Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Hope everybody had a good lunch. I'd like to welcome you to this session, with Pam Kaur, who is Group CFO of HSBC. Thank you very much for joining us, Pam.
Thank you, Nick, for the opportunity.
No. We're gonna start off with the usual polling question. I shall read that out to you now. The question is, what is the most important area for HSBC management to deliver on to achieve a better than 17% ROTE target? The first is managing banking net interest income against the backdrop of rate volatility. The second option is delivering operational efficiencies. The third option is delivering growth in their wealth business, and the fourth option is managing capital efficiency. If you could please use the buzzer to answer the question. Let's see what the result is. Wow. Split. It's operational efficiencies, banking NII, but actually pretty evenly balanced, I think. Maybe we just start with the obvious question.
Obviously, it's a very dynamic situation out there, and it's difficult to predict, but what are your initial thoughts on the impact of the Middle East conflict on HSBC's operations?
Thank you, Nick. This question is top of mind for us, particularly in terms of the safety and security of our colleagues. Beyond that, it is being there to support our customers. We have been in this region for 130 years, and we absolutely believe in the business, the region, and its potential continuing going forward. As we sit here today, I would like to call out just the size and shape of what we have on the ground. Our biggest exposures in the region are directly through our HSBC Bank Middle East, and they're mainly in Dubai. Just in terms of context, that business contributes $1 billion to our PBT. Next is the Saudi Awwal Bank 31% share, and that contributes $700 million to our PBT. Overall, in the round, the region contributes around 5% to the PBT.
In terms of loans and advances, it's about 2%. More broadly, what we are monitoring on the ground is a range of risks, whether it's to do with cyber, whether it's to do with operational continuity, fraud, and so on. As I look back and see how does this impact us from our own business perspective, we are very comfortable with the targets that we have given for this year in terms of 17% ROTE and a continued trajectory of growth accelerating to 5% between 2027 and 2028, as well as the 50% dividend payout ratio. Of course, depending on the duration of this conflict continuing, and that is the key factor with which we do the risk assessment. Does this continue just for the next few weeks till sometime in April, or does it go well into most of Q2?
In those contexts, we really would like to raise a few points of reference 'cause that does have an impact on ECL guidance because of IFRS 9. At this point, we are not shifting that ECL guidance because the assumption is it's more shorter end. We are looking at a range of downside scenarios, some very specific for this conflict and some just the existing downside scenarios with impacts on inflation, GDP, not just in the Middle East, but more broadly across the globe. Typically, what happens in these circumstances is you change the probability weighting from the base case to downside one, downside two, as well as to any specific scenarios that you may have created for this conflict or this stress.
In terms of the parallel I can draw is when Russia, Ukraine happened, Q1 2022, we had similar shifts in weighting of our scenarios, similar pressures on oil price, and there was a reserve build during the quarter, and we would expect the same to be this year. The reserve build at that time, and that's not necessarily to be exactly the same here, was a couple of hundred million dollars. It was 250 to be precise then. As we go through the cycles in the next two quarters, if there is more stability, you absolutely get the releases to those reserves. That's the one area which is really important. Very much close to that is you also look at what's happening from an RWA perspective because there'll be a downward pressure on CRRs.
Having said that, at this point, we are not seeing any significant either drawdowns. We're seeing a bit more deposit flows coming in into our accounts, and we've seen no specific individual customer-related credit issues related to the Middle East scenario. In terms of the RWA downgrades and the headwind you get, in some ways, unfortunately, the tailwind is loan growth because of the sentiment is even slower, and therefore you won't get RWA growth there. In terms of our targets, it's still fine because we had not really factored that much loan growth in the first place. In terms of wealth, what we are looking at is really being there for our customers as they look into opportunities to consider opening new accounts, whether it's in Channel Islands or Singapore or Hong Kong.
Our customers are very much there, but they obviously want to have some ability that if they do choose to move, they have accounts, and we are very much ready to help and support them. If I think in terms of the CIB business, there will be some impact in terms of not just lending, the general customer activity, but of course, when volatility is up, there'll be some benefits coming from, that as well. Overall, in the round, fairly comfortable on the revenue trajectory. Some headwinds driven by IFRS 9 modeling temporarily from an ECL perspective. In the same token, we look at what we can do.
From a cost perspective, if things go bad, we have a plan to say, are there any areas which we can reprioritize because of what's happening in the world and indeed need to, because there may be areas you want to invest more because your customers are reaching out in those geographies, and there may be some areas where, in terms of your multi-year plans, you may indeed choose to, shift the timing of when you invest. We don't want to do anything and don't need to do anything which in any shape or form takes us away from our strategic priorities, which we will continue to focus on.
Okay. Thank you. I guess the other sort of news that's grabbing headlines at the moment is private credit. You've mentioned less than 2% of the loan book, I think in your disclosure. Can you give us sort of any more detail or any more comfort around these exposures? Should we expect any impact from MFS or any of the other names that are in the headlines?
Okay. Firstly, private credit is a very inconsistent definition on how different people are describing private credit. If I take a more conservative view on private credit compared to what has been described elsewhere, our overall exposure in private credit is within 2% of our loan book. That's $20 billion below. Within that, if I look at specifically that specific area where we have secondary exposure, where we have more reliance on due diligence done by third-party organizations, that is a minority of this number, which would mean it's a single-digit billion number. Now, we are very mindful of fraud risk, and we have a large book. I'm not going to comment on any single name, but that fraud risk is something which we are monitoring. We are looking at our portfolios, doing read across, so on and so forth.
We have not changed our overall ECL guidance, and that is the most important factor to consider at this point of time. We remain very comfortable that given the size of our book and the diversity of our book, as and when these losses crystallize within that contained space, we have the loss absorption capacity, but not commenting on any particular name.
Okay. Thank you. Let's move probably to a little bit more medium-term from the immediate sort of concerns. Obviously, 2025, I think you defined it as performing and transforming in terms of what you achieved. Now you're sort of focusing growth on your strongest areas and, you know, reallocating $1.8 billion in costs to strategic growth opportunities, investing in Asia, for example, Hang Seng. Over the next three to five years, what are the most reliable structural growth advantages you have? And what do you think you need to do to prove it to investors that they are structural growth opportunities?
Firstly, from our perspective, since we reorganized the bank into the four businesses, we are really pleased that each of those four business is growing. Each of these four business has a mid-teens or better ROTE, because that's really important, not just in terms of the financial numbers you deliver, but of the confidence and the culture you drive in the organization because no one is subsidizing another business. Everyone is strong enough, stand on their own two feet, and indeed be able to get the investments that they need, which we are doing through multi-year programs. I'm very comfortable that as a starting point and our results from last year, as well as the continued performance we've seen till the end of February this year, prove that.
Whether it's in terms of the resilience and the growth of the banking NII, pretty much driven by a very strong deposit franchise, as well as the growth in the fee income from a wealth perspective, not just in Hong Kong, but across other markets, Singapore, Middle East, India, China, Taiwan. I can name a few. As well as the very large corporate institutional bank and its very strong underpinning in a top three position in FX payments as well as trade. Just as in good times as in difficult times, we've been there to support our customers. As you're seeing even today in the Middle East, the engagement you get and the long-term relationships you actually solidify because you've been there when times have been good and bad, that's the underpinning of the franchise. There is a track record behind that to deliver it.
If I look then in terms of what's yet to be proven, but again, we have, I think, realistic, albeit a bit ambitious plans because we believe in this market, which is Hong Kong. In terms of the Hang Seng Bank, we are well on track in starting the process of implementing on what we have promised to deliver, which is $900 million of benefits with the restructuring cost of $600 million. Then going beyond that, as we go deeper into opportunities in Hong Kong as well as in a more stabilized pre-impairment kind of level, which is great always. Even with the ECLs normalizing over time, we think the opportunity is tremendous. That, of course, is yet to be proven because we still have to get the numbers delivered, and that will follow through from 2026, 2027 into 2028.
We will not stop there. We will continue on that growth trajectory from 28 onwards. Underpinning that, we have some real key drivers which are product driven as much as we are a relationship brand bank, but in our ability to be able to serve our wealth customers with the wealth products of the retail franchise of Hang Seng Bank, as well as wholesale products, transaction banking, capital markets, the wholesale client base, as well as their ability to participate in our very strong cross-border business. On top of all of this, having privatization, and yes, it is a privatization and no other word applies because it is truly leaning into the Hong Kong growth story with two strong brands. We have a good ability to have greater operational efficiencies, and that's with regard to manufacturing capabilities in insurance as well as in asset management.
We will also have some technology harmonization. Our mantra is we want to do more with the same, so we will be upskilling colleagues and helping them to be able to serve their customer base with the broader product franchise across both the brands. It's not a severance story. It's much more of doing more with the same number of people we have, as well as, you know, deploying AI and so on. The other factor is we'll also have greater ability to have capital efficiency and portfolio efficiency, 'cause once you're all privatized in terms of how you upstream, downstream capital and deploy your capital, as well as better manage the balance of your portfolios across both brands.
Okay. No, that's good. Just, I mean, slightly on Hong Kong, I mean, obviously, we had very, very strong deposit growth in 2025. We had very soft loan growth generally. It seemed that things were changing a little bit towards the end of the year. I mean, Hong Kong certainly on the ground feels like it's much healthier. U.K. performance, I think in Q4 was strong. Obviously, there's a few things changing, but is your sense that, you know, there are these little pockets of growth?
You know, we always welcome pockets of growth because that's a core role for a bank in any community, in any country that they serve, particularly in their home markets. We have the risk appetite available, and we will be there to support our customers. Now, obviously, with the current situation, if there is a downer on the overall sentiment, loan growth gets muted. Even before the current situation, we had very, I would say, conservative estimates on loan growth for this year, hardly any. I'm hopeful in Hong Kong, which has been, you know, pretty normal. If I look at the IPO activity, the economic activity over the last few weeks, nothing has really changed in Hong Kong. If commercial real estate continues to stabilize, then the very small Hong Kong growth will continue in gross terms.
Also in net terms, you won't have any large, big sort of deleveraging of commercial real estate that has happened in the last two years, where large developers who have strong cash flow positions are resilient and have been deleveraging. That, I think would, could be a little bit of a tailwind. From a U.K. perspective, the growth has been, for us, more than GDP, but in very specific areas. There's been growth in mortgages to $6 billion. There's been also growth in terms of infrastructure, renewables, innovation, so some of the new sectors. Those areas in pockets, partly it was because we were catching up on market share and didn't want to be left behind, but partly because we had very specifically invested in those areas and therefore the growth has come through.
Before the last few weeks, we did see very good momentum in terms of credit appetite, particularly coming from mid-market as well. Now, the backdrop to this is the underlying credit levels in the U.K., both for retail and wholesale customers, are pretty low. I expect that to continue to some degree, even though the overall sentiment is a bit sort of wait and watch. Hopefully, if this current situation stabilizes, particularly over the next few quarters or a month or so, then it's a very different situation. 'Cause as I mentioned earlier, sentiment as well as our own assessment gets driven by how long a stress actually stays in the system. Because after then, there has to be a period of normalization, supply chains opening, so on and so forth.
Just talking a little bit about cost, I mean, obviously 17% ROTE, a lot of that depends on costs. I think that was what a lot of people thought in answer to that question. When you're budgeting, how do you measure the appropriate level of BAU cost savings from simplification? How much of that gets recycled into investment? How much of it drops down into the bottom line and improves returns? Just linked to that, will BAU inflation gonna become an issue again at some stage?
A really good question again, Nick. Firstly, what we are managing the bank to is 17% or better ROTE, so we're not stopping at 17. What is important from a cost perspective is one of the key drivers of costs, obviously from inflation, is also staff-related inflation. The inflation related cost increase was 3.6% in 2024, 3.2% in 2025. This year, the assumption prior to the Middle East situation again was 3%. The reason the number comes to 1% net is because we have simplification savings of $700 million going into this year. Very comfortable with that sort of 1% headline, and that's what we are tracking to. In terms of,
Just to note that quarter and quarter may be different because when the savings come in, when we run the bank continues, just to give you a bit of a view on that. So far, nothing changes. The real shift where we are doing in terms of our investment is really trying to drive operating leverage, whether it's by focusing on scale businesses or indeed focusing on the benefits we can get through AI, whether it's on greater productivity around the revenue line or just the cost benefits. By doing that, the purpose is that within the overall cost envelope, because we think we have a very heavy, you know, sort of healthy, revenue and cost ratios.
Our main driver is that we want to be able to shift the run-the-bank costs to change-the-bank. In other words, when you have efficiencies, it is easier to deliver and manage your day-to-day costs, but you always have greater room for investing in change-the-bank opportunities. That's really the value of being a big-scale, large organization, 'cause when we do these shifts from run-the-bank to change-the-bank for investments, it's not in hundreds of millions, it gets into billions. I think that's a big benefit for an organization of our size, scale, and diversity. I think overall, yes, inflation is a key driver. The view at the moment is around, as I said, the 3% number. The way it actually lands on the ground is, it varies from market to market.
It also varies in terms of skill sets, demand and supply. Keeping all those things in the round, the 3% is not just a straight line, but that's kinda the average sort of look at in these markets.
Okay. Great. I'm conscious that we're, I've asked a few questions, so I'm gonna throw it open to the audience and see if anybody has anything that they would like to ask. I think. No? Or maybe I will go on with one more. Maybe if we can just talk a little bit about capital. I think at the results meeting, it was made very clear what the capital's policy is. Obviously balance sheet growth, payout, or business growth payout and then, buyback acquisitions, with very clear sort of targets around what the hurdles are for acquisitions, versus buybacks. I guess my question would be, Hang Seng is a business you knew, and it's in your core market.
How easy is it to hit those hurdles in terms of acquisitions?
You mean our four-
elsewhere?
Our four criteria.
Your four criteria. Yeah.
Firstly, I want to remind you. In every results announcement, I've used three words: discipline, performance, and delivery. The underpinning of discipline is that when you have those four criteria, you absolutely deliver on those four criteria considerations before you make any decision. You're right, Hang Seng was truly a one-off, and we are very pleased we could do that transaction at the right time at the price which was accretive from an EPS perspective. That is a number one criteria. It also gave us meaningful scale, not small scale. It was also in a market which is a home market for us. Last but not least, I know mergers and acquisitions become a fashion of the day very often. When you have such strong opportunities and ability for organic growth, you don't want M&As activity to become a distraction factor for you.
We will not do things which distract us away from our organic growth, because that is an absolute goal that we have that we will drive towards. Obviously, if there is a great opportunity, not perhaps similar to Hang Seng, 'cause I do believe that's a once in a generation kind of opportunity for us, we will consider them, but use the very strong disciplined approach and rule that we have applied. We don't want to get off track, lose focus, 'cause as I keep saying, especially in a world which will have headwinds, scale matters. It gives you the ability to weather the storm, to have loss absorption capacity, and yet stay true to delivering on your organic growth and your strategic objectives. Small scale acquisitions don't give you that, obviously.
Seeing as you touched on it, let's talk about Hang Seng in more detail. I think you've spoken around some of the sort of things that you hope to there. Can we just get into some specifics and talk like where are the biggest revenue opportunities for you out of Hang Seng? Where are the cost savings? You know, what areas will they come in?
The revenue opportunities, as I briefly mentioned, really comes from the basic fact that you have growth in a market, you have a very strong customer proposition. Hang Seng has a community bank customer proposition. HSBC has both local, domestic, and international in the Red brand. What we do have from a Red brand perspective is some very strong product proposition. The ability to serve those products to customers who come to us through the Green brand, whether it's the new customers, like close to 1 million we got in on the retail side in the Red brand and 250,000 in the Green brand, we should be able to have the same cross-sell for wealth products and fee income generation. That's one thing.
If I look in terms of how you enable it, you do some technology harmonization, you improve your customer journeys, but you also maintain the very strong branch network and service capabilities of the Green brand, because that is so important for the Green brand's role as a community bank. You can accelerate customer journeys and product offerings in terms of improvements for the Green brand. You also have some abilities to look at, you know, from a wholesale bank perspective in terms of the suite of products you offer, whether it's your wholesale transaction banking products or beyond DCM products and so on, okay, and your advisory products for your wholesale customers, as well as enabling those customers to have the same degree of cross-border connectivity and flows of products and offerings as we do in the HSBC Red.
When I look at from a cost perspective, firstly, it's going to be easier to do that growth based upon investment you do in one place. That's where the restructuring cost is. It's not, as I said, people related so much. It's the investment you're doing in technology. You do it in one place. You don't duplicate. That's the technology harmonization. That gives you some cost synergies. Also in terms of manufacturing capabilities, you don't need to necessarily do it in two places, so therefore, that gives you the synergy.
From my perspective, it is the ability to leverage both operational efficiency, people capabilities, as well as learnings from both sides. You know, there are some pockets where Hang Seng Bank has done some really good initiatives, including some AI deployment, which they have done, from a finance function perspective, which I'm learning for.
For HSBC Group overall. That's all to do with understanding better customer profitability, understanding the real drivers when you do a cross-sell in terms of the differential on profitability across different customer relationships.
Customer segments.
I guess that brings us quite nicely onto technology, then. I mean, we can tackle this in two different ways. Maybe if we can start off and we can talk about AI, and we can talk about how HSBC is deploying AI and where do you see the biggest sort of near-term opportunities for you from AI deployments?
It's a really good question. For us, the first starting point of AI is to increase the productivity of your colleagues. For that, we have deployed a productivity suite with more than 80% take up in terms of people who regularly use it. That is all about opening the minds of our colleagues to new ways of doing business, because that will have an impact, not just today, but your ability to embrace change as we see a changing landscape over the next few years. As I've said, given our scale, we should be able to deploy at not just at pace, but in a significant manner. Beyond that, we consider that both in terms of revenue and cost, AI is beneficial. Most people will talk of only cost synergies.
For revenue, it's like we do actually track it to say if for growth and revenue you needed X number of additional headcount in a pre-AI world, in a post-AI world, as deployment gets deeper, what would that number be? Hopefully, it's going to be significantly smaller. If that's the case, you straightaway get improvement in jaws and operating leverage. From a cost synergy perspective, again, we want to be quite targeted. We don't want to take an approach to say, "Let's deploy AI anywhere and everywhere, and hopefully the vast majority of use cases stick, and what doesn't, so be it." We wanna pick up areas where it's going to be meaningful enough to make a difference.
That is, again, looking at those processes, those volume-driven activities, those activities which at the moment require very basic binary decision-making, a lot of which that gets to offshored activities as we all have grown. We're looking at those more. We are also looking at technology and technology coders in terms of deployment of AI in that space. In terms of processes, very specifically speaking, it's not just contact centers, it's KYC onboarding, it's small ticket credit lending, it's also looking at transaction monitoring. There's a range of activities where with the deployment of AI, not only can you do it, I would say in a more cost-efficient way, but it can also be faster. It helps you to do at scale client onboarding, for example, in a safe, risk managed way.
What is very important to all of this is, and that makes a big deciding factor on who we choose to partner with, and we have no specific view whether it's buy or build. In terms of the partnerships we choose, we wanna make sure not those people who just give big headline numbers on benchmarks and savings, but those who give us the optionality in terms of deployment for us, which is safe. By that, I mean safe and well controlled, whether it's from a cyber fraud risk perspective or indeed, from a data protection perspective. Because those are sacrosanct, and I think if anybody takes a misstep, those are the areas, no matter what country you are, in what jurisdiction is managing you not only get into issues from a regulatory perspective, but you start losing the trust of your customers.
I'm gonna check one more time, see if there are any questions out there from the audience. No. Yes. Just that gentleman there. Yeah. Yeah, a microphone is just on its way.
Thank you very much. We've just seen some rate curves around the world move pretty violently in the last couple weeks. I'm wondering directionally if any of this has any bearing for HSBC. Thank you.
Can you be a little bit more specific, please? Sorry.
I think a lot of the belly of the swap curves around the world are starting to weather whether you believe hikes or not, but I know you're reinvesting as well.
Yeah.
Great impact. Thank you.
Okay, great. No, thank you. I'm sorry you didn't pick up banking NII. That is kinda right up there in the questions in my comments. The way we look at that is that clearly from a rate curve perspective, both, the timing of the interest rate cuts and these shifts will be a benefit from a sterling and a US dollar perspective for us. That is a tailwind. So far, given the fact in Hong Kong, the IPO activity is still at a heightened level. Although hybrid is at the lower end of the two to three range, we still feel quite comfortable. On top of that, if I look at from a deposit perspective, in times like this, customers always want to go for what they consider to be the safest, securest, biggest banks.
The deposit inflows have also started getting built up. Banking NII is in a good space.
Are there any more, questions out there? One right at the back over there.
Hello. What are the opportunity or the threats you see from the current war in Iran for your wealth management business?
Your question is, what are the opportunities we see from our wealth-
On threats. Yes.
Threats. Okay. From an opportunity perspective, clearly, we are well present and the best embedded bank in some of the largest middle class growing economies, whether it's China's, India's, but also Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. Demographically, as well as growth of the middle class goes absolutely in our favor, and that's why you see the large volume of new client activity and client numbers that have been building up. You know, 1 million in the Red brand and 250,000 in the Green brand, as I mentioned. Now, these numbers can vary a little bit, and they're not all wealth customers day one, but that's the starting point of the growth into the wealth journey over a vintage of a couple of years. I think that is quite a powerful from a wealth opportunity.
The threat on that is, of course, you're always mindful of the customer journeys, in particular, some of the new providers may be offering. You need to be absolutely top of the game in terms of the technology, online banking, as well as applications and product offerings you have. That's what we are investing in. We learn actually as we move from one geography to another to be able to leverage and build it across the board. This is what we have been doing already. The other big advantage for us is then when the world is in a difficult position and clients want to be more mobile in terms of opening accounts, not just in one location, but more broadly across the geography, the internationally mobile clients, we can do that right from UK, Europe, Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Asia.
That is a big advantage for us, and few colleagues have that. The last but not least is we have an embedded commercial bank, not just large corporate banking in all these countries where we are present, which basically means the employees and the owners of these banks for their banking needs, they are our natural client base. We don't need to put so many RMs on the road to actually get that business. As they grow and their businesses grow, our wealth client base grows. We've seen that happen with businesses we have supported over the years. As they have become millionaires and billionaires, our wealth business has grown.
Last but not least, we play the full spectrum on the wealth business, right from assets under management of $100,000 going to $2 million, $2 million-$10 million and beyond. We have that broad range. The competitors we face in different buckets are different. Of course, it's more competitive at the top end. We have that continuum, and I think that's what gives us the growth trajectory as opposed to a pure play wealth manager in one country.
Were there any more questions out there? I'm gonna come up with one more on the tech side.
Please.
Can you talk a little bit about sort of digital assets? I mean, there's news or there's talk in the press about Hong Kong launching its stablecoins in the next week or so, I guess. 23rd, I think, is what the South China Morning Post was talking about. Anything you're doing in terms of the stablecoin space or the direct sort of crypto asset space, and then maybe a bit more broadly talk about what you're doing on tokenized deposits.
On tokenized deposits, we are very comfortable. We've been spreading tokenized deposits across various of our geographies, so that will continue from a tokenized deposit perspective, you know, from starting from Asia onwards coming west. Again, for all these initiatives, we want to first stay very much aligned to our strategy. We are big in the payments business. We believe in digital being very viable in terms of the transmitter of value. We will, you know, use those digital channels as well as those products. In terms of stablecoins, there are a couple of things. If the stablecoins being launched are in a market or geography which is strategically important to us, obviously Hong Kong.
Also if the regulatory environment there is mature and strong enough to give us that safeguard, which will be critical as time goes by, to be able to mitigate financial crime risk, provide the right degree of transparency of the money flows, then of course we would participate. That's the way we look at this. We are not into the sort of crypto space in terms of proprietary risk for our own purposes. Obviously, in terms of product offerings for our customers, depending on the sophistication and the size of the customers, we have a broader upside.
Are you seeing, I mean, what are the best use cases for tokenized deposits? 'Cause I know that's where more of your focus is.
I think the best use cases, and of course, we are following through this very closely, is to say where, you know, we have that ability for our customers to engage with us real-time in terms of managing their expectations 24/7. I think that's a very strong point that tokenized deposits and digital more broadly has. It's in line with customer expectations shifting more in terms of having more real-time products, but also giving the customer the ability to be fungible and ability to engage with us at all times everywhere.
All right. I think we've got time for one last question. I shall offer it out to the audience one more time. If not, ma'am, thank you very much. Any closing remarks you'd like to make?
Yeah. We've got few minutes.
We've got, yep.
If I can make a few closing remarks, if I may. Firstly, I would like to close by saying, we follow up and manage on our risks very closely. We learn from the history of what we've been through various years, especially recently, whether it's COVID, whether it's Russia, Ukraine. That gives us the confidence as well as with our strong capital, very strong liquidity position, to be able to be there to support our customers in line with our ethos of being a relationship bank. That will not change. Therefore, our commitment to our strategic choices where we are is something which will stay firm as we go through even the current crisis period.
At the backdrop of this, we always work through different choices we can make in terms of timing of investments, in terms of prioritizing them, in terms of costs, and we will manage that through the cycle. We have sufficient levers, given our diverse businesses, our size, scale, our geographic footprint, to be able to very comfortably, despite the conservatism in how we call issues to have loss absorption capacity if there are individual issues that we need to tackle through the cycle, as well as to be able to deliver to the targets that we have set out. That is the underpinning for what I'm sharing with you.
I also believe for the sustainability of our franchise and our growth journey, it's really important that the people leadership journey we are on, the cultural change that we are driving in the organization of speedier decisions, simpler organization, greater accountability enables us both in normal times, but particularly in the times we've faced in the last few weeks, to be better positioned to service our customers. That is really the underpinning of our franchise. We never sit on our laurels and the inherent advantages we have from the trust that we have taken hundreds of years, 160, to build in terms of our customer loyalty.
We want to continue to be and will be competitive for the customer journeys we offer because the landscape around us in terms of competition as well as the demographics changing of our client base requires us to do so. We are very well positioned to do so because when we shift from run the bank to change the bank, we can do it meaningfully at scale on strategy where it matters, where it will deliver, once you have the right discipline underpinning it all.
Thank you very much. Thank you for your time.