Okay. It's my pleasure now to be joined on stage by Ida Lerner, CFO of ING. Ida has been CFO since April this year. As I think everybody knows, was previously CFO of DNB from 2021 through to 2025, having worked at DNB since 1999. First of all, Ida, thanks so much for coming and joining us here in Zurich. We're going to be talking for 35 minutes. We're going to have some time towards the end of the session for Q&A. Also, this session is being webcast, thank you for everyone joining us remotely. Ida, I think as I said at the beginning, I think this is your first conference as CFO of ING. Perhaps just talk a little bit about what first attracted you to the role, also how you found the integration process so far. Well, first I would say I was very happy where I was, so I wasn't planning to move. If there was one bank in the world that would attract me to move, it was ING. The reason for that is that ING has always been very technology driven and very advanced in terms of technology. It's also been a bank that a lot of banks have looked up to in terms of how do you truly combine customer proposition with technological developments, and how do you put tech team together with the business team in terms of truly generate customer satisfaction as well as customer value proposition. In addition to the fact that it's a larger scale bank, I think it's a bank that truly can benefit from the European market growth overall, but also scalability, not the least, which will be important in the times ahead. What has, I wouldn't say surprised me, but has shown, is that the perception from the outside also is very much true when you are on the inside. The tech teams who's really sitting close to the business side are really also filtering through in terms of the customer pain points, how do we solve those and how do we think about it. In spite of the fact that we're such a big organization and are in so many different countries, we are still able to really build technological interfaces towards our customers that are solving the problem in a quite amazing way. The culture is very open, transparent, and similar to the Nordics in a way in terms of non-hierarchical, and I hope that I will be able to also bring something to the group. Great. By my reckoning, it was about 30 days between you joining the Executive Board in ING and then presenting on the first quarter results call. Clearly quite a compressed timeframe. How would you characterize performance so far this year? I guess how have operating trends evolved so far in Q2? I think the first quarter proved to be a very strong quarter across the board. There was a strong customer activity in the retail banking side. We saw a good growth in terms of mortgage lending. We saw a good growth in deposit and liabilities in spite of the fact that the first quarter seasonally is a slower quarter, in spite of the fact that we didn't do any larger campaigns, but still managed to attract a good amount of deposits, profitable deposits, at lower deposit cost than what we have done historically. If you look at wholesale banking, there was a very strong growth on the lending side at zero growth in risk-weighted assets. The fact that the part of the wholesale banking team has really worked on capital velocity, thinking more in terms of capital optimization in a very good way. We also saw a good uptick in payments and cash management deposits coming in, which is the more sticky part of the business on the wholesale banking side, which I also think is very good. In addition to that, you can see that we see the effects of the cost measurements taken last year, and we only saw a cost growth of 1.1% year-over-year in spite of the fact that you had underlying stronger wage growth, not least from the Dutch market, but also overall, which shows that the impact of scalability and really driving cost efficiencies in a good and systematic way has also proven to be fruitful. Super clear. Turning to NII, if we start to work through the P&L. On NII, you report something called the liability margin, which I think you may get questions on from time to time. To begin with, can you just give us a quick summary of what the liability margin actually shows us? Why have you set up the hedge the way that you have, and as rates evolve and competition potentially intensifies, how are you thinking about managing deposit pass-through from here? Liability. First of all, what we saw in the first quarter as also coming out of the fourth quarter was that we had a stronger growth. We had a strong profitable growth in liabilities overall as well as on the lending side. What we're seeing is that, yes, the liability margin also benefiting from fewer larger campaigns, and more targeted campaign is, of course, benefiting from that as well. In addition to that, if you look at the composition of the underlying portfolio for us compared to other banks, we have a larger share of the savings bucket on the liability side. Our deposits is, to a major degree, driven by savings accounts and to a lesser degree of current accounts. The current accounts percentage continues to grow, as we're also growing the savings part, that is not showing up in the numbers. When looking at the replication for us is predominantly a risk management tool. I think that is important to say that we look at the replication as more of a way to manage the downside potential but still capture part of the upside potential. It's not to maximize profit for the group, but really to ensure that we have enough room to manage, in terms of pass through to our customers in terms of the savings accounts if that is needed from a competition perspective, but also at the same time continuously focus on profitability and the longer-term profitability of the liabilities. You mentioned the margin in itself was 104 basis points in the first quarter. Indicatively, how should we all think about how that evolves through the rest of the year? When analysts like me have a liability margin forecast well over 110 basis points in the LTs, what are we getting wrong? Well, I'm not saying that you're getting anything wrong. I should start by saying that. What we're saying is that, yes, what we expect is that the liability margin to be in the mid-range of what we've guided in terms of what we anticipate the liability margin to be between 100 basis points and 110 basis points. This year, we expect to be in the mid-range, and we were there already in the first quarter. What would that say in terms of the future outlook in terms of liability margin growth? We still believe that given what we're seeing in terms of our portfolio, larger part being savings accounts, but also in terms of competitive behavior, the behavior among our competitors as well as customer behavior, we believe that we will, in 2027 and 2028, be above 110 basis points. People like you say that, "Well, then you're being too conservative when you say that that's only a temporary effect, that that would trend down to the more normalized levels again." You could very well be right, but when we are saying this, it's not a way for us to say that we're steering the business to say that we cap it at 110 basis points. Yeah. It's more a way for us to say, given historical development, in particular related to the savings accounts- Yeah. ...competition, that is what we have seen is happening, is that you get a temporary increase in terms of liability margin, then that is competed away over time. On the other hand, you could say that if we continue growing our current account business to a larger degree than what we have done historically, we also see less competition than what we have seen historically, you could definitely say that, yes, the liability margin would be in the areas of where you and your colleagues are anticipating it. I think for us, it is just to say that this is our best estimate- Yeah. ...given the historical development, but that's not how we steer the group, and that is an input. Yeah. We're not putting a cap on 110 basis points. If we can get beyond 110 basis points, we would naturally welcome that as well. Very clear. Okay, switching from margins to volumes, you're quite unique in that you've got a target to grow both loans and deposits at roughly 5% each, which in effect means keeping the loans deposit ratio around 100%. How do you balance volume growth on the one hand versus margin discipline on the credit side and the liability side from here? If we look at the first quarter, we saw a strong growth on the lending side, and then you could say, so given if we start by talking about the lending volumes, if we see the situation we have in the Middle East or the war that we're having in Iran at the moment, the uncertainty that we still see in Europe, given that there is a war in Ukraine still, that could lead to higher uncertainty among the customers in terms of you see consumer confidence coming down. That would mean that you could see lower growth on the lending side. I would expect that to particularly be seen in the wholesale banking side first. There we come from a good momentum in growth, a good pipeline also in the first quarter, which also stems from what was built up during last year when we had Liberation Day and quite a lot of some of the volumes were put on hold, or the investment decision were put on hold, materializing in the fourth quarter and then in the first quarter. We could potentially see a similar picture here, where some of the pipeline isn't materializing in the second or third quarter but are being pushed out in the future. I wouldn't say that we're seeing anything of that now, but looking again at history and consumer confidence. On the personal customer side, you could say that potentially if we expect interest rates to increase and ECB to hike, now also going forward, what would that do to mortgage lending- Yeah. ...and the underlying mortgage portfolio? That could of course also be slightly impacted. Structurally, we're not seeing any change or any signals of that also because there's still an under supply of houses overall in our key markets, and therefore, a underlying stronger demand than the supply. I think on the other hand, that would positively impact liabilities. When we say 5% growth on both sides, it's more to say that we believe that that's a long-term sustainable growth level, which also supports the profitability targets that we have set and that we're working towards in terms of the longer term. I wanted to ask about campaigns, I guess from two slightly different angles. First, you have really good underlying volume trends in a lot of your markets. Why is there the need for campaigns to begin with? Second, with the campaigns, we often see teaser rates right at the beginning, rates that may be at or above swap rates. The front-end economics of those campaigns look quite bad, right? Perhaps talk through the level of recurring revenues that those campaigns bring, how we should think about the ROE upside of that sort of acquisition cost, right? Like the economics of the second half of the story. Yeah, absolutely. All campaigns that we do and all the volumes that we attract, either on liabilities or on lending, should be a return on equity accretive in the sense that it should be profitable. In the first four months of a campaign, it's obviously not. On the other hand, then you see what, in terms of the retention rate or the stickiness of those deposits, that hasn't changed materially from what we've seen before. The shift that we've done or the change that we've done over the past few quarters is that we haven't done any larger campaigns. Historically, we've done more larger campaigns in kind of a broader perspective, in particularly in the German and the Belgium market. Now we're doing more targeted campaigns based on the customer insight that we have, which means that it's smarter in a way because it also shows that we have a better understanding of the customer needs and the customer behavior, and we can also be more targeted in the sense that it also has lower cost in terms of campaign costs overall, as well as deposit cost. If you look at it from the first four months might not be standalone good, but if you then look at the retention of those customers and those volumes, they're always profitable, and has also continued to be profitable in the past few quarters. Okay. Staying on the same, I guess, theme, but maybe pivoting over to fees. How much incremental fee income are you now generating per additional primary customer, and where do you see biggest opportunities remaining to sort of deepen that monetization opportunity with your preexisting customer base? Well, we come from a, I wouldn't say legacy, but a history of ING Direct being very product-focused. Kind of focused on a savings account or a mortgage. Over the past few years, we've increased focus in terms of customer proposition or value proposition, which means that we look at it more holistically in the sense that the customers should have more than one product, and we, as a bank, need to think cross-sale, to a larger degree. That is also why we're focusing on mobile primary customers and are really looking at what are these customers doing in terms of having a recurring income coming into the bank on a monthly basis. They do their payments through us, and then they have one added product in addition to that. We haven't said kind of what exactly, in terms of profitability or fee income generation, but that is, of course, part of this as well- Yeah. ...in terms of driving the increasing fee income relatively to our dependence on NII. I would say just by looking at what we saw in 2025, we had a fee growth of 15%. In the first quarter, we had year-over-year a fee growth of 13%. Yeah. I think just by looking at the underlying growth trend by further cross-sale is one important element. The structural shift, I would say, is related to investments. Investments is only in the early days in some of our core markets. I would say in the German market, we see a strong potential just with the pension reform and the reforms that are being implemented. What we look at is also what has been seen in, say, the Swedish market, where the pension reform was implemented in 2000. You now see that the Swedes are investing most in terms of per capita if you compare it to the rest of Europe. Just by looking at the trend shift from only look saving in your primary house as well as in your savings account has now boosted the focus on capital markets and also investments into mutual funds and stocks overall. This is a trend shift that we expect. Will happen not only in Germany, but also in the broader base perspective in Europe, and we definitely intend to be an important player there. Investments, I would say, is structural. Still very much in the early days, but we intend to play an important role there. You mentioned the 13%, right? The double-digit fee growth that you delivered in the first quarter. Like you said, well ahead of the guidance of 5%-10%. You talked about some of those structural elements. If we try and break down the 13%, how much of that 13% is cyclical versus structural, or how much is a bit one-off fee? There's a tough comp. If we think through the rest of this year, do you just put 13% in the back- Yeah. ...say, "Actually, let's focus on 5%- 10%," or is there a bit of a story emerging? I think in the first quarter, some of the income stemming from investment was also driven by the high volatility that we saw in the market. If we don't see the same volatility in the stock market, that is, of course, you could consider that as being more of a one-off. On the other hand, you have higher assets under management that you also generate fees on. I think that's structural in the sense on why is it important to continue growing assets under management and assets under custody is also because it kind of generates fees on a more recurring pace. On the daily banking side, which we didn't talk about before, there's no kind of one-offs there, but really more an added value purely by the fact that we're also now positioning ourselves and opening up business banking in new markets, being fairly new in terms of looking at the German market as well as in Italy, where we will continue growing. This is predominantly self-employed corporates or smaller corporates, which means that they're not a lending customer, but they're depositors and payments-focused customers, which will drive daily banking fees also going forward. Then you have insurance, which is fairly new, I would say, in the sense that it is also part of the cross-sale proposition, and also in the new agreement that we've closed with producers of insurance will continue to drive fee income also going forward. If we switch over to OpEx, I guess the logical question on OpEx is that everyone's talking about AI, the tangible use cases, the speed at which new opportunities are arising. Definitely love to hear your thoughts on how you're seeing that play out with regards to your focus on cost. Also, you delivered just 1% underlying growth in cost in Q1. As you look in your guidance for the out years for 2026- 2027, how do you think about the deliverability, the challenges or not of getting to those cost ambitions? Well, being a digital-first bank means that, first of all, that we also should show that the scalability is there in the sense that the scalable platform works, that the customer acquisition cost isn't really as big as it is for other banks. That's what you also see in our cost numbers in the first quarter as well as in the full year figures for 2025, is that we are able to add more customers on a scalable platform. That goes for business banking as well. When you start up something new in Italy, for instance, and you use the platform or the tech platform from the Dutch market, that is of course more scalable and really drives the lower cost growth related to that. I would put AI in two buckets. You have AI in terms of increasing efficiency, increasing kind of standardization, as well as taking out cost. That's an example where we announced earlier this year that we're reducing the operation staff by 1,250 people. That is, of course, something that will benefit us also going forward in terms of OpEx, and is a clear testament of that we are onboarding AI to some of our core processes and KYC more importantly. I would point to the fact that we're now seeing concrete examples and really deliveries where AI is not only focusing on cost efficiency, because that's only part of the story. Our biggest opportunity, I would say, is also related to income potential and time to market, where the agentic mortgage proposition that we have launched in Netherlands really shows that there is an income potential if you work with agentic AI in a smarter way. The fact that we are now reducing the time to yes in a market where we already have quite a strong proposition and we're in the forefront, and now the other banks have caught up with us, this gives us another opportunity to be even quicker with higher quality- Yeah. ...decision-making capabilities, not necessarily lower cost, but just the pure fact that you are quicker in terms of your response to the customers means that you are then generating- Yeah. ...more value creation as well, both for the customers but also internally. If we think a little bit more medium term, I guess on a headline basis, your 2027 targets of above EUR 25 billion of revenue, EUR 13 billion of cost, that implies a cost-to-income ratio around 52%. You've said ING is essentially a digital bank. In many regards, you've said that ING has a clear ambition to be sort of the best bank or the best European bank. With that in mind, shouldn't that kind of medium-term cost-to-income ratio start with 4 rather than 5? You talked to someone that comes from the Nordics. Yes. I think the scalability of our platform, of course, means that we should also prove that in terms of cost efficiency. Having said that, you also need to look at what markets we are operating in terms of not only the cost related to people as well as tech, but more importantly also if you look at regulatory cost and taxes, which is more predominant in some of our markets than in others. I think if you take that aside, you could then say that, how can we prove that the platform is as scalable as we're arguing? You would say, yes, that means that we also need to show that we are adding more customers to an existing cost base, which we are. What we believe strongly in is that we will not want to save ourselves or starve ourselves to profitability. We want to ensure that we invest sufficiently into our business. That's also because having the best mobile banking app and the way that we meet our customers is predominantly through the mobile platform. That also means that we need to ensure that the Net Promoter Score stays as high as it is today, that the customer values our proposition and are able to solve their issues, or the customer friction needs to be solved online by themselves. There shouldn't really be any customer friction. I would say that the cost ambitions and the cost targets that we've set today are quite ambitious coming where we come from. Could we do more? I think we can. Again, I don't want to under-invest in our customer proposition either. I definitely don't want to under-invest in the organic growth platform that we have with 41 million customers on the retail side, only 15.5 million being mobile primary customers gives an enormous potential to cross-sale for those remaining customers to become mobile primary customers. That also means investing product capabilities and business banking, for instance, in Italy, as we've done. On the topic of returns, kind of two separate but clearly linked questions. As you look at the 200 basis points of RoT improvement or RoE improvement you've got to deliver between 2025 and 2027 targets, I'd love to hear about sort of how you think about the main big building blocks on that 200 basis points. Also, how would you characterize, I guess, the quality of current returns? Because particularly given you've got the tailwinds from the deposit margins, which are elevated, we've got higher rates coming through, we've got low credit costs. How should we, on the flip side, maybe think about downside risk management on RoT bridge, i.e., what are some of the levers you have to pull if this sort of aggregation of current tailwinds doesn't sustain all the way out to 2027? Yeah, you're right in everything that you say. We have a positive tailwind in terms of the replication and interest rates. On the other hand, we also have quite a lot of work to do in terms of cross-sale and really generating on the fee side, which I feel like we've shown that we are, and also kind of proven that we are delivering on. I think one of the key points that we haven't talked that much about is also our ability to turn wholesale banking and really make that as profitable as we want it to be in terms of supporting the return on equity targets for the group. I strongly believe that is possible, and I also see very positive steps already now being taken in terms of capital velocity and thinking smart around how we distribute the capital or how we think about kind of splitting the capital between retail banking and wholesale banking. That transition has already started, and just the pure fact that they have stable return on risk-weighted assets and are still generating a strong loan growth, I think is showing that. We need to add more feature, or not more features, but more cross-sale on the wholesale banking side and originate and distribute, not the least, to a larger degree than what we have done before, and bring even more in terms of payments and cash management. The risk, if we were to see a significant downturn in terms of macro picture and economic downturn, that would of course impact us. On the other hand, I would say that there's a very strong solidity in the group as such. The fact that we are well-diversified, the absolute majority of our exposure is related to mortgage lending in markets where historically we've also not seen a large negative development in terms of cost of risk. On the wholesale banking side, the portfolio is really well diversified. You could say another risk I would point to in terms of cost and cost management. I don't think that we, as financial institutions overall, or the market are paying for all the AI costs that will come going forward. I think we will need to think smartly around how we structure the contracts and the agreements with the partners and the tech partners and really think smart about the usage of data as well in an AI context, because otherwise you might see a significant growth of costs moving from tokenized data rather than what we're used to thinking about data being a stable cost. Maybe on capital, you're continuing to run the business at 13% CET1. What gives you the confidence that's the right level, I suppose, in this current macro environment? Any scenario in which you'd consider operating at either a higher or perhaps a lower level? maybe if you could also just talk through the move from 12.5%- 13% over the last 18 months. How should we think about that? Yeah. The move from 12.5%- 13% was driven by increased regulatory requirements. Where we are today, around 13%, which is important to highlight, that is not 13 per se, but really around 13%, is a level where we also think that we will be able to continue delivering a good return on equity, and it's 195 basis points above the MDA. It also shows that we have a good prudency in that number and a good kind of flexibility should things deteriorate or should anything impact the solidity of the bank. I think that 13% also shows that we will continue delivering on our dividend policy, and that was also testament by the fact that we announced the latest share buyback in connection with the first quarter. That also shows that we will continue to reinvest in our business where we believe that is good for a shareholder perspective. We will continue looking at potentials in terms of potential M&As, if that is deemed to be return on investment that is kind of holding up long term and really delivering return on equity accretive business. we will continue, more importantly, to redistribute excess capital above 13% to our shareholders. Okay. I have a question on M&A, but maybe in the interest of time, maybe just any questions we have in the audience for Ida? Yeah, on the front row. If you just wait for the microphone so people can hear you online. Thank you. Thank you. Many times you mentioned about the specific European markets, like the Italian market, Dutch market, Swedish and German market. I'm wondering, to what extent the European market fragmentation impacts negatively the business, and what would be the potential if the European markets would be better integrated? If yes, what would you recommend for the European regulators to do to improve the situation? I wrapped up a couple of questions. Yeah, no, I think, overall we believe strongly, being a pan-European bank, we believe strongly in level playing field. We also believe strongly in simplification, and a regulatory environment that supports banks to operate pan-European. We don't think that that is reflected to the extent that it could be in the current setup, and we think that there is more to do in terms of simplification and standardization between the markets. I would point to particularly in terms of the regulatory environment there, in terms of the differences and the particularities in the different markets. If you just look at the Dutch market compared to the Belgian markets, it's neighboring countries, but there is completely different market dynamics. I don't think that we will be able to change that and see a uniform standard in terms of mortgage lending. I also don't really see that as a constraint for us in terms of scalability, because scalability is really built around do you have a scalable tech platform that allows you to onboard new customers and also do it in a systematic way? You could add specific features in different geographies to that platform without significant hindrance. It is, of course, more challenging to have one call center or those kind of, where you need to understand the local markets, which would help if everything was standardized. I think that is quite far to go if you look at mortgages. I would say that it's easier to see that would happen in terms of investments and more standardization in terms of an investments and savings union or one capital markets in a European perspective, which we strongly believe in and are also advocating for. Okay, maybe just one final one from me on Oh, you have a question at the front? Perhaps in Europe. Could you just with the microphone so they can hear you on the webcast. Europe, I think, is beautiful for all its diversity, and I think you cover very interesting diversity of markets. We have an issue in Europe with demography. Now, going from Postbank, ING Direct to being digital, being app-oriented, why is the rollout of new products relatively slow? Why does Revolut exist? Because I believe ING does fantastic job to send customer an email after you paid EUR 5 in different country that you paid this FX. Which is very neat. Which is absolutely fantastic. However, we rather would see young potential customers being caught on simple FX product and growing that customer for the future. two questions with it, demography, young customer. Do you segment on that, and do you try to actually capture those customers? Yeah. I don't believe we need Revolut in Europe. We have ING. I agree with you. On the other hand, I think if you look at Revoluts of this world or the niche players, and the fintechs, what they've been very successful on is, of course, targeting a specific part of the market, or they start there and then they grow. You have Revolut, you have Klarna, and you have other fintechs that are doing the same. they start in a very niche part of the market, and then they broaden themselves to become more of a universal bank, which has other complications as well, and kind of also makes it less easy for the customers to navigate on their mobile banking apps or their apps. I think I agree with you in saying that ING should be able to fill that position. Why haven't we been able to do it so far is, again, I think back to the legacy and the way that we were built historically, in the sense that there was a strong autonomy in the different markets or in the different geographies where we set up ING. You were allowed to set up ING, really successful and very strong franchise, but based on product specifics, so thinking mortgage or savings, or savings and mortgages, which didn't really help us in terms of scalability, and also didn't really incentivize cross-sale to other products. The fact that we're still launching products in Germany, for instance, in terms of credit cards, is an example of that. We don't have a full-fledged product offering in all the markets where we are present, where we probably should have, and that's what we're building now. That's why I would say that we have an organic growth potential that is phenomenal. I think it just gives us a platform to grow just organically without further increased costs if we manage to do it also from one tech platform, and really drive scalability and customer value proposition, which some of these niche players will be more challenged to do in the sense of when they're growing. Yeah, right at the back. Thank you. The fact that you don't have a full-fledged product offering in a market like Germany, for example, do you think it makes you more vulnerable to see coming of Chase, for example, being quite aggressive on the German market with a strong balance sheet behind them? No, because we also have a strong balance sheet behind us, and we are now launching the necessary products. I would say that we have the necessary products that we need to have. Can we do even more, and can we be even better in terms of being that first or the customer's primary bank? There we really can capture more and do even more. I think just the pure fact that we're now talking far more in terms of cross-border scalability and thinking more in terms of what are driving profitability and customer loyalty more than anything in some of the markets, and are implementing that also in other markets, shows that this will just be able to continue for us. Chase is just one example of players coming in, establishing them in our markets. That has happened before. It's not a new feature. I think it's more timing of it that we didn't know when would Chase coming and what pricing rather than that they came in. We were well prepared for it, and I think it's important to point to a lot of people seem to think that when we've done our campaigns, we predominantly target new customers. That is not true. In our campaigns and the absolute majority of our campaigns, we've targeted existing customers in increasing their deposits with us. What you're looking in terms of what Chase and what others are doing when they're coming into market, you're bringing new to the bank money. That has not been our largest proposition, and therefore, you would say that the 5% or kind of the price chasers, which is something that you often talk about, are not the typical ING customer, even though I understand that that has been the perception by several. Okay, great. I think we've run out of time, but thank you so much for coming here and sharing your perspectives. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.