Thank you very much for joining us on the second day of U.K. Leaders, and it is overlapping with our Pan-European Financial Conference, which is also starting more or less today, going all the way to Friday. Good morning, Anna. It's great to have you.
Good morning.
I have Barclays here, one of our top picks, trading at seven times earnings, still a lot of upside from our perspective, our top IB pick globally as well. I am going to stop talking. I think they want to hear from you. Maybe we start with a little bit on the top-down environment, both in the U.K. with a budget coming up, as well as, as you have a leg in the U.K., how you compare that, U.S., sorry, how you compare the U.K. to the U.S. in terms of economic environment that you operate in.
Yeah, thanks, Kian, and thanks for having us. We're delighted to be here. Actually, the story in both geographies is pretty similar in that you see some softness in the labor market, but that appears to be more than compensated by real wage growth. In both the U.K. and the U.S., we see that phenomena in our consumer books. What that means is, if I just start in the U.K., our delinquencies are very low and very stable. In cards, 90-day delinquencies are 20 basis points. In mortgages, they're 10 basis points. We continue to see pretty steady demand for mortgages with pretty stable HPI and real wage growth. We see good demand for mortgages, including first-time buyers, which is really important for the health of the economy.
Even in corporates, about 84% of our corporates that we're surveying are telling us that they have confidence in their business model, and they expect to make some investment decisions beyond the budget next week. All of that feels quite solid. I mean, we see something very similar in the U.S. The consumer in the U.S., as far as we see them, is very resilient. Their levels of savings remain pretty high, good wage growth. Remember, our book is relatively high FICO, so it's 758 FICO. We've only got 13% less than 660. We see, if anything, levels of repayments in cards that remain higher than they were pre-COVID. If I look at our wholesale books, I would say, again, very little signs of any distress. Any sort of single names that we've seen have been idiosyncratic.
In the U.K., our corporate loan loss ratio has been about seven basis points, so very low. We are also heavily protected, both in terms of LevFin, the pipeline's hedged, and we employ pretty extensive SRT, and that program has been in place since 2016. We are well protected, but we do not see anything but pretty steady demand and good delinquency signs.
Moving on from there and looking level down and looking at your targets, you're going to do a refresh with the full year results on February 10th. You are well on track. I mean, you said 11% for this year. You're well on track for next year, 12%+, and we have 12.5% in our numbers on royalty. How should we think about this refresh on targets in terms of what are the key topics that we should think about, sustainability and outlook in that respect?
Yeah. I mean, we said greater than 11% for this year, greater than 12% for next. Greater than 12% was never supposed to be an end game. That was true of all of our targets, whether it be royalty, whether it be the balance of RWAs, or whether it be our distribution targets. We were always going to come back with a new set of targets. The fact that we're doing them a year before these ones run out, you should take as a sense of confidence and a sense of momentum in the business and expect a similar sort of pattern of delivery. We found the setting of targets, both internally and externally, very good discipline. We like it. Expect us to do a similar framework again, and actually for the formula to be similar. It's pretty simple.
I mean, we're growing revenue, and particularly more stable sources of revenue. We're controlling our costs and driving gross efficiencies so we can invest. We're being disciplined in our capital allocation. We're not going to stop doing that at the end of 2026. We do think that there's more to go here in driving not just higher returns, but more sustainable returns. That is the use the word sustainable. That is the word that we're really sort of looking for here, higher levels of revenue and capital generation sustainably, indelibly delivered in the next phase of the plan. There's a few things I would draw out. Obviously, we've got considerable momentum from the hedge. We continue to grow lending in the U.K. and indeed the U.S. as part of U.S. cards. We're delivering on our gross efficiency targets.
Had it not been for Motor Finance, we would have actually upgraded that this year. The two divisions, which were arguably dragging back the RoTE of the group, are now making meaningful progress, both the IB and indeed U.S. cards. Of course, we see more opportunities, I think, to drive efficiency into the organization through AI, but we'll say more about that in February.
Yeah, and you touched on the U.K. business and the growth that you're seeing there. You and maybe we can talk a little bit about the U.K., strong lending momentum. You're on track on delivering on the GBP 30 billion of risk-weighted assets target. What do you see in terms of opportunities on the asset side in the U.K. in terms of growth? If you can put that in context of your Tesco Bank and Kensington strategy as well.
Yeah, sure. I mean, it links very much with where we started on the sort of resilience, if you like, of the U.K. economy because we see good opportunities for growth across retail business and corporate. That is really what we are seeing. Of course, we are leaning into areas where we are either deploying new capability or alternatively, we had ceded some market share previously. In mortgages, we have seen five consecutive quarters of growth. We are obviously leaning a bit more into higher loan to value than we were, really using that Kensington capability that we purchased way back in 2022. That is really helping us there manage the mix, manage the margin, and really access the breadth of the market. That multi-brand strategy is a bit of a theme, as you point out, because when we get into cards, obviously, we are also acquiring there.
We acquired a million new customers last year. This year's run rate is higher than that. There we're using Tesco, we're using Barclaycard, we're using Amazon, we're using Avios. Really being able to use those brands to access the market. Similarly in corporate, we've had four consecutive quarters of growth. What's important here is that it's not risk appetite and it's not pricing. We're using those brands, we're using capability. In mortgages, we've launched this new broker platform that's reduced the application time from 45 minutes-15 minutes. That's gone to 26,000 brokers, and it's making a big difference. In cars, we've meaningfully improved the customer journey on a digital basis. That's, again, improved matters. In corporate, our clients are now able to navigate Barclays just on a single login into our portal, and we've really reduced that time to offer.
That is giving the regional teams and the clients real confidence around the facilities that we are giving them.
If you look at the liability side of the U.K. balance sheet, deposit growth has been kind of flattish. How do you see that developing? What's the strategy there? If you can put that in context of the structural hedge and the NII, how we should think about the full picture in that respect?
Yeah, sure. Deposits in Barclays U.K. have been stable and actually stable to growing outside of Barclays U.K. because we sometimes forget about the structural hedge. It's actually a group-wide mechanism. That is really why you're seeing us stabilize the notional of the structural hedge. We're now saying that we expect to roll all of it. That really makes a meaningful difference to the NII, both for Barclays U.K. and for the group as a whole. NII is not at peak in Barclays. In fact, it's not near its peak. I would expect us to have a meaningful tailwind in 2026 and 2027 because the maturing yield in 2026 is 1.5%. It's 2.1% in 2027. If you think about what's happening outside of Barclays U.K., deposits are growing, they're stabilizing, and we're also actually seeing the equity of the bank stabilizing.
That's also important for the hedge. Up until now, the proportion of the hedge that sat outside Barclays was about 30%. It's going to be more like 40% ongoing. That does not mean to say that Barclays U.K. falls as an absolute number. Obviously, it's going to continue to increase. Do not forget the rest of the group when you think about the hedge. In Barclays U.K., I'd say meaningful NII progress coming from the structural hedge, but also lending. There were a couple of things that we called out at Q3. The first was, if you remember five years ago, we were just on the edges of COVID, and there was a big block of five-year business written across the industry at pretty wide margins. That is all going to mature in the next six months. I see that as a market-wide impact.
That's going to hold our margins back a little. I would say fixed-term deposit pricing remains pretty competitive in the U.K., whether that's budget-related or otherwise, we'll see. We just called those two things out, but expect to see NII progress.
If we switch gears and we look at the IB, you have risk-weighted assets roughly flattish, GBP 200 billion. Your return on risk-weighted assets on income to risk-weighted assets are latest number 6.3%, so has continuously improved. You're generating positive operating leverage continuously for the last six quarters. You mentioned sustainability as part of the discussions we will have in February, most likely. Can you talk about sustainability of the IB as we see continuous improvement in that business on an operating leverage basis? Also in respect to financing, which has been a big contributor, how much potential is there really to grow that further so we can put that whole picture together?
Yeah, sure. It is really important, given the scale of the IB for Barclays, that it delivers good returns, but sustainably good returns. What we are doing is really monitoring how those returns are going up. I think of it on a sort of rolling 12-month basis. From the end of 2024, it has kind of gone 8.5%, 9.5%, and it is now closer to 10.5%. Making really good progress there. That is coming from increased stability of revenue, and financing is a really, really important part of that. Markets as a whole, because we have been really focusing on those areas which we felt were important to balance out our client opportunity, if you like. Markets have now had year-on-year growth for six consecutive quarters. We think that it is really making progress and taking share.
Within that, financing, obviously, is a big part. We set ourselves a target of 5% CAGR for that business between 2024 and 2026. You can see that we are on track for that. That has really been about maintaining where we are in fixed-income financing and growing prime alongside. Actually, our prime balances in the third quarter were up by 30% year-on-year. We continue to see opportunities there. Cost discipline is also very, very important for this business, particularly the kind of general efficiency journey that we are on for the group as a whole. Reducing technology debt, really driving operational improvements. Finally, I would say really how we manage capital in the business. It is not about starving the business of capital. It is actually about being nimble with that capital, increasing the velocity of that capital.
If you saw in Q3, in many ways, in some areas, we lagged the street in terms of progress, even though we're making progress in absolute terms. The areas where we did really well were actually the more capital-heavy areas like LevFin, like FICC. The areas where we feel we've still got more to do in are the areas that were already called out as focus areas, like, for example, equity derivatives. We're happy with that. The last thing on my mind always with this business is how we manage the risk. The VaR being stable, only two loss days year to date, that's a really important part of delivering that sustainability of returns.
In terms of the IB capital position, you have given some indication that you wanted to keep it at 50% as a percentage of group. Clearly, there is a lot of capital built in the U.S. IB, your competitors in particular. There is deregulation, which is likely to kick in very soon as well in that sense. How do you think about your capital position in the IB where you have risk-weighted assets, more or less capped, and competing head-to-head?
Yeah. I guess the proof of this is that risk-weighted assets in the IB have been flat for more than three and a half years now, and it continues to grow. We really feel like there are opportunities to continue to improve the capital efficiency of the business, whether that's growing areas which are inherently more capital-like, being really nimble with that capital. You've probably seen over the last year there's less in credit risk, RWAs, more in market risk, and counterparty credit risk, RWAs. That just reflects the market opportunity. We do see further opportunities to drive revenue within the capital footprint that we have.
We should focus more on income to risk-weighted assets as a measure of.
Yeah, absolutely. Also really important for us is how we focus on clients. If you remember, we are trying to get to 70 of our top 100 clients being in the top five. We continue on that journey. That client focus is really important to us. If you think about client focus, nimbleness of capital, and real discipline about how we use that and also deploy our costs in the business, that is really what is driving the returns.
Doing more with your client base that you have today.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. If you're moving to the U.S. Consumer Bank, third quarter saw material improvement in the numbers. At the same time, you acquired Best Egg, which will have an impact in 2026. Can you talk about, on the one hand, how this business is reshaping? You've announced some strategic changes, but also operationally, deposit focus, etc. If you can talk about the dynamics here. In that context, maybe also how you think about the RoTE development, because even at mid-teens, you would be still at the lower end of your peer group.
Yeah, sure. I mean, we always said this was a plan of many parts, and it's taken a while for it to come together. We were confident in the operational decisions that we were making and deploying. Obviously, that's now coming out in the numbers. That's really what you're seeing, Kian. Really, really focused on NIM and driving NIM in the business. That comes from repricing that we did in 2024. We really felt that we were not optimally priced relative to the market. We repriced the entirety of the book in 2024. Obviously, that takes a while to work it through customers' terms and conditions and appear in NIM on the outside. That's what you're seeing now. About half of the year-on-year increase comes from that alone. Then you've got this increase in retail deposits.
Remember, retail deposits are about 50 basis points-60 basis points cheaper for us as a source of funding than the broker deposits. That is meaningful as well. Also, moving the business, moving the balance of the business towards retail, trying to get to sort of a 20% retail weighting over time. By taking those actions and driving operational efficiency, making the business more digital. You saw that the cost-income ratio is about 43% now. We said mid-40s, so well on track. We think that this business should be in line with the group in 2026, so greater than 12%, and then to mid-teens by a few years after. We think mid-teens is the right sort of level. I would call out a couple of things. First is our relative risk appetite.
If you compare us to some of our monoline peers, they will have a higher risk appetite. We want back to that point around a higher RoTE, but a more sustainable RoTE through the cycle. RoTE is really important to us. We're very focused on not being quite as super prime as we are now, but still remaining a very prime player. Expect our RoTE to be a little lower. There's obviously a scale point there too, and probably a relative capital point. We think mid-teens is about right. Of course, Best Egg will really help there. It's not to compensate for a lower RoTE anywhere else. We absolutely have to drive the core business to the right level. If you think about both General Motors and Best Egg, they essentially compensate for the loss of the American Airlines revenue, but at a lower capital level.
A much higher RoTE for the business, for that replacement business. It will make a difference. I think several sources of synergy there between unsecured lending and cards, but also an ability to take high-quality consumer credit into the IB, into the markets for our ABS business. That's also an important point for us.
Can you just on Best Egg discuss briefly the volumes written? Because they clearly were mainly securitizing a lot of their book work. You have the optionality of keeping that in, actually, in terms of as an opportunity to grow your NII and further scale.
Yeah. We expect to keep a portion of it, probably at the higher end of the FICO. Not a huge amount, but some. Now, unsecured loans are typically lower RWA weighting than cards because you do not expend capital on any undrawn amount. They are much more efficient in capital terms. This is also a very, very good forward flow and originates a securitized model. We do expect to keep the majority of that going and keep a portion. Obviously, for the elements that we do securitize, what we are left with is a servicing income, but obviously zero RWAs. It is highly, highly RoTE efficient. This is a business that we can clearly scale because of our proximity to the investment bank, its clients. As well as the platform that they have already got, think that we have funding benefits pre-securitization because we are a bank.
Best Egg, as it currently stands, is not. Obviously, the saving securitization costs and that flow of ABS. It is a neat opportunity for us because it really helps us drive both businesses.
It clearly helps you on the CCAR test as well, as outlined in the past.
Yeah, absolutely. Diversification within the geography is really important.
Score as part of the capital requirement side.
Yeah, it has to earn the right RoTE. Once it does and we're confident that it will, it gives broader capital benefits to the group because it means we hold less capital in the IHC.
Great. Maybe moving to some of the group numbers. We start with cost. We have to, I guess, as analysts, always look at cost. You're delivering on cost. I mean, you guided to 61% cost income for 2025. We are below. I think analysts generally are below that already. High 50s, we had 57.5% for 2026. You're well on track on these measures. Clearly, you have the reset coming or refresh on the targets. Can you talk about cost discipline going forward and at the same time, investment pressures, cost pressures, how you're managing that picture and how should we think about it going forward?
Yeah, sure. I mean, in any business, not just a bank, cost is the thing that you control most. It has to be the focus of what you do and that discipline, really being thoughtful about when and where you invest. This is a plan really of efficiency. That is our primary, primary focus here because what we have been doing is saving gross costs in order to generate capacity to invest in the business. Some of those things that I talked about in terms of the new broker platform or the new capabilities in corporate, creating the room to be able to invest in the business is really, really important for us. Expect us to continue to do that. Where we started on this plan was a GBP 2 billion ambition. We are at GBP 1.5 billion through that after seven quarters. Clearly, as you say, making good progress.
I think had it not been Motor Finance, we would have upgraded that CIR this year, definitely. We are where we are, and we've maintained the circa 61%. I think the way you should think about it is initially it was about people and property. Now it's much more about end-to-end journeys through the organization. Expect us to be focused on modernizing technology, delivering operational efficiency through reducing duplication, workforce planning. Increasingly, I think we see opportunities, tangible opportunities to land AI within the organization. Obviously, we'll talk more about that in February. To give you a few examples, we've now got 16,000 branch and customer-facing colleagues in the U.K. using an AI platform to support their customers.
We're reducing time for things like letter writing in response to clients from like 45 minutes-20 minutes using AI capabilities. Real sort of small opportunities all the way through the operational chain to deploy AI.
An investment plan, but still some room also to save on a growth basis to think about this further room to be.
Absolutely. Next year, we expect cost to be flat, maybe slightly down. Yeah, maintaining that guidance. We still think there are opportunities to reduce the CIR of the business. We said high 50s for next year. I think particularly within Barclays U.K., where you're going to see the integration of Tesco start to take effect and those costs come out, but also the IB. I mean, they are our two biggest cost bases. The ones where we feel probably is a market opportunity, we've got most ways to go.
Yeah. On the IB, a lot of still back office, middle office.
Yeah, absolutely.
Integration.
Typically, if you go all the way back to our investor update in February 2024, which feels like a lifetime ago, it wasn't, but it feels like it. Adeel Khan was saying at the time about all of that work that we're doing in terms of subledgers, integration of that back end, that's really important, all of the sort of post-trade activity. You are going to hear more and more about that.
Okay, great. Moving on to capital, you talked about upper level of capital, 13%-14% ratio. What would trigger a shift here? Considering you're talking more sustainability of earnings, you're growing the retail side as a percentage quite nicely as well. How should we think about capital levels that you want to operate with at? At the same time, the Bank of England review on capital framework, how should we fit that all into the 13%-14%?
Yeah. Our target remains 13%-14%, but we said that you should expect us to operate towards the top end of that for a couple of reasons. First, we have not yet implemented the U.S. cards model. That means we're carrying a bit more in pillar two. That increases the MDA. We want to give ourselves enough room there. Also, we're awaiting the pillar two clarity from Basel. We've got the pillar one piece. We've been told that the PRA expect there to be enough capital in the system in totality. In theory, as pillar one goes up, pillar two should come down. That will hopefully allow us to operate more broadly across that range. Like you, we eagerly await what the FPC are going to say at the beginning of December.
If you ask me for my wish list, it is about stability of regime. It is about international consistency of the regime and making sure that there is no sort of regulatory arbitrage between geographies. We note what the approach that the Fed are taking, which is very holistic, looking at the Basel framework, looking at stress testing, the CCAR framework, looking at G-SIB, looking at leverage together. We are hopeful that the FPC takes a similar holistic approach, but at this point in time, we are wait and see, just as you are.
Clearly, in that context, we should also talk about capital distribution.
Yeah.
At the third quarter, you announced to bring forward a portion of your full year distribution. You are moving to a quarterly buyback. How does it actually affect your distribution of GBP 10 billion between 2024-2026? How should we think going forward about capital distribution, also in respect of the mix? If you can talk about that.
Yeah, sure. The reason that we want the organization to deliver higher, more predictable returns is to deliver a higher, more predictable capital generation. That is the basis of the strategy that allows us to operate our capital hierarchy well. Be well capitalized from a regulatory perspective, distribute more and invest more in the businesses. That is what we are doing. We are delivering those RoTE figures off a meaningfully higher equity base. In Q3, that was a 70 basis points headwind. This is higher returns off higher equity. As I think about the distributions, we said two things. First, that 2025 would be progressive on 2024. The second, that we would deliver at least GBP 10 billion across 2024 to 2026. That remains true.
What we've done in the third quarter is really a reflection of our confidence in generating that capital and the resilience and the repeatability of that really is that moving to a quarterly buyback. Now, we're about 90% of the way through our half-year buyback. We'll be able to switch to that Q3 buyback relatively soon. As we look forward from here, as we expect to progress our RoTE targets, you should expect us to progress our distribution targets. As I said at the beginning, they were never supposed to be an end game. Expect them to go hand in hand. We will think about the mix also because obviously, as the share price has improved, the dividend yield has deteriorated. We're really mindful of that, and we continue to take shareholder feedback.
Okay. In respect to M&A, clearly also part of, to some extent, the capital discussion, you had a, I would say, very successful acquisition with Tesco Bank, now the Eck acquisition, which makes a lot of sense to scale up. How should we think about acquisitions going forward? Basically, the mix between inorganic, organic, and also the capital return that you will commit most likely to there's a reset.
Yeah, sure. I mean, in any plan, it has to have an organic basis to it because it has to be within your control. Our plan is and always has been a largely organic plan. What we've sought to do is add points of capability or points of scale along the way. Kensington was about capability. Obviously, although Kensington was before the investor update, we were already planning what we're now executing. Tesco was about capability and scale, actually. Scale that we really wanted in terms of unsecured lending because we'd ceded so much share during COVID and post-Brexit. Capability really about some of the platforms and actually the customer service capability in Tesco has been really helpful to us. Best Egg is obviously a capability, a fintech customer-facing, very digitized, that originates a securitized model.
Those are relatively small in scale, but give either capability or scale. These things have to be at the right price. We are really, really disciplined about return of capital to shareholders versus deployment in the business. They have to be at the right price. We also do not want to be distracted because to that, your final part of the question, this point around distribution of capital to shareholders, we do not want that to be interrupted. We think it is a really important part of what we are doing. Hopefully, you see that commitment. We are doing things that allow us to continue to grow without interrupting the execution of our plan, either internally or externally. To fit all of those criteria and satisfy what it is that Venkat and I are looking for is a really high bar.
Can you talk a little bit, I don't know how much you can say around, is there more of a geographic focus or more certain businesses, or is it just very opportunistic in nature what comes available?
Yeah. I wouldn't say it's opportunistic. We clearly have views about where we would want to build capability. Geographically or business-wise, I would think about it much more around our high-returning U.K. businesses, typically. In this Best Egg acquisition in the U.S., the RoTE is at least comparable to our high-returning U.K. businesses. Think of it as a focus on returns and balancing or getting greater balance between the IB and the rest of the bank. That's how we're really thinking about it.
Yeah. At this point, I suggest we open up to questions. Here we go. This one. Please, there should be mics on the table, I believe.
Hi.
If you could just introduce yourself.
Yeah, hi. So I'm Stephen Kirk from Caxton. Thanks very much for the presentation. I just had a question on AI, and I know that you're going to say more about it in February. Is the right way to think about it that digital banking allowed you to reduce the number of branches by about 40% over the last decade? Should we think about it that AI will have a similar sort of order of magnitude impact on staff numbers? Is that the right sort of order of magnitude?
I would say branch numbers have reduced by more than 40%. I became CFO of what we used to call U.K. retail and business banking in 2013, and there were 1,800 branches, and now there are about 200. That has been quite a substantial journey. I think on AI, we're still learning. There are opportunities in AI that I think go beyond cost as well. There are opportunities that go to the ability to generate revenue, whether that be in hedging and treasury or whether that be in client-facing activity in whether that be retail banking or private banking. I think we're still learning, but it's a meaningful opportunity, I think, for us, both in what you can do, but how you can do it. It's not just about reducing effort in the firm, but arguably should improve your control environment.
I think that's really important because, unfortunately, people are human, and they do occasionally make errors. That's really important. I think the other thing I would say is it reduced the costs of deploying technology and testing that technology pre-deployment. I think we're all just learning, but it feels like an exciting opportunity. Where next? Hopefully, more questions. Otherwise, Kian's going to ask me another one. I can feel it.
Maybe I can just in terms of if you think about the gaps within your business and the opportunities, we say, "Okay, this is just not our natural market share. We should be doing better in this geography, in this business segment, in the subsegment, in the IB," or can you talk a little bit about what is on your mind when you think about that, where we should be potentially having a better profile over time, where you see the opportunity really for the bank to grow?
Yeah, yeah. I'd call out.
We do not want to do the target refresh together, but just to get a kind of a view around those topics.
I mean, the one that's really exciting but very nascent is obviously wealth. We have a highly successful private bank in the U.K., and we have a highly successful retail bank in the U.K. That sort of mass affluent wealth opportunity in the U.K. has been very much underserved by banks post the retail distribution review in 2014. With the sort of advice guidance boundary changes that we anticipate next year, and obviously, we're sort of well plugged into, I think that gives us an opportunity to really provide that to many of our clients who are actually sitting within the retail environment. Generally across the market, the white paper that we've done would estimate that there's about GBP 600 billion sitting in savings that could potentially be deployed into investments. That feels like a really big opportunity for us.
Just really driving digital deployment against that's important. I'd also call out corporate. I mean, you can see that happening now. That's about bringing our corporate market share in lending up. I mean, to give you an idea, our deposit share is sort of over 20%, and we're sort of nine point something percent in lending. Really sort of, if you like, starting to rebalance that. We've already got those clients. We're acquiring more, but it's about really driving into that opportunity. I think the other one that we see is actually within investment banking, and that's driving what we call treasury coverage. Typically, what we've had is a very strong relationship around debt capital markets, but we've not really been able to leverage that into transaction banking.
I think transaction banking is so exciting now when you think about not just what you can do domestically, but with that single platform that I talked about, but also internationally with our largest corporates. We're seeing good deposit growth there, but I'd really like to see better growth in kind of trade, working capital, FX, etc., again, linked into the markets business. Very symbiotic.
It sounds like you have the customer base, it's more the penetration into.
Yeah, and product.
It is the result, more execution. It is not hiring more people in that sense, or the cost base should be well managed in that context.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. If anything, it's technology deployment. In corporate and in transaction banking. Of course, they share the same technology. They sit in different divisions, but they're sharing exactly the same products and the same platforms. We're building it once for two different divisions, obviously very different types of customers that will use those. Think about it as technology and execution focus within the organization.
I have much more questions. I can sit here with Anna all day, but anybody from the audience wants to ask a question? If I maybe also, you clearly just coming back to wealth because we have not really discussed that in my questioning, and you make a very good point, and you had the wealth investor update. There was actually a lot of talk about operational conversion and creating a new operating model. Is it purely organic, you think, there? You have the scale, you have the people within the U.K. in particular, or do you think also there are opportunities more from an add-on perspective to just gain scale as you have a little bit done in the U.S. on the cards business?
Yeah. I mean, the opportunity is, as you say, we already have the customers. We have them sitting in the U.K. retail bank. If I recall correctly, it's about 3 million of them. It is not insubstantial who we think could really sort of move across into that kind of activity. Really, it's beholden on us to deploy that capability, that sort of it's a combination of people advisory and the digital platform and improving the Smart Investor platform that we've already got in terms of product capability and customer journey. That capability, again, can be leveraged all the way into the private bank. Just because you are ultra high net worth doesn't mean to say that you don't want to be able to see things in a digital way. I would say largely organic.
Of course, we continue to look as we do across the businesses, but here, as elsewhere, the bar is very, very high. The other thing that we would be very mindful of in that kind of advisory business is past conduct risk. As we look at any business, we would be really mindful of that. That makes it quite different to some of the other things that we've done, whether that be Tesco or Kensington, etc. You've got to be extra careful in that part of the organization.
Great. Thank you very much, Anna, for being here. Hopefully, next year again, first slot.
Exactly. 10th of February. Put it in your diary.
Great.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.