SOCIETE GENERALE (GLE) September 2026 Capital Markets Day Transcript

All right.

Good morning, everyone. I would like to extend my thanks and a warm welcome to our shareholders, bondholders and analysts joining us here in the room in person, but also online. We deeply appreciate and value your continued commitment and engagement with Société Générale. Today is an important milestone for us. It's an opportunity to step back, assess our achievements, discuss where we are headed, and more importantly, explain how we intend to keep creating value for our shareholders. In 2022, the group was in a difficult position. Our organization was too complex, our operating model was not efficient enough, costs were too high, profitability was too low, and a weak capital position hampered our ability to grow and to distribute value to shareholders. But it was also clear that the group had strong franchises and a clear potential. A potential, however, that was not translating consistently into financial performance. The average profitability languished at around 6% for the 2018-2022 period. So in 2023, we set out to fix that. We established a strategic roadmap with clear priorities to build a stronger, simpler, and more profitable group. A group with greater capital flexibility, tighter operational discipline, and a sharper focus on a higher and more sustainable value creation. And this is exactly what we have done. And of course, there is still much more to do. What I want to share with you today are the next steps we will take to create the conditions for disciplined, profitable growth, reaching a roti between 13% and 14% in 2029, and above 15% in 2030 and beyond. But we know that promises don't earn you credibility, results do. To give you a better sense of how we plan to achieve our future ambitions, let's revisit how we engineered this turnaround. Three years ago, to strengthen our foundation, we decided to increase our CTO on ratio target from 12 to 13 percent after Basel IV. It was an ambitious goal at the time, designed to create a robust buffer above regulatory requirements, give greater flexibility to manage the group through different market conditions and to remove the perception of the dilution risk. At the time, we combined this capital objective with a payout policy of 40 to 50 percent of the reported net income. And as we all know, you have to make money before you can spend it. And we had to earn the right to distribute more. But by Q125, our CTO ratio had already reached 13.4% after Basel IV, above our 13% target. And that marked a fundamental change in our position. Instead of being a constraint, capital became a source of strategic flexibility. It also became the foundation for more predictable ordinary distributions, as well as a lever for additional capital returns when our capital generation exceeded the needs of our business. We have moved from rebuilding capital to actively managing it. Over the past three years, we have also fundamentally improved the operating performance of the group. We made difficult decisions, we simplified the organization, we reduced structural complexity, we increased accountability across the group, and we applied strict discipline in the allocation of every euro of expense. These actions are now producing tangible results, and we now have a cost base that is 8% lower than it was in 2022. And yet, at the same time, we organically grew revenues by 8%, and this despite stable organic RWA. Those measures have improved our cost-to-income ratio, which by the end of this year will be below 60%, exactly what we committed three years ago. That 60% is also 11 percentage points below the 2018-2022 average level. As a result, profitability has increased to around 11%, that's five percentage points higher than the 2018-2022 average, and above our initial target of between 9% and 10%. All this resulted in a higher distribution to our shareholders, with the ordinary payout reaching 50% of reported income as early as 2025. We were also able to return excess capital to shareholders beyond our ordinary distribution policy, and we've done this through three extraordinary share buybacks totaling €3.5 billion. So by 2025, just 18 months after the cut, the total distribution to shareholders was almost three times what it was in 2022. In total, we distributed around €9.5 billion since 2023, and total distribution, combined with the increase of our share price, represents a total shareholder return of 270%. This performance is among the best in our industry. Greater profitability also strengthens our risk profile. In the past few years, our earnings have not only grown, but they are significantly more resilient. First, we reduce the volatility of our revenues. We are now generating revenues that recur with greater predictability at lower levels of volatility across market cycles. And as the chart on the left shows, this is better than most of our peers. Second, the combination of stronger revenues, lower costs and greater operating efficiency has increased by 50% the pre-provisioned profit generated by the group compared to its 2018-2022 average. And third, our cost of risk has remained low. It has been consistently below 30 basis points every quarter since 2023. This reflects the quality of our loan portfolio, our disciplined origination standards, and our prudent management of credit risk. We are now better equipped to absorb shocks, generate capital, and deliver sustainable returns through the cycle. This is the risk profile we intend to maintain as we move into the next phase. One look at these results leads to a clear and simple conclusion. We have met or exceeded all of the targets from our previous plan. And given how well this playbook has performed, we want to enhance it and build off our strengths. And our group is built around three powerful and complementary pillars, French retail banking, global banking and investor solutions, and mobility and international retail banking. Each pillar has its own strengths, sound client franchises, and growth drivers. And together, they give us a diversified revenue base, a broad range of expertise, and a distinctive capacity to serve our clients across their different banking needs. Of course, the strategy is only as strong as the organization's culture and capacity to execute it. And Société Générale is well known for its resilient, business-minded, entrepreneurial, and innovative culture, as well as for a strong sense of belonging, which are unique assets. Our success is a testament to the performance of all our talented teams all over the world. And I want to take this opportunity to warmly thank them for their hard and consistent work which delivered a particularly successful turnaround. But we knew we could do better. So we also worked hard to reshape our culture around four principles. Ownership, efficiency, cooperation, and responsibility. We changed. And this is why we can look into the future with confidence. And those future next steps come straight from a familiar playbook. It's a strategic equation that has already proved successful for us. It doesn't need to be changed. It needs to be enhanced. We can take an even lower cost base, combined it with profitable growth, underpin it with disciplined risk management, while continuously transforming our businesses to make them more competitive with higher level of sustainable performance. So here are the targets for 2029. Lower costs in absolute terms, standing at €16.3 billion, down 2% versus 2026. Higher revenues, growing at a CAGR of around 3% between 2026 and 2029 Leading to a cost-to-income ratio below 55% A low cost-of-risk between 25 basis points and 30 basis points And a roti between 13% and 14% With a C2O ratio above 13% and a distribution payout ratio of 50% Now, here's what this strategy and those targets mean in terms of shareholder distributions. Our policy is built around two complementary components. The first is an attractive and sustainable ordinary distribution with a payout ratio at 50% of our reported net income. This will grow along with the recurring earnings and organic capital generation of the group. And this ordinary distribution will continue to be balanced between dividends and share buybacks. And it will translate into a low-to-mid-teens DPS growth CAGR over the 2026-2029 period with an expected cumulative ordinary distribution above 13 billion euro. The second is an extraordinary distribution which allows us to return capital generated above our 13% targets. If no relevant and accretive M&A opportunities are identified, we will return to shareholders the entirety of this excess capital estimated at around 8 billion euro. Therefore, the total return to our shareholders may reach 21 billion euro for the period, or 39% of our market capitalization. Think of it this way, we could distribute around 80% of our earnings each year after funding our businesses for profitable growth. Now let me outline how we will lower costs, which has been and will remain at the heart of our strategy. Over the past few years, the steps we took to reduce our cost base and improve our efficiency have paid off. Our costs, as you know, have decreased by 8% compared to the 2022 level. That is a decrease of 1.4 billion euros in absolute terms, despite an average annual inflation rate of 2 to 3%. Restating from perimeter impact and inflation, our cost base has decreased by 17% thanks to savings of 2.6 billion euros. This is massive. And we accomplished this because we worked on every component of our cost base through decisions both large and small. We adjusted our workforce to reflect our strategic priorities and the changing needs of our business. As you can see, compared to the end of 2023, headcount is down 17% and 11% when adjusted for the disposals. We implement a strict control on hiring and on external spending. We simplified our organization and reduced management layers, creating clearer responsibilities and faster decision-making. But creating a lasting efficiency culture takes more than that, so we conducted an exhaustive review of our processes and thousands of employees took part, generating thousands of ideas on how to be more efficient. In IT alone, we reduced costs by €900 million between 22 and 26, in part by consolidating our supplier base from 650 providers to just four key partners. This reduction in spending, however, did not come at the expense of operational resilience or security. On the contrary, in fact, we improved the quality and stability of our IT production, bringing the number of incidents down by 80% versus 2022 and our composite IT efficiency index improved by 27%. At the same time, we have continued to reinforce our prevention, detection and response capabilities in cyber risk. But even with all that, our cost base is still too high. Our organization remains too complex in some areas and we still have too many systems, processes and activities that are duplicated across businesses and functions. The next phase, therefore, will go beyond the measures already implemented. In 2029, we expect our cost base to be at €16.3 billion, representing a net decrease of 2% compared to 2026 levels. We will continue to invest billions to support our businesses with an incremental €600 million, bringing the total investment to over €5 billion over the period. Our strategic approach is to spend less on what causes inefficiency and more where we can create lasting value. The savings generated will more than offset inflation and the investments required to deliver our strategy. And here's how we're going to do this. We have three main levers. The first one is technology and AI, and more on that in a minute. The second one is our human capital. It is simple, really. Every recruitment decision is put to a clear test. Can the need be addressed internally, either through reskilling our own people, automation, or reallocation of resources? If it can't, we'll hire from outside. We will also continue to improve spans of controls and reduce unnecessary organizational layers. The goal is not simply to reduce resources, it is to use our talent more effectively. We'll also reduce costs through procurements. External spending represents a significant part of our cost base, and we see further potential to improve how we manage this through stronger control. And it starts with a simple shift in posture. Before being disciplined in spending, one has to be disciplined in his or her needs. This is how we will continue to decrease our cost base in absolute terms. And we're just getting started. Despite the significant progress we have already made, our IT intensity ratio, which stands at 15%, remains above that of our peers. And it tells us that we have plenty of room for improvement. We are now targeting an IT intensity ratio of 12% by the end of the plan. We will achieve this, again, through three main levers. The first is the continued simplification of our application and technologies landscape. The second level is to pursue the simplification of our IT operating model. And the third level is AI, which will be an important accelerator for our transformation. By 2029, we will have reduced our IT costs by 30% since 2022, despite inflation and higher investments, all while substantially improving our IT KPIs and KRIs. AI will, of course, support our journey, and we see three major opportunities here. First, lower costs, particularly in technology, through more efficient coding, testing, and maintenance and support. Second, higher productivity by streamlining low-touch processes, automating reporting, and reducing repetitive administrative tasks. And third, it should free up our people to have more personalized interactions with our clients. In short, AI makes it possible to develop and operate technology at a lower cost, and it makes our teams more productive. We will scale use cases selectively, based on measurable benefits, and within a rigorous risk and governance framework, as we are not just any business, but we are a bank. So right now we see AI generating 500 to 600 million euros of cost reductions, with around 350 million embedded so far in the trajectory. Last week we signed a strategic collaboration with Anthropic that gives us access to its advanced capabilities and latest generation AI models. This collaboration will provide us with a highly scalable platform, enabling us to accelerate the deployment of AI use cases across the group, resulting in all the benefits I just mentioned. Their focus on enterprise AI applications will be key to supporting the deep strategic transformation of our IT environment and core systems and processes. This is, in our view, an important step in our AI journey allowing us to combine external technological capabilities with our own data, expertise and understanding of our clients. We addressed costs first for a simple reason because of operating leverage. Growing off a lower cost base creates more value and more resilience. So now let's address growth. Three years ago, in this room, I told you we would grow differently, in a more disciplined manner. And we've done that. With almost no organic RWA allocation, our businesses grew by 8% between 2022 and 2026. We did that by transforming our core businesses and playing to our strengths. French retail grew by 1.4 billion euros during that period. BourseBank is now a real bank at scale and profitable. With more than 9 billion clients, it has around 85 billion euros of assets and leads in the French online banking sector. At SG, we're growing and building on our leadership in savings and wealth management, supported by record life insurance inflows. Global markets are less volatile, delivering recurring and predictable earnings while achieving a record profitability of 20%. In financing and advisory, we implemented a new model to make more efficient use of our balance sheet. And this increases our ability to originate financing solutions and distribute them to investors while supporting our clients even more effectively. With the integration of Lease Plan, AVENS has reinforced its position as a global leader in fleet management with close to 3.2 million vehicles worldwide. And they do operate in a complex environment, but thanks to, again, our disciplined approach, we manage to increase margins and preserve profitability. We expect group revenues to grow by an average of approximately 3% per year between 26 and 29, supported by a disciplined organic RWA growth of around 2% per year. This growth will be broad-based and balanced across our three businesses. It will not depend on any single franchise, market environment or source of income. and just because we now have capital doesn't mean we're looking to grow all businesses all at once first we will accelerate growth in bourse bank and in our wealth and savings franchise in france those businesses are capital light and highly profitable they can build on existing platforms expertise and client relationships to generate additional revenues with limited rwa consumption This operating leverage argument, so to speak, also applies to global equities, financing and advisory, to our retail banks in the CE region and to Avons, where capital investments in RWA will bring accretive returns thanks to scale and high marginal returns. Our US platform represents a distinct growth opportunity. It's already a highly profitable, well-diversified business with a large and deep client base across financial institutions and corporates in a growing economy. We will increase our capital allocation to the region to take advantage of this compelling combination of opportunity and strength. So by now, our objective should be clear to direct resources towards our most profitable growth opportunities and maximize the value created from the group's existing franchises. More broadly, our approach in terms of portfolio management remains consistent. Three years ago, we defined specific criteria. Those principles still apply. What has changed, however, is our capital position. This means that we can be open to potential M&A opportunities. But let me be clear. We do not need acquisitions to deliver the financial targets we are presenting today. And any transaction would have to meet strict conditions. It would need to have a compelling strategic fit, reinforce one of our core franchises, and be consistent with our risk appetite. It would need to meet strict valuation criteria, demonstrate financial accretion, and offer credible opportunities for synergies. We will therefore remain selective and disciplined, and we will only pursue an opportunity if it offers a more attractive use of capital than the alternatives available to us, including investments in organic growth or returning capital to shareholders. Let me also address our minority interests. From a strategic perspective, we already have control of these businesses through our majority ownership. At the same time, we regularly assess the most appropriate ownership structure for each of them. This includes considering their strategic importance, growth potential, capital requirements, valuation, and so on. And here, the technical benefits of reducing the minority interest frictions, in our view, do not outweigh the strategic consideration nor the principles we apply to managing our excess capital. And at this point, we are satisfied with our current ownership of these assets. Our responsibility is always, and will always be, to maximize value for the group and its shareholders. Good performance results from solid execution, and risk management is, of course, vital to that execution. Our risk profile benefits, first, from the diversification of our business model. We operate across different geographies, client segments and economic sectors. We also combine complementary businesses across a wide range of markets. Our diversification is also reflected in our credit portfolio, where our exposures are well spread across industries and top five sectors represent less than 13% of our EAD with limited client concentration. This diversification matters, of course, as it reduces our exposure to any single market, business, or sources, or revenue, and it provides greater stability and resilience to our overall earnings, as I showed you earlier. Now, with regards to market risk, I implemented a significant shift in risk management, which has been in motion since 2021. We have significantly reduced the amount of market risk taken by the group. You can see that in the drastic reduction in our market's stress-less limit usage. At the same time, we improved commercial performance and grew our business substantially. Our global markets activities have delivered record revenues, demonstrating the strength of the franchise and the quality of its client-driven model. We are therefore generating stronger revenues with significantly lower market risk intensity. operating with an improved risk-return profile and with a better quality of earnings. Let me bring these elements together. Over the past few years, our cost of risk has remained low and well-controlled. We have an S1, S2 provisions buffer in terms of cost of risk, which is effectively almost double that of our peers' weighted average. At the same time, we have significantly increased our pre-provision profit. and this provides us with a much stronger hedge against any potential deterioration in the environment or in the credit environment. Looking ahead, we are targeting a cost risk of 25 to 30 basis points over the 2026-2029 period and the target reflects a prudent approach and incorporates a degree of normalization from the low levels observed in recent years. Let me now turn to the transformation of our businesses which will be critical to unlocking further growth and higher profitability. Of course, the transformation of any business is always impacted by the broader environment and how it's rapidly changing in both challenging and promising ways. We're no exception. The global economy is undergoing profound structural change. This environment will remain complex and volatile, but it is also creating significant opportunities for us. Because of our business portfolio, franchise strengths, well-aligned to core secular trends, Thanks to our global, multi-local reach, and because of our willingness to embrace change. Let's start with French retail. Over the past three years, we have delivered a significant transformation of this franchise. We have a strong and integrated platform that is unique in France. It serves more than 17 million clients, combining the number one online bank in France, our traditional network in France, a leading private banking franchise, and strong capabilities in insurance and savings. Together, these franchises give us a particularly strong penetration with all individual and corporate clients in France and the ability to address the full range of their needs. We now manage close to half a trillion euros in deposits and saving assets. Life insurance outstanding have reached €170 billion, euro, an increase of 27% since 2022. Private banking assets under management now exceed 145 billion euro, that's up 30% over the same period. And BourseBank has AUA of 85 billion euro, an increase of more than 70% since 2022. These strong achievements have improved profitability and we are well on track to achieve all our targets for 2026. Three years ago, when the cost-to-income ratio of this business stood at 73%, we set a target of below 60%. It is fair to say that at the time, few considered that achievable. Today, we have not only delivered on that commitment, we have exceeded it. Our cost-to-income ratio reached 58% in the first half of 2026. This 15 percentage point improvement reflects a powerful combination of revenue recovery and cost reduction. At constant perimeter between 22 and 26, and consensus 26, revenue increased by 14%, while costs declined by 11%. 25 percentage points of positive jaws. This operating leverage has also translated into significantly stronger returns, with only reaching 14.2% in the first half of 26, compared with an average of just above 10% between 2018 and 2022. So, three years ago, we were facing many challenges, and we had two unbalanced and somewhat unstabilized On the one hand, we had significant opportunities to improve efficiency in traditional retail banking, both through cost reduction and better commercial performance. On the other hand, we had the massive opportunity to grow, to double, really, the size of BourseBank. We simply had to grab this unique opportunity to establish our leadership. And despite, as you know, an otherwise conservative approach to spending, we had to build our group's future. And we managed to do that. Today, BourseBank has 9 million clients and 85 billion of AUA, 300 million euro profit and 60% RONI. And overall, our French retail banking pillar has a cost-to-income of 58 and we're only above 14. We now have a unique French retail banking setup, strong and profitable, stabilised and mature, with critical size across all market segments and channel and ready to embrace the future. And we will take this business step-by-step into that future by combining all our businesses into one integrated but differentiated franchise. One market, one business, with several assets to address it under one management, dedicated to the individual retail banking business in France. As you know, we announced the appointment of Benoît Grisoni as its leader starting October 1st, and Benoît will be under the continued leadership of Loubout-Mirain Rocher and my supervision. From now on, all our individual clients will be served by one integrated franchise led by one management. BourseBank will continue to serve digital clients across all levels of wealth and grow aggressively its footprint and its asset base in the French market. The traditional network will focus strategically on the mass affluent and affluent clients. This will be done in close cooperation with our private banking franchise, which will continue to operate its high net worth client business on the one hand and continue the existing and widely successful cooperation with the traditional network in addressing the upper band of the affluent segment. The product offer, the relationship model, the relationship channels will be highly differentiated by client segments using all our assets consistently from BourseBank to private banking. And importantly, the pricing and cost to serve will be highly segmented and differentiated across client segments, with the clear objective of reaching consistent profitability across all client segments all the time. We will develop synergies across the businesses and seamless transitions for clients interested in moving from one channel and product offer to another. as their needs and behaviors change. And finally, we will work to eliminate all duplication over time, whether that's product factories, digital tools and services, or process design. This vision will be implemented step by step over time to protect the franchise and to execute the transformation in the most effective and responsible way. And that implementation starts now under these strict principles. Over time, this vision has the potential to disrupt the cost-to-serve equation in the French market, while carrying a high-earning increased potential. Its benefits will flow through progressively for years to come. They will support the delivery of not only our 2029 targets, but also the further profitability increases we project for 2030 and beyond. Building with this vision, we are setting out a clear roadmap through 2029. We're targeting cost-to-income ratio below 55% by 2029. And first, we'll continue to grow BourseBank aggressively as we capture growth and a meaningful contribution to the group's profitability. Second, we'll continue to improve the efficiency of the unified platform. We will adjust the number of branches in our network to better reflect continuously changing client behaviors. We will streamline our central functions, simplify processes, and further reduce duplication, as I said, across the platform. We are currently removing one regional management layer. And finally, we will focus our efforts on a strong position among affluent clients and leading franchises across our traditional network, private banking, and life insurance in the French market. The step-by-step transformation of our entire business will unlock the unique potential of our French retail. The powerful platform of BourseBank, you know, is built on four strengths. First, client acquisition. BourseBank combines a leading brand in online banking, brokerage, and financial information with a highly efficient acquisition model. Its client base has grown by 29% per year over the past three years, at the same time that acquisition costs have declined. Second, client loyalty. A comprehensive product range, a leading digital experience, and consistently high client satisfaction resulted in a churn rate below 4%. Third, client potential. Boursobank's clients are young, financially attractive, if you may say so, and still early in their relationship with the bank. As these relationships deepen, their value continues to grow, with assets increasing six-fold since 2016. And fourth, scalability. With around 1,000 employees and highly automated processes, the platform operates with a very low cost to serve, and this naturally supports a return of normative equity above 60%. So, Boursobank combines client growth, deepening relationships, and exceptional scalability. The result is sustained double-digit growth and profitability well above its competitors. We see two complementary sources driving Boursobank's revenue growth. The first is the increasing value generated by our existing client base. As clients mature, they become bigger and bigger contributors to revenues and profitability. But we intend to go beyond that to monetize our client base. We will enhance our advisory capabilities, notably through AI, and this will allow us to address a greater share of our clients' financial needs. The second source of growth is new client acquisition, of course. The French market continues to offer a highly attractive opportunity. Traditional banks are not yet able to provide the market with the same combination of service, product breadth and competitive pricing, while new banks still offer a more limited range of products. So BourseBank is uniquely positioned between these two models. It combines the simplicity and pricing of a digital platform with the breadth of products and services of a full-service bank. Building on this competitive advantage, we are targeting a total client growth of more than 50% between now and 2029, and that would take our client base to more than 14 million. To us, it's crucial that we maintain a strong balance between rapid client acquisition and high profitability. We should not over-earn. We are therefore targeting a RONI above 45% each year from 26% to 29%. Bottom line, BourseBank will combine continued client growth with increasing value per client, allowing it to expand at scale while sustaining a very high level of profitability. Wealth and savings represent a major growth opportunity for the group as well. France is one of Europe's largest and most attractive savings markets. French households hold around €7 trillion in financial assets. That's the second largest pool in Europe. Their savings rate is around 18% of disposable income. An ageing population is placing greater emphasis on retirement planning. But with state-funded retirement benefits shrinking, individuals will need to take greater responsibility for their own financial future, and they will need investment solutions. We also expect wealth transfer between generations like we've never seen before. By 2040, an estimated 9 trillion euro, around three times the French GDP, is expected to be transferred from baby boomers to other generations. And these trends will change both the scale and the nature of our clients' needs. And here, our unique position, our new, highly segmented approach, and our focus on mass affluent to high-network individual clients positions as well for these opportunities. At Bourse au Banque, our goal is to increase the EUA to €115 billion by 2029. In our private bank, our 29 target is €180 billion. In insurance, our ambition is to at least exceed €200 billion by 29. The value of our model lies not only in the strength of each franchise, but in their combination. Here's a summary of the different financial targets I just laid out. Turning to global banking and investor solutions, our corporate investment banking franchise is built on strong foundations as well, with leading positions in highly profitable and differentiated businesses, such as equity derivatives, structured finance, equity research, and tokenized finance with SGForge. We serve more than 6,000 clients worldwide, with a well-balanced client base across financial institutions and corporates. Our revenues are also diversified by product, as you can see, contributing to the strength and resilience of the franchise. In 2025, GBIS generated record revenues of more than €10 billion. But when we consider its profitability, the quality of the franchise becomes even clearer. GBIS is among the most profitable corporate and investment banks globally. RONI reached 19% in the first half of 26, an improvement of three percentage points since 2022. This performance has also been supported by a more capital-efficient revenue mix, with fees growing and representing 45% of revenues in 2025, compared with 40% in 2022. As a result, GBS is on track to outperform all its 2026 financial targets. The cost-to-income ratio stood at 62.1% in 2025 and improved further to 60.5% in the first half of 2026. That's already significantly below our target of less than 65%. Both our global markets and financing and advisory businesses are also on track to exceed their respective 2026 objectives. gbis therefore enters the next phase from a position of strength with leading franchises diversified revenues disciplined costs and top-tier profitability our 2029 roadmap is based on the same four priorities as the group together these actions will support a cost to income ratio below 60 percent in 29 we expect financing advisory revenues to grow by an average of three to five percent per year between 2026 and 2029. For global markets, we are targeting revenues between six and six and a half billion euro, compared with approximately six billion euro in 25. We will do all this while sustaining top-tier profitability through the cycle. In global markets, our goal is twofold. Capture opportunities in under-penetrated client segments and address selected gaps in our product offering so while historically a core component of our client base hedge funds and asset managers currently account for a substantially lower share of our client mix than the industry average we therefore see significant potential to scale our presence in this segment at the same time we'll strengthen certain product capabilities so we can diversify our business mix and increase the contribution of recurring revenues prime brokerage for instance will be a key priority. We see a clear opportunity to gain market share there as we expand already existing relationships with institutional clients and grow our cash prime brokerage balances. And finally, we will grow fixed offering beyond the flow business, and we will build on our strong origination capabilities to expand credit distribution. Together, these initiatives will broaden our franchise and support profitable growth. In 2025, global markets revenues were 28% higher than the 2018 to 2022 average, while our market stress test usage declined by more than 70% over the same period. In other words, we have generated much higher revenues while taking far less market risk. But this performance is more than just high quality, it's also predictable. Back in the 19-23, 2019-2023 period, our revenue volatility was broadly in line with our peers. Since the third quarter of 2023, volatility has been almost half that of our peers. This improvement is not accidental, of course. Reducing revenue volatility was a clear strategic priority for us. We have intentionally improved our business mix, reinforced our risk discipline, and increased the contribution of more recurring revenue. And this has translated also into strong capital efficiency. In 2025, our revenue-to-RWA ratio in global markets was around twice the level of our peers. And at the same time, global markets delivered a rowing of 20%, approximately 6 percentage points, above our CIB peer group. These operating principles will continue to underpin our growth ambitions through 2029. We will pursue opportunities where we have clear competitive advantage, always within a disciplined risk appetite and with a strong focus on risk-adjusted returns. The other key division of GBIS is financing and advisory, as you know. And thanks to our clan base and leading positions in structured finance, we increased total origination volumes by 60% between 2023 and 2025. This growth was achieved with more efficient use of capital As over the same period, we doubled the volume of loans distributed to investors Increasing our distribution rate from 40% to 50% in 2025 We intend to take this model further By 29, we are targeting a distribution rate of 60% More origination and more distribution increases client impact as well as fee generation and leads to a more efficient balance sheet usage. And total origination volumes will grow by 50% between 25 and 29, while maintaining disciplined RWA consumption and, of course, attractive risk-adjusted returns. We also see meaningful upside potential in investment banking. The combination with Bernstein is generating strong momentum in equity capital markets, particularly in the United States. We will build on this distinctive expertise through targeted investments, strengthening our sector teams and our client coverage. We will focus particularly on expanding our advisory business with financial sponsors and on reinforcing our presence in the U.S. market. Finally, Global Transaction and Payment Services will provide an additional source of profitable growth. We intend to address their new client segments and increase our share of wallet with existing relationships. This should support an average annual deposit growth of approximately 10% between 25% and 29%, providing a valuable and recurring source of revenues and liquidity. A strong risk profile, of course, is one of the core features of the financing and advisory franchise. Our credit portfolio is well diversified here again across sectors, geographies and clients, and this diversification, combined with disciplined origination and prudent underwriting standards, reduces our exposure to idiosyncratic risks and supports the resilience of the franchise. This is also true for sectors that have recently attracted greater market scrutiny. Our exposure to private credit remains limited and controlled, as does our exposure to software, IT consulting and data centres. And more broadly, our track record here speaks for itself. F&A has consistently delivered a low and stable cost of risk, including through periods of significant economic and market volatility. These operating principles will remain firmly in place. These are the different targets for GBIS businesses. Over the past three years, we have also reshaped our mobility, international retail banking and financial services businesses. We completed the disposal of most non-core activities in Africa and exited equipment finance. This gives us a simpler and more focused portfolio. With a successful integration of lease plan, we have built Avons into a global leader in mobility. Avons has what it takes to capture the long-term growth of this market, namely scale, expertise and operational capabilities. The SPILER also benefits from our strong and well-recognized European banking franchises in the Czech Republic and Romania, as well as from our specialized consumer finance activities. Together, these businesses provide the group with valuable diversification across different geographies, client segments and revenue sources. Our lending portfolio there is also well-balanced between retail and corporate clients, contributing to the resilience of the platform. And importantly, this diversification comes with strong profitability. Since 2023, the pillar has delivered an average RONI of approximately 14%. Its cost-to-income ratio reached 53% in the first half of 2026. This positions us to achieve our 2026 target of below 55%. So, as we enter the next phase with a streamlined portfolio of strong and efficient franchises that generate attractive returns and provide the group with complementary sources of profitable growth. These businesses are accretive to group profitability and consistent with our strategy. Now, here's what we have planned next for MIBS. Our first priority is always to further improve the efficiency of the business model and bring the cost-to-income ratio below 47% by 2029. In our international retail networks, we will use our strong positions in attractive markets to grow consistently, aiming at market share gains in target market segments. At Avons, growth will remain selective. The industry does not yet offer the optimal risk-reward balance across all segments, and we will not pursue volumes just for volume's sake. We will focus on the client's products and markets, offering the most attractive profitable growth opportunities, while preserving strong margins and responsible risk management. Historically, our consumer finance business has demonstrated strong profitability, and our priority here is to rebuild that performance progressively through prudent origination, and again, a clear focus on risk-adjusted returns. So the direction from MIBS is clear, efficiency, selective growth, and rigorous capital and risk discipline. And this will make MIBS an increasingly accretive contributor to group returns by 2029. Each of our three international retail banking franchises has a specific roadmap. At KB in the Czech Republic, we will preserve our leadership among large corporates, grow selectively in SMEs and accelerate in retail through AI and the KB Plus digital platform, which was a key investment in the previous plan. This will support further growth while maintaining high profitability in a profoundly transformed entity. At BRD in Romania, our priority is to consolidate our market position and close the efficiency gap with peers by scaling our digital capabilities. And growth will remain selective there as well. In Africa, following the streamlining of our portfolio, we will continue to manage our five franchises according to our proven playbook. In consumer finance, we have a focused footprint and leading car finance positions in France, Italy and Germany. And looking ahead, we will look to grow in this business by strengthening partnerships with leading manufacturers, particularly in new car financing. And we will do so while preserving our highly efficient model and strict credit origination standards. And together, these levers will enable us to improve the business RONI by 2029. AVENS, as you know, is the global mobility leader, and we have positioned it to realize its long-term growth potential and shape the industry for years to come. Three years after the beginning of a complex integration with this plan, AVENS successfully delivered its 2025 financial targets and is firmly on track to achieve its 2026 objectives. And by shifting from a volume-led expansion to disciplined profitable growth, the AVENS teams have done a remarkable job restoring strong margin amidst a rapidly changing mobility market. Under a skilled new management team and with strong governance, AVENS is now ready to enter the next phase of its strategic development. And that next phase will be built around three priorities. The first is selective growth in the most attractive customer segments. We see significant potential in retail, both among SMEs and individual clients. We will focus where margins are strong, namely in the light commercial vehicles category for SMEs. This is less a market growth opportunity than a market penetration opportunity, where even scale, expertise and product capabilities provide a clear competitive advantage. We will also deepen client relationships through additional services like insurance, electric vehicle charging solutions, and enhanced fleet management services. This will increase value per client while further diversifying the revenue base. Second priority is cost reduction. Avent is committed to reducing its cost base through 2029. Technology, AI, and a more effective allocation of resources will help simplify the operating model and improve productivity further. A major level will be the optimization of the cost to serve across vehicle operations, from delivery and maintenance to end-of-contract management. The third priority is to prepare havens for the future of mobility. We will develop new sources of value, including used car leasing, next-generation automotive technologies, and over time, the transitions toward autonomous mobility. By 2029, we are targeting a cost-to-income ratio of approximately 49% and a ROTI between 14% and 16% at AVENS level. This summarizes the key targets we have set for mobility, international retail banking and financial services. Let me now hand over to Leo, our CFO, who will take you through our financial trajectory and targets. Thank you.

Thank you, Oslo Vermeer, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with the key macroeconomic assumptions that underpin our financial trajectory. Our outlook calls for a subdued growth in the near term, followed by a gradual recovery through 2029. Inflation is expected to steadily ease while short-term interest rates normalise from their current levels as energy markets stabilise over time. However, we expect both nominal and real rates to remain structurally higher than during the previous decade. Long-term sovereign yields are also expected to remain elevated and volatile, reflecting higher-term premia and public financing needs, while our euro-dollar outlook remains relatively stable across all of the period. Taken together, these assumptions describe a scenario of moderate growth, progressively lower inflation, some normalisation in short-term rates, and persistently elevated long-term yields. This scenario, of course, is not without risk. Geopolitical tensions, commodity prices, public financing or market volatility could lead to less favourable outcomes. For these reasons, our targets are mainly driven by factors within our control. The structural reduction of our cost base, disciplined and profitable growth, rigorous risk management and the continued transformation of our businesses. In other words, the delivery of our plan does not depend on macroeconomic tailwinds. It depends first and foremost on our ability to execute. Turning to the key revenue drivers for 27 to 29. The group targets a compound annual growth rate, a CAGR, of its revenues of around 3% from the end of 26 to the end of 29. All businesses will have a balanced contribution to this growth, as can be seen in the slide. Revenue growth in French retail, private banking, and insurance, or PBI, will be supported by the wealth and savings segment, as well as by a strong contribution coming from Boursobank. In the case of Boursobank, this will be driven, among other factors, by the significant increase in the number of clients served by the franchise. In global banking and investor solutions, GBIS, growth will mainly be driven by targeted commercial initiatives in structured finance prime services and credit activities now with regards to mobility international retail banking and financial services in my bs revenue growth will be underpinned by a strong commercial momentum at both kb and brd as well as by a sustainable and profitable growth at avens these revenue streams will be supported by an organic rw kager of around two percent over the whole period. I would like to focus on RPBI for a moment and try to address a request that many of you have made in the past. First as a context let me remember that the NII is an important driver of course but even within RPBI it represents only half of the total revenues. This is substantially lower than in many European peers. Moreover as a proportion of the group's total NBI or PBI's NII, only represented 17% in the first half of 2026. As we have been doing in the past, we will continue to share our expectations on the direction of travel, which continues to be one of gradual progression and moderate growth over the following years. Let me now explain some of the dynamics, which I hope should help you to gain a better view of that trend. First, in this perimeter, we maintain a very low sensitivity to changes in market rates, thanks to our proactive hedging policy. As you can see, the NII sensitivity is only plus 10 million euros for plus minus 100 basis points prior to the shift in interest rates. Second, we expect deposits to grow by 1% to 2% annually from 26% to 29%. And also importantly, at this point, we expect our deposit mix to remain broadly stable. That's driven by the fact that term and regulated deposits are at peak levels since the rate increased back in 2022. This implies that the share of term and regulated deposits should stay close to current levels. This is 40% of total deposits. Third, the average maturity of non-reminerated deposits is 5 to 8 years, which gives you a reference of the rollover pace of our replacement portfolio. As a result, volume dynamics and the replacement of back-book deposits are expected to be the key drivers of NII dynamics during the 27-29 period. And as I explained earlier, we expect NII to grow gradually over the coming years. Although, of course, in any case, this is a trend and therefore may not always be completely linear. Now let me take you through an accounting change we're introducing regarding Bourse Bank's client acquisition. Under IFRS 15 standard, client acquisition costs may be capitalized when their recoverability can be demonstrated through future revenues. We now have more than 15 years of reliable customer cohort data and enhanced profitability analysis. This provides robust evidence of the recovery of these costs. In this context, starting Q326, acquisition costs, around 75% of all marketing expenses, will be booked and therefore amortized through P&L over a seven-year recovery period. This recovery period is determined by using only revenues eligible under IFRS 15, which in this case only take into account net fees. The capitalization will lead to the recognition of an asset in the balance sheet, which will be 100% risk-weighted, which will reflect the long-term investment made through the acquisition costs. Overall, this change will allow for a more faithful representation of the customer value creation over time. This will happen through a closer alignment between the accounting and the client's lifetime economics, through a better matching of commercial investment and revenues, namely acquisition costs and related revenues, and also through greater visibility into sustainable and profitable growth. Disciplined cost management will support the group's performance throughout 2029. Here is how. Having delivered $2.6 billion of gross savings, or about 17% net cost reduction since 2022 pro forma, this is including inflation and perimeter changes as shown in the slide, the group enters this new plan with a relentless focus on enhancing efficiency. We expect to bring our cost base below €16.3 billion, or a minus 2% compression versus 2026. This is after accounting for inflation, as well as additional investments to further grow our businesses. Adjusted for these items, inflation and investments, the underlying gross savings amounts to approximately €1.9 billion. The cost savings measures will reap benefits well before 2029. In fact, most of the savings will be delivered earlier in the plan, providing a meaningful improvement as soon as 2027. It is also important to point out that we will reduce the structure through natural attrition. In other words, we will not have to invest in any costs to achieve these reductions. With regards to operating performance, the group is expected to deliver a significant step up over the course of the plan. As you can see, gross operating income, as shown on the left, is expected to increase by around 25% between 26 and 29. This translates into a significant improvement of the cost-to-income ratio in 29, with a target below 55%. This is an improvement of more than 5 percentage points versus the end of 2026. This performance will be driven, as explained before, first by our structural cost discipline, and therefore net cost reduction, and then by the organic revenue growth, which together will more than offset for inflation and additional investments in the period. Our targets for cost-to-income ratios across our businesses demonstrate our ambition to further improve efficiency throughout the group by 2029. In our PBI, the cost-to-income ratio is expected to improve to below 55% in 29, compared to below 60% in our 26 targets. For GBIS, we are expecting to be below 60% in 29 versus below 65% in our 26 target. And finally, in MIBS, the cost-to-income ratio is expected to be lower than 47% in 29 versus below 55% in our 26 target. These improvements reflect our continued focus on operational excellence, simplification and disciplined cost management across all of the businesses of the group. Within the context of the Pillar's cost-to-incub ratio, it is important to mention that in the last few years, we have significantly reduced the corporate-centred drag and therefore narrowed the gap between Group Roti and Business Roni. First, since 2013, restructuring charges have been recorded at the business level, rather than at the corporate centre. This was done to better reflect individual business performance and enhance accountability and ownership. Second, we optimised the management of our excess liquidity, while also improving the group liquidity steering with the businesses. Ultimately, each business must be fully accountable for the value it creates and the capital and resources it consumes. Now, while substantial progress has already been made on that front since 2023, we believe there is still more to do. And in this context, from 2027 onwards, we will keep on working on optimizing our liquidity buffer, and we will reallocate to the businesses 0.3 billion euros of regulatory and overhead costs, which were previously booked at the corporate centre. To put this into context, this further reallocation represents 75% of the overall costs booked at the Corporate Centre in 2025. Those initiatives will reduce the difference between Group ROTI and RONI to less than 3 percentage points in 29 compared to the current 5 percentage points. Moving on to review and risk management. Let me now come back into it since Slavo Mir already gave you the strategic approach. but nevertheless we will maintain a prudent and disciplined approach to ensure that we remain resilient across a broad range of economic scenarios. The combination of a low cost of risk, a prudent provisioning and higher pre-provision profit provides the group with a strong buffer against potential shocks. We are therefore targeting a through-the-cycle cost of risk of between 25 and 30 basis points throughout the 27-29 period. With regards to profitability, we're targeting a row of 13% to 14% in 2019. Importantly, the improvement will be broad-based. Each of the three businesses will contribute in a balanced manner, reflecting both the strength of our diversified model and the progress expected across all our franchises. This increase in profitability will be supported by a combination of structural cost reduction, organic revenue growth and continued risk discipline. Together, this will generate stronger operating leverage and improve the quality and resilience of our returns. In terms of trajectory, we expect ROTI to increase steadily over the next three years. Finally, as Slalomir outlined earlier with regards to shareholder distribution, we are proposing an attractive policy. This policy is comprised of two complementary components. The first one is an ordinary distribution, which is equivalent to 50% of group net income after interest on 81, and will be delivered through a balanced combination of cash dividends and share buyback. This should translate into a low-to-mid-teens cash dividend per share CAGR growth over the 27-29 period, with an expected cumulative ordinary distribution above €13 billion. euros. An interim dividend will also be announced each year in H1, continuing the approach we apply today. The second component will be the return of excess capital. We intend to maintain a CT1 above 13% throughout the 27-29 period. If no additional accretive organic growth and no relevant and accretive M&A opportunities are identified, we will return to shareholders the entirety of this excess capital. The accumulation of excess capital over the period is expected to be approximately 8 billion euros. Extraordinary distribution, if any, will be communicated once a year during our Q2 results, as is already the case. Taken together, the potential shareholder distributions could exceed 21 billion euros from 26 to 29, both included, or 39% of our current market cap. In other words, this can be translated to distributing around 80% of our earnings each year after funding our businesses for profitable growth. This framework combines the visibility of an attractive, ordinary payout with the additional return of excess capital, and it reflects both the strength of our capital position and our continued discipline in allocating capital to where it creates the most value. Let me now give back the floor to staff on me. Thank you Leo.

So I want to spend a few minutes now on ESG. In the last three years we have made a substantial progress decarbonizing our activities. It was driven by a sense of responsibility. It is also creating significant and growing business opportunities. The growing distance between the two curves shown here on the far left provides tangible evidence of our execution. With the doubling of our financing of low carbon energy since 2019, we have managed to dramatically flip this ratio in favor of low carbon energy production and by wide margin. But we're not just raising our contribution to financing new energy technologies, we're extending the scope of our contribution to capitalize on growing business opportunities. Our competitive edge here is our expertise and our reputation. We have established ourselves as a leading project finance house and advisory partner for clients investing in the transition. Between now and the end of this decade, we remain committed to mobilizing €500 billion for environmental and social projects. We play a bigger role than just financing the energy transition. Our expertise helps clients both navigate the transition and adapt to the consequences of climate change. Investment needs are growing rapidly across water infrastructure, climate resilience, nature restoration and supply chain adaptation. We see this both as a critical challenge, of course, but also a significant business opportunity. We have already deployed 1 billion euro to support emerging leaders of the transition, and we now intend to invest an additional 1.5 billion euro in debts and equity which will allow us to support both established transition players and earlier stage companies in developing climate solutions they can bring to a broader range of clients. We also firmly believe that one of the best investments is the one you can make in your talent. Our teams are playing a key role in the group's performance and when that team is diverse the return on that investment is even greater. That's why building an inclusive culture remains one of our key priorities. While our progress may be slow at times here, our ambition remains firm to achieve greater gender balance by reaching, by 2029, 35% of women in senior leadership positions at the group level and 40% in France. We are looking to accelerate our talent development by expanding leadership training to 2,000 employees by 2029, which is vital for critical expertise, as well as continuous talent pool development and sound succession planning. Something else that enhances performance is a sense of ownership. That's why we'll continue to strengthen share ownership through employee share ownership through our annual share plan. Ours is one of the largest employee shareholding bases among European banks. It's our way of saying that if you have helped create value, you should benefit from it. And the more alignment there is, the more performance there will be. Our investments also extend to the wider community. Société Générale develops educational programs that help build people's skills in terms of financial skills, confidence, and opportunities they need to thrive in society. And finally, we're expanding our philanthropic efforts by increasing our corporate foundation's annual budget by 50%. And this will make it possible to widen and deepen our initiatives across our three areas of focus, education, culture, and the environment. Another important strength of our group is governance. Our governance framework is built on a clear separation between the roles of chairman and chief executive officer, and is supported by a highly independent board. This ensures a clear allocation of responsibilities between the oversight and executive management of the group. together with appropriate challenge and accountability. The board brings together a broad range of backgrounds, nationalities and perspectives as well as vast experience across a wide range of expertise. Our governance also benefits from independent external expertise, notably through our Scientific Advisory Council. The council provides an external and scientifically grounded perspective on climate and environmental matters as well as on technology, public policy, macroeconomy, urban planning and human rights. This makes it possible for us to challenge our assumptions, understand emerging developments and strengthen the quality of our decisions. And as you can see, these efforts have not gone unnoticed with consistent external recognitions. We remain committed, as ever, to best-in-class governance. Let me conclude by bringing together the key elements of the plan we have presented today. What makes Société Générale distinctive? Three strong and complementary pillars, leading franchises and a diversified business model with a significantly strengthened financial and risk profile. Our ambition for 2029 is equally clear, to translate these strengths into structurally higher profitability and greater value creation for our shareholders. Our plan is built around a simple and disciplined equation. First, a lower cost base. Second, balanced and profitable growth across our three business pillars with a focus on capital-led activities, high marginal and risk-adjusted returns. Third, rigorous risk discipline. And finally, transformation, so that the group's operations continuously improve through simpler organizations, stronger cooperation, more scalable platforms, and the disciplined deployment of technology and AI. The financial targets on the slide outline the expected outcome of this strategy. It is broad-based across the group and driven primarily by actions within our control. By 2029, Société Générale will be an even simpler, more efficient and more profitable group with stronger franchises, resilient earnings and an attractive capacity to return capital to shareholders. but our ambition does not stop in 2029 the actions we are taking today will create value and sustain our profitability well beyond the horizon of this plan and looking beyond 2029 we see significant potential for the group to continue improving its profitability this potential will come from from four drivers disciplined and efficient capital allocation continued growth of our franchises with high operating leverage, sustained cost discipline, and the full benefits of the transformation of our French retail. These benefits will build progressively and extend well beyond the formal horizon of this plan. We have strengthened the group, we have restored its capacity to perform and to unlock the full potential of our franchises. We enter this next phase with clarity of purpose, with discipline, and an unwavering commitment to the responsible and effective stewardship of your capital. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's now take a small break. You deserve it. We deserve it, but you deserve it even more. So thank you very much and a small break before opening the Q&A session. I don't have a watch, so I don't know, like 15 minutes or something like that. Okay? See you in a second.

Two questions max per guest. And if you can please introduce yourselves in the organization that you represent. So let's start. It's crowded. All at once, so I'll pick. If we can go on the third left, please, with Tariq.

Hi, Tarek.

Yes, hi. Morning, Tarek Limajad from Bank of America. I have two questions, actually, and I will start where you left it, Slavomir, around the 15% ROTE target after 2030. I just want to understand you added this extra guidance without any backing from cost income or any granular guidance. Is this to show, actually, that your 13-14 is more of 14% ROTE? Because going from 14 and 13 and 29 to 15, above 15, sounds a bit of a jump. Or is it actually to position yourself with European banks and some banks closer to home, maybe in terms of profitability? So question one. My second question is slightly provocative. Sorry about that. It's actually about Bourse Bank. And you talk a lot about cross-convergence. And the question actually, is it actually more about integration? I think you've said it in so many ways and words that, you know, Bursa is growing fast, there is intergenerational wealth transfer, there is a maturity and vintage of existing clients, profitability, so running these two networks, I mean, this is maybe not 29, but this is direction of travel, is more integration maybe on the retail side, not maybe the wealth and the SMEs. and his appointment of Bernard Rissini as deputy head of French retail is not a strong hint to that.

All right, so I can't say that I wasn't expecting the first one, right? So let me walk you through the reasoning, right? We provide a range for 2029, not just because we provided one last time, but also because in the current circumstances, I mean, it's difficult to, you know, exclude all kinds of sets of scenarios in terms of microeconomic conditions, in terms of market conditions, and so on and so forth, right? So, also, I would expect everybody to position, you know, their expectations, you know, somewhere in the middle of the range, right? So, once you start to saying this, you see that the differential is substantial versus as the 15% in the road T of 2030 and beyond, but it doesn't need heroic achievements to get there, right? And so what we're saying with this guidance is that the continued usage of the same equation, right? This is what you have on the last slide. It's the same playbook, right? Simply factor in more capital allocation to organic growth at, you know, improving further and further high marginal returns, add the same approach in terms of risk management and to volatility of earnings, etc., and then add a few hundred millions in terms of the upper band of the AI opportunity. As you know, we recognize 350 million out of an opportunity which we see but don't want to bank on yet, you know, closer to double that, and then add, indeed, and that's going to be a segue into your second question, add the steady-state effects or, let's say, wider, bigger-scale effects of what we're trying to do in French retail. And, you know, without any, again, heroic assumptions, you're going to get there, right? And this is what we want to say, is that there was a first step, it's behind us, there's a second step now, the upshift, but there's, again, room to go further, right? across the board, right? So you could also, you know, because of what we're saying about our strategy and what we've done, et cetera, that, yes, there's further cost efficiency, right? I can't tell you right now that, you know, costs are going to be down in absolute terms in 2030. That would be stupid of me. But the idea that focus on operating leverage will be a high point of our agenda remains true. To French retail now. So, yeah, I hope I used quite a bit of word to say that things are changing and are going to change deeply, right? So let's talk about this, right? Let's talk about integration. This is integration or is something slightly different from merger, right? I don't think that at this point anyone would think about the merger, know that the merger would make sense because of the purity and clarity of the business model of the unique selling proposition of BourseBank of everything that goes so well in that asset, right? Equally, on the other hand, we do have still room to be better, but first, by thinking about this market in one unified way, right? Again, what's the before and after, if you allow me to say it this way? Today, we have BourseBank, which is mostly, you know, all clients, all types of clients, of course, but the vision, right, is it's a channel. It's a successful channel with its own, let's say, strengths. On the other hand, we have traditional network. And so you can see that the former way of thinking about this is driven by channels. And I think, well, I mean, I don't know if it was a good idea in the past, but it's true that today it's not a good idea, right? You need to look at clients and at their behaviors and use that as the input into your model. Not that you happen to have a channel that you've built over the last 160 years, right? So the idea here is, by having one approach to the entire market, knowing that we're the only ones to have all these assets at the same time, we're going to optimize the offer, you know, based on client needs and expectations and behaviors, and optimize cost to serve, right? So we don't want to have, again, Bourse of Bongo on the one hand, traditional retail where you have everything from mass market to actually large international corporate and everything in between, right? This is not, in our view, the right way to manage this. So from now on, individual clients, one management, one business addressing all the changes in the French market with Bourse au Banque doing what it does right now. And SG continuing to do what it does, but much more segmented and focused on mass affluent to high net worth with private banking, meaning, and this is maybe the most important sentence I said earlier, which is with a segmented approach in terms of offer, pricing, right, and cost to serve. The most important idea here is you have to segment your cost to serve, you know, much more at a much more granular level and much more effectively. So in the end, you have Bourse bank, you have the focus on wealth and savings where we already have much better strengths than the overall footprint in our market and you have a separate approach for each one of the segments. And this will, in our view, over time create massive opportunities indeed in terms of operating model, in terms of cost to serve, and in terms of simply profitability, right? And choices are going to be made in terms of how we address everything, right? All the clients are welcome, but they get a segmented offer that, you know, is in line with what they expect.

Okay, thank you. We'll take a question from Giulia here, just in the second row on the left.

Thank you very much. Giulia Miotto, Morgan Stanley. I have two questions, one on cost and one follow-up on French retail. So costs, I thought the below 16.3 was the highlight of the day and quite a commitment, especially because in the previous plan you had two tailwinds, the SRF and the restructuring costs coming down. You don't have that going forward. and there is inflation, peers are investing. So what can you tell the market to give us confidence that this is achievable and also it doesn't cost an underinvestment, if you wish, in the business and will not prevent you to compete with the peers? And then secondly, if I expand on French retail, so will a client now have the same app? Will the interface be the same for Boursobank? and the networks will the systems be the same and if that's the case why cost income 55 that number surprised me because you're already at 58 um so i would have thought a number much closer to 50 especially if you are sort of integrating the networks in into bursa bank would make sense Thank you.

So on the first question, I think the most important idea here is, I'll come back to our track record, but I don't want to lead with this. The most important idea is that when you run operations inefficiently, you're actually destroying value at a high pace and in high volumes, if you will. And we've proven that in the last three years by, and I'm taking the most important achievement, I guess, from a cost reduction perspective, which is the 1 billion almost shed off our IT spending, right? We've done that and I gave you stats while reducing incidence and increasing efficiency and productivity and quality of production, availability of production, and so on and so forth, substantially. The incidence is 80%. And so here what you absolutely need to understand what you're thinking about this is that we're not perfectly optimized and trying to do much better. We're coming from something which was really all over the place in terms of efficiency, having done a lot of work in the last three years, but still having substantial, real, true efficiency spending increase opportunity. I'm going to give you another stat, which is when we look at the structure of some of our teams, and we've improved that, and hence the improvement in IT cost and in IT intensity ratio, but we have still teams where we have double the number of non-coding, non-developing resources in a given versus coding resources in a number of projects or a number of areas. So the sheer efficiency gains are not what they were in terms of potential three years ago, but they're still substantial. Procurement is this other example where, you know, I mean, we did a lot of things. We think that we can do much better in this case. And it's what? It's policies that are at the group level, much more control in terms of application and so on and so forth. We refer to what we call the control towers. So we've implementing something very strict in terms of controlling the headcount and controlling replacement rate of the attrition. And this is, of course, an extremely important process. But we also have a spend control tower, we call it like that. And what you see there, it's not about, like, think about this as, it's not about, like, just, you know, we're deciding that, you know, one every two expense requests, we say no. Of course, that would be again stupid right and so what we're trying to do here is understand through this much higher level of management let's say much more detailed level of management understanding what's going on I'm going to give you an example right one of the things we spotted and started to address already with Laura our chief operating officer is that a number of requests on significant IT spend come late right and so you can have a much smaller impact on procurement if you don't have alternatives to keep it simple, right? And you're much more in the hands of your suppliers if you start thinking about that procurement process in this particular case late in the process. And so here, you know, by changing the way we look at these things, by taking the right amount of lead time, you know, we put more pressure and we create more alternatives in terms of these procurement discussions, right? And so on and so forth. And don't underestimate the level of, let's say, still entropy in the system, and, you know, we're in the process of, in procurement, for instance, of putting that bet together at the right level with the right level of control and so forth. So we, you should be confident because of that, and lastly, because of the way we work, like, we're not working, we're not working, I insist on this, you know, out of our joint office and saying, oh, you know what, I look at this benchmark, you know, you're 10% above, why don't you cut 10% and just come back, you know, in six months once you're done, right? The approach is completely different right we have this ongoing running every single week right every single week uh you know with reviews at all kinds of levels you know leo gets three meetings a week on this i get one every week where we follow a super granular cost and efficiency plan where we have thousands of initiatives which are replenished uh very regularly and so on and so forth so we feel very comfortable that we are going to reach this target. In terms of the French retail question, I think the heart of the answer is it takes time, right? It takes time to effect total change there because the answer is not so much that it's going to be the same interface. I mean, it's going to be blue and pink for BourseBank unless, you know, we make a very aggressive decision to change the colors. and red and black on the HD side. But to your point, yes, ultimately, we don't want two entire teams, right, doing digital applications and digital processes, design and production in our company. We want only one, and at that, we want the best one, right? So absolutely, right, part of this whole logic and part of what's going to help Uplift support the 29 targets, But after that, uplift even further the profitability is this idea of convergence across everything while maintaining, you know, the purity of the channels with a focus on wealth and savings on the traditional side. So, going back to your 55%, well, first of all, 58 is an H1 number, right? So, always remember, and you know that, that, you know, in Q4, usually you have a number of true ups, et cetera, which could kind of change a little bit that number at a quarterly mark. But more importantly, right, the next step is 55, but of course, right, the contribution of the steady-state contribution of what we're trying to do should drive this performance higher.

Okay. We'll take a question from Chris in the second row here, please.

Good morning. Chris Hallam from Goldman Sachs. So two questions. First, any colour you can give about RWA growth on a sort of divisional basis? I guess the trends are reasonably different across the three landscapes, so to speak. And is it fair to assume that leverage exposure will grow faster than RWA's through the plans, and does that have any impact on the 81 issuance So 81 costs we need to think about in 29. And then second, on slide 29, I think it is the prime balances growth. Looks like roughly an ambition to double prime balances by 2029. When you think about that, what are the key drivers to grow? Is that product, geographies, people, tech, balance sheets? What are the kind of ingredients you want to put into that business to roughly double the size of balances?

So let me do it this way. I'll start on the RWA and then I'll leave the floor to Leo. I'll just talk about the business side of things and Leo on the second part of your question and then I'll take it back for Prime Brokerage. So from a business perspective, the way you should think about this is more capital light on RPBI, meaning support for Bourse Bank, but as you know, it's not a high RWA intensity business today and support for Wealth and Savings, which is also not a high RWA intensity business. So, conversely, you should expect us to be on the conservative and super disciplined side of things in terms of the allocation to corporate or to broad lending into the mass market, right? For, I mean, obvious reasons in the French market is that, you know, it's substantially lower profitability than anywhere else in Europe, and we have to take this into account. And this is the logic of what we're explaining, you know, the opportunities actually to grow more in asset-light businesses there. So then the most important part would indeed support more GBIS, both in F&A and more marginally in markets because of prime brokerage, which consumes on the Bidoué, but also, of course, at the heart of it, the F&A business, which is one of the destinations for capital. And then on MABS, it is capital at KB and BRD, but, you know, at the level of the group, this is not super material, and, you know, we don't want to, in growing markets, especially in Romania, we don't want to overdo it as well, right, so we will be disciplined there as well. There is allocation, but at the group level, it's not that much. And then lastly, AVENS is a final destination for also capital investments. But as you know, and we'll see whether we have questions on this later, but the idea there is we see the market substantially still in deep transformation at the beginning of the plan, right? So we don't expect these investments to come early. We expect them to come towards the end of the trajectory.

So, I mean, just rebounding on that. So, obviously, you know, there's going to be a part which is going to be driven by long growth and therefore normal RWAs. We could be talking about, you know, Eastern European franchises, as Almey was mentioning, or, you know, or an F&A effort, no? But on this, it's important to remember that we want to increase the origination, I think, by somewhere around 25%. We did 50% in the previous cycle. But we also want to increase a little bit the distribution, right? So the net will have an increase in RWAs, but it's balanced, if you wish. On the other hand, on the markets activity, it will be more driven by leverage, indeed. So leverage is going to be something that we will need. Right now, at this point, today, we've done almost 100% of the funding programme of the group. Now, going forward, we have a buffer, which is above, you know, the bucket of 81. So right now, we're not in a constraint at all. We're actually beyond that. But normally, we usually do some pre-funding of the previous year, so we'll probably do the same this year. Our funding program in the coming years, we expect it to remain more or less stable, so we're going to do something around 13 to 16 billion euros every year. Of course, if we distribute more capital to shareholders, we may increase that a little bit, but it's not going to be anything sizable.

In terms of the prime brokerage business, so the opportunity, again, quickly, it's we as you know have a very strong franchise in equity derivatives uh high profile one of the leading ones especially in terms of thought and innovation leadership and the capacity to do all kinds of things for kinds of clients but historically we had two issues with prime brokerage we didn't develop this business uh organically that much because we're focused on synthetic prime brokerage and then the second piece was obviously cash equity and research which you know actually are significant components of cash-prime brokerage businesses. So, first thing that happened, we invested in Bernstein, and we now have a much more meaningful platform from this perspective, both in terms of the cash equity business, but also in terms of the research. And second, we have been investing in the systems, because that's the other component, organically, and we're now progressively, and we're now at maturity to kind of roll that out. So the idea is, now that we, again, have all the components, we can really accelerate the development of this business. And as you know, the market dynamics there, for all kinds of reasons, led to concentration, right? And so the opportunity is very simple, is that, as you know, I'm sure, most of the clients, well, actually, they do seek an alternative provider. And Sokjen, because of everything we have done for decades, you know, we are a relevant and a trustworthy provider in the space. So there is a, you know, I'm not, nothing's easy, right, in that business and certainly not in CIB, but it is a real tangible opportunity where, you know, now that we have what it takes, it's possible. So you need RWA, you need Salesforce, which we are investing in, and to your point, there is a component in human capital, there is a component in IT spending, there is a component in capital, but which we now can put at work on something that has, you know, the infrastructure to be developed.

If we take fourth row, second left, please.

Hello, I'm fourth row, second left. Jacques-Henri Goulart from Kip Le Cheveau.

And thank you for the red and black.

No, thank you, mate. I love doing that with the banks, generally. Put the colors. Two questions. First, the agreement between AI and Anthropic. It's true you're not the first financial institution to announce one. Can you be a bit more specific, explaining to us how this is going to work, And is there any chance that in five years' time, you wake up with twice the cost which has been decided by your provider? That's question one. Question number two, it seems that Revolut is on a rampage now. They've hired somebody who is not completely unknown to you to chair the company. Just a little bit about how you view that particular type of competition in France, vis-à-vis, in particular, your Bourse au Banque franchise, which is going to be under attack, assume.

So, on the first point, let me address the latter part of your question, which is, is there a risk that we wake up with a substantial increase in costs, wherever this thing is, let's say, applied three years from now? The answer is, I don't think that the risk is substantial, because we are going to pay attention. And, you know, I know you guys are very busy, so I don't expect you to follow what I happen to say about AI. but in our regular interaction, I think you got the gist that we were always very conservative on this topic and you've never heard me or Leo or us in any way, shape or form, you know, drum rolling the fact that, you know, we're going to reduce our workforce by 30% thanks to AI. I thought always that this was absolutely unrealistic to say things like that right now. I guess that the last few weeks give a little bit of color on why that's unrealistic, especially in highly regulated, highly supervised businesses where the trustworthiness is absolutely fundamental, right? So, you know, the risk of us overspending there or not paying attention to what happens is very, very low, right? We don't want to do this. And to your point, you do have already today in some of the AI firms, I'm not going to name names, but 10% to 15% of their spending is actually the cost of tokens, et cetera, et cetera. So you can easily see a world where, yeah, maybe you're down 30% with your workforce, but you're also up, you know, 50% in your IT costs. So I'm 100% with you there, and I think it's a view that we share at the management level. Now, what is it? It is something where, you know, what have we been doing, right? To some extent, you know us, right? 25 years ago, we were running high-frequency trading desks, and, you know, and BourseBank is what it is, like one-twelfth of the workforce of the regular retail. So, you know, I mean, talk about being focused on efficiency and on high automation and so on and so forth. But on the other hand, you know, we want to go from experimentation, right? Yeah, sure, coding is a little easier. Yeah, sure, people can do some things that seem to be burdensome before, faster, et cetera, et cetera. But, like, if we stop now, take a step back, et cetera, what is embedded today in terms of AI, actual AI impact, positive on either revenues or costs? It's a minimal figure, right, if we're honest, right, in terms of being at scale and so forth and so on and so forth. So what we, our vision here is we need to change tacks a little bit, and it's not about like kind of trying to grab everything that's out there and use it and experiment like we're all, you know, some form of, you know, Albert Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci of today's world, but rather take advantage of Anthropik's approach to enterprise AI, right? It's not that they're perfect at it, but it's the one firm that has in their thinking embedded the idea that it's not so much about the models, but very fast, it's about what can we do with these tools at scale in deep transformation of companies. And so I'm going to say something crazy. Can we rewrite an entire CBS and then implement it with no frictions, something we all tried at some point in the time and never succeeded at? and usually drowning 500 million in the process, right? Is that the future, right? Is that the future? In which case, guys, I mean, the opportunity is incredible, right? Or is this going to happen maybe in 20 years' time? And for this, you need constant dialogue, right? So this collaboration agreement gives us access to all their technology, gives us access to co-developing, adjusting their models, like cloud, for instance, et cetera, specifically for the needs of our business and financial services in general, whatever we choose to work on, but more profoundly even, it gives us access to their experts so that we can think about this in strategic terms and stop just throwing money indiscriminately at all kinds of ideas. So that's really that. With all that, I forgot the second question. Revolut and Bursa. Ah, Revolut, yeah, this is why I forgot it. I choose to forget it. No, no. Listen, first of all, as I always said, you know, you have a market competitor, right, that enters your market of choice with a strength, with a strategy that's working and with apparently, you know, very determined views about their growth in France. You know, you have to pay attention and we are paying attention. And now I go back to what I think sometimes alluded to, which is today we have still very different businesses, right? On the one hand, a bank, Bourse Bank, that has the entire product offer, as you can say, a proven track record in running an entire product offer from very simple things to very sophisticated ones, the brokerage, remember, et cetera, et cetera. And on the other hand, we have something which has so far covered a large ground geographically and in terms of types of clients. One could say, you know, what's the usership versus clientship in that... Is that me? No. Well, that's not a great idea. So, and in terms of AUAs, it's a fraction, you know, one-tenth of what we have most likely our a way per client is in the nine to eight to nine k theirs is below one thousand etc etc so we think we're not exactly doing the same job today but a client is a client or a user is a potential client and this is why we're working very hard adjusting you know some of our marketing approach in terms of you know how we acquire clients you know, we had a certain way of doing it in France, you know, for those of you who follow us super precisely, we have tilted that to a slightly different approach. And, you know, being much more present online with a different kind of marketing, etc, etc. But in the end, what we are working off is the entirety back to what I said earlier of the market, including with high end segments, which are going to continue to be covered by traditional networks that have to be more segmented and more optimized. So, ultimately, you know, Revolut can't be Société Générale in the French market anytime soon. Société Générale, the way I described it earlier, which is all of our assets together, one market, one business, one management. No one can do that in the French market so far, and we will increase substantially our usage of this competitive advantage.

Okay, thanks. Let's take a question from Andrew, please. Third row, second right.

Morning, it's Andrew from City. Just a broad question, then a follow-up on Borsau. On the broader question, you talked about a steady improvement to your ROTI target in 2029. At the same time, you said that the cost reduction would be front-loaded in 2027. So should we assume that the revenue growth is more back-weighted in 2028 or back-loaded in 2028 and 2029? And then the second question specific to Borsa Bank. You've given an absolute profit target for this year. You haven't given an absolute profit target for 29. But you've alluded to the RONI actually declining versus this year. So greater than 60 to greater than 45. And that's even with the IFRS 15 accounting change. So can you just talk through both the implications of the accounting change from a numbers perspective, but also the reason for the decline in the return profile of Borso Bank?

All right. So, Leo, you'll take some of these questions, both on costs and on the accounting change, et cetera. Well, I'll start then by addressing the strategic side of the 45, 60, et cetera. So it's quite simple. And three years ago, we already had a discussion about, you know, is it worth developing BourseBank, growing it? And there was a number of voices on the buy side, which not only analysts, but also investors, who were questioning, you know, why would you continue to develop this asset? Why don't you milk it and generate the high returns that it carries, basically, structurally? Well, I hope that by now the answer is clear, right, and that when you have an adventure like this from a growth perspective, from a strategic disruption potential for an entire market, your first duty is to make sure that you develop it while, you know, and you saw that, you know, containing costs. And we did much better in terms of containing costs than what we initially planned. But this idea that we have this unique asset that needs to continue to grow and to continue to disrupt the French market through cost of serve. Like, think about it this way, right? The French market has a number of positive features, right? It has a number of negative features, you know, the products, you know, some of the structural constraints with the regulated savings, with the nature of our mortgage products and so on and so forth. But if you apply a radically different cost to serve to this market, right, well, you are going to create a big opportunity out of something which initially seemed challenging, right? So this is the thinking that we have. And going back more precisely to your question, the idea is exactly what you implied, which is at 60% RONI, we have a much, much lower, We still grow, right? We still grow, as you can see, but we have much lower growth rates while, you know, delivering a profitability which is equivalent to over-earning, right? And so just having these two things, you know, shows you that it's not the right thing to do, right? You need to find something which is much more balanced between the growth and the earning, right? So from now on, we have a highly profitable Boursobank that's going to contribute to the group, but at a lower level than it could because we still want this to grow at a very high pace, 14 million in 2029, and as I said many, many times, ultimately way more than 20, and the leading bank in France in terms of market penetration. So that's that. With everything I said, you can imagine that we're not disclosing it right now, but the absolute terms contribution in terms of net income is going to grow at a slow pace.

So, taking it from there, if you wish, the rhythm between the difference of the 65 and the 45, as Lovam just explained, it's that, just to drop a couple of numbers there, in the first half of the year, Borsobong acquired 300,000 clients, now we want to acquire 2 million, right? Which, by the way, it's more or less the same amount of clients that we already acquired in 2025 when Revolut was already, you know, trying to get deep into France. Now, I would like to highlight that there is no change in the accounting framework, OK? So the accounting framework doesn't change. What changes is that we're going to apply now a norm, IFRS 15, which was in place or was implemented back in 2018. The reason why we didn't implement that norm in 2018 is because we didn't have the historical, very granular, via vintage data that could support how long it takes us to recover the initial investment through the revenues that are being brought by those specific vintages per year. At this point, we now have over 15 years of experience and, moreover, a very good experience over the course of the last three years where we doubled the number of clients, so it's very specific. And then, again, the norm is specific. We cannot take into account all the revenues. We cannot take into account the revenues, for example, that are driven by the IFRS 9 norm. We cannot take into account NII, right, the NII that we acquire from the clients. We can only take into account the net fees. So going forward, we're going to capitalise this asset, actually, from this quarter. So that's going to be risk-weighted and therefore will have an impact on the CT1 of Bursa Bank, while amortising this asset to basically align the investment made on the acquisition of the client with the revenues that we're going to get from the client going forward. yeah so if we didn't have that the returns would be lower uh but uh but uh uh there was a another question you know uh on the second is uh on the on the curve in terms of both costs and revenues so so on this regard right uh we've been a little bit more cautious we always have more control on everything that has to do internally is intrinsic to the bank it's it's it's on us if if you wish, as management, and that's costs. And that's why we wanted to show that, you know, the costs are not going to be backloaded, but frontloaded. And, of course, this comes from a lot of work that we've been doing not only in the last two months, but in the last, whatever, 18, 24 months. There's a number of very, very granular number of projects. I think we've explained these in the past, which don't give all the benefits in one quarter, but are spread out through the course of several quarters or even years, right? And we monitor these very precisely. As Lavo Mibos pointed out before, I have three meetings per week. Lavo Mibos has one, and we are constantly monitoring the milestones behind those projects so that we achieve them. So, indeed, the cost reduction is going to be significantly front-loaded to 2027. On the other hand, as per the revenues, we have taken a more cautious view for 2027. Why? I'll try to explain, basically, pillar by pillar. So, on the MIP side, we're going to have a little bit of an impact of perimeter for some of the companies that we are still divesting in Africa this year. So we will not have that kind of revenue next year. On the second hand, evens will still be normalising on the used car sales by 20 to 7. So basically, we're not expecting a huge increase in the revenues of evens because of that reason. And probably they will grow further on down the line because of all the things they want to aim for. On the GBI side of things, we have an F&A which we do think will grow next year, more or less linearly every year, on the grounds of the numbers that we gave you, 3%, 5% CAGR. So that's not something that we see at risk at this point. On the other hand, on the market side, which represents 60% of the pillar, or more, if you wish, well, we gave a target this year which was a range between 5.1 and 5.7 billion euros. But honestly, we always said we were going to land above 5.7 billion euros last year. We did 6 billion euros. We're on track to be there. So we're already at the bottom part of the range, right? So we've been a little bit cautious, you know, and next year we're more aiming for the bottom part of the range than the higher part of the range, you know? And again, this is a big part of the pillar. So that's another piece of, you know, conservatism, if you wish, in our numbers. And then lastly, in RPBI, well, we cannot avoid to understand that next year we may have volatility in that market driven by all the uncertainties regarding the French elections. So we have, again, been conservative on that end. We have the increase of rates driven by increase of inflation, which will have an impact in Libreya. And therefore, that will directly have an impact on the cost of funding of our franchise and actually sets the floor for the term deposits for the overall franchise. And then the benefits that we're going to see from the wealth management and from Bursow, it's something that's going to scale up, right, over the course of the next three years. So it's not that we're not going to have them next year. We think we are. But of course, those, you know, 2 million clients, 2 million new clients in Bursa per year are escalating over the course of the trajectory. And that's why we've been a little bit more cautious on the revenue side in 27. But it's under the same assumptions that we have for 28 and 29.

Just very precisely, but it's not that all the costs happen in 27, of course, right? Not 1.9 billion of gross savings happen over 27. And equally, it's not all the growth happens there. I know that some of you are going to take the ruler and take a pass at the slide. I mean, we try to be accurate even from that perspective. So I'll give you some color.

Okay, if we just take a question on the fourth row on the end there, please.

Thank you very much. It's Ann Kangen from RBC. Two questions, please. First, on RWA growth, you say 2% organic RWA growth. What would it be including the Bolsa Bank effect? regulation and any capital optimization and then on global markets so you say you're stepping up from 5.1 5.7 this year to the 6 6.5 billion if we think about the drivers that drive that step up is a large part of the increase in your normal run right coming from prime brokerage given the increase in the balance. Thank you.

So I'll take the second one and you can take the first one. On markets, so I think to be fair, it's the combined effect, more than prime brokerage kicking in by, say, from a guidance perspective of 300 million in one year, which is not the case. It's more a combination of continued growth indeed in this business and a bit across the entire franchise and the recognition, right, that there was, you know, undue conservatism now in the previous guidance, right? So think about it as a combined effect of some of that organic growth, but also us recognizing that, you know, the argument that I served you with, like, for years, which is the market conditions were exceptional, which, again, I think was a reality. you know now is simply the regime in which we're working right so again if we have another 2017 with you know a VIX at seven or eight percent throughout an entire year not moving and at that kind of level I mean the performance is going to be much lower right that's for sure but the likelihood of this happening anytime soon right is equally extremely low so again in a base case scenario we do believe that you know the steady state of our performance in markets actually is is higher than what we've been guiding to, right? So a combination of that change in guidance reflecting, you know, progress made. Remember, I checked, right, because I knew that I would have some questions about the guidance. When I took over at CAB in 2020 and at CMD in 2021, I mean, the target was 4.5, right? So there is a real, right, substantial increase in the earnings capacity of this business. And, you know, the guidance reflects partly this. and partly some of the growth projects that we have.

Regarding your question on Bursa, I think it's worth perhaps taking one step back. So why is Bursa so profitable at this point, with 60-plus percent RONI or 45 for the future? If I can oversimplify, it's basically because of two reasons. On the one hand, because we have 9 million customers and 1,000 employees. So obviously, it's the endgame of whatever we could dream of out of ai if you wish no the efficiency is is very important but it's also because our clients are different are younger than in a natural or a historical uh you know uh retail franchise and therefore they're much more leverage on the liability side of things than on the asset side of things so we have much more deposits and auas than loans granted to them because they still don't have that need our purpose is to retain those clients so that we can serve them as their need for other financial assets grow, and therefore we can offer the best product there. But in the coming three years, we're not expecting Bozo Bank to be highly, you know, using RWAs, because this path will take some time. And as per the impact on the amortisation or the capitalisation of those costs, again, I don't think it's going to be very material in the overall scheme of the group. Regulation in the coming three years, we're not expecting a major... I mean, we're still forecasting but it's beyond 2029 and 2030 FRTB. We still put it in our trajectory because it's there and of course we will have some plus and minus over the course of the years as we're showing in the last couple of years now because you have some add-ons that are released and you have some OCs where you need to book a few basis points here and there but it's nothing material.

Okay, if we just take the question fourth or on the right please, Fran.

Yes, good morning. First question regarding your FIC activity you mentioned the last two quarters or also that your mix of activities was not optimal for the period but from a more general point of view do you see any change in this activity where you are a little bit less I would say present than in equity business How do you see your future in this activity in Europe, but also in the United States? You didn't speak a lot about that. And any complementarity also with what you did not mention, SGSS, with these activities? How do you see the future of that with the cost-income ratio of this activity? We don't know it, but we suppose it's much above 60%. and my second question is on the retail you did not mention your ambitions regarding PNC or protection you mentioned your ambition in a life business with outstanding but in protection or PNC we don't see anything do you think that for you you forget it's for the next plan or for another life or do you have any views there because Because for individuals, we have a good environment for pricing today, so it could be an opportunity for you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. So on the FIC franchise first, right? So again, like quickly, we discussed that in the past, but quickly the biggest gaps are product because of, you know, our our substantial focus on rates in general and euro rates in particular over representation of europe versus the equities business as well so these are the biggest gaps and then always right i mean it's a choice it's a management choice not a reporting choice because frankly we could have a reporting upside if we change that but part of the credit business which is very often reported in fixed income almost everywhere else in our house is partly booked in global banking, in F&A. Why? Because we made, I don't know, like 15 years ago almost, right, right after the GFC, the decision, right, that credit-intensive activities would not be run out of the market activities, but out of the credit business where we do on the regular basis every day billions of exposure and where that expertise is. So it's a super important choice that Pierre and I made when Pierre was leading that division and I was working for him. And we continue to run it this way. It's a very successful business. And if it were on the fixed side, it would also support that business from this perspective. We're very happy with the performance and risk management but most importantly right now there. So closing these gaps over time, right? And the other thing that you see on the slide is that the flow business on the fixed side is a much bigger component of the business than if you compare this to equity. So it's really, think of it like us doing the job step by step, we don't expect, and this is why we didn't spend too much time in the presentation, we don't expect like revolutionary change there. But what's important for us is to continue closing the gaps also through the investments in the prime brokerage because there is a continuum there, right? Once you have the cash prime brokerage business at scale with your clients, it is actually supporting also, obviously, your fixed income franchise as well. So that's one of the avenues. The investments that we mentioned in the U.S. are part of it as well. We do intend to invest very selectively in the U.S. I'm just going to give you an example. 15 years ago when I took over there, we were running a huge investment in an MBS, an agency, a desk, etc. Believe me, we're not going back there because that would be completely irrelevant and it would be a bad investment for sure if we were to go there. But again, around credit, around some of the corporate business, we can do better because we have a substantial client base in corporates there where we can do better, right? And that's part of the investments that we were referring to earlier. And usually that business, as you know, in the US is actually, you know, marginally to substantially more profitable than the corporate business in Europe and let alone France. So, you know, expect us to do this gradually to support our entire markets business, but also specifically FIC. In terms of the PNC, So, within two answers, I hope very clear, right? So, it's not a highlight of this plan. So, I don't know if it's another life or another plan, but more precisely, we believe that in this business, you have some of the products which are important, especially in France. You know, life benefits linked to the mortgage origination, et cetera, and some other products there that have, to your point, a high margin and high opportunity. It's a big opportunity in terms of cross-selling and so on and so forth. And the market is very sound from this perspective. On the other hand, on pure PNC, I mean, two things. One, because of our historical focus on savings, and when I say historical, here we're talking about, you know, decades and investment and a little bit higher end segments, we have a cultural challenge there in terms of the marketing for these products, right? I mean, let's recognize this. You know, it's much more difficult for somebody who's working with that tilt, if you will, towards investments and savings, et cetera, to be a super good salesman on PNC. Now, the other thing also with PNC is that when we look at the – well done, man. When we look at the differential in penetration, we do have a differential in penetration of this product with our client base versus other banks and some of the leaders in the space. That differential would be, you know, with the best ones, I think 15% to 20% touch points. So, it's substantial, right? But when you take the end profitability on this product and apply it to the client base, etc., I mean, let's say, addressing half of that gap would not dramatically change the overall picture for French retail and private banking and insurance. So this is how we're thinking about this, right? It's important. We're working on this, but it's not the number one priority, and neither from a revenue nor from a bottom-line perspective.

Okay. We'll take a question at the back, third to the left first, please. Back row. I don't know if you can hear me.

Jeremy Siggy from BNP. Two questions on Borso Bank again, please. Of the 5 million extra customers you expect, how many of those do you expect to come from the SG branch network? I know historically it's been a very small proportion. Is there a difference in this plan? And then second question, you talked about lower customer acquisition costs in Borso. Is that just a function of the accounting or are you finding ways to bring in customers with less cash payment?

So on the first question, like the one-word answer would be 500,000, right? Because more or less, and we monitor this very carefully, we've been monitoring this for the last decade very carefully, basically the cannibalization, so to speak, which we don't see and have never seen as a cannibalization, but rather as customer development, is roughly the size of our SGRF market share in the market, which is around 10%, to keep it simple, right? So we expect this to be consistent with this historical trend. And if your question, and I do want to address this, I normally try not to answer questions you didn't ask, but in this particular case, if the implication was also linked to the new strategy, new vision with the bank, The 14 million does not include any transfer from the traditional bank to BourseBank. Not any transfer. This is a standalone growth strategy for BourseBank. So, I mean, as we develop the vision, you know, can you imagine flows both ways? Again, in the spirit of one business addressing one market, we expect these flows to go both ways, right? and we'll work on this so that the flows are both ways, but that would be incremental. The CAC is down, like the customer acquisition cost, is down actually substantially if you compare it to what BosoBank was doing earlier. And this is why, if you remember, we had projected a negative GOI of €150 million that would be the consequence of the investment in the previous cycle from 23 to 26. It has not been the case. We have been profitable net contributor. Bourse Bank was a net contributor to the net income throughout the entire trajectory. So you can see, and that's directly, directly linked to all the efforts made on optimizing the customer acquisition costs. And the way it's done is, well, twofold mainly. One, a much more subtle regulation, right, if you will, of this expense throughout the year and throughout the campaigns, right? Because, you know, obviously it's run through all kinds of campaigns, links with advertising or not, or this or that. And, you know, instead of being a little bit, if I may say so, blunt and aggressive, it's much more subtle and trying to optimize that. And so that's one of the drivers. The second one is also a more recent and important evolution, right, which is trying to, how to put it, be more sophisticated about it and so not just focus only on the acquisition fee, which was a little bit of a feature of the strategy in terms of acquisition, like just pay a fee, get the customer. Since you are the best performer in terms of quality and app efficiency, you turn it into actually a very good and active one, hence the level of AUA per client, but rather taking into account the online opportunities and how the younger generation, you know, let's say, navigates these offers, etc., etc. And the combination of all this, I mean, it's a 65% reduction in cost of acquisition since 2016, just to give you a sense.

Okay, we'll take a question from Sharaf at the far left, please.

Sharat Kumar from Deutsche Bank. I have two questions. Firstly, on events, the fleet growth at 3% between now and 2029. It's still very modest if you compare it with your closest peer, BNP Arwal, who have been growing at 5% per annum. So my question is, the gap is now significantly reduced with their acquisition of Athlon. So how important is being the number one player to you? And related, Arwal has also started doing more SRTs in this particular business. So how open are you in this regard? And the second one is regarding SRTs at a group context. Any change in your message? And if I compare to BNP, they are doing net 10 basis points. Cumulatively, they have 90 basis points. And so, just wanted to understand these figures from your perspective. And is there any messaging versus your previous stance?

All right. So, I'll address the AVEN's question by saying, I guess, two things. One is, when you compare us to competitors, any competitors, it's possible to also look at other parameters of the performance. And we try to obviously, you know, look at what's going on in the market. And what we notice, right, if we read things well, is that some of the competitors, I'm not going to name them, but some of the competitors have a much more aggressive stance, not only on growth, but also on profitability and funding for that matter. So, you know, you think about us, you tilt this the other way around, right? We pay attention to funding and we pay attention to building businesses that are strong from a healthy, from a risk management perspective and so on and so forth. And so our focus in the market, which, I mean, think about it again, between the EV paradigm shift, between the UCS paradigm shift and so on and so forth, and still unstabilized customer behaviors on both origination of these assets but also at the back end in terms of what happens at the end of the contracts and the secondary markets and so on. I mean, it's a market where you do want to protect value, right? Value at the expense for now of growth because once these things are stabilized, and they will be stabilized obviously, right? And we get inputs every year, right? this year, this market got a huge input from the war in the Gulf with Iran. And so once all these things are stabilized, I mean, we will be happily pouring capital at this sound and healthy base so that we can use the high profitability that we will have there, that we have already and will continue to have, to grow at super high levels of marginal return, right? So that's how we think about this. Now, on the SRTs, short answer, there's no change in stance, right? So it's a tool, it's an efficient tool, if you manage it conservatively in terms of diversification of your providers, I mean, that's very important, of course, right? And when you don't rely on this as a fundamental piece of your equation, right? Because if you start relying on this as a fundamental, inexorable, I mean, I wanted to fancy a word, like unavoidable piece of your equation, right? You're going to maybe wake up one day with no capacity in the market. And what do you do then if you used it too aggressively in terms of capital management or, frankly, in terms of like huge differences between underwriting and what you actually want to hold on your balance sheet? So from this perspective, our stance has always been and remains one focused on risk management as an additional tool just to kind of manage some of the extra opportunities or whatever. But that's fundamentally where we stand. So no strategic change in SRTs.

Fifth row, please. Just Delphine with a hand raised.

Yes, Delphine Lee from JP Morgan. Just a few questions on costs, just to come back on cost reduction. Just wanted to check that the minus 2%, 29 versus 26, that's going to be mainly driven by France. And you talked, I think, in the presentation about 11% decline in headcount at the group level. how much have you assumed are you going to see an acceleration in this next plan and also a very quick one on the decline in 27 which is more pronounced if you just can explain is that related to the disposals you've made recently or is there a staff reduction plan that impacts a bit more 27 compared to later years or is it just the phasing of the cost investments that you're going to make towards later years.

Thank you. So in terms of the headcounts in your first question, and I'll leave the second to you, so 11% is the headcount reduction over the last plan when adjusted for disposals, right? Otherwise, it's closer to 20. We're giving this figure just to point to the fact that, you know, obviously, you know, cost savings don't come from nowhere, and it is a combination of IT, headcount, and procurement in the end, really, if you oversimplify. And so there was a substantial contribution from this reduction in headcount, which, as you can see, is far higher than, let's say, the sporadic news that you can read in the press because of this or that particular little action that we take, right? So just to give you some perspective, this is why we chose to give you this number. For the future, the way you should think about it is we have decided to run all these transformations through natural attrition. One, because it compels us and our teams to be better, to be better, simply that, at transformation, right? And not rely on big announcements that are value destructive. And you guys, of all people, know that better than us. You know, you put this in an Excel spreadsheet, you will see the difference in present value between a high CTA intensive move versus a no CTA move, right? And there's no argument, right, that a natural attrition is a much better way of doing this and a much safer way as well because of the losing expertise phenomenon that you have in the plans and the negative bias, especially in voluntary plans, which is what we can do. We can't do anything else in particular in France. So we focus on this. We don't do it everywhere in the world, but we focus on this and we focus on this in France. The natural attrition creates an opportunity to run these things, which, I mean, we're not disclosing the figure, but think of us as one of the players in this industry. You can take some average turnover and average retirement hypothesis, and you'll get to a pretty significant number, right? So what's happening is that this is what we can do, but, of course, there is a reasonably high replacement rate. Just to give you some color, last year, we actually recruited 8,000 people in the group. So there is, of course, a replacement rate because you need to replace some of the expertise and you need to replace some of the capacity. But as our efficiency work kicks in, we do want to use this in the future as a main tool to work on that part of the cost base. With that, I didn't give you any number, but I won't, but it gives you the color of how we think about this. And the single most important condition for this to work is the control of hiring, right? Because why plans based on attrition don't work often is because you don't exercise enough control on rehiring. Believe me, we exercise extremely strict control on rehiring. Leo?

On the front load in 27, again, as I tried to explain before, there's no big bang, there's no huge project which is going to bring, I don't know, hundreds of millions of euros just because of one project, you know? As a matter of fact, we have literally thousands of initiatives which are small, some are bigger than others, obviously, as you can imagine, and that will go through over the course of the coming years. Additionally, some of the initiatives that we have in IT, in IT most of those costs are capitalised and therefore they need to be amortised going forward. So it's not something that you see in one quarter, but it's going to streamline over the course of a trajectory, obviously, right? And on top of that, yes, there may be a little bit more of an opportunity to front-load some of those procurement initiatives because, you know, it's the renewal of those contracts. So there's more, perhaps, opportunities in the short term, and then you roll them over and you keep on working on them over the course of the, you know, the future, if you wish. But it's no big bang, no big opportunity that's going to drive, you know, this drive, sorry, this significant reduction of costs in 27. It's more, you know, an addition of many, many, many, many initiatives for which we've been already working for the best part of two years.

If we take a question at the back, please, Lars Roth and Mathieu, thanks.

Hi, Matt Clark, Mediabanker. A couple of questions on the resources that you're deploying into revenue growth. And I guess I'm curious how you decided not to spend more on costs and presumably there would have been opportunities to grow revenues faster. So how do you think about marginal cost versus revenue opportunities and the same in terms of capital deployment? I mean, the slide you have showing the very high return on incremental capital deployment into the equities business and various other businesses is quite impressive. But why is 2% risk-weighted asset growth the right level? Does that return on incremental capital deployment rapidly tail off for you to deploy 3% risk-weighted asset growth per annum? I'm just intrigued why you've framed your footprint of capital resource deployment over the plan as conservatively as you have.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Listen, two different things, right? One, in the deployment of capital, you have to think about this as something that is linked to two different forces. One is the one you described, which is you have an opportunity, you decide to deploy the capital, and therefore it's an increase in capital allocation and capital consumption. But there's another force which we didn't speak to, which is continued focus on eliminating waste in terms of capital deployment. And while we have done quite a bit, as you can see in the figures, right, both at GBIS since 2021, but also elsewhere in the group, I mean, there are areas where we are just getting started, right, in terms of pulling capital from where, just to be blunt, there's no prospect whatsoever to ever reach the right level of return, right? And you have portions of retail where it's like that, and both in France, but more marginally elsewhere. And so we're in this process of being very, very strategic about putting some of that capital back. And so the 2% is also, again, right, you need to think about this as the combination of these two forces. And again, we're not doing anything stupid. We're being responsible. We talk about clients here, sometimes clients that have been around with us for a while. So we don't do this. We try basically, right, like with everything else, we try not to be a caricature of what we're trying to do, right, and be responsible with all the stakeholders that are involved in our transformation. So that's one set of reasons. The second set of reasons has to do with the table that you're referring to. And I'll actually first support your point even further. There is no theoretical capacity or declining returns in these businesses in our view, right? Of course, nothing ever grows, you know, to reach the sky. but all of the things that are on this on this page have actually quite a bit of capacity to absorb investments right but the question here is not so much and i'm addressing your question how much basically revenue are we willing to leave on the table for the sake of cost containment we think about this slightly differently if i have a business that comes to us in the various processes that we have, strategic planning, budget, etc., and tells me, listen, I want to increase here my investments so that by the end of next year, by the end of the trajectory, you have something which generated a creative cost to income and a creative roti, I mean, both of us are going to say, let's do it, right? Let's do it. The question we will have is, one, how confident are you on the cost spent there? And how confident are you on the market environment and market conditions? So my point here is the reason it's 2% and not, say, 5%, because theoretically in the spreadsheet you could easily make that argument. Why isn't your growth rate 5%? Well, because last time I looked outside the window, right the world was pretty pretty challenging and one thing that we have done way back in the past is both throwing capital indiscriminately at the entire business mix of the group right you know the argument on marginal are we in banking right once you have a stabilized franchise you know you could actually make it throughout the entire business portfolio right but the point is if you do this you will end up with uncontrolled growth either from a cost or a risk perspective and we're not going there right so that that's how we think about this hopefully that was clear okay question from say 10 please on the fourth row here hi setting friends of from moneta asset

management um the first questions on your french retail um why not give us a little bit more in terms of guidance particularly on the revenue growth side uh where where you imagine this um this division should be quite visible uh has have good visibility and thinking particularly on the nii side um some of your competitors have give fairly fairly precise guidance there um should should you not have similar range i suppose that's my underlying question um and perhaps it's because you want to build some flexibility? And I'm thinking, is it because we want flexibility on the investment side, on Boursobank? And would you give us the disclosure of your cost of acquisition for the customers so we can have a better visibility on the underlying trend? So that's the first question. The second one, M&A, you mentioned that briefly.

Could you perhaps give us a little bit more colour about what fits strategically nowadays all right thank you uh so on the first question i mean uh one uh we and i'm just saying this because that's true uh we don't disclose these numbers for the for the pillars i'm not saying it's a great answer to your question but uh but it's uh it's the the the framework in which we we communicate second um as you can see though I mean, like I said earlier with my ruler, a little joke, you have a representation which is not strict, right? In the way we represent this in the presentation, there is flexibility indeed in terms of the actual number. But what we are saying is that this growth is going to be balanced. And if you look at the slide very precisely with the ruler, you'll see that indeed French retail has a contribution which is slightly higher, which looks slightly higher than the other pillars. So, you know, you can make an assumption quite easily here, you know, through the calculation of how much NBI is expected here with a 3% CAGR, and knowing that, you know, a little more than a third is going to come from RPBI. And you're going to be, you know, I guess, fairly close to the reality. So that's one. in terms of, is it about flexibility? And I'll come back to an AI in a second. Is it about flexibility? I mean, I guess a little bit, right? In the sense that, you know, in our markets, and that's part of why we have a diversified business portfolio, you have circumstances which are going to be different, even in a normal world, right? And today, with everything that's going to happen in the next few years, you know, we will be managing, you know, with flexibility our resources, right, to optimize, again, the stewardship of your capital, the capital of the investors. So, yes, this is why, you know, a little bit like Jimmy Diamond, right, and I'm not thinking I am Jimmy Diamond, but, you know, he basically never gives guidances, right? Why? Because to some extent, right, there is intrinsic flexibility to be used, right, when running this company now the banking banking banking firms right now in the past and today in the in the in the objectives you have something which gives you color and it's going to be balanced with a slightly bigger share of fbi in terms of the nii leo leo talked to you about the size of that in our uh in our uh in our uh business mix and here uh you know i absolutely confess to PTSD from my early days as CEO, where I inherited an NII guidance, right, which we had to communicate on, of course, right, because it was a guidance that was formal. And I went through a few quarters where we were doing twice to three times better than any competitor, but everybody was obsessed with the fact that we were below the guidance, right? So from that moment, I decided, and I personally will never change my mind, You will never get the guidance from me on NII from French Retail. There was another question. I got so worked up that the other question was... M&A. So, as I said, the strategic feat, it's really how can we grow, expand in our businesses, either by closing gaps, right, or by moving into something adjacent in terms of either geography or, again, product or client segment or something like this. So the first rule is, is this something that basically we know how to manage, right? I mean, the idea that we would go out there and start from scratch doing something new is not something that's going to happen, right? So that's the first parameter. And the second one is, I mean, of course, right, that this thing has synergy potential, either from revenue perspective but you know us so more on the cost side right is there a synergy on the cost side that could justify that we we pay the price that we're supposed to pay and that overall the financial equation you know makes sense for for for you and for investors of course right so right now it's fair to say that I think it's extremely difficult to imagine you know what kind of asset would meet all of these criteria, right? Both being strategically fit for us and us for it and the valuation as well, right? But, you know, anything that has to do with again, some of our product gaps in investment banking, some of our product gaps in fixed income, some of our gaps from a geography perspective, you know, I mean, I don't know, right? If Sabadell is a little cheaper. I mean, we go for it the next day, right? And we do have some insights into the asset. But again, today, I think the set of circumstances is still very challenging to see anything super material happening there.

I think we can stop there and maybe continue the conversation with Slavmi and Leo over lunch.

All right, so thank you very much for your time and for all the questions. and, you know, let's take a little time to chat. But thank you very much for being here. Thank you for joining us online. And, yeah, let's talk soon. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.