Good morning, everybody. It's my pleasure to be joined now on stage by Marguerite Bérard, CEO and Chair of ABN AMRO. Many of you know Marguerite well. She joined ABN as CEO just over a year ago. Since then, I think it's fair to say that she's been busy, most notably pulling together the updated medium-term financial targets and group strategy update communicated to all of us in September last year. Prior to joining ABN, Marguerite worked in senior roles at both BNP Paribas and BPCE Groupe, having started her career in various government roles in France across the Ministry of Finance, the Élysée Palace, and the Ministry of Labor. Marguerite, thank you very much for joining us today. Given that aforementioned familiarity with Paris, we're delighted to welcome you back to the conference in Paris next summer. So, this discussion is due to last 35 minutes. It's webcast, so t hank you as well, and a warm welcome to everyone joining us on the web. Let's start, maybe, with a bit of a macro backdrop. The Dutch economy is resilient w ith slightly lower growth, higher inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, that's feeding through to energy prices. How are you adapting your strategy to operate in what looks like a more volatile and less benign macro backdrop? You are absolutely right, and I think one of the good things about the strategic plan that we presented last November is that it's very much what we call a self-help plan, i.e., relying primarily on levers that we have within our own hands, whether it is pursuing profitable growth, but also, right-sizing our cost base, steering on capital. Yes, we see the Dutch economy is not immune to geopolitical turmoil. We see its impact, which at this stage is moderate on our growth forecast for the Netherlands. The Netherlands is also a country that has been steadily, I would say, outperform, i t's a great ZIP code, o utperforming EU macro indicators steadily since the COVID crisis. Last year, growth was 1.9% versus, on average, 1.5% in the EU. Debt- to- GDP ratio, 44%, AAA country, very strong labor market, unemployment at 4%, and so on. So, this is a very healthy economy. But as I said, the important thing is that when you look at our strategic plan, the main levers, we had, I would say, conservative assumptions regarding the macroeconomic environment, and the main levers are in our own hands. Yes, exactly. Your forecasts themselves point to slow GDP growth, as you mentioned moderating housing activity, fewer transactions. How should we think about that environment in terms of balance sheet growth v ersus profitability? We don't pursue balance sheet growth for itself. What we pursue is profitable growth. This is really, for us, the name of the game. If you look at the various compartments of our balance sheet, we see, for instance, you mentioned mortgages. Even though the mortgage market is slowing down, we nevertheless see healthy mortgage prices because the Dutch market is a tight market with not enough supply. If you look year-on-year, the growth has been, on our balance sheet, 5% on mortgages. Same apply when you look at corporate loans, y ear-on-year growth of 3% over the past quarters. Again, we only pursue opportunities that are profitable, i.e., capital savings. This is really the core of our strategic plan. If I look also on the liability side, deposit growth has also been very meaningful these past quarters, and we expect them to continue to grow in the coming year. All in all, I would say, a fairly healthy environment, but a gain, for us, the name of the game is profitable growth, so we're not trying to grow the balance sheet for its own sake. Okay, if I move into the sort of P&L line items. Yeah. You mentioned a couple of the drivers there, but if we start with NII, that's clearly being driven at the moment by the liability side of the business. Yeah. Both, as you mentioned, in terms of deposit volume growth. There's also the hedge tailwinds kicking in. Yeah. At the same time, there is, again, you mentioned that persistent margin pressure in the mortgage business. How should we expect those opposing trends to develop over the coming quarters and years, especially in the context of what we see in rates? Yeah. I do recognize these trends. On mortgages, that there is definitely margin pressure. You had it in our strategic plan as well. One of the reasons too, and that's also a specificity of the Dutch mortgage market, is that there is a scheme in the Netherlands called NHG. This is state guarantee scheme for certain categories of mortgage buyers where there, yes, the margin are thinner, but at the same time, and that's very positive in terms of profitability, the capital that we need for these types of mortgages is also smaller. This is actually quite accretive. I also fully recognize a trend you describe on the liability side. We see not only volume growth, but also tailwinds in the forward curve. The impact was moderate in Q1. In our Q1 result, we provided a sensitivity analysis, not an update of our guidance, but a sensitivity analysis of what this could contribute if we were to apply the current forward curve to our model, and the potential upside on top of our EUR 6.4 billion commercial NII guidance, excluding NIBC, was an additional EUR 100 million. Yes, we see these trends right now in our situation. When it comes to NII, we will also be able to narrow down our guidance at Q2. Can we talk a little bit again on NII about competition? Yeah. You assume 100% pass-through. Yeah. On any rate hikes in terms of what you pay on your savings products. I guess the simple question, is the Dutch market really that competitive? Or is there a layer of conservatism built into that as well? The answer is both. Okay. First, yes, the Dutch market is competitive, and at the same time, I do fully recognize that the assumption we make when we present replicating portfolio of a 100% pass-through is conservative because we also know that the reality depends on other factors such as competitive trends, client behaviors, so it is a conservative assumption. One of the reasons we have this assumption in place is because if we were to be more specific, we feel it would also be giving, I would say, commercial indications on when we at ABN AMRO would think we want to make certain commercial moves, and we don't want to give this indication because then, we don't speak only to you, but we also speak to our peers in the market. That wouldn't be very wise. At the same time, I agree with you, the 100% assumption that we have of pass-through is conservative. There is another assumption that we make, it's not, this one plays in the other direction. It is that we don't have any hypothesis of migration effect. You also know that when interest-bearing accounts are going up, then you can also have a migration from current accounts that are not interest-bearing to these better remunerated accounts. We have no assumptions on that when you look at our replicating portfolio, and that plays in the other direction. I agree that it is a fairly simple model that we provide. At the same time, I think if you look on our website, you also have fairly good historical data on how things have played in the past, and you can make your own assumption. Are you seeing that migration already, or it's a sort of hypothetical as to what might happen when rates? No. It is just something that historically we've observed. Again, it's not one-to-one because, again, client behavior depends on, do clients bother for 25 basis points? Probably not. They also take into account, is this going to be lasting or not lasting? They also take into account prudency if they feel the environment is volatile. There are many things that play a role. I'm just saying there is no assumption on migration when you see our replicating portfolio. Understood. Then my last question on NII for 2028, in fact, w e can all work through the replicating income maths, et cetera, to try and take into account. Yeah. Those ideas you just gave us. But is there anything more fundamental we should be thinking about on that three-year view? Perhaps with the onboarding of NIBC, there's some funding synergies there, or there's improvements in mortgage market share. How does the shape of NII growth, I guess, change over the coming years as well between volume and margin? Yeah. We do have, as we shared, we definitely have, when it comes to NII, a more liability-led growth, huh? This is really not only on the back of volume, but again, on the back of margin now much more than on the asset side. That's one. NIBC per se is not going to change anything to this equation because with NIBC will come additional mortgages and additional deposits. It's not really changing the shape. When it comes to funding synergies, when NIBC will be joining our group, there indeed may be some. We see them kicking in later than the end of our plan post- 2028. This is not something we take into account in the years till the end of the plan 2028. Yeah. Okay. Then maybe let's switch gears over to fees. They were very strong in the first quarter. Yeah. Driven by clearing, by global markets. How much of that growth that we saw in Q1 was cyclical versus structural? I think you had both in Q1, i.e. yes, on the back of a strong volatility in the market, you definitely had a very strong quarter for clearing, for example, but also for global market activities. Yes, we registered a record level of fees in Q1, more than EUR 600 million, but I think it would also be unfair to assume that everything is just cyclical because this growth also came on the back of, for clearing, for example, additional clients that we have onboarded and additional resources that we have provided to this business because you know that five long-term ambitions, sustaining or clearing business growth over time is crucial. Part of it is structural, and it's not only about clearing because the growth in fees, you observe it also in the different parts of the bank. It's true in markets, but it's true in wealth management. It's also true in P&BB or retail division. You saw all the parts of the bank contributing. Yes, you may have quarter after quarter some volatility, but the underlying trend is positive, which is important because developing our fees is indeed a crucial part of our strategy. Yeah. Let's talk about developing fees. Can you walk us a little bit through or talk us through the wealth business, especially post the acquisition of? Yeah. Of HAL, where do you want to take that business? What's working well? What's maybe a bit more challenging? And I guess, how are you fairing in terms of converting cash into advisory and discretionary mandates? Absolutely. We do have in our five long-term ambitions, the ambition to make our wealth business a top five players in Europe. It's a long-term ambition. The strict ambition we gave ourself end of 2028 was EUR 335 billion of client assets. HAL, the acquisition of HAL plays, of course, a key role in this strategy that gives us a very strong number three position in the German market. This integration is going well. We will go through the legal merger mid-June, and then the IT merger will happen in the fall. This is all going according to plan. I'm also happy in wealth with the commercial and commercial intensity momentum that we see. I also like very much the way our businesses, corporate banking, and wealth management play together. We see hundreds of leads coming from CB to wealth since the beginning of the year, and of course, we need to keep transforming them. But this is one of the sweet spot of ABN AMRO, being able to serve clients, family-owned companies, privately owned companies on the corporate side, and on the private side as well. I think this is playing nicely. Conversion from first deposits, we may have been attracting from targeted campaigns, such as the one we did last year into more valuable assets, and DPM is going well. Of course, you also have part of cyclical effects based on market performance, but also clients sometimes taking more time to make certain decisions given the more volatile environment. We also observe that. Again, I think the underlying trend is going in the right direction. Sticking on the fee side, but thinking about it more from the corporate bank perspective. Yeah. I guess how underpenetrated would you say you are in regard to fee revenues with clients? If you look at average fees per customer. Yeah. Or fees to RWAs or fees to loans, is there scope for you to do more in monetizing those corporate relations as it pertains to fees? Yes. This is when we looked, preparing our strategic plan at our situation, we found that on our corporate bank, we were a bit heavy, dependent on, I would say, lending heavy on the balance sheet, and that this was something we could keep improving. This is something we do through various levers. We have, we go through all our client portfolio, see those where we think we are below hurdle, have conversations with our clients in terms of how can we improve cross-sell, make sure they visit the entire house going from, "Hey, are there things we can do with you from using global markets, hedging, transaction banking, wealth, and so on?" Make sure we have these conversations, and clients understand perfectly these conversations. If sometimes we think that there are situations where we cannot improve the profitability of the relationship, then we have also a disciplined client selection framework so we can exit clients. This is what I call, and we always do it very carefully, t his is what I call a solution of last resort because this is not our purpose. But we have, we're very disciplined in the way we allocate our capital, and this is why we're very confident in the target we have for a corporate bank to reach 11% ROE by the end of the plan. Yeah. Oh, perfect. Okay, now, let's turn to cost. Okay. That's perhaps the most unique element of the ABN investment case. It's nearly 200 days since you unveiled your new targets at the Capital Markets Day. You've already delivered 40% or so of your FTE reduction target, EUR 220 million of cost savings. What's driven that faster than expected execution so far? We've made a strong start, which is good. We've been, I think we achieved it through, I would say, a strong discipline, a strong discipline on new hirings, strong discipline on, I would say, external parties we were working with, not always necessary and so on. I would say this is really about a tighter discipline on controlling than what we probably used to have, and it's paying off. It's not a linear process, and we shared that also in our Q1 presentation. We also said, yes, we've reached 40% of the target we had in terms of FTE reduction, i.e., 5,200 by the end of 2028, which represents a 20% decrease in our workforce over the course of the plan. It's not a linear process, but the good thing is that we know exactly how we are going to achieve this because behind each of our cost initiatives, there is a well-grounded business case that we agreed upon, we called it sign in blood and audited, and w e monitor it literally on a weekly basis so that we know where we stand. So, not a linear process, and I think that's important for you to keep in mind, but a t the same time, grounded in a way that gives me, not only confidence in 2028 target, but also allowed us to improve our cost guidance by EUR 100 million for 2026 when we communicated at Q1. Yeah. Yeah. Within the cost narrative, you've also talked about AI adoption being there. Yeah. At 85% of your employees and already seeing tangible productivity improvements. How are you seeing the AI opportunity here today? I guess several of your peers have talked about the sort of meaningful differences in how they see the AI opportunity set versus three, four, five, six months ago. I guess a simple question would be, if you were to redo the CMD tomorrow, would you think about AI differently now versus when you spoke to us in September? Probably because, indeed, we see things moving very fast, so i t would probably have played even a bigger role in our strategic plan narrative when we presented it last November than if we were to do it again now. With every major technological revolution, and this one is probably the most important we will experience in our lifetime, there is what's called Amara's Law, i.e., we tend to overestimate the impact of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. I think that we are very much at this moment with AI. The way to solve the paradox, and that's also the way you see who's going to win this game, is speed of adoption. For me, the crucial thing is how fast we are able to diffuse this technology within the company. The way we do it, that's very important, is I don't believe in enforcing it on people because AI is intimidating. They call it the fourth narcissistic wound that was inflicted on humanity after, the first one was Copernicus when he found out that the Earth was not the center of the universe. The second one was with Darwin when we had to accept that we were just another kind of animal. The third one was Freud and having to accept that our ego was not actually fully in control of our minds. This is the fourth one with AI. Is conversation creativity intelligence something that is specifically human or not? It is intimidating, and we experience it in the bank with colleagues asking, "Hey, not only how do I use this, but is this going to replace me? Will I still have a role?" The way we work on it is not only to address these questions that are very valid questions openly in the bank. This is also, I think, a great reflection on what I like about Dutch culture, that we have these three councils meeting with the Works Council, the Supervisory Board, the Executive Board coming together and working very openly and constructively on this topic, AI being one of them. Also, we make sure that we diffuse AI at scale. For instance, we made widely available within the bank, AI tools such as Copilot licenses so that people can experiment and learn organically because I think this is really how you speed up diffusion. Then, what's really important also is to do things that I call at scale, i.e., you don't want to have the additional use case where we're just going to do, hey, one more press release on how glamorous this is going to look. You want to do things very methodically. We've developed six archetypes going from conversational agents to, for instance, intelligent document processing, and we use them as building blocks a little bit like LEGO blocks that we assemble so that we diffuse them throughout the company. Right now, Anna, our AI conversational agent, handles more than 150,000 calls per month. Lenny, our lending agent, helps our colleagues prepare for their credit memo for the credit committees and so on. This is how you play it. It also requires, and that's very important, a very, I call it, good plumbing, i.e., good IT, good process, review of end-to-end process, because AI on a bad process, it's still a bad process. Good data. This is where you get the full benefit of it. Speed of diffusion and how methodically you do it is absolutely crucial in being able to crystallize, materialize the productivity gains you want. I definitely didn't think we'd have Copernicus, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin turn up in. In one sentence? Yeah. We're going to have Karl Marx when we come to capital. Okay, on cost, final question on cost. If you look forward to 2027, 2028, do you see ABN AMRO at that point as a structurally leaner bank or one that's effectively been great at recycling those efficiency gains into higher growth investments? I guess how should investors judge that you've managed to achieve the right balance between those two? We're going to be both. We're going to do both b ecause one is feeding the other, i.e., we will be structurally a leaner bank because we have a fairly simple model and geographic footprint that allows us actually to be leaner, which is great because these are things we're already doing. For instance, we have today subsidiaries for mortgages and subsidiary for asset-based finance. We are integrating them in the main bank to simplify. We will be leaner. We keep very systematically, this is what we call our IT value case, decommissioning applications that are not necessary to simplify our IT landscape. This also allows us, and that we shared it at the CMD, to have a fairly, I would say, constant investment budget, but where the share of what we spend on maintenance or regulatory programs is decreasing compared to the share of what we can invest in commercial opportunities or also innovation. We see that as an opportunity to fuel our growth. So, both. But we're very disciplined on our cost yet because we seize the upside as well. We're not fully optimized yet. Very clear. By far. Let's pivot to ROE, and then I want to touch on capital and distribution quickly. Yeah. You're targeting greater than 12% in 2028. The first quarter this year, did 11%. I guess what happens through the rest of this year in terms of how linear and predictable the ROE path should be on the go forward? Okay. What you have to see in Q1, yes, it was a good Q1, w e're very happy with the good start, the good momentum we see in this first quarter, but y ou also have to bear in mind that there are, for instance, certain costs that will only kick in in Q4, like the banking tax, just to name one. You need to average it through a cycle. Yes, directionally, we are going in the good direction, but it is, I often say this is a marathon. We do it quarter after quarter. I think what we want to be is predictable. We commit to things that we know how we're going to deliver, and I think that makes us also attractive and appealing because we say what we're doing, and we know how we're going to reach it. But it is a discipline play, and this is still very early in the strategic plan. Okay. One on capital, one on distribution, and then I'll go to the audience quickly. On capital, you've made significant progress so far. Yep. On capital optimization, headroom creation, et cetera. How much further upside is there on capital efficiency alone, sort of in isolation? For instance, if you look at our corporate bank, which was an area where we put a lot of efforts because that's where it was primarily needed. I would say we've done half of what we wanted to do, so t his is good. We will keep freeing up capital. We will also mobilize active portfolio management, not only through SRTs, but potentially other solutions, insurance solution and various forms of partnerships that can be there. We're in a good spot, and more to come. Lastly for me on distribution. You've clearly reiterated the distribution policy of up to 100% of net profits. Given the large excess capital position, the limited RWA growth, as you mentioned earlier, the capital optimization levels we talked about, opportunities we talked about. Yeah. What are the key conditions for, I guess, going beyond that baseline? And how supportive is the regulator in terms of you asking to distribute more than 100%? Could there be a more innovative solution, like a directed buyback or anything with the state like we saw happen in Ireland? So many questions in one. You've got about three minutes. Okay. I'll be fast. We're still early in the plan. Again, happy with where we stand today. This is much better position to start like that than the other way around. We committed at our CMD for a distribution policy of up to 100%, at least EUR 7.5 billion. That's very clear. If over time, again, we are still early in the plan, we would be consistently above, significantly above our CET1 target, of course, this will be part of our assessment. Our assessment, we made very clear that we will do it at Q4. This is when our capital assessment is happening. To your point, as for share buyback, but also any inordinary distribution that would go to beyond 100% distribution would be, of course, subject to ECB regulatory approval. Yeah. Okay. Very clear. Any questions in the room for Marguerite? No? We're good. Maybe one. Oh, sorry. Could you wait for the mic friend, just because we're on the webcast, so then they can hear your question. You are obviously market leader in wealth management in the Netherlands. We are in Switzerland, so it's a relevant market. Now, you are big, you are a market leader. You have now the state backing a little bit. You have actually lot of clients who might be actually very relevant for the future, but your strategy in wealth management seems to be more focused on kind of standardization, the ETF blocks, and less on customization or solution, what we have heard, for example, from the UBS colleagues. Do you see some chances where you as a market leader in the Netherlands, maybe then later Benelux, would actually take the wealth, ultra wealth a little bit more seriously? Because you are recognized as a bank and you have these accounts already, but they are not being serviced as a 60 million or 100 million account. They are being serviced like retail. I think that would be slightly excessive. I would not fully agree with your last comment. We are indeed the undisputed market leader in wealth in the Netherlands. I feel, in terms of product offering, that we are actually innovative and we operate in a very open architecture scheme. I can tell you that our clients actually benefit from the full scope of what can be offered because this is part of, w e operate, and this is actually one of the upside we also have in the plan, w e operate way more in open architecture than most of our peers. I see also the potentials. These are things we are doing in internalizing some of the product offering, having global markets, clearing and wealth working together for certain projects that we, right now, buy outside and provide our client rather than do in-house. This is one also of the upside we have in terms of our revenues. In terms of product offering, I think, given this open architecture approach we have, we're quite innovative. What's true is that we are often for wealth clients, also their household account. That's true. This is also why you sometimes observe some seasonality with us because they also use us to pay their taxes from their accounts with us and so on because we are their primary bank. We are the household bank, but not only. Okay. Any more? No, we're good. Okay, Marguerite, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It was a pleasure.