an open, friendly relationship with the Supervisory Board. Thank you, Wouter. That's the questions that we received in advance. Now I'll give the floor to the moderator. Have we had any questions submitted on the live chat? No questions yet. Thank you very much. Now I'll give the floor to people who submitted questions in advance and said they want to ask their questions in person. I understand that this is the VEB and the VBDO. They said in advance that we should do that. I'll give the VEB the floor first to ask their follow-up questions in person. VEB, please. Do we have the VEB on the line? To be clear, to ask questions, please press star one, and hopefully, Mr. Koster, you are able to ask your question now. The connection has been severed. I'll give the floor to Mrs. Laskewitz from the VBDO. Good afternoon. I'm Mrs. Laskewitz from the VBDO. Dear Executive Board and Supervisory Board, thank you for this opportunity to ask additional questions. The VBDO would like to congratulate the ABN AMRO. We read both documents with tremendous interest. This concerns responsible investing. Apparently, there has been sustainable investment. The VBDO is delighted at the conversion by the bank. Mrs. Laskewitz, may I interrupt you? asks the Chair. It sounds like a horse is galloping through your room, because we have the greatest difficulty hearing you. I'll repeat this, says Mrs. Laskewitz. The customers of ABN AMRO already invest over EUR 26 billion sustainably. The VBDO is delighted with this change by the bank in 2018, so that customers are typically offered a sustainable investment format. The ABN AMRO has ranked five sustainability categories from poor to excellent. It's not entirely clear what share sustainable investment is of the total invested assets, or the distribution as to the extent of sustainability among the different investments. Could ABN AMRO communicate the extent of sustainability and its progress toward objectives, and whether this may be influenced by European regulations, especially the SFDR. Yes, now we could hear you, explains the Chair. Thank you. Thank you for your questions and your observations, explains Robert Swaak. I'd like to talk to you about our objectives in the area of sustainable investment at ABN AMRO. We agreed that the total sustainable investment book for ABN AMRO would account for about one-third of the total book by 2024. We're explicitly aiming t o track the developments in that investment book. We've divided it into different categories as we've indicated in our annual report, and it appears in our other reports as well. Sustainable financing at the Corporate Institutional Bank would be about 25% of the total, and we said that in 2024, renewable energy should account for 45% of that book, which is also our own target. As for the Commercial Bank, we're very active in circular, and we've said that the ultimate objective should be 27% by 2024 in terms of circular sustainable financing we do. Objective for circular loans were also set, so they're all consistent with how we have addressed this in previous years to define objectives within the bank for sustainable loans and investments. There are certain targets that you identified for us, which I won't elaborate on, but that does enable us, with respect to those criteria, to continue to focus throughout the bank on something that we consider to be exceptionally important. Perhaps you could tell us the ratio of what is sustainably invested with respect to the total invested assets. What I can tell you, answers Robert Swaak, is that we have amply exceeded our objectives. I can't tell you the total, but I can tell you more about that later on. That's fine. Thank you very much. Thank you for your additional questions, explains Tom de Swaan. Has Mr. Koster arrived at the phone? No. Mr. Koster will now tape in. Okay, we'll wait a moment. If you hear me, it's all been resolved. We can hear you perfectly now. Earlier, we couldn't hear you, says Tom de Swaan, but now we can. Okay, excellent, says Mr. Koster. My question, thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for all the explanation so far. What I'd still like some answers about, that concerns threats and new emerging markets and how ABN AMRO considers all of this in light of the strategy. When I say threats, I also mean discussions about new market operators. How will ABN AMRO respond? I don't really see much about that in the annual report either. Thank you for your question. I'm glad you're answering that question because basically ABN AMRO has been dealing with new operators on the financial markets for years. We work extensively with what are known as Fintechs. What's interesting is that we're learning from that. Based on working with Fintechs, we're able to adapt our own operations, and we're investing in Fintechs. We do not see the new market operators as threats. We see them as encouragement to review our own digital agendas and our infrastructure and accelerate implementation. You'll see that in our strategy. At the same time, we are explicitly examining how quickly and in which fields new operators are becoming active. We spoke about the mortgage book earlier, and you'll see some new operators there, too. That means that we're also adjusting our offers on those markets, too. We're adjusting our supply. In addition to accounting for what ABN AMRO held as a very natural position for years and improving there, we're trying to examine the dynamics on the market. Thanks to working together and investing and then integrating within the ABN AMRO model, we believe that we can accommodate that competition or in quotation marks, those threats. Tom de Swaan: The Supervisory Board has this topic very high on the agenda. We regularly exchange ideas with the bank executive about this, as well as with external experts, and ask them to advise as to their view on the developments, on the one hand, relating to consolidation in the financial sector, and on the other hand, how they view the influence of new operators in this field. This is very high on our agenda, Mr. Koster. Mr. Koster: That's excellent to hear. Thank you very much for your reply. It would be nice if this is fleshed out more in the coming annual report because this seems to be happening behind the scenes, and I certainly understand that. It's important that we can sense that ABN AMRO is keeping up with changing times, and it turns out from your answer that you are devoting considerable attention to this. Mr. Chairman, may I ask two additional questions? Please go ahead. One question that comes to mind is in what measure, what is the idea behind Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets? A lot is happening there. Major operators also on behalf of US B anks are taking all kinds of steps now. How does the ABN feel about that? Okay. Robert? I can understand your enthusiasm in giving me the floor about this. Thank you for the question. It aligns perfectly with what I just mentioned. As for cryptocurrency and Bitcoins, I am keeping abreast of all developments meticulously. You'll undoubtedly have noticed how quickly they're forging ahead. It's not a regulated system yet, so it's particularly important for financial institutions to track how the regulations in the field are progressing. Nonetheless, we need to continue keeping track of it to ensure that we can keep abreast of this in time. We're certainly scrutinizing that and keeping track of it. Is that something that will be disclosed at a certain point? I think it's important that we know not only that you're keeping track of it, but also that you'll be commenting on this. I think it's useful if we understand how an important bank views this new market. There was some comment about one area via the Dutch Banking Association, which recently published a report responding to ideas that exist within some central banks as to issuing cryptocurrencies of their own exchanges. In Europe, that would be of the euro. The NVB, the Dutch Banking Association, drafted a report in response to, I think it's a blue paper, it's not a white paper in any case, by the ECB addressing cryptocurrencies. Thank you. I'll certainly read that. continues Mr. Koster. My final question, I know that this will be a sensitive question. Recently, you made announcements to the public that negative interest will be assessed on deposits exceeding EUR 150,000. Fortunately, that's a somewhat higher threshold than with other banks after this COVID-19 period in which many people tried to save and deposits have increased. My question is, aren't you heading toward the most traditional and essential function of a bank towards society, which is that you should be able to deposit your money safely with a bank without it costing you money? They're undeniably short-term fees because, that 0.5% needs to be paid to the ECB. Doesn't that mean that one of the traditional pillars of banks in the Netherlands is being obstructed here? In my view, that's negative. That's a drawback, and shouldn't you take a different view of the negative interest rate, which hopefully will not endure for years and years? Isn't this something that the NVB, the Dutch Banking Association, could address so that it could be abolished on retail private deposits because this is the driving force behind getting people to invest in the interesting proposals in your business model. Of course, this shouldn't mean that investors operate too quickly and carelessly in investing their money. In the past, depositing money with a bank was the safest possible approach. Of course, you understand, says Tom de Swaan, that we don't enjoy assessing negative interest rates, but this is the consequence of market circumstances. Since the ECB charges us for having money, so we need to maintain the earnings model of the bank, and that's why we're forced to charge negative interest rates. Robert Swaak: Well, that's the core of the answer. Let me tell you, we're very well aware, and I'm glad that you told us about our own social responsibility in this respect. Your suggestion to mention the broader social consequences of such measures, which indeed are necessary, and to relate them to the fundamental role of banks and to discuss this within the NVB, the Dutch Banking Association. I'll certainly take that on board. Tom de Swaan: Thank you, Mr. Koster, for your questions. Are there additional questions via the live chat on the phone? Yes, Mr. Chairman. PGGM is waiting, so I'd like to give the floor to Mr. Fehrenbach. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start with a point of order. I just wanted to mention that there's a huge time difference between the webcast and the phone. The webcast is considerably behind. That means that I'm talking with you over the phone, and your gestures on the webcast become visible only much later. That is an aside note. I have another point, if you allow me, because you started by mentioning that agenda items 4 (a) and 4 (b) have been deleted from the agenda. Basically, we welcome that, and we requested that last Monday in our questions submitted in writing. It's a very good thing that you did that, but I believe that enables me to ask questions about that here. Is that correct? Yes, it is the answer. At least I assume that your questions relate to the reasons why we discussed to remove 4 (a) and 4 (b) from the agenda. That's correct, is the reply. I am specifically referring to your indication that the settlement proposal resulted in penalties being covered by the NV company, if I'm correct, and if that's the case, how does that relate to removing the discharge from liability items from the agenda, which concern supervision of the NV and being able to hold the board members accountable. Can you explain how in the settlement proposal, it was agreed that the corporate entity will cover that even though it's been decided to remove the discharge item from the agenda? Just to clarify, and I should have told you relating to 4 (a) and 4 (b), the reason that we deleted them from the agenda is because we believe that the course of time between the announcement of the settlement and today was too short to enable shareholders and depositary receipt holders to modify any voting instructions they had already given. We certainly don't plan not to request a discharge, but it won't be today. That will happen at more opportune moment. For example, if during the course of the year, for whatever reason, we convene an extraordinary general meeting or at the Annual General Meeting next year. We're not going to skip requesting that discharge. That's clear. Thank you. No additional questions at this time. Thank you. Are there any additional questions? There are no other questions over the phone, Mr. de Swaan? That covers this agenda item, and we will move on to the next one, which is agenda item three, and that concerns the reservation dividend policy, and I'll hand you over to Robert Swaak for that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The dividend policy of ABN AMRO takes into account the current and expected capital requirement, the risk profile, and growth and market factors in determining the percentage of profit distribution. We considered the moderate risk profile of ABN AMRO and statutory charges so that dividend payments can be maintained in the future. This year, we were not able to put a proposal to distribute a dividend on the agenda. We are reconsidering a dividend proposal in accordance with the recommendations of the ECB, and in any case, will not do so before the end of September 2020. As soon as we have done such a reconsideration, we will notify you. Thank you, Robert. We did not receive any questions in advance about this agenda item, and I'll ask the moderator whether any questions have arrived via the live chat. No questions about this topic via the live chat either. Thank you for this announcement. I propose that we move on to the next agenda item, which is exactly the item 4 (a) and 4 (b) that Mr. Fehrenbach was asking questions about. As I mentioned at the start of this meeting, agenda items 4 (a) and 4 (b), respectively, discharging individual members of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board members. These items have been omitted from the agenda. The reason is that most shareholders and depositary receipt holders had already issued their voting instructions before last Monday, so before the important new information concerning the Public Prosecution Service was disclosed. As a result, they were unable to include this information in deciding how to vote. That's why we chose to withdraw this agenda item at this specific meeting. I'd like to give the floor to the moderator to see whether any questions have been asked via the live chat about this item. No questions about this item. We'll move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the report on the performance of the external auditor, and I'd like to give Tjalling Tiemstra the floor. I see him already, the Chairman of the Audit Committee, and he'll elaborate on the main findings arising from the annual evaluation of the performance by the external auditor. Tjalling? Thank you. Can you hear me? Just a sound check. Excellent. Yes, we do this every year. Especially this year, it's very important because we're going to propose that you shareholders reappoint EY for two more years. Once again, this year, we evaluated the external auditor, and the result of this evaluation, as you can see in this presentation, was once again very positive, especially on important items such as independence, objectivity, knowledge, and professional competence. Also, the areas for improvement that arose from last year's evaluation were taken on board well by EY, especially relating to communication about the management letter. I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. I propose that we move on to item 5 (b), which is the reappointment of Ernst & Young as the external auditor for the financial years 2022 and 2023. We did not receive any questions in advance of that agenda items 5 (a) or 5 (b). This is a voting item on the agenda, and as stated with respect to all voting items, the results will be disclosed at the end of the meeting. I'm asking the moderator, have any questions been asked via live chat? No questions via the live chat. Thank you. I will move on to agenda item 6. That is the composition of the Executive Board. Agenda item 6 comprises three subordinate points. I propose that we cover 6 (a), 6 (b), and 6 (c) all in one go. After that, of course, you will have the opportunity to ask questions about all of these items. The appointment term of Executive Board members Tanja Cuppen, our Chief Risk Officer, and Christian Bornfeld, our CI&TO, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer, will end at the close of this meeting. We intend to reappoint both Tanja and Christian as members of the Executive Board for terms of three and four years respectively. We opted for these distributed terms of appointment to ensure that when these terms end, Executive Board members do not need to be reappointed simultaneously. In addition, because of the departure of Clifford Abrahams, the Supervisory Board went out in search of a new CFO, and that search resulted in the nomination of Lars Kramer. We're delighted to tell you that the Employees Council has issued a positive advice about the intended reappointments and the intended appointment. At agenda item 6 (a), the intended reappointment of Tanja Cuppen appears. The Supervisory Board is notifying the general meeting about the intended reappointment of Tanja Cuppen as member of the Executive Board for a three-year term. Tanja has been Chief Risk Officer at ABN AMRO since 1 October 2017. As such, she is responsible for risk management and compliance. She has a very strong track record in risk management in both domestic and international banking and has more than 22 years of experience in senior management positions. At agenda item 2 (b), the intended reappointment of Christian Bornfeld has been included for information purposes. We are informing the general meeting of the intended reappointment of Christian Bornfeld as member of the Executive Board for a four-year term. On 1 March 2018, Christian Bornfeld became Chief Innovation and Technology Officer and at ABN AMRO is responsible for innovation, IT, corporate information security, and business services as the title suggests. Christian Bornfeld has a strong track record, he's acquired broad IT knowledge and experience in different positions at financial institutions and previously at IBM. In addition, the Supervisory Board intends to appoint Christian Bornfeld to vacancy that rose as a result of Clifford Abrahams' departure as Vice Chairman of the Executive Board and the Executive Committee. The Deputy Chairman replaces the CEO as needed, or if the CEO is unable to attend or absent, or if the position of the CEO falls vacant. At agenda item 6 (c), the intended appointment of Lars Kramer as CFO has been included for notification purposes. On 10 February this year, the Supervisory Board announced the intended appointment of Lars Kramer as Chief Financial Officer and member of the ABN AMRO Executive Board. The highlights from the agreement with Mr. Kramer have been published on the ABN AMRO website. The intended appointment is subject to the approval of the ECB, and as soon as this approval has been obtained, he will be appointed by the Supervisory Board to a four-year term, and his term of appointment ends upon the close of the Annual General Meeting in 2025. Lars Kramer has over 25 years of international and banking experience in finance controlling and financial management. He is presently Group CFO of the Hellenic Bank in Cyprus. Before that, he worked for over 20 years in various positions at, for example, ING Wholesale Banking and ING Direct. He is also highly experienced in managing strategic projects and change projects in the forementioned positions. Lars is present online and will be pleased to introduce himself. Lars, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [Non-English content]. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Pleased to be here today to introduce myself. I'm Lars Kramer, born in Germany 53 years ago, where I lived for six years. I grew up in South Africa, where my family comes from. I went to school at the university in Cape Town and married my wife, Kim, over there. I've got two kids who are both born in Hong Kong and are both now at university in London. The relocation this time around will be a lot easier than the last time. I've spent the last 25 years in the banking industry at various institutions in many different geographies and lived through many times of turmoil in the sector. My career has taken me to many amazing parts of the world like London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, and most recently, Cyprus, where I've worked for ING, Credit Suisse, SBC Warburg, Hambros, and Hellenic Bank. As a family, we're really looking forward to coming back to Amsterdam as we have many happy memories from our previous time here, and it feels a bit like a homecoming. It will also give me the opportunity to improve my Dutch and to convert what is a rudimentary Afrikaans, German, Dutch mixed dialect into something more proficient. I've been working as a CFO since the early 2000s, and at last count, have partnered nine different CEOs in my life. It'll be a real privilege working as part of Robert's leadership team. I've worked on the restructuring side and the reorganization side, as well as on the growth side in various roles. I've also participated in multiple inorganic acquisition and disposal transactions over the years. Additionally, over the last four years, I've had the pleasure of running strategy, leveraged finance, marketing, and communications alongside the more traditional CFO roles. As the global divisional CFO at ING Wholesale Banking and earlier at ING Retail Banking International, I was part of a team running divisions operating in more than 30 countries with over 10,000 employees and total assets of around EUR 370 billion. The finance departments were up to 500 employees worldwide. During this time, the team was responsible for introducing changes aimed at improving the client channels, country footprints, product offerings, systems, and processes with the goal of better customer service, a lower cost base, more efficient balance sheet and capital usage, and better profits, as well as focusing on nurturing the franchises back to health after the last great financial crisis. For the past four years, I've been the Group CFO of Hellenic Bank, where the main emphasis has been on reducing NPLs, remediating AML issues, and consolidating the industry in Cyprus. My main achievements have been regaining the U.S. dollar correspondent relationships with JP Morgan and Bank of New York, signaling the concerted effort taken by the bank, the industry, and the country to tackle the issue of AML at a root and branch level. Taking what was the number four bank in the country to market leadership, doubling its size and quadrupling its customer base by acquiring and integrating in record time the local cooperative bank. This was a complex multi-billion-euro transaction involving two systemic banks, which required the alignment of many stakeholder groups, including Government, Parliament, Unions, the SRB, the ECB, the Central Bank of Cyprus, and the local SEC, as well as existing and new shareholders and investors. I've always been one to push my boundaries and go beyond my comfort zone. I gain my motivation from working in the finance area where the past, present, and future come together, where you are always working as part of a multi-talented team, where you are instrumental in strategic direction setting, where you're prioritizing resource for day-to-day delivery, and where you're held to account by the investors and the main stakeholders. The nature of the industry also means that you have to be nimble and adaptable, and there are always unforeseen events that have to be dealt with that will knock your best-laid plans off track. I've already spoken with many people at ABN AMRO. These meetings have made me even more eager to join this great bank, as I see a lot of motivated people with a clear mission, and that really inspires me. My past experience, my goal focus, my leadership qualities, and strategic skills will hopefully complement the team and provide some added capacity to deliver on a very ambitious set of plans over the coming few years to you, the shareholders and the broader stakeholder community. Being the CFO of ABN AMRO is a great opportunity and an honor for me. I really look forward to the challenge. Thank you. With that, I hand back to the Chair. Thank you very much, Lars. [Non-English content]. Thank you very much. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you will understand that we are delighted to see Lars Kramer joining our top team in ABN AMRO, succeeding Clifford. We look forward to very productive and enjoyable cooperation with him. At this point, I would just like to thank his predecessor, Clifford, for his input to ABN AMRO. I wish him all the best as CFO in Virgin Money over in the U.K. He is already made a start there, in fact. I was talking to him yesterday, and he has got off for a good start. If you do not object, I will send your best wishes to him on behalf of all of us. Well, we did not receive any questions on this agenda item. Have any questions come in by the chat, moderator? No. No live chat questions. Okay. Thank you very much. That means that we have now completed this agenda item. I can't really welcome Lars yet because we're waiting for the European Central Bank to give us green light. Nevertheless, I can welcome you a bit to our midst, Lars. We move on to agenda item 7 of the agenda. Issuing and withdrawal of shares. The Annual General Meeting is entitled to empower the Executive Board to issue shares and rights of shares to exclude the preemptive right and for the purchase of ABN AMRO shares and depositary receipts for shares. The Executive Board proposes, with the approval of the Supervisory Board, to take the authorization granted at the Annual General Meeting on the 22nd of April 2020 for an 18-month period to replace with a new authorization given under agenda item 7 (a), 7 (b), and 7 (c) today. My proposal is that we go through all three agenda items here, the 7 (a), 7 (b), and 7 (c). After that, you will have the opportunity to ask questions on all of agenda item seven. You won't be surprised to hear we start with 7 (a). The proposal is for the Executive Board to be authorized from today for an 18-month period to, one, issue ordinary shares. To make it quite clear, this is not ordinary shares B. Secondly, to grant rights to take up such ordinary shares up to a maximum of 10% of issued capital in ABN AMRO on today's date. The Executive Board will only be able to make use of this authorization with the authorization of the Supervisory Board. Agenda item 7 (b). The proposal is to restrict or exclude preemptive rights. Here again, the Executive Board can only act on this matter with the approval of the Supervisory Board. Agenda item 7 (c), the proposal to grant authorization to acquire shares and depository receipts for shares in ABN AMRO's own capital. The proposal is for the Executive Board to be authorized for an 18-month period from today to acquire shares in ABN AMRO's own capital or depository receipts for shares via the stock exchange or in some other way. The Executive Board, again, can only take this action with the approval of the Supervisory Board. Purchase of shares or depository receipts for shares in ABN AMRO's capital could happen, for example, as part of a restructuring or capital reduction, including returning capital to shareholders and depository receipt holders. This will only happen in full respect of the future and current solvency rules as imposed by the supervisory authorities. The purchase price of shares and depository receipts for shares in ABN AMRO must be at least the nominal value of the ordinary shares and maximum 110% of the highest rate at which the receipts were traded on the previous trading day in Euronext Amsterdam. We've received no questions on this agenda item in advance. Maybe there are some questions on the chat. Moderator, please. No questions on the live chat. Okay. There are no questions. Thank you, moderator. This brings us to agenda item 8. The cancellation of shares or depository receipts for shares in the issued share capital of ABN AMRO. The general meeting of shareholders is invited on the proposal of the Executive Board and subject to approval of the Supervisory Board and the ECB and other relevant supervisory authorities to decide to cancel the shares acquired by ABN AMRO on the stock exchange or purchase of its own shares or depository receipts for shares on the basis of the authorization granted under agenda item 7 (c). The cancellation of these purchase own shares will be restricted to 10% of the total capital issued in ABN AMRO on the date of the general meeting, and is authorized for a period of 18 months from the date of today's meeting. No questions on this issue were submitted in advance. Moderator? No questions submitted during the meeting. Thank you. Well, that is the last item available for voting. In a few moments, we will stop voting. You can cast your vote now, please do so, and we will give you the voting results at the end of the meeting after we've had the open discussion. Thank you all very much for your voting. Now we'll move on to agenda item 9. Here again, we had no questions submitted for the general discussion in advance. Moderator, have you had any questions submitted on the chat? No, once again, no questions from the chat. Okay. That brings us then to the end of that agenda item. Before we go on to display the voting results, I'd just like to come back to what our external auditor was saying a moment ago. This is the last time he'll be with us. I would just like to avail myself of this opportunity now that he genuinely has stopped working for us. He can heave a great sigh of relief, and I can see a grin on his face. Leaning back, smiling to himself. I would like to thank Mr. Smit most sincerely for all the work he's done for ABN AMRO. This is the last time he'll be with us for meeting on behalf of EY. This is because it's a compulsory rotation of auditors. It's not we've got fed up with him. We've got to change him. Wouter, thank you very much. I greatly enjoyed working with you. I know that goes for all of us, especially the Chair of the Audit Committee, greatly enjoyed working with you. My warmest thanks. Now it's time to show you the voting results. You can now see on the screen results of items 2 (e), 2 (g), and 5 (b). You can see that all three issues were approved with a very comfortable majority from 99.95%- 100%. All of those have been approved. Perhaps we could have the next slide, please. Again, we can see that all issues were approved by a generous majority. The lowest one is item 7 (b), that's 93.57%, and all the others are very much above 99%. This means that all voting issues have been approved by you, but with a comfortable majority. My thanks to you for that. The meeting is therefore now closed. Thank you all for joining us and for contributing to our meeting. The meeting is closed.