Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us. My name is Jason Napier, running financials research for UBS in London. It gives me great pleasure today to be joined by Diego De Giorgi, who is CFO of Standard Chartered, a role that you have performed all year, following a distinguished career in banking at BAML and Goldman, also including a stint on the board at UniCredit. So, Diego, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. Great pleasure.
So, I guess the sort of new news at Q3 was the sort of reformulation of the wealth plan, a bolstered investment in RMs there, as well as perhaps the exit of some products and so on. Could you talk a little bit about what's changed since February and what capabilities we're going to be acquiring as a consequence of all that?
Sure. So, nothing particular has changed since February in the sense that it's long been our great strategic drive to increase the importance of our wealth management business. And also, the reshaping of some of our mass retail activities, which we will intensify a little bit following this announcement, is really, again, a continuation of things that we have been doing. And to the question of why one doesn't talk about them before, and then talks about it in Q3, is mostly because if you don't talk about them, sometimes you don't get the benefits for doing what you are doing. The investment, as you mentioned, is going to be fundamentally in three areas. We are going to be doubling what we had previously planned to invest. We had planned to invest $700 million. We'll double it to $1.5 billion over five years, and it will be $1.5 billion cumulative.
We will invest in three things. We will invest in relationship managers and coverage people. We will invest in technology, both in terms of new ways of serving our customers, but also a little bit of scaling up of some of the technological infrastructure in order to accommodate the substantial increase in relationship managers. And we will invest in new product capabilities and new ways of serving our customers. The idea with all of that is to ensure that we continue to push towards our 5%-7% CAGR of top-line revenues ex notable items that we have flagged for the next three years.
Now, the investment in RMs and wealth is not a new thing for Standard Chartered. And so the sort of embedded J curves and what you've already done should give you some insights into how this sort of plays out. So perhaps you could talk a little bit about what you've done, how that's performing, sort of how that matures over the rest of your financial plan.
Spot on. Indeed, it's like a little set of J curves that happen every year. Our relationship managers achieve their maximum productivity depending on whether they are higher up or a little bit more in the middle of the distribution of affluence, anywhere between 12 months and 24 months, and we have been adding at a constant clip over the course of the years. That's what led to over 60,000 new-to-bank customers for the past six or seven quarters. It's led to over $10 billion of net new money over, again, the same period. We are, because we know that it's an area of interest to our investors and to our, hopefully, also to our prospective investors, going to have a wealth seminar on the 3rd of December in which we are going to delve a little bit more into all of the dynamics.
But it's really a continuation and an intensification of what we've been doing now for quite a while.
Right, and when we think about the sort of, I guess there's a lot of focus on what the Hang Seng is doing in any given day and how that may or may not feed through to the wealth business. How volatile do you see the overall business being? How much of it's sort of stock versus how much is month-to-month volatility and flow?
Volatility helps. There is no doubt. To give you a sense, if we think about how, for example, Q4 has been unfolding, it's clear that after some of the first signs of intensified and well-coordinated stimulus that was coming from China, in the time immediately after Golden Week, when people came back to work, we saw some extraordinarily good activity that has then tapered off towards more normal activity. I would be remiss if I didn't always point out that, in any case, let's always remember Q4 is a relatively seasonal quarter for wealth management. That is how we see it. At the margin, does it help to have some, I would say, the heads of our divisions would call it tradable volatility as opposed to jump volatility that is just scary? It helps.
If you broaden it out to the entirety of the business, it's pretty similar trends that we are seeing in markets where, obviously, we've had some volatility events that have helped us build both on our flow and on our episodic market business, and the banking business that during the first part of this year had maybe lagged a little bit, not in absolute terms, but in relative terms compared to competitors that are more exposed to markets in the West, it's clearly now picking up because with everything that has happened, we are seeing a pretty strong capital markets renaissance, particularly in the G3 business, and we've long been a leader across our footprint in that business.
Yeah. Finishing off on the sort of area of inquiry, the things that you're exiting, selling, restructuring, and so on, do we need to care particularly about how large they are or what sort of exit costs that might involve?
Not particularly in the sense that the simple way to think about it is, what are you giving up? You are giving up 1% of NII in 2025 as we exit some of those businesses. And everything else is included in our guidance. What are you getting for it? You are getting a continuous shift toward steadily higher return businesses, which is at the heart, together with the increase in our distribution objectives of the increase in return on tangible equity that we announced a couple of weeks ago from 12% to toward 13%.
So before we got up here, we were talking about sort of the groups of people at work that you spend a lot of time with, Treasury being one of them. Interest rates have now started to decline. Market rates are all over the place. If you could talk just a little bit about the guidance that perhaps NII next year might be flat, returns to growth the next year. First of all, how have you changed the risk of the balance sheet since you've arrived to protect it against lower rates?
I inserted myself into what was already a very well-trodden path of activity. Since 2021, we have reduced by something like 60% our exposure to rates. Now, how do you measure it? You measure it with a combination of using the currency-weighted forward rates that we are providing with our IRRBB disclosure. Now, IRRBB, we all know it has its strong limitations, parallel shift, 1% all at the same time, static balance sheet. Balance sheet, by the way, incorporates already a forward rate. So if those forward rates are not realized one year out, you are starting from the wrong point of view. But directionally, it's very clear that we have reduced our exposure to rates. How have we done that? A combination of shifts of business mix, asset and liability mix, and clearly with the building of our structural hedge, which has continued to grow.
We have indicated we will finish this year around $60 billion. We think we can grow it next year towards $70 billion, $75 billion, and at this level of rates, that's a true hedge. If realized rates next year for whatever reason end up being lower than we expect, that will be a fillip to our results.
We've all read the disclosures around IRRBB and some of the banks. It's a work of art of how unseriously they want us to take the assumptions made. Is the real-life exposure higher or lower than IRRBB says it is?
I think it's neither one nor the other. It's very dynamically managed. The big difference between IRRBB and how we look at it is that for us, it's a daily battle. It's a daily battle of shifting funding from assets, from Treasury assets into customer assets, particularly when we are helped by credit growth, which has been relatively scarce, and I'm sure we will find a way of discussing it. We fight the battle of the PTRs, pass-through rates, early days from that point of view. So far, so relatively good, but we will see how it will happen in the next few months.
It will depend a lot on the pace and on the level of the cuts that we are going to see, where I don't think that it's over until the fat lady sinks because we have had a few changes in the composition of the decision makers, let's put it this way, and so we'll see where that ends up.
Right. Really interesting answer. If you were talking to a generalist, sort of longer-term investor, and we were to look back and see that NII hasn't grown by the end of 2026, what would be the sort of force rank of potential drivers of that? If that doesn't happen, what do you think will have been missing?
Credit growth. Credit growth is the main ingredient in the sense you have four things that interplay. You have the level and pace of the cuts. You have our ability to continue to pass through the rates. You have the 1% NII headwind that I mentioned before that comes from the reshaping of our wealth and retail bank portfolio. You have, to a certain extent, a hedge, but that I don't consider as a factor because, as I say, it's a true hedge. It comes out only in scenarios where the forward rates are different from what we think they're going to be. And these three factors interplay with credit demand. Credit demand, since the beginning of this year, about 2% growth for us, but it has stuttered in the third quarter.
The little green shoots we have seen over the course of the year have been in different asset classes, which is good. Latest quarter, a little bit in trade. The quarters before, more corporate banking. So the evidence is there that demand, that historically, by the way, is in the region of 5%, the growth of demand in our footprint. Our footprint is truly the most dynamic economies in the world, but right now, they are not as dynamic as sometimes they are. So we'll have to see a little bit how that plays out.
Sticking with that for a second, one of the things that StanChart's been incredibly strong in since Bill took over in 2015 is balance sheet efficiency and a pivot towards higher return activities. Is the sale of loans and the originate-to-distribute activity significant enough that when I look at loan growth versus the footprint, that I'm getting the wrong impression as to how much of the business you're actually doing?
It is very well said. The answer is yes. Yes. It makes sense in the sense that 10 years ago, even for a bank, little step back, for a bank, for a one-country bank, growth of balance sheet is very easy to equate to growth of credit, and the two things go very much hand in hand. For us, that was always a little bit mediated, but now it's changed very substantially because when we originate credit, we have a plethora of opportunities to handle it. We can decide to keep it. We can decide to sell it. And when we decide to sell it, we can decide to sell it in very many different ways to local players, to large global players that are coming more and more into our footprint. There is pent-up demand for long-dated, well-yielding paper from insurers all over the world.
So all of those things are such that in the future, while I think you will continue to see our balance sheet to grow, because it's not that we are trying actively not to grow it, we indicate that we would like to grow it smartly so that we can continue to return capital to our shareholders for as long as we trade below book. But you do have to look at the combination of NII from holding and non-NII from banking in originate to distribute.
Sure. Because I think one of your larger competitors in the region talks about mid-single digit growth being the sort of natural sort of footprint, and I think they would also be doing originate to distribute. I think that's really important for PE multiples. Do you think the delta between credit risk, RWA, and loan originations will continue to be a material thing? Are we at stability in terms of how those relationships work?
I think it will depend on how quickly we achieve a different type of stability, which is stability of interest rates. We need volatility of interest rates to abate. Once volatility of interest rate abates, we will be in a position where that relationship will be a little bit more stable. What in the meantime we do have to face is that the ability to continue to shrink RWA density is just not there. So RWA density is where it is. The house is extraordinary at optimizing RWAs. Leave aside all the work that was done in the past, the $22 billion that were done in the past couple of years when that optimization was taking out assets that were truly low return on risk-weighted assets.
We look at the relationship between return on risk-weighted assets, return on leverage, our overall objectives, and we are constantly on the treadmill of making sure that we optimize that, not again with the objective of purely shrinking the balance sheet, but the objective of obtaining sustainably higher returns.
Speaking of treadmills, the restructuring budget of $1.5 billion, that's a big number, and cost management is a treadmill that no one ever gets to get off. If you could talk a little bit about, to the extent that you can, bringing it to life, what shareholders get in exchange for that and the sort of arc of expenses into 2026, because giving a dollar number that far forward is a real undertaking that I think is worthy of respect, but it's not easy to land. So a lot of money spent. What do we get from it and when do we get it?
Okay. Well, so first of all, you get $12 billion or less of costs in 2026, which, as you say, is no mean feat. In order to get there, I've long said, and you and I have had this conversation up plenty in the past, the bank has done a good job of managing costs in a dynamic way in what I call the flow of costs. What we are now doing is we are addressing the stock of costs, and we are doing it not with a cost program, but with a transformation program.
We are asking ourselves, in order not to have to do these kinds of programs multiple times, which I appreciate is not never to be the objective, although some restructuring costs will always be present in the balance sheet of a bank with our that is as complicated as we are, but not obviously at this absolute level. We had to transform the way that we do business. And although I really want to emphasize and stress how a lot of what we do are stones and pebbles as opposed to big rocks, and I love it because the fact that 80% of our programs are $10 million or less in terms of the transformation program, in terms of the efficiencies we're going to take out of them, de-risk the delivery of that program very substantially.
The big underlying themes are the streamlining and standardization of our technology estate and things like process simplification. Process simplification is obviously a very long endeavor. You don't simplify a process end to end in a year or two, probably, but you need to continue pushing in that direction. And think of an example. Think of how many AML, KYC systems do we have in the bank because of legacy reasons. The more you go toward one, the more you use big data, the more you de-risk that process and you simplify it, you make it better for our people, better for our customers, and less expensive. Think of things like payment systems. How many payment rails do we really need across wealth and retail banking and the corporate and investment bank? Today, we have quite a few. We want to go to very low single digits.
That's the kind of thinking.
Including in the transaction you announced with Wise a week ago.
Which is a good example of us always finding ways of lowering costs, serving our clients better, being more efficient. A few of our most important markets, a good partnership, consolidated vendors. You achieve multiple ticks, multiple results in one transaction with a very respected partner.
Yeah. We turn to credit risk for a second. The first thing most of us do every morning now is look at what China has or hasn't announced the previous day from a stimulus standpoint and what the autos and luxury producers of the world are saying about their business in mainland China. None of it particularly reads bullish at the moment. How much does that matter for your firm?
So the answer is it matters, but not a lot, because certainly what happens with the auto manufacturers, the luxury manufacturers, consumer goods, et cetera. Always remember that matters if you are exposed to domestic Chinese GDP. Our mainland onshore business in China is less than one-third of our overall China activities. And by the way, it's been doing extremely well this year because as of Q3, it's up 16% for this year. So even in that kind of a difficult environment, we've done well. The reality is that what matters to us is the opening of China to the rest of the world. And opening of China means both the world coming to China and China going out towards the world. In that sense, the discussions that in the room nearby we were watching together as we were preparing about globalization is dead, et cetera.
Globalization is far from dead. It just moves along very different corridors. Those corridors for simplicity are the South-South corridors, a term that I don't particularly like, but it gives the idea. Those countries, ASEAN, Singapore, India, Middle East, Africa, whether with China, with Europe, or with the United States, that's our heartlands. That's where we are present. Fragmentation in the flows of trade and capital ultimately leads to selling more products to our clients, to our clients needing us more. It's not bad for us.
Yeah. The more currency crosses there are in the transaction.
I always use the example. If a ship goes from Shanghai to Zanzibar with one stop, we make one transaction. With three stops, we make three and then some.
Right. Now, I can't have one of Europe's best-known FIG bankers on the stage and not ask you about M&A and sector dynamics there. The market seems to be applauding transactions now in a way that it wasn't sort of 12 months ago. Do you think deal-making is back? Do you think there's a room for purchased value-add rather than buyback-driven value-add?
So I think that as the sector continues, and knock on wood, the longer may continue, especially for Standard Chartered, to increase in valuation, the ability to do inorganic transaction grows. But I think you need to draw a very big distinction between banks that operate in jurisdictions where growth is scarce or non-existent and banks that operate in growth markets. From our point of view, we are in the second category. For us, just simply tapping into those fast-growing economies of our footprint is what drives us. When you don't have that, I can see why consolidation can be helpful. I think that the market is applauding it because within consolidation, anything that simplifies financial institutions tends to be well applauded. It's not something we need ourselves, but I can see why that is happening at this turning point, hopefully also on the valuation of the sector.
But it doesn't feel like Stanchot is a buyer of businesses. If anything, it's about deploying the capital you're generating already.
I think Standard Chartered is about doing two things with our capital. First and foremost, investing in our business, making sure that they have all that they need in order to achieve 13% return on tangible equity in 2026 and use that as a staging post for the future. And second, when we have excess capital, returning it to our shareholders in the most effective way, a combination of dividends and buybacks, achieving good increase in earnings per share and further helping ourselves.
Look, I still think your implied cost of equity is way too high and that the stock is cheap. And I don't say that as a point of flattery, but it matters now, potentially because of buybacks and so on. But running a bank where you're distributing a lot of capital and holding RWAs flat is difficult. There's less opportunity for operating leverage to give you growth. Is that price-dependent? When you think about how much capital you give back, if the share price was 50% higher, do you think that would allow you to grow RWAs faster, or is it about the opportunity you see in the market for your shares?
It's very much the second part, Jason, because I don't feel today. I mean, this morning we had a big management team meeting and we were talking budget and 2025 and everything. There's no, we have no constraints. If people want to deploy more RWAs, we have the ability to deploy more RWAs. There's nothing there that is not working. But on the other hand, if the horse doesn't want to drink, you can't force the horse to drink. So that is very much the environment in which we are. And that's why, by the way, I said very clearly, first we give our business the capital that it needs to achieve those sustainably higher returns.
Because to your point on the cost of equity, I'm a big believer that the cost of equity goes down first and foremost because you deliver constant good returns that are sustainably increasing over time. If you do that, your cost of, as your return on tangible equity goes up, your cost of equity goes down and they meet somewhere in the middle.
Absolutely. It will fix itself for sure. Diego, that brings us to time. I thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Jason, for having me.
Thank you.