Commonwealth Bank of Australia Aktie

Hello, and welcome to the results briefing for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for the half year ended 31 December 2025. I'm Melanie Kirk, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us.

For this briefing, we will have presentations from our CEO, Matt Comyn, with an overview of the results and an update on the business. Our CFO, Alan Docherty, will provide details of the results, and Matt will then provide an outlook and summary. The presentations will be followed by the opportunity for analysts and investors to ask questions.

I'll now hand over to Matt. Thank you, Matt.

Thanks very much, Mel, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you today to present the bank's half year results.

We recognize the cost of living pressures, global uncertainty and rapid change are weighing on many Australians. In this environment, we've remained focused on supporting and serving our customers. That focus has delivered disciplined growth across our core customer segments. Cash net profit increased by 6% on the prior comparative period and earnings per share increased by $0.19. We maintained strong liquidity, funding and capital positions. And our operating performance and capital position has allowed the Board to declare a fully franked dividend of $2.35, up $0.10 on the prior corresponding period. This marks the 11th consecutive period of DRP neutralization.

There are 2 features of this result to stand out. The first is the market context. We've seen high credit growth, low loan losses, supportive funding markets and intense competition. The second, which is a key strength, has been maintaining stable margins while growing volume at or above system across all major segments.

Over the past 12 months, mortgage balances grew by $45 billion or 7% and business lending grew by 12% at 1.3x system. Deposit balances increased by $44 billion in the half. This was our strongest domestic deposit and lending balance growth in a half year reporting period since 2008.

Australia is currently experiencing relatively strong nominal growth and private sector demand. In this environment, banks play a critical role in supporting credit growth for productive investment while maintaining unquestionably strong capital positions. Doing this sustainably requires profitable banks that can generate capital organically to support the economy. The last time credit growth was at this level, apart from a brief period during COVID, returns across the industry were materially higher. In normal conditions, such an environment would favor disciplined competition so that scarce capital is deployed where it earns an appropriate return. However, the competitive landscape is materially shifting due to differing business models, regulatory settings and architecture, customer offerings and return hurdles. Against this backdrop, we believe CBA is uniquely positioned to adapt and perform strongly.

Our deep customer relationships and franchise strength allows us to compete effectively and profitably. That profitability allows us to support higher growth across the economy, invest to improve the customer experience and deliver consistent returns for our shareholders.

Disciplined growth and margin management drove operating income growth of 6.6%. Operating expenses increased by 5.5%, excluding restructuring and notable items. This reflected inflationary pressures and higher investment in technology, resilience and our frontline teams to improve customer experience. Credit conditions remained very benign, contributing to 6.1% cash profit growth.

The performance and long-term health of our franchise is underpinned by a simple relationship-led model. Deep trusted customer relationships drive more frequent and meaningful engagement. That engagement provides deeper insights into customer needs, enabling us to deliver superior customer experiences. Over time, this creates enduring value for customers and sustainable returns for our shareholders. This model has long underpinned our leadership in retail banking and over the past year -- over the past several years, has accelerated growth in our business bank. Technology continues to amplify this advantage, enabling more personalized, timely and scalable customer engagement.

Our financial performance reflects customer focus, disciplined execution and investment in our franchise. We track the strength of our customer relationships through Net Promoter Score, and this remains an important indicator of trust and advocacy. We currently hold leading NPS positions among major banks in consumer and institutional banking. And following 15 months at #1, we dropped to the second position in business banking in the half.

Operationally, this is translating into scale and momentum across the group. On average, each week, we settle more than 3,000 home loan purchases, lend around $900 million to businesses and process almost 150 million payments, and alert customers around 280,000 times to suspicious card activity.

We continue to build scale and depth of primary customer relationships, which underpins long-term franchise health. We've consciously increased investment in data, technology and AI to improve customer experience, safety, security and operational resilience.

The retail bank has performed well with pre-provision profit growth of 5%. We've maintained the leading Net Promoter Score for 38 consecutive months. Retail MFI share has increased slightly to 33.5%, but remains below its 35% peak. Customer engagement remains a core strength with 9.4 million CommBank app users and 14 million daily log-ins. We now hold 12 million retail transaction accounts, a 35% increase since the start of COVID and an increase of 585,000 in the past year. As a result, our deposit growth has been strong.

Home loan balances increased by 7% in the past year to $622 billion. 97% of these customers hold a transaction account with us. Digitization and technology continue to drive performance in home lending. 70% of proprietary home loan applications are auto decisioned on the same day. We're focused on continuing to strengthen our MFI share and investing in AI-enabled digital experiences.

The Business Bank has had another period of strong performance. Pre-provision profit growth was 8% and cash profit growth was 14%. MFI share increased to 26.9%, which is a 310 basis point increase since the start of COVID. We added 85,000 transaction accounts in the past year, which is a 7% increase. And the business bank is now the Commonwealth Bank's largest source of transactional deposits.

We grew lending at 1.3x system, increasing balances by $18 billion in the year. Business Banking lending balances have increased by 87% or $78 billion in the past 6 years, supporting growth and jobs in our economy. Approximately 90% of business loans are linked to a CBA transaction account, reflecting the depth of our primary relationships. This supports credit quality with loan losses of 6 basis points in the half. It also allows us to use data and automation to substantially improve lending and servicing processes.

For small businesses, we've doubled the volume of loans auto approved through BizExpress over the past 2 years and have reduced annual loan maintenance activity by 85%. We also launched a national AI, cybersecurity and digital capability initiative, supporting up to 1 million small businesses to lift productivity and competitiveness. The combination of deep customer relationships and prudent lending growth is delivering sustained earnings performance.

Our institutional business is also performing well with pre-provision profit increasing by 13%. We've regained the #1 position in NPS, supported by improvements in client experience and execution. Our institutional bank plays an important role in providing $64 billion in net deposit balances and supporting markets activity. We've seen growth in new transaction banking mandates, enabling the institutional bank to further support the group in deposit funding.

The markets business has had a particularly strong half. We led the market in debt capital market performance and last year topped the Bloomberg combined lead table.

In New Zealand, ASB performed well with operating income growth of 8%. ASB is the highest reputation score of the major banks in New Zealand and has been a Digital Bank of the Year for the past 4 years. ASB saw 1.3x system growth in home lending and business and rural lending. Deposits grew at 1.2x system. Customer deposits and home lending balances have both increased by 41% in the last 6 years by $26 billion and $24 billion, respectively.

The credit environment remains benign. Troublesome and nonperforming exposures decreased following upgrades or external refinancing activity. The number of home loan customers in hardship declined by 28% since June 2024, and we remain well provisioned for a range of economic scenarios. We hold total provisions of $6.3 billion, which is $2.8 billion above our central economic scenario.

Our balance sheet remains strong with 79% deposit funding. Our weighted average maturity of long-term funding is 5.2 years and liquid assets are $199 billion. Our capital ratio of 12.3% is $10 billion above minimum regulatory requirements. A strong balance sheet allows us to invest for the long term and respond to any deterioration in market conditions.

We've seen record inflows of deposits in the half. We've also seen $15 billion increase in redraw balances and offset accounts. Customers having surplus funds available is a significant predictor of arrears performance, and so this behavior has a positive capital impact. 87% of home loan customers are now in advance of their scheduled repayments. On average, 35 payments in advance. When adjusted for redraw and offset savings, household debt has now returned to levels not seen since 2015.

The transmission of monetary policy in Australia means that our banks pay very competitive interest rates on at-call household deposits compared with other markets. On average, at-call deposits in Australia are attracting an interest rate, which is 5x higher than in the U.S. and 10x higher than in Europe.

We've seen a strengthening in the economy in the past 6 months, driven by consumer demand. Spend has been increasing across all customer age cohorts. Most age groups are broadly maintaining discretionary spending and increasing savings levels. GDP growth in mid-2026 was 2%, more than double the same period a year ago. Most noticeably, economic growth has shifted from being primarily driven by public demand to being driven by household consumption.

Last week, we saw the Reserve Bank raise interest rates to 3.85% in response to inflation, which is running higher than the target band. Almost 1/3 of the increase in the CPI basket is driven by housing with utilities a substantial contributor to that category.

Our purpose, building a brighter future for all guides how we allocate capital, manage risk and invest for the long term. It reflects our long-term commitment to Australia, our customers and our communities. Some of the ways we're delivering on our purpose include significantly increasing funding for new residential housing development, delivering $190 million in benefits to consumers through CommBank Yellow, migrating our core banking system to the cloud to improve resilience, delivering 30% more technology changes, reducing critical incidents and improving recovery times by 65%, rolling out new AI tools and training programs to our teams to build capability and deliver better customer experiences and maintaining our strong balance sheet settings, sending around 40,000 alerts a day to customers about suspicious activities and deploying more than 2,900 AI bots to engage and disrupt scammers.

Importantly, our strong performance enables us to continue supporting our 18 million customers, protect communities, support Australia's economy and invest for the long term. As cost of living pressures persist, we are providing targeted support to households under strain, including 63,000 tailored payment arrangements for customers most in need. We supported more than 79,000 households to buy a home, including through dedicated support for first home buyers. And we lent $25 billion to businesses supporting growth, jobs and economic activity.

We're investing $1 billion a year to help more people protect themselves from scams and fraud. Our strong balance sheet allows us to support customers and communities while delivering sustainable long-term returns for shareholders, including $4.4 billion in dividends this half, benefiting more than 14 million Australians. We will continue to support our customers, protect communities and invest for the long term to provide strength and stability to the Australian economy.

I'll now hand to Alan to take you through the result in more detail.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Starting with the results overview. We've set out the key aspects of our current operating context, how we are responding and how those actions are contributing to the long-term strengthening of our franchise. At a macro level, we are seeing strong system growth in both credit and money supply. Competitive intensity within the banking sector remains elevated. Technological innovations continue at pace and geopolitics remains a source of potential tail risks.

Against that backdrop, our response has been deliberate and disciplined. We have carefully managed volume and margin trade-offs, continue to invest and extend our leadership in both technology and proprietary distribution and maintained conservative balance sheet settings. This approach is yielding strong financial outcomes. Pre-provision profit growth is healthy. Our dividend per share continues to reflect the strong compositional quality of our earnings. And our balance sheet settings give us confidence in our ability to continue supporting customers, growing the franchise and delivering sustainable returns to shareholders over the long term.

This slide sets out the usual reconciliation between statutory and cash profits for the half. There were only modest movements in the usual noncash items during the period. As such, both statutory and cash profits on a continuing operations basis totaled around $5.4 billion.

Breaking down the components of that cash profit, Operating income grew 6.6% year-on-year as our investments in technology and proprietary distribution continue to yield strong operational outcomes. That top line performance allows us to continue to invest in the franchise with underlying operating expenses increasing 5.5% on the prior comparative period.

Notable expense items totaled $170 million over the last 6 months, largely due to the settlement of a long-standing legal proceeding in New Zealand during the September quarter.

Loan impairment expense was flat year-on-year and lower versus the second half, reflecting the benefits of our conservative settings and the resilience we continue to see in customer and portfolio credit quality. This resulted in growth in cash profits of a little over 6% on both the prior corresponding period and the second half of last year. It's worth noting that the effective tax rate for the half was 30.3%. Looking ahead, you can assume that will settle closer to 30% for the 2026 financial year.

On operating income, we delivered growth of 6.6% over the prior comparative period. Net interest income increased strongly, up $761 million, supported by profitable above-system growth in lending and deposits. Other operating income also contributed, growing $163 million over that period, assisted by one-off gains.

This slide sets out some of the drivers of long-term franchise strength that we have been targeting, deeper customer relationships, deposit-led growth in our core segments that underpins and proceeds lending growth and productivity improvements within our frontline teams.

Our retail bank continues to build foundational banking relationships, adding 3 million net new transaction account customers over the past 5 years. In home lending, we continue to prioritize and grow proprietary distribution with $55 billion of new fundings originated over the last 6 months through our own channels.

And our strategic focus on business banking continues to deliver strong outcomes with double-digit compound annual growth in both deposits and lending over recent years. Our investments in building a more digital, customer-focused and streamlined business bank for our people and our customers can be seen in the productivity improvements delivered over the last 5 years with fundings per banker up 65% over that period.

Turning to the net interest margin and looking at the movement over the most recent 6-month period. The main driver of the 4 basis point reduction over the half was the increased mix of low-margin liquid assets and institutional repos. Excluding those items, margins were 1 basis point lower with competitive pressures and the impact of a lower cash rate, largely offset by the replicating portfolio and the favorable portfolio mix effect of strong deposit growth.

Margins were a little stronger in the December quarter, largely due to the benefit of higher swap rates on our replicating portfolio.

You can see here that we're managing margin outcomes carefully, balancing competitiveness with returns and staying focused on building lasting primary relationships with our customers rather than chasing unprofitable volume growth.

On operating expenses, they increased 5.5% on the prior corresponding period. The drivers are largely unchanged over recent years. We are seeing inflationary impacts on wages and IT vendor cost inflation continues to run higher than CPI. At the same time, we continue to invest behind the franchise with higher cloud consumption and software licensing costs and our ongoing investment in technology infrastructure and AI capabilities alongside enhanced frontline capacity and operational resilience.

We are self-funding much of that investment through productivity initiatives, realizing approximately $222 million in incremental cost savings over the past 6 months.

Turning to credit risk. Loan impairment expense for the half was $319 million, broadly consistent with the prior comparative period and improving versus the second half. Across the portfolio, we continue to see broadly stable to improving conditions. Households have been supported by the strength of the labor market and rising disposable incomes. We have seen this reflected in higher prepayments and lower consumer arrears. In the corporate portfolio, troublesome assets and nonperforming exposures continue to trend lower as a proportion of the portfolio.

Given the uncertainty in global macro and geopolitics, we've maintained strong provisioning coverage. Total recognized provisions are approximately $6.3 billion. And importantly, we continue to hold a material buffer above the central scenario. This slide provides the usual additional detail on sectoral considerations. We marginally reduced base provisioning and forward-looking adjustments in areas where conditions have improved, including consumer, construction and retail trade. This was partly offset by an increased level of provisioning relating to our downside economic scenarios where we take into account the risk of exogenous shocks to the domestic economy. Overall, our approach to provisioning remains grounded, forward-looking and appropriately conservative.

Our funding and liquidity profile has continued to strengthen. We continue to be predominantly deposit funded, supported by a strong deposit gathering franchise. Total customer deposits grew at an annualized rate of 10% over the last 6 months, taking our customer deposit ratio to 79%. We also maintained a historically low proportion of short-term wholesale funding. This combination of deposit growth, consistent term issuance across diverse funding markets and strong liquidity buffers, we remain well positioned to support the current strong level of customer demand for lending growth.

On capital, our common equity Tier 1 ratio remained at 12.3% with organic capital generation continuing to support franchise growth and dividends. Growth in risk-weighted assets was largely a function of lending volume growth with credit risk weightings remaining broadly stable over the past 6 months.

The interim dividend increased $0.10 to $2.35, representing a headline payout ratio of 72% and a normalized payout of 74% after adjusting for the benign first half loan loss rate. The dividend will be fully franked and the dividend reinvestment plan will be offered with no discount and fully neutralized. Delivering franchise growth while maintaining returns above our shareholders' cost of capital allows sustainable and consistent accretion and dividend per share over the long term.

This slide sets out our long-term approach to capital management. We prioritize profitable franchise growth as the first and best use of organic capital generation. We invest in line with our strategic priorities aimed to pay sustainable dividends, and we carefully manage our share count and surplus capital in a disciplined way.

Over time, you can see we've balanced capital generation with capital distribution, supporting franchise growth when lending demand is elevated, while also returning excess capital to shareholders, primarily through dividends as well as through the selective utilization of buybacks. Ultimately, we remain focused on optimizing long-term shareholder outcomes while maintaining the balance sheet resilience that underpins our ability to support our customers and the broader economy through the cycle.

In closing, this long-term approach has again assisted in delivering consistent and superior shareholder returns. Our combination of a high return on equity and strong payout ratio continues to compare favorably with domestic and global banking peers. Our strategic investments are yielding measurable improvements in franchise growth and productivity, underpinning our continued outperformance in net tangible assets and dividends per share.

I'll now hand back to Matt for the economic outlook and closing remarks. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Alan. Australian economic growth has strengthened more quickly and proven more resilient than expected. This was driven by increases in consumer demand and rising investment in AI and energy infrastructure. Household consumption has risen, including across discretionary categories. Supply side constraints mean that the economy is struggling to meet this increased demand. And as a result, inflation is now expected to remain above the Reserve Bank's target band for some time, placing further upwards pressure on interest rates.

Australia has remained highly resilient despite a volatile global environment. To date, there has been limited economic impact from trade and tariff disruptions. A global AI investment cycle is supporting growth. Elevated geopolitical risks are likely to generate ongoing shocks, reinforcing the importance of economic and operational resilience. We will continue supporting our customers with their financial resilience during this period. We're optimistic about the prospects of the economy and we will play our part in building a brighter future for all.

So in summary, the market has seen a period of high growth, low loan losses and intense competition. The Commonwealth Bank is well placed to adapt and perform against this backdrop. We remain committed to supporting and protecting our customers, reimagining customer experiences by investing in technology and AI and providing strength and stability for the Australian economy and delivering sustainable returns. We will stay focused on consistent, disciplined execution and investment for the long term to deliver for our customers and build a brighter future for all.

I'll now hand to Mel to go through your questions.

Thank you, Matt. For this briefing, we will take questions from analysts and investors. When the line opens for you, please introduce the organization that you represent and limit your questions to 1 to 2 maximum questions. The briefing will then have the -- sorry, we'll then take the first question from Andrew Triggs.

Matt, in your prepared remarks for the first quarter trading update, you talked about the competitive concerns -- sorry, the competition concerns you had and potential responses and onsettings. Could you sort of elaborate on those? You seem to have sort of reiterated some of those comments this morning. And specifically, what size of the balance sheet are you referring to there? It does seem at odds with a stable underlying margin in the half and the slight improvement in NIM that you've seen in the December quarter.

Yes. No, thanks. Look, I guess I'd contrast between -- as I said in the opening remarks, I think the strength of this result has been our ability to maintain a very good and disciplined volume growth and a part of that is underlying stability in the margin performance across all of our customer-facing segments. I think when we look at, let's say, last calendar year, I think the market is and the competitive context is shifting. I think clearly, this demonstrates our ability to be able to perform well in that. But I mean, if you look at the period of the last 5 years, we've seen the most rapid growth by one competitor in household deposit share growth. In fact, I think it will be close to double the previous growth rate.

I think we've seen a pretty sharp reduction in household balances. I think the greatest over that 5-year period outside the major banks. I think even if you went back to 2008. And I think that's interesting in the context of the backdrop. We've got, as we talked about, higher system credit growth. We've seen that clearly in retail and also in non-retail. We expect that there's going to be a maintenance of higher credit growth on the back of higher nominal growth and of course, I hope a pickup in investment.

If you look at the organic capital generation across peers and really the sort of volume and NII returns that are being generated, I think that sort of marks quite a shift. Against that sort of credit environment, you'd actually expect there to be much greater pricing discipline.

And look, clearly, there are different choices that are being made around business model and customer proposition. Some part of that's being informed by the regulatory architecture and choices. I mean it's for us to understand and adapt to the environment to be able to execute as well as we can, both in the 6- or the 12-month period, but also most importantly, to position the organization for the future. And we think a lot about how do we build on the scale, durability, resilience, investment in the franchise while continuing to perform well in any given period and deliver sustainable, reliable returns to our shareholders.

And maybe perhaps for Alan. Just the pick apart maybe a little bit more of the slight improvement you referred to in NIM in the second quarter. You put that down to the replicating portfolio, but that tends to come through more slowly. What were the other drivers? And given we've had a rate hike in February, potentially another one in May, what does it mean for the outlook for the NIM into the second half?

Yes. Thank you, Andrew. Yes, between Q1 and Q2, I guess there was a couple of things that changed. I mean, importantly, the replicating is a major factor. The 5-year swap rate, I think, increased 30 basis points between Q1 and Q2. And as the tractors gone through over that period, we've seen the pickup there.

Also, there was a bit more of a cash rate headwind in Q1. So if you look at the weighted average overnight cash rate that was down, I think, 40 basis points Q1 to the second half of last year and only down a dozen basis points over the second quarter relative to the first. So you had that cash rate headwind in Q1 sort of be much more neutral, I guess, in Q2. And the other aspect was very strong growth as we've reported in particularly business transaction accounts in that December quarter. So that was pleasing. And so we picked up a bit of a mix benefit on BTA growth through Q2. Now an element of that is seasonal, we get seasonally stronger growth in the December quarter. But you can see what the changes we've seen in swap rates. So that will continue to feed through in our tractors in the period ahead.

The next question comes from Jon Mott.

Jon Mott here from Barrenjoey. I've got a question on Slide 96. I know it's a long way in, but if we can just click over there. Just looking at the deposit side and well done, just really shows the strength of the franchise with the great growth of the deposits coming through. But I wanted to drill down into it. So if you look at the growth in retail transaction accounts, pretty steady, good numbers growing 3% in the half, 5% year-on-year. It's been growing pretty steadily.

But then when we look over at the retail deposit mix, a big jump, and I think this is the biggest jump you've ever had in transaction deposits in the retail bank. And if you go on the average balance sheet, you can also see they're coming in noninterest-bearing deposits, so excluding offset accounts. You're seeing huge growth. And given the comments from the first quarter, it didn't appear to be there. So it really looks like it's come through in the December quarter. To put it into perspective, I just backs that the average transaction account in Australia jumped by $700 from just over $10,000 to $10,700. So what happened in that December quarter to see such massive growth, not in the number of transaction accounts, but in the balance?

And when you think about how it's going to go going forward, is this just a seasonal and then get drained into savings or higher interest rate accounts over this next half? Or are you going to see really strong growth in noninterest-bearing deposits really support the NIM through the second half of '26 and into '27? So can you just explain what happened?

Yes. I mean one element of that transaction account growth is growth in the offset accounts. We've seen very strong consistent growth in offset through both Q1 and Q2. I mean that's, I think, a healthy sign of continued growth in excess savings across the economy, and we called out in the -- in one of the macro slides, the improvement that you can see in the savings rate that we continue to see through the course of that half. Yes. And in terms of the performance of the underlying ex offset growth in the retail bank, that's continued to improve. I mean we've seen relatively consistent growth in average balances per retail customer account. So that's continued to grow in the period.

And of course, we've continued to attract more customers. And so very strong growth, another, I think, year-on-year, 600,000 growth in customer transaction accounts in the retail bank. Retail customer numbers are up 3 million over the 5-year period. So again, that's been relatively steady. But I think it's a function of just that continued growth in savings across the broader economy, and we've seen a large share of that come through the retail bank.

Okay. Just digging into that a bit more. I just going over to the retail bank in the actual result. And if you look at the noninterest-bearing transaction accounts in the -- you can see there, this obviously excludes offset accounts. Big jump again there by $4 billion. So is there anything in particular that happened in that fourth quarter that just drove this much higher because this isn't you're seeing steady customer account growth, it's unusual. And then obviously, this implies what happens into the next half.

Yes. No, I mean it's very pleasing. I think a more like-for-like comparison is going to be December to December growth in noninterest-bearing trend in the retail bank. We do get a fair amount of seasonality into that June period. So going into June, as you come out of the March quarter into June, you tend to have a higher level of spot non-retail transaction account deposits, which then dip quite significantly into the 30 June period. We see a lot of switching, particularly small business owners injecting cash in other businesses as they get to the 30 June financial year-end. So we've been pleased with the growth, probably the better underlying measure of that growth, I think, is the year-on-year 6% growth between the $47.5 billion we had this time last year and the $50 billion that we landed at 31 December. So yes, strong growth, but I wouldn't annualize the 6-month growth.

Yes. I think there's a bit of seasonality for sure. And Jon, I think Alan touched on it all. I mean, obviously, we'd like to think with all the work that we're doing around the engagement of main bank proposition that's attracting higher balances. We did see obviously a run-up in incomes across the economy. But I think it's hard to then just extrapolate the fourth quarter was strong for us in a number of areas, including both in business and retail deposit growth at an account and average balance number.

The next question comes from Richard.

I've got a couple of questions. The first relates to the mortgage market and the second relates to the benefits of scale. So on the mortgage market, your major bank competitors have been pretty clear in communicating their desire to invest in and grow their proprietary distribution. So that leads me to ask whether your expectation that you can grow at or above system in the mortgage market is premised on a belief that you won't lose any share of proprietary distribution or that third-party broker share of the industry's mortgage origination will fall from its current levels?

Yes. Look, Richard, I mean, we don't, as you know, sort of -- we, at any period, seek to grow sort of at or around system. We're going to make lots of different choices. I think there's a couple of different sides to it. Clearly, the proprietary distribution has been a strength for some time, and the team have executed really well. I think we're now, we think, 54% of proprietary mortgage origination.

On one side, the other banks joining and having a greater focus on that, maybe that helps a little bit to change the perception or customer preference more broadly in the market. I mean, secondly, the broker channel is a really important distribution for us and it will be going into the future. So I mean, it's predicated really on the continuation of what we have been doing. And I think we'll be able to maintain between both our CBA Yello brand, BankWest, which is obviously heavily concentrated in broker and our digital proposition, a balanced portfolio in terms of distribution. And then, of course, while serving our customers, we've sought to optimize for cohorts and individual segments where there's structurally higher margins like there are in investor.

Okay. And my second question really relates to some of the slides and your comments pointing to very strong growth in the franchise since 2019, whether it be deposit balances or number of customers or number of accounts, you called that out in your opening remarks. That should suggest that you'll get increasing benefits from scale. But if we look at the cost-to-income ratio, in rough terms, it's somewhere in the mid-40s. That's where it is today. That's where it was back in 2019. Do you think it's fair to view the cost-to-income ratio as a measure of whether you're delivering benefits from scale? And can investors expect or cost-to-income ratio at CommBank over the coming years?

Yes. Look, I mean, it's -- and look, I'm certainly a believer in increasing returns to scale and how they might compound over a long period of time. I think the drivers, particularly on the cost side for us, I guess, as we reflect over the last, whatever, 5 or 8 years have been deliberately targeted in a couple of areas.

First and foremost, we've significantly increased the investment, and we think that's really important to both underpin the durable competitive advantages. But I think that's one of the major sources of scale. And we've substantially increased sort of operational and regulatory risk management. Of course, without giving any sort of clear guidance, you might recall early on in our collective tenure, we gave some cost-to-income ratio guidance and then the cash rate promptly fell several times after that. So we're not likely to repeat with that.

That was early 2019.

It was. It was, Richard. We remember it well, I'm sure you do. So look, I think we definitely have aspirations to perhaps over the medium term, definitely shift the trajectory of that cost. But we also, I guess, in any period, we're prepared to sacrifice near-term returns if we believe that we can deliver the best long-term outcome. And I do think the next 5 years will be quite different in terms of where the investments will come from. I do think there's a lot of consistency around technology.

Probably the other area that I think occurs to Alan and I in this result is in terms of where the increased investment over and above the areas that we're used to calling out is there's just a lot more going into resilience more broadly. And I mean cyber has been a theme. So we do think the importance of being able to continue to invest in differentiated experiences but also just core resilience and protection of our customers. You need to be able to generate a strong organic return profile to be able to fund that investment to be able to simultaneously provide lending to the economy and distribute dividends.

So it's probably a long-winded way of saying no change to guidance, believe in returns to scale strongly. I think there will be opportunities for us to improve our cost trajectory and ratios over time.

The next question comes from Andrew Lyons.

Andrew Lyons from Jefferies. Alan, just a question on costs. Firstly, the first quarter, you spoke to seasonally low IT vendor costs, but the first half cost performance was a particularly good one, and it wasn't particularly apparent that, that came through in the second quarter. How should we sort of think about that seasonality comment from the first quarter? Should we be seeing a bit of a step-up in those costs being expensed through the P&L in the second half just as you continue to invest in the business?

Yes. You'll notice in the detail of the investment spend disclosures we have. We have dropped the capitalization rate in the current period. We're capitalizing less, more of that's flowing through into the P&L. That goes with the change -- slight change in mix that we've seen from a strategic investment perspective. So more weighting towards productivity and growth initiatives, a little bit less proportionately on some of the infrastructure spending. The infrastructure spending by nature is more capitalization heavy than other forms of spend.

There is a little bit of seasonality in Q1. We've seen some of that reverse in Q2. It's fair to say that we've called out IT vendor cost inflation pretty consistently over the past 12, 18 months. It's an area that we continue to be very cognizant of, very focused on. We see that as over the medium- to long-term potential source of above CPI, above domestic inflation source of cost growth. So it's something that we're managing carefully, but something we keep an eye on, and that's why we made the comment in the first quarter because you didn't really see it as a source of cost inflation there. But again, that was a quarterly timing issue.

Yes. Okay. And perhaps a question for Matt. It was a particularly strong result in business banking. Your loans are up 9% on PCP NIMs up 3 bps over the same period and 5 bps in the half. That does somewhat fly in the face of the view that the market is facing elevated competition driven by both the big 4 and also other players in the space. So can you perhaps just talk about the competitive environment in business banking? How do you see it playing out? And what is CBA basically doing to sort of try and insulate the margin as much as possible as you do grow?

Yes. Look, I mean, I think the competitive context is intense. And against that, I think the team have executed extremely well. I mean some of the things I think that stand out to us is a continuation of what we've now seen for many years in terms of transaction liability-led strategy, strong growth in account numbers, strong growth in balances, as Alan touched on, particularly in the fourth quarter. I think a very good track record over the last 5 or 6 years of high-quality risk identification in terms of lending, really leveraging the main bank relationship and having a much broader relationship with our customers.

We've seen also capabilities that the team have developed. It is probably one of the things that stood out to us as well as like a very good performance in small business. I touched on some of the growth in products like BizExpress, which is largely unsecured, and we've gone from sort of $30 million to $130 million. Now at some level, they're still relatively small numbers, but it's been a diversification of the lending growth that's been good. Small business would probably be roughly twice the margin of some of the other segments. They've been very disciplined up and down throughout all of the segments. We monitor closely in terms of the value of deals that we won't originate due to pricing, the value of deals we won't originate due to credit conditions. And I think leveraging some of the technology both in the decisioning -- speed of decision as well through to funding but also in terms of giving us the confidence to be able to originate across broader cohorts of customers where we've got that main bank relationship. We've also been able to again, leveraging some of the technology to automate some of the account management processes, substantially free up banker time. And so we're seeing much improved productivity in terms of facilities per banker. So I think in aggregate, the team have executed extremely well. I think the result is another very strong one.

The next question comes from Carlos.

I'm Carlos Cacho from Macquarie. You spoke to in the retail section lower deposit margins due to competition and shifting into high-yielding savings deposits. Can you give us any color on the mix shift you're seeing there from lower rate products like NetBank Saver into the higher gold saver or potentially higher rates on some of the NetBank Saver accounts that's driving that.

Yes. I mean, I guess that's been a consistent trend. I mean, I talked earlier about the things that had changed between the first quarter and the second quarter, but one 1 thing that didn't change was the very strong level of growth that we continue to see into the GoalSaver product. So that's running multiples of the growth rate. And we're still growing in NetBank Saver, but the key driver of savings account growth in the retail bank has continued to be GoalSaver. And so the sort of mix effect and we've called out previously the very strong level of balances that are attracting that high the bonus rate on GoalSaver. So that's now up to 87% of balance is attracting that high rate. We can see then on the quarterly trends on margin, it's a consistent headwind. So very consistent over Q1 and Q2, it was about a basis point headwind in each of those periods due to the mix effect of that the growth in that higher rate product.

Yes, I think specifically -- sorry, I was say we're using the GoalSaver product, particularly, we've got some targeted offers in market. I think we see a little bit more switching into the saving, but there's probably less churn than we would have seen in other periods from savings into TD. And I think, again, the team have done a good job of optimizing across the various customer segments and trying to make sure we're getting the right overall margin outcomes whilst growing a bit above system as well.

Great. The other question I want to ask you is more around the thinking longer-term asset investments you make. You're clearly investing a lot of money into technology and AI. And I spoke to those vendor inflation headwinds, which appear to be as the tech companies wanting to return on their investment, how do you think about return on those investments you're making? And I guess, particularly how you think about that flowing through higher revenues versus potentially more productivity or lower cost in time?

Yes. I mean we've been very pleased with the yield from the investment. And I think it's particularly there's a number of proof points in this result that we've called out. I think sure that we are getting a measurable return on those investments. We called out the productivity that we've seen as we've continued to digitize, importantly, the work of a business banker. We've got much better mobile and digital platforms for our business banking customers, getting them to the sort of levels that we achieved in previous years for retail. Customers, and you see that coming through. I mean that's a big driver of the MFI growth that we've continued to see within the business bank continue to underpin the transaction account growth. And then we've got sort of 97% conversion of those transaction accounts into lending relationships, which has seen us continue to grow well above system in the business bank over the last 12 months.

So yes, the yield from the technology investments we're seeing measurable returns, both on the revenue side and in the cost side. So we've been pleased with that. To your point, and again, that's why we call out the IT vendor cost inflation, there is over the next few years, we're going to continue to see where the returns emerge from newer technologies between the technology companies themselves and the corporates who have deployed those tools. Certainly, over the past period of time, we've been pleased with the return that we're generating through our franchise, but that's something that we'll continue to manage, ensure we've got compatibility with lots of different vendors. We're able to switch providers in various areas, maintain that flexibility to ensure we maintain competitive -- have a competitive tension with some of our key technology providers, which I think is going to be important for every corporate over the next 5, 10 years.

The next question comes from Matt Wilson.

Matt Wilson, Jarden.Two questions, if I may. If you look through the long term, CBA's key point of differentiation has been your largest ticker low, no cost deposit base, and you're very effective at growing it as we can see today, and your major bank peers have failed to close that gap through the decades for various reasons. But today, we have sort of 2 new challenges out there. Macquarie who's the fourth peer and perhaps should appear in every slide where there's a peer comparison now going forward to put a line in the sand and then you've got AI. If we embrace your enthusiasm for AI, then does it follow that we'll all have a personal AI bot that will automatically direct our savings and transaction accounts into the highest-yielding accounts and a machine will do that for us. And on that basis today, they move to Macquarie. I've got a second question.

Yes. Look, Matt, I think on your first question. I mean, look, I think what the result demonstrates is our ability to perform in the current context. We think we've got to see good strategic assets and sources and the team have executed really well.

We're, of course, alert to lots of different shifts in the competitive context. I mean, specifically, maybe it's a little bit of a flow on to car losses. Question, in terms of AI and technology, we've got a bit of balance between sort of flexibility and scale. I think in the near term for heavily regulated institutions, I think it adds both complexity and governance.

I do think one of the important things that we're certainly spending time on is where do we think AI has the potential to change the economics of the industry, what might the impact be around sort of competitive moats or enduring sources of advantage, how might that show up. I think there's lots of different ways that we envisage that we can compete extremely effectively in that environment.

So I think we are both planning for the long term, lots of different sort of scenarios. We think we've got the scale to invest. We think we're uniquely placed. And I think the team are highly motivated and very focused on execution. At least in this period, I think it's a good example of it, and we certainly intend to maintain that focus, discipline and execution ability.

And then a second question, probably linked to Richard's second question as well. If we look back over the last 5 years or so, headcount at the enterprise is up nearly 20% despite investments in AI and technology that should be driving efficiencies. But at some stage in the future, there's obviously a big dividend to be reaped by taking people out of the organization. Could you comment on that opportunity?

Yes. Look, I mean, I think that's right. In banking in Australia, there's been a significant increase in headcount. At least in some of our areas, though, as well. I mean it's our approach to the management of important risk types like financial crime has strengthened considerably. There's large operational and FTE requirements with that today. When we think about that more broadly, economic crime, across scams, fraud, cyber. Clearly, the vector of threats that we need to be able to deal with is increasing on a daily basis. And absolutely, some of the technology that we're deploying at the moment in time, I think we'll be able to make a meaningful improvement to the level of automation and efficiency with which we're allowed to deliver those services. A lot of the other increases have been in and around technology. Obviously, that's supported much higher levels of investment, also into key frontline roles, notwithstanding the fact that we've been able to improve productivity on a per role basis, but I think that's enabled us to grow at a faster revenue rate than peers, which we think is important.

So I guess to Alan's answer earlier, I think there's both revenue and cost benefits that are being delivered in this period. We obviously and Alan is tracking those benefits very carefully and clearly, we think it's really important to continue to sort of push for further sources of competitive advantage. I think that takes time. But clearly, we think there's some opportunities to manage the cost base over the medium term.

I'd just add one point, Matt, around the 5-year growth in the FTE, of course, about half of that growth just related to the in-sourcing that we had within our technology teams. So we've moved away from third-party suppliers in many respects, brought our own engineers in-house. We're seeing a much more -- much greater velocity, much greater quality, much greater productivity over that 4, 5-year period, as we've conducted that in-sourcing. So that's been a big part of the overall FTE growth. Actually, we're seeing again -- we've called out some of the benefits we're seeing in terms of the engineering capability. Change deployments is up 30%. Over the past 12 months, we're seeing that deployment at greater pace, greater speed and greater quality. And so the work that we've done to in-source into our FTE base the engineering capability, we think is paying dividends.

Our next question comes from Brian.

Thank you. And first of all, congratulations on the stonking result. But more to the point, since you've been speaking, you put on a lazy $3 or $4 a share. So I had two questions. The first one is that if we have a look at CommBank, we can see that you've got excess liquidity, long-term funding. You look at your software. You're increasing the expensing profile. You've got incredibly strong provisioning. We're not a look at the profit after capital charge. It's up -- you're saying that you normalize the dividend payout ratio for the current low loan losses. I just would be interested to hear what is the scenario where we'd start to see your harvesting the latency. And does that basically mean that we see a continued dividend growth even when system becomes more averse? And then I have another question as well, please.

Yes. Maybe I'll start, and then Alan can add to it specifically. I mean, Vijay, as I know, we've had this conversation before. I mean a lot of that the way we think about things is sort of maximizing value over the long term. We're consistently trying to find ways to invest in the earnings potential. We're prepared to not seek to sort of maximize our performance in a particular period because we want to have the flexibility over a long period of time to both deliver very strong earnings growth and momentum but also to have substantial flexibility to be able to deal with a range of different scenarios. And so look, I think this is clearly above the central scenario. I think the largest excess we've had at $2.8 billion. This is clearly still tail risks, particularly on a global basis and some of those are hard to accurately predict and price. But I mean, I think, there's a number of different areas where we've got a lot of flexibility in the organization. But most importantly, we want to translate a lot of the investments into long-term earnings potential going well beyond 2030.

Yes. I mean the balance sheet settings, we continue to take us sort of through the cycle view. As Matt says, I mean, the provisioning, we're pleased to hold the provisioning at the broadly around stable levels, albeit we're growing the lending side of the balance sheet very quickly. We've seen record levels of lending growth. So the coverage ratio, the provisions as a proportion of the risk-weighted assets has drifted a little lower. And so you've seen some unwind of the provisioning that we held maybe 12, 18 months ago. But yes, we take it through-the-cycle view. We like having that latency, and I think that gives us a more stable through-the-cycle performance, which our shareholders really value.

Just a second question, if I may. Once again, I really want to congratulate the entire management team on the results. If we have a look at some of the global in financial services, in particular, as they seem to hit a kind of more adverse environment, they basically seem to be pulling the pin quite aggressively to shared labor. I'm just wondering, when we have a look at CommBank, is there a point at which you -- how close are we at the point to which technology replaces people? And I'm not saying you necessarily have to go to retrench people, but natural nutrition probably gets you. But do we actually get to the point where we actually see basically the headcount element of the total operating cost fall. And in that context, can you see a point, Matt, and I never thought I'd ask this question where it's difficult to find more incremental to spend on technology?

I think in terms of tech spend and investment and software, I think demand across the economy still sort of outstrip supply. But I mean, clearly, the potential to be able to deliver a lot more change, I mean, significantly more than we're currently doing in year is clearly there. And I think some of the leading firms globally, outside of banking are already seeing some of that automation.

Look, I think there's going to be multiple sort of speeds for how AI is adopted across the organization, how it's able to improve and automate some of the processes. I do think also it's important and certainly the approach that we're taking is thinking through that very carefully and thinking about the individual tasks and skills. I think it's really important to build the capability across the organization. I think anything that is disruptive like this technology is, it's really important to engage inside the organization, maintain the very high levels of engagement and motivation.

I don't think some of the more pessimistic scenarios around labor force disruption will materialize. I think it does take quite a bit of time. I think the sort of the performance of the models is quite jagged. There's also a number of different things that you can do really well. There's others that candidly, you can't. But I think the potential over time to improve certainly the performance of every individual to provide greater output and then in time through more automation.

And there's also just a number of customer processes, we think we can manage on an automated basis. I mean we believe in having to be able to service our customers in real time dealing with scams and disputes and fraud and to be able to perform and close those tasks out through an agentic framework to be able to serve many of our customers more directly and comprehensively. We've already got the capability to be able to monitor the environment and an automated basis, deploy new rules in to pick up and detect fraud.

I think we're just scratching the surface of the potential here. And I don't think we're going to be talking about it in very significantly different ways at our full year results in August, but I think in a sort of 3- and a 5-year time frame, I think there certainly is some significant potential. And there's a lot of things that need to be managed as a highly regulated industry. I mean I do think sort of governance and transparency and explainability and most importantly, trust with customers and with employees. I think that will be a very important part of what we need to do well.

We've obviously started communicating externally with some of the work that we're doing. And yes, I think we're trying to think about this comprehensively and over a long period of time, and we believe it's going to be a source of competitive advantage for CBA.

Our next question comes from Brendan.

Brendan Sproules from Goldman Sachs. I just have a couple of questions. Just in terms of the impact of higher interest rates as we look forward into the second half. Obviously, in this looking backwards this half had record lending growth, particularly strong deposit growth in business banking as touched on earlier on the call. But when you look back to when the cash rate was last, 4.35, you showed us a number of slides similar to Slide 18, which showed negative spending and cost of living pressures in the household sector and you also saw quite a slowdown in business credit. Just want to get your view on how sensitive you think the current system growth rate in both lending and deposits will be to these higher rates over the next 6 to 12 months?

Yes. I mean, it's going to be -- to your point, I mean one of the things I called out in my opening was very strong level of credit, growth leads to very strong growth in broad money and money supply. And that's a factor that we look closely at in terms of, I mean, we see a lot of that money supply growth come through our deposit accounts. That puts more money in people's hands ultimately across the economy, and there's an inflationary element, obviously, to that mechanism. So of course, the reason that rates are being hiked as in order to maybe slow down some of that demand more broadly across the economy slowdown in that spending. And so we would expect to see some impact to that. We've had a very strong period for system growth across both home lending and non-retail lending across the system. We've got -- our economics team has got a range of between 6% and 8% across the total system credit over the next couple of years. Obviously, we're running at the top end of that as we sit here today.

So I think there's maybe some -- you would expect some impact on system levels of credit growth and a higher rate environment. I guess the big question will be how many rate rises do we see from here because that will determine the sort of size of the slowdown you see from a credit perspective.

Yes. I think, I mean, if you assume there's a couple of rate hikes. I think it have a modest impact maybe even if it took a percentage point of housing credit growth. I think the non-retail credit growth has been very strong. Certainly, everything that we see is there, we think sort of higher nominal growth is going to support that. I think boosting investment is going to be an important driver of productivity.

I think there's certainly investments in technology across the economy that are going to support that. And I think that's the importance of having the right sort of capital settings and deploying that lending growth into the right risk-adjusted returns, and certainly, we've kind of extended out the sort of credit growth that we've seen over the last couple of years. And I guess that's sort of our base case to make sure we're going to perform optimally in that environment.

That's great. And the second question, just on NIMs on Slide 27, obviously one of the better parts of today's result is the lack of compression on your funding cost. To what extent is this a timing issue in terms of the switch in the rate cycle that sort of happened towards the end of the fourth quarter? Obviously, with the RBA pushing rates higher earlier this month. We have seen some deposit product pricing move higher with that. To what extent is that going to play out in the second half, a bit of catch-up in terms of deposit pricing for these higher rates?

Yes. I mean I think that as we've long said, I think the -- I mean, deposits are very competitive, and we're going to continue to see the mix, unfavorable mix impact of that growth in our high rate products. So I think that's likely to continue. The other element that we watch closely is wholesale funding spreads. I mean, I guess you've seen a very benign period. I mean, in the last 6 months, the 5-year funding cost and the wholesale funding markets fallen another 10 basis points. You tend to find there's a real correlation between what happens in wholesale funding markets and the level of deposit competitive intensity and deposit pricing. And so one of the forward indicators or lead indicators that we'll be looking carefully at around the likely outlook for deposit pricing and competition as that level of wholesale funding spread. We've had a benign period. We're below historic averages in a number of those long-term funding products. So we'll keep a close eye on that in terms of how that -- there's a potential for that to revert and that to lead to more deposit competition in the second half, but we don't know that today. We'll keep a close watch on that.

Our next question comes from John Storey.

Good set of results. I just wanted to touch quickly just on the business model and potential construction to business model. You've seen it in the last few days. Insurance broking firms have obviously been impacted by the threat of AI, right, in terms of distribution. Just thinking about it in terms of the mortgage market share in Australia, how prevalent brokers have become -- I mean, what are your views on the likelihood of AI disrupting mortgage brokers. So the disintermediators are becoming intermediated. And around that, how well or how prepared is CBA in terms of its own business model for something like that, that could potentially eventuate?

Yes. No. I mean, look, we've tried to think through all the various sort of potential sources of disruption not limited to mortgages and how to most effectively prepare for that. I think we feel we've got the right combination of distribution assets to perform well in that particular environment.

I mean I know from speaking to a number of mortgage brokers and some of the leaders of those mortgage brokers firms, that's definitely on their mind. I think like a lot of businesses, perhaps the sort of speed and rate of disruption is also a question of debate. I think one of the things that has been important in terms of why our customers will still preference a face-to-face experience with either a mortgage broker or a proprietary lender is it's a significant decision I think people still value that. I would have incorrectly forecast the proportion of mortgages that would have gone to digital when we started sort of thinking about this 15 years ago, and it's been a lot slower. So -- but look, I think it's important to think things through and assume they're going to happen more rapidly. I think in our case, we think we're well prepared and I think there's very few sectors of the economy that aren't thinking about some of the disruptive potential and obviously, the rate and pace of change, particularly some of the genetic services that are out even in the last month. Certainly, there's been some pretty significant share price reactions to a number of global industry and software providers.

One, just quickly on a second question. Obviously, a lot of talk, I guess, is on certainly over the last few weeks, months, around increased levels of competition put in the market. And obviously, you've got a very interesting slide, Slide 73, 74, just around new business volumes that are significantly 24% half-on-half, right? I wanted to just get your views on to what extent this growth that you've often seen reflects some of the competitors actually stepping back from the market, right? So I'm thinking specifically around some of the regional banks. And then obviously, ANZ going to a period of restructuring. How sustainable is this level of new business growth that CBA is showing?

Well, I mean -- we'll see, it remains to be seen. But I mean, I think, we executed well in the period. We certainly planning to continue to do that. I mean, look, I do think it's quite interesting in terms of some of the share shift on the deposit side. And then on the asset side. I think where your returns are under pressure and you're not able to generate returns above the cost of capital, it's pretty hard to grow it system.

Yes, there's disruption. I guess the other point is it occurs to us as we look at both capital ratios across the industry and where we would anticipate the DPS profile might be at some of those institutions, it would probably start -- it would tend to support pretty disciplined pricing. And so I think clearly, where there's volume share shifts between institutions, that tends to at times lead to not particularly disciplined pricing. I think it's been a really good period for the half. I think it's quite a -- I think it's an interesting equation, at least as we look forward and think about, well, if it's higher credit growth and the RWA the consumption that comes with that, shouldn't plan as a base case that record low loan losses are going to continue investment, certainly, for us, we're increasing. And we think that's important from a competitive perspective as well as to be able to support broader resilience objectives.

I think -- but maybe that financial equation looks a little challenged, perhaps for some. And so I mean, look, I think we're thinking about how best to compete in that environment. And I think, hopefully, at least this 6-month period has been probably one of our better periods of execution in market.

Our next question comes from Matt Dunger.

Yes. Could I ask a deposit question in a different way? The 79% deposit funding stands out versus the peers. You flagged you're expecting higher growth in higher rate deposits and we noticed that NetBank Saver didn't reprice as much as some of your peers through 2025. So why compete on price when you're already leading deposit growth? Is there a target at CBA to continue to strengthen the deposit funding mix?

Yes. I mean we're always -- we're predominantly deposit-funded and we want to keep it that way. We've been impressed with the execution on the deposit gathering and it's a foundational relationship. It drives MFI drives, as you can see in the numbers we've disclosed, relationship between retail transaction account and home lending, propensity to have your home loan with CBA higher in the business bank. So we -- it's an important part of the franchise. We want to continue to gather deposits. Now we're in a competitive market for deposits. And hence, we've got a very attractive offer on not only GoalSaver, very, very attractive rate. On GoalSaver, we've a very high proportion of balances that achieve that rate. We also got very competitive term deposit offer. So the 12-month term deposit especially that you've seen across the industry, I mean, they're up 45 basis points in the last 6 months. So it's an important part of the franchise. We'll compete effectively in there. We've got -- we've been happy with the improvement in the deposit ratio.

I think as a game of inches, though on the deposit ratio. It's a large balance sheet. We're continuing to compete well for deposits. We don't have particular targets that we set around that particular ratio. We want to keep funding as much of our lending growth as possible through deposits. And pleasingly, in the 6-month period deposit growth outpaced lending growth even though we had a very high level of lender growth relative to a very high system. So we were able to retire a couple of billion dollars of long-term wholesale funding, which again helps in terms of the overall earnings profile and net interest margins. So we don't have particular targets that we set around that. We just try and keep things in balance and make sure we've got a strong deposit gathering franchise.

And if I could just follow up on the credit quality side, you're talking about bad debt charges being low. You just referenced some of the peer selling capital returns policies based on that. You've seen the external refinancing of corporate exposures, bringing down the arrears. Just wondering if this reflects your conservative lending settings. Or are you seeing competition after this corporate business as it refis out?

Yes. We've continued to see -- I mean there's always going to be an element of external refinancing across each of the bank's portfolio. So we've seen some of that over the last sort of 6 and 12 months in particular, within our business bank, in particular. It's a competitive market. There's -- we've seen some continued aggressive pricing offers in market, particularly at that top end of the business bank. I think we called that out 6 and 12 months ago, that's continued in over the last couple of quarters. We are seeing some banks compete more on credit risk appetite, and we've seen some external refinancing. from our portfolio. So I think that's a function of the competitive market for business bank and that we're in at the moment.

The next question comes from Ed Henning. We might just move to the next question, and perhaps we can come back to Ed if the line comes back. The next question will take is from Tom Strong.

Tom Strong from Citi. Just a couple of questions. The first on the replicating portfolio, it contributed basis points in the half, and the commentary suggested that much of that came in the December quarter. How should we think about the replicating portfolio over the next couple of halves just given the material step-up in swaps that sits sort of 50 to 100 basis points above the tractor rates now?

Yes. Yes, there will be -- the tractors will perform well at current swap rates. Now the swap rates have proven to be, obviously, fairly volatile over the past 12, 18 months. But current levels of swap rate, I mean there'll be a pickup in each of the tractors. So if you think about the size of our replicate portfolio, it's something like $2 billion that we'll reinvest at current swap rates each month. And so yes, that will be a function of the where swap rates move expectations for interest rates more broadly and the level of the deposits that we choose to hedge at any point in time. So yes, that will be a supportive element. I mean the equity tractor we called out last time around, if you go back 3 years, where swap rate was then, it's pretty similar to where swap rate today in the 3-year part of the curve and so we're not going to see much tailwind on equity tractor but replicating portfolio, given it's a 5-year tractor.

We've probably got another 2, 3 halves of positive earnings momentum as those if you go back sort of for years, we were still in some pretty low in a pretty low rate environment. Some of the tractors that we put on there are coming up for reinvestment at much higher current rates. So yes, 2 or 3 halves of earnings momentum from replicating remain.

Great. And just a second question around business deposits. I mean we look at the strong growth in the business bank, but net of offset accounts, a lot of this growth has come from more expensive TDs and the business MFI did sort of slipped slightly half-on-half. I mean how are you seeing competition for business deposits more broadly given a number of your peers spending pretty considerably to emulate your success here?

Yes, I mean, it's a competitive market for deposits both for REIT on the retail side and the business bank side. We've been pleased with the deposits that we've gathered. I mean, the new business transaction account openings have continued at pace. I think we're up 7% in net BTA accounts opened over the past 12 months. So we're pleased with that.

Yes, we did -- I think there's a little bit of volatility. It's a 6-month moving average on MFI. I think we're up 40 basis points year-on-year in the longer-term trend I think we're up 300 basis points over the last 5 years. So you'll see some oscillation one half to the next. But the overall momentum within MFI, I think, goes to the good execution within that franchise over multiple years. And yes, there's been, I think, some as I mentioned earlier, we've got some attractive rates on the term deposit product as well, and that did particularly well in the 6-month period within the business bank, which we're pleased with. It's a good stable source of funding for the strong lending growth that we're doing in that division.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the briefing. Thank you for joining us, and please reach out if you have any follow-up questions. Thank you.

Hello, and welcome to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's results briefing for the full year ended 30 June 2025. I'm Melanie Kirk, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us. For this briefing, we will have presentations from our CEO, Matt Comyn, with a business update and an overview of the results. Our CFO, Alan Docherty, will provide details of the financial results; and Matt will then provide an outlook and summary. The presentations will be followed by the opportunity for analysts and investors to ask questions. I'll now hand over to Matt. Thank you, Matt.

Thanks very much, Mel, and good morning to everyone. It's good to be with you today to present the bank's full year results. We recognize cost of living remains a challenge for many and global issues are creating uncertainty. We've been focused on consistent operational execution and investing for the long term. This year, we've chosen to increase lending across all of our key segments with record risk-weighted asset growth of $29 billion and disciplined margin management, accelerated investment by $300 million in line with our strategic priorities, strengthen our balance sheet and pay a $4.85 sustainable dividend with a fully neutralized reinvestment plan.

We've been able to provide our customers with a range of support options, including tailoring more than 139,000 payment arrangements for those most in need. We've helped more than 140,000 households buy a home and have provided support for first-time buyers. We've extended our commitment to regional Australia, operating the largest branch and ATM network in the country.

Safe and secure banking remains a top priority. Over the past year, we've invested more than $900 million to combat fraud, scams, cyber threats and financial crime to better protect our customers. These efforts have led to a 76% reduction in customer losses from scams since the peak in late 2022. Our NameCheck technology has been used 110 million times, preventing over $880 million in mistaken and scam payments.

Strong, safe and resilient banks benefit all Australians. This year, we lent $42 billion to businesses to help them grow and paid $22 billion in interest to Australian savers. We've further strengthened our balance sheet and remain well positioned to support our customers and the broader economy. And this year, we paid $8 billion in dividends, benefiting more than 13 million Australians.

We know many Australians have found the past 4 years challenging, particularly dealing with cost of living pressures. This past year has brought some relief through easing inflation, lower interest rates and tax cuts. Many households are now experiencing a rise in disposable income. The financial gap between younger and older Australians has narrowed. Savings have increased across all age groups with younger Australians now rebuilding their financial buffers. And discretionary spending has also picked up, reflecting growing consumer confidence.

While we recognize many are still finding the context challenging, there is some positive momentum. The economy is at an important juncture. And as a country, we need to make the most of our structural advantages, government stability and available opportunities to improve prosperity for generations to come.

We welcome the government's focus on economic growth and productivity. We believe it is important to make a constructive contribution on behalf of the more than 10 million personal customers and 1 million business customers who choose to bank with us. Economic growth will require both small and large businesses to thrive and invest for the future.

Small businesses play a very important role in economic dynamism and job creation and will be most responsive to changes in incentives. When I meet with our small business customers, I'm often struck by their energy, optimism and new ideas for the future.

Australia's large companies also have a substantial role to play. These are our most productive institutions and provide critical infrastructure the economy relies on. They are investing to build a better Australia, whether that be laying in city optic fiber, mining resources for export to underpin our prosperity, building and financing new infrastructure or investing in cybersecurity or AI capability.

These investments benefit all Australians and help small businesses help the economy. 36% of Australia's corporate tax base comes from 20 of our largest companies. Our miners and banks are the largest taxpayers in the country, while our retailers are some of the largest employers. We need to make sure that the economic dividend from technology is captured by Australia for Australians and not shifted offshore. We observe many overseas markets, actively supporting their domestic institutions in the interest of economic growth and resilience. It will be strong domestic institutions that support Australia in times of crisis.

We support the Productivity Commission's focus on reforms to encourage greater private sector investment. We do, however, think a simpler and faster way to achieve this outcome would be through an accelerated investment incentive, which should be time-bound, apply to all businesses and allow immediate investment write-offs. We understand well the high expectations on the Commonwealth Bank. We are proud of our role as the bank for all Australians and how we contribute to our country.

We are 1 of Australia's largest corporate taxpayers with an implied tax rate of approximately 36%. As a domestically significant institution, we hold an additional capital buffer to protect depositors and provide stability to the broader economy. And we are required to invest significantly in national infrastructure without a return on capital like the new payments platform and open banking, which benefits all Australians. We estimate these obligations amount to almost $6 billion per year. We also make a range of voluntary contributions to support the financial system, our customers and the broader community, some of which are illustrated on the slide.

We provide fee waivers and goodwill payments to support customers in vulnerable circumstances. We subsidize the provision of cash and regional services to support low-cost access. And this year, we stepped in financially to support Armaguard, Australia Post as well as helping to protect Australia's interest in the Pacific. To provide further stability to the financial system, we also choose to hold an additional capital buffer.

Australia's banking market is stronger and more efficient than international markets. We already have among the lowest consumer banking fees and lowest credit and debit interchange rates globally. We seek to strike the right balance between strength, security, efficiency, customer outcomes and investment for the long term. We believe Australia compares very favorably with global markets and that our financial system is working well for the country.

Our purpose, to build a brighter future for all, reflects our enduring commitment to Australia. This year, we refreshed our strategy to reflect changes in the context and also emphasis. At this time, it is critical to support national growth and prosperity, unlock the potential of AI for our customers and increase economic resilience for the country. Our strategy is built on 4 key pillars: the first, building Australia's future economy. This is about helping the nation prosper and improving living standards for all Australians. We played an active role during COVID and are now actively involved in supporting growth and resilience of the Australian economy.

Second, reimagining customer experiences that are more seamless, personalized and rewarding. We're focused on building deep, trusted relationships, offering a distinctive proposition and digital experiences that our customers love.

Third, leading in technology and AI reflects our commitment to technology leadership and particularly AI, which is likely to play a more prominent role across the economy into the future. We've accelerated the modernization of our technology estate, and the use of AI to drive better experiences for customers as well as quality and speed of execution.

And finally, delivering simpler, safer and better reflects our commitment to delivering customers experiences, which are underpinned by security and reliability. We've increased our focus on operational resilience in particular.

Our strategy aims to build on our sources of competitive advantage. The strength of our core franchise starts with a deep commitment to customer focus and deep, trusted relationships. These relationships drive more frequent and meaningful engagement, a deeper understanding of customer needs and superior customer experiences. This creates long-term value for our shareholders. This model has always underpinned our performance in retail banking, and we are using that same model to drive growth in business banking.

Technology is accelerating this momentum. It's reshaping what customers expect from a trusted relationship, including how we protect them from increasingly sophisticated threats like scams and cyber-attacks.

Net Promoter Score is an important way that we track the strength of our customer relationships. In consumer banking, we've maintained the #1 position for 32 consecutive months and achieved the highest score of any major bank since tracking began. In business banking, we've regained the #1 position with our highest score since June 2023, the second highest ever recorded by a major bank. Our digital NPS leads peers across key platforms, including the CommBank mobile app, which continues to be the most widely used financial services app in Australia.

When customers know us and trust us, they choose to bank with us. Today, 1 in 3 Australians and more than 1 in 4 businesses call the Commonwealth Bank their main financial institution. This has led to continued growth. Retail transaction accounts increased 4% since June 2024 and by 35% over the past 6 years. Business transaction accounts grew 7% and since June 2024 and 65% over the last 6 years. These increases have translated into home and business lending growth, 6% and 11%, respectively, over the past 12 months. And importantly, more than 97% of home loans and 90% of business loans are linked to a CBA transaction account.

Turning now to our performance. We've sought to be disciplined on volume and margin management in home loans. We increased net interest income share and gained 7 basis points of market share. We're enhancing the customer experience through GenAI-powered messaging, reduced contact center wait times and faster business loan decisioning.

Our focus on disciplined capital management is supporting franchise growth and dividends. Strategically, we're deepening direct primary relationships. Our proprietary home lending flows remained strong at 66%, now accounting for 52% of proprietary loans in Australia. We continue to leverage technology data and AI to provide superior differentiated customer experiences. We've delivered for all stakeholders through our customer focus and disciplined execution. The 4% growth in cash net profit after tax was driven by strong operating performance and lower loan impairment expense.

Throughout the year, we've maintained strong liquidity, funding and capital positions. Our operating performance and strong capital position has allowed the Board to declare a fully franked dividend of $4.85, an increase of $0.20 on the prior corresponding period. Our operating income increased 5%, supported by a disciplined approach to volume growth and stable underlying margins. Operating expenses were 6% higher, driven by inflation and investment in technology and our frontline. Loan impairment expense decreased 9.5% in the period, and as a result, cash net profit after tax increased 4% on the prior year.

The credit environment is stable. Our portfolio quality remains sound, supported by a strong labor market and savings buffers. Troublesome and nonperforming exposures as a percentage of total committed exposures were stable over the past 12 months. And as we've made help easier to access, we've seen a number of home loan customers in hardship come down by 19%. We remain well provisioned for a range of economic scenarios. We hold total provisions of $6.4 billion which is $2.6 billion above our central economic scenario.

Our balance sheet remains strong with 78% deposit funding. Our weighted average maturity of long-term funding is 5.1 years and liquid assets are $184 billion. Our capital ratio of 12.3% is $10 billion above the minimum regulatory requirement.

We've delivered consistent and disciplined execution across all of our business units this year. In our retail bank, we've grown home lending and deposit volumes broadly in line with the market. We're continuing to grow our business banking franchise above system. We hold 1.3 million business transaction accounts, a 7% increase from June 2024. We remain the market leader in business deposit market share and hold $15 billion more deposits than the nearest peer. Our institutional bank continues to play an important role in net deposit funding, contributing more than $65 billion. Over the past 9 years, we've reduced total risk-weighted assets by more than $38 billion while maintaining strong risk-adjusted returns. ASB has also seen strong growth in both business and rural lending and deposits.

Notwithstanding clear leadership in retail MFI share, we've seen increased competitive intensity, and building stronger and deeper relationships with customers will be a focus in 2026. Our consistent investment in our digital ecosystem enables us to offer distinct and differentiated customer experiences.

Our CommBank app now has more than 9 million active users and sees more than 12.7 million daily logins. The app incorporates leading AI capabilities, including AI-powered messaging and new features like everyday investing to offer highly personalized and rewarding digital experiences. This year, we launched -- or relaunched CommBank Yello, Australia's largest loyalty program, to offer customers even more value through their relationship with us. So far, CommBank Yello has delivered more than $135 million in benefits, rewards and discounts to CommBank customers.

This year, Bankwest successfully transformed into a digital bank and has acquired more than 90,000 new-to-bank customers. Central to the business bank's continued growth has been an increased focus on deepening customer relationships and differentiated digital experiences. For example, CommBank Yello for business is now available to more than 360,000 business customers, helping them unlock discounts and reduce costs. We've also provided easier lending access with more than 10,000 loans to small businesses written through BizExpress and auto decisioning resulting in as little as 10 minutes between instant approval and funding.

The time it takes to conduct a customer's annual review has been reduced by 85%, further enhancing efficiency. The deepening of primary customer relationships and prudent lending growth is driving strong earnings performance. The business bank contributed approximately 40% of group net profit after tax.

To deliver better outcomes for our customers and people, over the past year, we've continued to invest in strengthening our AI capabilities and enhancing our technology delivery. To accelerate innovation through artificial intelligence, we've partnered with global leaders and established our own tech hub in Seattle. We're using AI to increase the speed and quality of code reviews, alert customers to suspicious activity, help process disputed transactions and create more personalized experiences for our customers. This year, we've delivered 35% more technology changes, reduced critical incidents by 30% and improved recovery time by 25%.

To leverage the full benefits of AI, we've chosen to accelerate the modernization of our technology estate. We completed one of the largest and fastest data migrations of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, moving 10 petabytes of data to AWS Cloud. Building world-class AI and engineering talent and capability is central to our technology ambitions, and we've hired 2,000 engineers in the past year.

We're also providing all of our people with AI skills and tools, so we can deliver the best customer experiences and outcomes. We're also investing in AI partnerships, including with Anthropic and OpenAI to try to bring the best of AI to our customers and our teams.

Digital scammers continue to prey on our communities. We've scaled up our alert system sending 10x more alerts to customers this year via the CommBank app to warn them of suspicious transactions. We're intercepting frauds and scans earlier and have seen the number of disputed transactions fall by more than 30% as a result.

We've also introduced a QR code-based feature for cardless withdrawals and deposits, offering a safer and more secure way to access funds. And an Australian banking first, we've deployed thousands of AI-powered bots to actively engage scammers on voice calls and WhatsApp chats. But we must be vigilant. We know there is still more for us to do to protect Australians from financial harm. We remain committed to keep delivering our own innovations as well as working on a broader ecosystem approach.

I'll now hand to Alan to take you through the results in some more detail.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I will take you through the results in some more detail, focusing on 3 key themes: firstly, how we are responding to changes in our current operating context, including choices around the level of investment deployed towards our strategic priorities and the financial outcomes that's delivering; secondly, how the changing global and domestic environment shapes our approach to balance sheet settings around credit risk, funding, interest rate risk and capital management; and thirdly, how today's combination of management actions and balance sheet settings seeks to position us to continue to deliver shareholder value over the years ahead.

Starting with our headline numbers. Statutory profits after tax were $10.1 billion. That included some noncash losses on divestments, principally relating to the sale of our interest in the Bank of Hangzhou and a modest amount of hedge accounting volatility. Excluding those items, cash profits after tax were $10.25 billion.

Breaking down the components of that cash profit. Operating income increased by 4.8% over the year or approximately $1.3 billion. That growth in the top line gave us the opportunity to increase the level of investment in the business, resulting in growth in operating expenses of 6% over the year. After absorbing some further restructuring costs and other notable items in the fourth quarter, we delivered 3.4% growth in pre-provision profits over the year. Loan impairment expenses reduced by nearly 10% to $726 million, and this resulted in growth in cash profits of 4.2%.

Looking firstly at operating income. Overall, income grew by almost 5% to approximately $28.5 billion. Net interest income was the key driver of that growth, increasing $1.2 billion due to strong lending growth across all of our banking businesses in Australia and New Zealand. Importantly, that growth did not come at the cost of margin contraction. Margins were broadly stable to improving on an underlying basis, reflecting our ability to compete effectively while maintaining our pricing discipline. Other operating income increased modestly over the year due mainly to the soft first half trading income that we reported in February.

The second half growth was stronger, reflecting continued volume-driven growth in lending fees and the rebound in trading income. This slide illustrates the results of our decision-making around the all-important trade-off between volume and rate. In this context, it was pleasing to see continued growth in our share of industry net interest income. This was achieved by growing volumes at or above system in most of our key segments while maintaining our focus on higher-return proprietary distribution across all of our businesses.

One example of this can be seen in the performance of our network of retail lenders. The middle chart shows our share of proprietary home lending in Australia growing from 34% 2 years ago to more than 50% today. By continuing to invest in our digital capabilities, customer experience and our frontline and operational teams, we're meeting more needs of more customers.

Turning to net interest margin and looking at the movements over the most recent 6-month period. Despite 2 cash rate cuts in February and May and ongoing competitive intensity, margins remained broadly stable over the half. On the asset side, we continue to see elevated levels of discounting across the industry for both home and business lending. As you can see, that did not translate into any material margin compression for CBA over the half. Our business bank has continued to show good discipline, walking away from over $4 billion of new lending to large corporate customers due to competitor pricing being below cost of capital.

Deposit margins were under pressure due to competition and lower rates, driving most of the 4 basis point headwind in funding costs. This was offset by our hedges of interest rate risk, which delivered 5 basis points of margin accretion. If 3-year swap rates remain around their current levels, our equity hedge earnings will likely be relatively stable from here. And so we wouldn't expect to see that particular tailwind repeat in the next financial year.

Turning now to operating expenses. They increased by 6% over the year. This reflected a combination of inflation as well as strategic choices about where and how much to invest in the franchise for long-term outcomes. As we flagged in our results announcement in February, we've accelerated our investments in our technology infrastructure and software assets as well as the frontline teams supporting our proprietary distribution channels. These choices were made possible due to our strong top line momentum and our continuing delivery of productivity benefits.

Looking ahead, we'll continue to adopt a flexible and responsive approach to our cost growth. This will take into account factors such as our top line growth, realized productivity improvements and our targeted level of pre-provision profit and dividend growth.

Turning now to our balance sheet settings starting with credit risk. Our lending portfolio continues to perform well from a credit quality perspective. Loan impairment expenses fell for the third successive year to $726 million as loan loss rates reduced to 7 basis points over the year.

Consumer arrears rates have stabilized in recent months, and we're seeing reduced levels of hardship amongst our customer base as real household disposable incomes continue to improve as inflation and interest rates eased. Corporate, troublesome and nonperforming exposures were also stable with relatively small movements in a few single name exposures. Overall, loan loss provisions increased slightly to $6.4 billion, which was principally a function of lending growth, and that led to a slight decline in provisioning coverage to 160 basis points of credit risk-weighted assets.

We now hold a buffer of approximately $2.6 billion to our central economic scenario and our balance sheet provisions cover 75% of the expected credit loss of our downside economic scenario of a global recession. As usual, we have set out here how our provisioning considerations have evolved at the sectoral level over the last 6 months. In response to heightened global trade and geopolitical tensions, we increased the weighting to our downside scenario by 2.5%, with a commensurate reduction in our central scenario. As a result, consumer provisions were overall largely unchanged as the increase in mezz provisioning was offset by reduced forward-looking adjustments for those customers most exposed to higher interest rates. Within corporate, provisioning overall increased marginally due to portfolio growth and the increased mezz overlay.

Our funding profile remains conservatively positioned for the long term. Customer deposits now cover 78% of our funding needs, providing structural cost advantages and funding stability. Short-term wholesale funding currently represents just 7% of total funding, well below historical levels and provides substantial franchise protection against volatility in funding markets.

We have long said that the first and best use of surplus capital is to support our customers and the economy and grow our franchise. The capital deployed to grow risk-weighted assets totaled 31 basis points over the last 6 months. Notwithstanding that high level of franchise growth and a strong first half dividend, our Level 2 Common Equity Tier 1 ratio was 12.3%, up 10 basis points. This was a function of strong profitability as well as the capital benefit of recent divestments.

The final dividend increased $0.10 to $2.60. That brings our full year dividend to $4.85, an increase of 4% year-on-year and represents a full year payout ratio of 79%. The dividend reinvestment plan will again be fully neutralized through an on-market purchase of shares, ensuring no dilution to our existing shareholders.

We have also extended our on-market share buyback program by a further 12 months. As you know, we are currently seeing historical lows in the cost of CBA equity relative to the after-tax cost of our debt, and we responded by pausing activity on our buyback. That said, the flexibility provided by this form of capital return mechanism means we still see value in maintaining an open-ended buyback program with execution remaining subject to changes in market conditions.

I wanted to share some additional considerations around our current and future balance sheet settings. The guiding principle across our approach to balance sheet management is to underpin and protect our long-term franchise value and in doing that, support our customers and the economy through good times and bad. On the left-hand chart, we have sought to show a broader perspective on the capital buffers held to fund organic growth and absorb losses.

Firstly, we have the current level of common equity Tier 1 in excess of the APRA regulatory minimum. Secondly, our forward-looking approach to loan loss provisioning means we can set aside provisions on our balance sheet to absorb losses if economic conditions worsen relative to our central scenario. Thirdly, we're holding an unrealized loss reserve on our liquid asset portfolio of high-quality domestic government bonds. Holding these bonds to maturity will see their mark to market revert to par value in the years ahead. And lastly, we have an embedded gain, which reduces our overall capital requirement for interest rate risk in the banking book. These gains will reverse over time, and therefore, they are deducted. It is important to understand that the composition of our aggregate capital buffers currently totaling $13 billion will move in response to changing market conditions.

Turning to the second chart. Under Australian prudential requirements for IRRBB, we have long had to make trade-offs between earnings volatility and capital volatility. Changes to the prudential standard scheduled for implementation on 1 October will introduce new capital considerations related to the size and composition of our replicating portfolio hedge. This will introduce an additional aspect to the Board's calibration of our capital target, depending on our appetite for earnings volatility through an interest rate cycle. And the third chart highlights the unique nature of CBA's funding stack that embeds resilience through a combination of deposits and low-risk long-term wholesale funding.

In summary, our balance sheet settings are deliberately conservative and calibrated to optimize for long-term outcomes as opposed to short-term earnings. As the global operating context becomes increasingly uncertain, we believe that this approach is even more important today and remains a key focus of both Board and management.

This long-term approach has again assisted in delivering consistent superior shareholder returns. Our combination of a high return on equity and a strong payout ratio continues to compare favorably with domestic and global banking peers. Our strategic investments helped generate the franchise growth, which underpins our continued outperformance in net tangible assets and dividends per share.

I'll now hand back to Matt for the economic outlook and closing remarks. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Alan. Economic growth remains below trend but is recovering. Inflation is back within the target band, and what we expect to be a modest rate cutting cycle is underway. Consumer confidence has improved, but households remain stretched. We continue to watch global events closely, which remain unpredictable and volatile. We're yet to feel the full impact of trade and tariff disruption. Australia is well placed on an absolute and relative basis. Our fiscal position is relatively strong, unemployment low, and real disposable incomes are now growing. Australia has a number of structural advantages, including vast land and natural resources, attractiveness as a destination to live and work and a stable social and political environment. We must not take this for granted. Unlocking growth and building resilience will be critical to create a brighter future for generations to come.

So in summary, we remain committed to supporting and protecting our customers, to reimagining customer experiences by investing in technology and AI, in providing strength and stability for the Australian economy and delivering sustainable returns. We'll stay focused on disciplined execution and investment for the long term to deliver for our customers and build a brighter future for all.

I'll now hand back to Mel to go through your questions.

Thank you, Matt. For this briefing, we will be having questions from analysts and investors. I'll state your name, and the operator will open your line. Please announce the organization or the institution that you represent. [Operator Instructions] The questions will wrap up at the end, and we will have time to answer questions this afternoon. We'll now have the first question from Andrew Lyons.

Alan, just a question on your margin firstly. Over the course of FY '25, you've had broadly flat NIMs with the replicating portfolio offsetting deposit competition and the impact of lower rates. I guess, looking into FY '26, you've noted that you lose the equity hedge and you are faced with some headwinds from your unhedged deposits. And I guess it would be unusual to have another year of neutral impact from asset pricing. So would you say that those characterizations are broadly fair? And if so, are there any potential offsets that might provide some insulation to the NIM next year?

Yes. Thanks, Andrew. I mean I think they are some of the key moving parts as we look into '26. Obviously, we're not providing specific guidance around the margin outlook. But obviously, key to that is going to be the extent of the easing cycle in Australia. And I think there's a fair degree of consistency now between market pricing and many economists' views.

So the number of rate cuts that we are yet to see through the balance of the financial year will be an important driver, ongoing competitive dynamics across both sides of the balance sheet and across both retail and business. Banking will continue to play an important part. I did call out, I think it's -- as we know, given it's a 3-year hedge on the equity side, if we go back 3 years, we're now back to a pretty consistent roll-on and roll-off rates around that equity tractor.

And so that's likely to be fairly neutral. And obviously, that provided a tailwind in the last financial year but still continue to be an offsetting tailwind from the replicating hedge. Obviously, that's a 5-year hedge and the rates that are rolling off 5 years ago are significantly lower than the current level of rates. So the replicating portfolio will continue to provide an offset.

And then obviously, the other moving part will be wholesale funding spreads, credit spreads. We have seen over recent months and recent weeks, a slight tick-up on basis risk, the bill is always spread, and so we're watching that closely. Credit spreads more broadly around term funding have been pretty benign and actually narrowed over the last 6 months. But I mean that will be the other key moving parts. So I think your characterization of the things you're looking at are the right things to be focused on in '26.

Alan, maybe a question for you. You've announced today that you've extended the buyback, but you've considered that market conditions make it difficult to return capital to shareholders this way. At the same time, you've reiterated that your franking neutral payout ratio remains greater than 90% -- 80%. So can you perhaps just talk to how the Board sort of, I guess, assesses these various issues. And just under what conditions would a special dividend or some alternative form of capital return be considered?

Yes. No, happy to. And maybe the one thing, not so much as an offset to NIM but I guess one of the other constraints that we're certainly aware of and watching in the market is sort of to the competitive pricing perspective given where some of our peers are on capital and the requirement to either start issuing shares to keep their dividends. So I think they come under pressure. So be a question of whether that slightly improves some of the competitive pricing given how much some of that's moved in the last couple of years.

Look, I think, I mean, overall, the conversation with the Board has been very consistent over some time and a lot of which we've shared previously. We sort of obviously look at our buffers over the regulatory minimum, having a view around risk-weighted assets. We're thinking about sort of what losses could be looking at various sort of scenarios for that. As Alan has touched on, our risk-weighted asset growth this period was very strong. It's a record year and clearly being able to deploy capital at that scale well above our hurdle rate, which is, again, above where our cost of capital would be is a very effective use of that capital.

We decided to pick up investment. You're right insofar as -- well, one of the things we also think about is, well, with that capital that we're now holding as a surplus, what's the opportunity cost of holding that capital. We look at the after-tax expense of alternative sort of funding instruments. That's very narrow. That opportunity cost of capital is very low.

And so I think we've got a lot of flexibility clearly in terms of the balance sheet and our capital levels. We're conscious of all of those factors, but we feel that the path that we've been on, which has been trying to deploy it effectively organically while supporting high fully franked sustainable dividends, I think, gives us a lot of flexibility. Particularly, I guess, in an era of increased volatility and uncertainty, I think being well prepared puts us in a very strong position. But as you would expect, it remains an ongoing topic of dialogue, and we've certainly put a lot of thought into what that overall plan could be over many years.

Thank you. The next question comes from Jonathan Mott.

Two questions if I could. The first one on -- goes on to what you're talking about, Alan, was competition, especially on the deposit side. And what we're seeing now, it looks like a lot more competition coming in the Online Saver, the GoalSaver area and some of your competitors are now waiving some of the requirements to grow the balance each period and not make a deposit or able to make withdrawals, especially in Macquarie. And given how their success is seen on the mortgage side, now looks like they're rolling that out on the deposit side.

So I wanted to sort of get your thoughts on that. Is this another area that you need to look at? And what percentage of your current savings customers don't qualify for the bonus rate in each period? Is that an area that could potentially come under threat?

Yes. I mean we've continued to see very high levels and actually growing levels of customers who are earning the bonus savings rate, which we've called out in previous results. We're now around in the high 80s percent of customers who are earning that bonus rate. So that -- I think that's much higher than the industry average. So that should provide us a degree of protection from a competitive pricing perspective because most of our customers, the vast majority are enjoying that higher rate.

We give very proactive notifications to our customers, importantly, digitally through the app to ensure that they do the things that they need to do to earn that higher rate and demonstrate the sticky behaviors that allow us to offer that, the level of pricing that we offer on the award product. But it's undoubtedly a new form of competitive focus across the industry. We've seen deposit pricing emerge as the single biggest headwind from a margin perspective over recent halves. I think we'll continue to see competitive pressure on margins.

Obviously, we're passing the peak of the cash rate cycle, so there will be a degree of offset in that regard as rates come down. If you look at pricing of certain standard base rate products across the industry, there'll be less degrees of freedom for some industry participants relative to others given where those base rates are at the moment, heading into -- in the middle of an easing cycle. But I think that's -- it's a fair observation. There's continued competitive intensity in deposits, and that's -- we can certainly see that.

And the second question, probably for Matt. If I go to Slide 45, one of the charts we've been talking about many, many, many years goes to the retail bank and main financial institution. And it's fallen very sharply over the last 6 months basically across every category. And on some of these categories, you're back to where you were when it actually started being disclosed all the way back in 2013. So just wanted to get some explanation on what's happened over the last little while. It's not migration. I can't really explain it given the rapid change. Is this just a sample error? Or is there anything that could explain why this very sharp fall in the MFI has come through?

Yes. No, thanks, Jon. Yes. And as you noted, we've been talking about this slide for 12 years. Look, I think, and as we've said many times, we -- it's survey based. So it's not precisely accurate, but it's been directionally accurate. So it's certainly an area of focus for us, has been for some time, and we're not entirely satisfied with the performance over FY '25. So it's a big focus, and maybe I'll link it to the -- your question on deposits in a moment. I think it's across the year, business banks had a very strong MFI share growth, retail after a very strong FY '24, weaker as you said.

Look, I think there's a number of factors, and I guess in a survey-based result, it's hard to get the actual levels of sort of like causality across some of these drivers. But look, we do really well in migrants. Migrants is down 11%. Accept your point there. Some of that is also a mix effect as well. I know we've touched on this earlier. We do particularly well when migration is higher from markets like India, not so well with, say, New Zealand and the U.K. So I mean there's a number of factors. That's one of them that contributes to it.

Look, we have seen in some of the cohorts increased competitive intensity. And I think predominantly on the deposit side, we've seen cash back for migrants. We've seen some very aggressive and sharp pricing offers in youth and maybe in young adult. It's perhaps a consequence of having a focus on the performance last year. We've certainly seen some competitive intensity responses on the back of that.

Then maybe then we're into sort of like more perhaps minor issues overall in terms of just execution and timing. So there's a bit of a loss in and around Bankwest as we did the migration, but that's a big shift in the business model and strategy. We think that's gone very well, and obviously, we plan to execute as a digital only.

But -- so ultimately, as you quite rightly pointed out, it hasn't been a strong year in our retail MFI share. We think a lot of the factors are around competitive intensity, and we're very focused on having both improvements around offer proposition and being very targeted. And as you'd expect, it's a big area of focus for me, the team, for Angus going into FY '26.

The next question comes from Carlos.

Carlos Cacho from Macquarie. I just first wanted to ask about your investment spend. So you ended up investing $2.3 billion, well up from last year. Should we expect that level of investment spend going forward? Or was it more opportunistic that you saw good opportunities and we'll just take advantage of them, and it might pull back in FY '26?

Yes. I mean you certainly shouldn't see that level of increase in FY '26. It's not going to go backwards in FY '26, just to be clear and specifically in terms of the sort of technology investment as well. I think we've been talking about for some time a focus on wanting to increase the throughput of productivity for the dollars that we're investing. We -- as we said previously, we've been holding that investment envelope basically flat for many years, so going backwards in real terms. We felt much more confident about throughput and ultimately, output for dollars of investment spend and so wanted to increase the investment.

And then we decided to take some additional discretionary investments, specifically NII. We see a very close linkage between modernization of some of our technology estate, and that's a broad piece of work. We've been able to leverage the capability of GenAI. So we wanted to increase the pace of that, so we put some additional investment across that. So I think we're -- Alan and I obviously talk about this quite a bit. We're open to continuing to increase it, but we wouldn't want there to be an assumption that, that level of growth would be something we'd be contemplating in FY '26.

I guess kind of staying on that topic, when do you expect to start to see the benefits coming through? Obviously, productivity has come through, but even with that, you still saw 6% expense growth for the year. Is this really building for a 3- to 5-year benefit? Or do you think we should -- could start seeing those benefits of technology and AI investments coming through sooner?

Yes. I mean, I take a sort of broader view of all of the investments. I mean, obviously, the infrastructure modernization work, what we're really doing is accelerating that work that you would otherwise do over maybe a 4- or a 5-year time horizon. We're trying to get that done within 3 years and therefore, accelerating the amount of engineers that are working on that. We -- I spend a lot of time personally looking at what's the measurable efficacy improvements and the measurable yield that we're seeing from the last number of years of investment. And as we get more velocity, lower rework rates, more efficacy in the technology change work that we're deploying and we can see a number of measures, many of which we've talked about in the body of the pack, that's manifested in a number of lead indicators that we measure quality of retail deposits, the improvements in NPS, the improvements that we see in business lending market share growth, the automation of a number of the credit origination processes and annual review processes.

So we can see the productivity. We can see the better customer outcomes, and we can see the translation to the top line revenue. The work that we're doing now around infrastructure refresh and generative AI, we'd expect, again, to see a forward profile of benefits in that regard emerging in the years ahead. And we're continually calibrating. We're seeing the benefits. We've got some room to invest a little more at this point in time, and we're managing to that pre-provision profit outcome and dividend per share growth outcome.

So we're pleased with the yield that we've seen over recent years, and we've got very measurable targets around the assumed benefits profile that we'll see from the current investments that we're making over the years ahead. So we'll continue to sort of watch that and manage that very closely.

Yes. Maybe just a couple of very quick thoughts, maybe like between the different types of investment that we're making and then maybe a slightly different productivity benefit profile. So in engineering, which I think is the most easy to sort of measure and realize productivity benefit in GenAI, I mean, we talked about the increase in terms of the velocity of change. I mean if we could increase by 50% in FY '26, we would. So we -- but we wouldn't seek to reduce our engineering. So I think we're going to continue to just try and push for more and more volume and quality of change and speed of execution. As Alan said, already across lots of different use cases, whether it's in fraud or in home loan verification, content synthesis in some of our service tasks or supporting our bankers.

Some of those benefits, they're, I think, incrementally small and they're a bit nearer term. I think where maybe there's some larger benefits, that will take many years. One of those would be some of the -- I think, the hardest areas of financial services. And certainly, where we've put huge amounts of both CapEx and OpEx like financial crime, scams, fraud, to some extent, cyber in that area is where we talk about sort $930 million of investment. It's a huge part of our -- at least on a relative basis, our operating expenditure.

That's not going to be realizable in the next couple of years. I think that's going to take some time. But I think the technologies that are available today and obviously are going to keep getting better, are going to enable just a different -- a very different and I think, much more effective approach at delivering better outcomes in that case for our customers and the community at a much lower cost.

The next question comes from Andrew Triggs.

Just a first question on cost just to pick up that last point. You saw 3% half-on-half growth in FTEs in the second half. Alan, wondered if you can unpack some of the drivers there. And are they sort of more expensive people you're bringing onboard given the likes of data and engineer type stuff that's coming on to the platform?

Yes. Yes, happy to sort of break that down a little bit. So yes, there's a 3% growth in spot FTE in the second half. There's a component of that, that relates to the in-sourcing that we've continued to do. We'll continue to build out our in-house engineering capability within our Bangalore team. There's an offsetting reduction in the -- over the year. That would be around 700 engineers of the 2,000 that we've hired are housed in Bangalore. There's an offset in reduction in some of the third-party ASPs.

And so you'll see the run rate cost of those in-sourced engineers roll through the full year next year within staff expenses, but there's also a commensurate reduction of the third-party costs that we've seen in the IT cost line through the course of this year, so there'll be commensurate offset.

We're really happy with the capability, the productivity, the efficacy, the quality of the engineering talent that we're bringing in to the Bangalore team. And so that pays off through the execution metrics that we continue to track around the loss and work quality and rework rates, so continue to be pleased with that.

The other source of -- we've also added, obviously, domestic engineers, many of whom are working on some of the technology infrastructure modernization and the GenAI platform builds that we've referred to. Some of that cost, obviously, given the nature of it, is capitalized. You won't see that necessarily emerge in OpEx in the next financial year. That work will be capitalized over the period where we'd expect to receive -- accrue the benefit of the work that we're producing. So you'll see that gradually emerge through amortization in the years ahead, matching the benefits profile that we see from that investment.

And so yes, we've seen -- you will see that growth in FTE was a function of the [indiscernible] that posture we've taken towards investment spend. The other component is the growth in proprietary lending. You've seen that, particularly in the retail bank through the course of the last financial year. We continue to invest strongly behind the proprietary distribution.

The productivity of our retail lenders and our business bankers, we're continuing to see improvements there. Decision again this year was we're not going to harvest that productivity by reducing the amount of proprietary lending that we have in the front line. We actually slightly increased it over the period and with a greater productivity. We're pleased with the results of that, that we see through the volume growth and the top line performance in the next year.

And just the second question on trading income, it was described as a rebound in the second half after weak first half, but the full year number is still towards probably the top end of what the historical range has been. Could you maybe just describe sort of the trading income conditions that you found and whether we should be expecting something more positive going forward than perhaps what we've previously expected with CBA?

Yes. I mean it's hard to just isolate the trading income within other operating income. There's an offsetting, we've referred to in a couple of places, an offsetting funding cost attached to that trading income. So when you see higher periods of trading income, as you've seen in the second half, there's actually a commensurate increase in funding costs related to that trading that appears with a net interest income.

So I wouldn't want to overstate the importance of the second half trading income in terms of the overall operating performance. It's certainly higher second half than first half, although it's a little more modest on a net basis when you take into account the funding costs for some of the -- for example, our commodities business where we've got higher physical inventories of precious metal holdings.

So it's been part of the second half revenue momentum, but I won't overstate the importance of it on a net basis. And then I think when you take total income into account, we're pleased with the second half, pleased with the overall trading income performance, and we'll seek to maintain that level of performance in the period ahead.

Thank you. The next question comes from Richard.

It's Richard Wiles from Morgan Stanley. I've got a question on sort of the expense environment generally, Matt. So for the economy, inflation has come down. It's now in the target range. But could you say cost pressures have eased much for the bank sector? Are you able to sort of give us a yes or no answer to that? And it would be great if you could specifically talk about salary inflation for frontline bankers and IT staff as well as other IT vendor costs. So are the pressures easing in the bank sector the way they are for the economy more broadly?

I mean in totality, whether yes or no, I'd say no. I think you'll see similar easing of some of the increases across a broad base of employees. I think some of the enterprise agreements, obviously, they were structured around higher increases in the earlier years, which clearly we're through. And I think we'll see perhaps lower wage growth there. But then it's a question then of sort of like mix effect on a relative basis in some of the roles that we're hiring, particularly in technology, and you can imagine all of the sort of sub skill sets. There's clearly a lot of pressure in -- on wages. It's not a huge market in the context of Australia. Frankly, there's very high inflation in some of those job types internationally.

And then I think as you look at technology, one of the other things that has drawn our attention is just you can see a lot of software repricing globally as well. So we're kind of watching that very closely as well in terms of what inflation there might be from some of our external software and licensing expenses. But we've made deliberate choices to bring much more engineering in-house. That's been -- I think, really important strategically lower cost as well because we're moving from -- some of that was provided by external parties.

And so yes. I mean, I think we're certainly going to continue to feel wage pressures. There's obviously been a lot of disruption across the other banks. There's a lot of hiring in -- at both sort of senior levels but also in some of those key areas, and we expect to have to compete for talent and obviously continue to focus on trying to grow talent even if that occasionally means we're providing that for some of our competitors.

The next question comes from [ Brian ].

Matt, 2 questions if I may. The first one just on AI. Your messaging today seems to be that revenue is strong. We can invest so you can have like a -- you can fund a higher cost number. I was just wondering, can you give us a feel whether AI is basically a cost-out story or a growing revenue story? And when -- if it is a cost-out story, when do you feel that we'll start to see it really flowing through?

Yes. So I mean, look, a couple of things, [ BJ ]. And Alan touched on this. We sort of -- we're looking obviously at pre-provision profit. We're very conscious of the performance that we would like to deliver in-year, but we're also really focusing on trying to invest in long-term earnings potential. And so this year, there's a number of things that we could have done differently if we wanted to deliver a stronger result, but we wanted to make those conscious choices and if we feel like we've got that flexibility and we think it's just a really important maybe period as some of the technology transitions.

And then specifically to your point, look, I think it's both a revenue opportunity. In some areas, it may be an expense opportunity. I think it's also just really important to be used defensively. If you think about from a threat perspective, like the quality, sophistication, frankly, velocity of some of the sort of cyber-attack vectors, so -- is increasing very rapidly. So I guess we sort of see it as being a cornerstone of being able to support a great customer proposition but also position the organization competitively. And I think sort of speed of execution is going to really matter over the long term.

And then I guess my answer in terms of the productivity or cost savings, I think, will be similar to what I said before. In some areas, we will just continue to try to deliver more in engineering. In the near term, we see, just about across all parts of the organization, an opportunity for all of our people to be using AI tools, and we certainly like to see that to do their job more effectively to a high level of quality so that our customers, I think, there'll be some nearer-term incremental maybe cost opportunities. But where we sort of reallocate that will depend again to the sort of first point.

And then, yes, on the longer term, yes, you can imagine that there are some much more efficient ways of delivering some of the things that we currently do. But I do think that's going to take some time, some years to work through some of the -- like the accuracy and quality that's required. Obviously, there will be a very high standard, standard of regulation placed upon us. But we do think that having core capabilities, learning by doing, delivering benefits is a structural underpinning of being able to perform well over the next decade or more.

Second question, if I may, Matt, just Bankwest, which now becomes like the digital brand of CommBank. Does that mean anything for this kind of long-running strategy that you'd rather originate stuff proprietary? Does it actually become the broker channel as well?

Well, I mean, look, it's heavily -- there's multiple parts to the overall strategy. I think the team has done a very good job of executing from -- because, look, I think the economics of a subscale universal bank, given the competitive change in the landscape, I think that's very difficult. And we did think, competitively, it would be good to have a digital low-cost proposition, which works very, very closely as very limited proprietary distribution, particularly in mortgages less so. Obviously, the digital experience really matters. Full-service, Yello CBA brand, which we're focused on proprietary, of course, the broker channel remains a very important channel. So we get that sort of balance, right?

And then I think we feel like it gives us more strategic flexibility to pursue some targeted propositions in different markets because certainly, in our view, the competitive context and intensity has shifted quite a bit over the last 5 years as in it's increased. I mean, you can see that even in the CoFR paper recently in terms of regional banking, that sort of myth that there wasn't much competition in banking because it was a concentrated industry structure. It's just that. It's a myth.

I mean, we look at some of the challenges that may be facing sort of smaller institutions. So I guess we're cognizant of that and adjusting for the future and want to make sure we can position to serve our customers as effectively as possible and obviously capture a large share of the economic profit that will be available in the market.

Matt, just on that, if you guys had, had peer #5 in that Slide 45, which is Macquarie, which has grown its share, which in APRA's recent paper about small- and medium-sized banks, that put Macquarie in the medium-sized bank bucket. Are they the one that's picking up that kind of cohort MFI share from CommBank? Or is it...

They're not actually in -- yes, they're not in the survey. If I unpack the survey for you, actually, the MFI share is very modest. But I think, again, there may be -- I'd say that's more survey error. But they aren't winning MFI share at least through that lens. They are a formidable competitor. I mean, yes. We would see them in a category that's beyond a medium bank. And I think there's a number of I guess, issues from a competitive context and the way that they go to market, but we recognize the benefits that they have in terms of their structure. And they have a slightly different, I guess, motivation and posture, and they're a good and strong competitor. And we think and worry about them at least as much as we do any of the other majors.

As an observation, your only competitor.

Thank you. The next question comes from John Storey.

I just wanted to get a little bit more into the drivers of net interest margin at a divisional level, particularly around your retail business. And you obviously called out a few times today how you've grown your proprietary channels. But if you go into your actual pack itself, you'll have to see that in the second half of this financial year. Your NII on home lending was down quite significantly.

I wanted to just get a little bit of your interpretation of what's happening there. And then just within the margin discussion, too, just your deposit margins have obviously been a very big tailwind around the retail division over the last few years. How should we think about that and the timing of deposit margins coming off in a low interest rate environment?

Yes. So on your first question around the retail bank, the retail bank overall had a 1 basis point improvement in net interest margin over the period. As you say, the home loan net interest income, I mean, we continue to see an elevated level of discounting across the front book of home lending over the course of the year. So that did result in some additional margin pressure from a discounting perspective over the period. You don't see it in the group net interest margin because there's some offset in timing differences around the February and May cash rate cuts. But the retail bank continues to operate in a very competitive front book housing market in particular.

The other elements of the net interest margin in the retail bank, which goes to that -- the home loan margin as a product margin as there was an increase in basis risk that I mentioned in the presentation through the second half, so that manifests most directly in the home loan product margin. And the group net interest margin, we called that out. That's 1 basis point of that 4 basis point funding cost headwind that we've seen at the group level. And so that put a bit of pressure on the margin on the retail bank.

Obviously, the retail bank benefits as does the group from those interest rate risk hedges that we have on from both an equity and a replicating portfolio perspective. So that provides a good degree of offset to the overall outcome.

Your second question, John, could you just repeat that?

Yes. It's just obviously if you go and have a look at the detailed disclosure that you provide, deposit margins within your NII, so it's obviously been a big tailwind to that overall NIM and provided quite a big cushion, right, despite all the competition and all the other drivers of margin, I guess, particularly around mortgages. Just how should we think about the timing, right, of how those deposit margin benefits could change in a lower cash interest rate environment?

Yes. So again, by deposit margin benefits, you're referring to the tractor, the interest rate risk hedges?

Well, it's really just the disclosure that you provided. So I appreciate the benefits around the replicating portfolio but obviously, the way that you provide the cap in the retail division. Obviously, 50% of NII comes from your deposit margin. I assume that must be interrelated if that's what you're talking to, but just on the -- yes.

So the -- those bits -- yes, that's right, John. So the benefits of those hedges turn up in the deposit revenue so that we allocate the replicating portfolio benefits to the deposit product. I mean the underlying momentum within deposit margins is deposit margin pressure due to the competitive environment and the mix shift within deposits, more customers enjoying those higher rate bonus saver balances, for example, and the ongoing competitive pressure that we covered earlier in the call.

So I think that, that between the competitive aspect and also the easing environment, how many more cash rate cuts are we likely to see over the next financial year, they will be the key factors around deposit margin competition and the trajectory of that in the period ahead. On the offsetting hedges, I mentioned, I think, equity hedge is going to be pretty neutral.

In earnings terms between this year and the next financial year, if you go back 5 years on the replicating tractor, we did enjoy a period of very low 5-year swap rate 5 years ago. And so those are the hedges that will continue to roll off and roll back on at the current more elevated level of 5-year swaps. So you'll continue to see a tailwind from replicating portfolio into the next financial year and indeed then the financial year after that until a couple of years before the swap rate that rolls off is close to where we're at current level. So you continue to see that into the next year.

The next question comes from Matt Dunger.

Yes. Matt Dunger from Bank of America. Just looking at the Slide 37, which Alan you called out, Matt, you're right in saying the opportunity cost of holding capital is pretty significant. It looks like about a 250 basis point drag on ROE on my numbers. Are you saying this is the right level of buffers? And could you confirm the macro is driving the higher buffers? Are you also concerned around the regulatory environment?

No, we're not concerned about the regulatory environment, and I wouldn't seek to imply that the current surplus that we're running above the regulatory minimum is the buffer that we think is going to be necessary. I think, obviously, what buffer we would like to hold is a function of a whole range of different factors, as I said earlier. Ultimately, yes, we could boost ROE by having less capital. But the opportunity cost of that capital over the long term versus where we've seen the differences between cost of equity, alternative cost of funding instruments, outlook on RWA, on growth on certainly sort of stress losses, which, as we've seen today, the credit environment is very benign, and so with all of those factors taken into account, that's the position that we're -- we believe is optimal at this point.

Obviously, we revisit it very frequently. We talk about it twice a year, but we're revisiting it every month in terms of alternative and best uses of capital. Which of those are likely to deliver the best overall outcomes? I think we'd certainly acknowledge the uncertainty in the environment, but it's obviously impossible to predict the future. But in terms of near term or sort of impact or pressure on credit losses, as you've seen, it's been pretty benign over the period. And given the provision coverage that we've got versus the central scenario, we've got quite a bit of flexibility there, too.

Great. Just a follow-up on that. It seems like buying just about anything would be EPS accretive. Can you give us any thoughts on what's stopping you on M&A? Any potential criteria you would have to look at M&A?

Yes. No, look, I know you've been flipping, but just to use part of your question, I think there's probably plenty of people who've been down that path and found a way to destroy a lot of value through M&A. So look, obviously, we recognize the premium. We review and challenge ourselves regularly. It's a high bar as it should be for -- certainly for anything of any sort of scale within our core markets where we believe we've got real capability that we think would be good use of shareholder capital.

Of course, beyond the risk-weighted asset sort of lending growth, increases in our investment, look, we've made some small acquisitions to augment our technology and our customer experience. They're always on the table. But I mean, ultimately, to your point, yes, I think it's incumbent on us to consider lots of different opportunities. But I think our experience and what we've observed over decades of M&A is that any of that should be approached with a great deal of humility given the realized benefits in just about all instances.

Thank you. The next question comes from Matthew Wilson.

I have 2. The good story in this result, which is a pretty soft result is the business bank, which has been long growing and winning market share. Could you tell us what percentage of the new 2 business bank customers are coming from the broker channel? And I have a second question.

Yes. I mean, Matt, we've talked about that before in terms of it's like 19% of our customers [ through ] broker and the mix of flow will vary. So it's very low in MCG at the top end. I think it's just below 10%. Then as you go down to a small business where maybe there's a higher concentration of products like asset finance, it would be a higher proportion. We haven't seen that really change over the period.

Okay. That's good. And then secondly, you're obviously a clear leader in technology. Your perspective on stablecoins would be valuable. If they become a means of exchange, a store of value, then they become money. I mean such a scenario, it appears that we don't need household transaction accounts. There's no reason for us to give you our money. We just hold it in a digital wallet and transact accordingly. How do you see this scenario playing out?

Well, I mean, it's -- there's a lot of different assumptions in what you're sort of looking at, Matt. I mean as you...

There's only 2 really.

Well -- but I mean, let's talk about the variations between that. So I mean, strategically, we've thought about this quite a bit. I mean, some proportion of that we're working obviously with the Central Bank on a wholesale digital currency. I think there's little appetite at least at the moment for a retail digital currency or deposits that would compete with the banking system.

Yes, stablecoins have grown enormously internationally. Yes, we're sort of interested in that. I think a lot of that money is coming from emerging markets, where understandably some of those countries and flows are getting pegged -- would rather be pegged against the U.S. dollar.

Look, I think there's certainly the opportunity for that technology more broadly to sort of lower transaction costs and particularly cross-border. So I don't see something that's quickly going to be competing directly with the ADIs from a deposit perspective, but that's not to say that we aren't and shouldn't be thinking about how the tokenization more broadly but in this case of currency, what that looks like from -- versus fiat currency and what the impacts might be on the domestic banking system.

The only thing I'd add to that, Matt, is that...

Would it be fair to say that -- yes.

Sorry, Matt. The only thing I'd add to that is just the regulatory response has been interesting to watch around the world as well. So you've obviously seen the GENIUS Act in the U.S. A really important component of the GENIUS Act was the stablecoins in the U.S. -- for the U.S. dollar stablecoins operating in the U.S. are now not permitted to pay interest.

And so -- I mean, I think the regulatory posture, although it's made it much clearer and simpler from a stablecoin perspective, I think there was clearly a focus on maintaining the financial stability and maintaining the important role of banks in the U.S. economy. You've seen a very similar -- a very -- actually a very different posture but with a similar intent with the Bank of England. And they're working papers around stablecoins in the U.K. context.

To back a stablecoin in the U.K., you have to deposit the equivalent dollar at the Bank of England, and you won't be earning any interest on that deposit at the Bank of England. And again, it strikes me that those regulators in the U.S. and the U.K., in particular, are very focused on the advent of stablecoins, what the use cases are and how they interact side by side with a healthy banking system, which is important from a national capability perspective.

So it's an interesting one to watch. I know -- I think you might subscribe to Russell Napier's newsletter. He had a very interesting and informative piece on stablecoins in the last couple of weeks. So I think Russell's conclusion was actually similar that he didn't see it as a direct competitive threat to banking but obviously a marginal source of new treasury security purchase over the next few years in the U.S. economy, which could be [ important ].

He also said that retail deposits become wholesale deposits, which is consistent with the McKinsey's paper as well. So this thing is evolving faster than any of us would have thought 2 years ago given we have legislation now in both the U.S. and Europe and the banking system is still very much paper-based versus the digital trends that we're starting to see emerge globally.

Yes.

Thank you, Matt. The next question comes from Ed.

Just one thing you haven't mentioned and you didn't call out in your NIM walk was around deposit mix. You call that deposit competition. In the retail and business bank margin comments, you did make a comment around deposit mix. Can you just talk about historically in -- as we kind of come to more rate cuts in a cycle, how you're seeing deposit mix at the moment and how you see it going forward, please, in a NIM context?

Yes. I mean the -- you can see most clearly what's happened in deposit mix terms probably on Slide 61, where you can see both for the retail bank and the business bank how that deposit mix has evolved. There hasn't been dramatic moves in deposit mix over the period. You have seen, I'd say, a stabilization in noninterest-bearing transaction deposits as an overall proportion of the deposit -- deposits in both the retail bank and the business bank.

We've seen a slight reduction in term deposit mix within the retail bank. Much of that increase was absorbed in the at-call savings products. Again, I mentioned earlier the higher rate of customers that are achieving the bonus rate, the award rate. And so there's been an impact on both the retail bank and the business bank. The business bank distinct from the retail bank, actually seen a slight increase in TD mix over the period.

So I mean, the -- it's hard to separate the mix effect from the competitive effect because if the competitive effect has to offer generous attractive bonus rates to a customer perspective then that engenders some of the mix change that you see. So the 2 factors are sort of 1 and the same in my mind. We've noted in the divisional commentary the -- that switching that we're seeing at a customer level and at the group level, that's one and the same as the competitive effect that attracts more savings into higher yield products.

And then just one very quick one on cost just to clarify. Today, you talked about increase in FTE and obviously, staff costs still going up, but it's more of a mix impact. You talked about software replacement -- or sorry, increasing costs coming through there. You've got the capitalized software balance has gone up, so amortization will increase, I imagine, over time.

It all sounds like you've got costs growing above inflation. And I imagine, you've talked about historically looking at pre-provision profit over necessary costs of managing the bank that way. But if revenue does start to fall a little bit, do you believe you've got the capability to pull back the costs if required?

I mean I wouldn't so much say it's a question of the first lever is pulling back the costs that we're obviously investing behind our strategic priorities and pleased with the return that we're seeing on that investment. It's more of a question of the productivity that we continue to deliver.

So if you look at that last 12-month period, we delivered the productivity dividend, which was 3.4% of the group's overall cost base. And that's actually pretty close to the inflationary effect that we've seen over the period. And then we made some conscious choices, as we talked about, to invest behind the technology modernization, the additional investment spend, the GenAI and the proprietary distribution spend. And so that's where you -- the productivity creates the optionality. And so the focus is to continue to generate the productivity that continues to generate that optionality so that we can continue to absorb inflationary increases and then make decisions around the investment agenda.

And so I think we've got a good muscle built over many years from a productivity perspective. We'll continue to focus on that and then make choices commensurate with how top line is moving, how the productivity improvements are going and where the NPV accretive options are from an investment perspective.

Thank you. The last question comes from Tom strong.

Just another question around business banking. You had another strong half of lending growth, but your business transaction accounts actually stalled in the half in terms of the growth. Does this reflect more of doing a better job lending to existing customers? Or is this more new to bank lends only?

No. I mean no change in strategy. I think the team have executed extremely well. And I guess one of the things we look at it over the arc of time, particularly over the last sort of like 4 or 5 years, I mean, really big gains in MFI. I think it was 180 basis points even in the last 12 months, very strong share of transactional deposits. You can see that in terms of the relative growth in tran balances, which, I think, must be something like $30 billion over that sort of 5 years. You can see the mix effect of that and then the leverage, big focus on lending into the customer base and providing a full range of products and services.

Another strong period of asset growth. I think we're observing -- we saw the last set of results from peers, some pretty sharp margin deterioration, and I think the team has done a good job of balancing both a strong volume but staying out of some of that really competitive pricing. So it will be interesting to see how that sort of plays out across peers, particularly given what we were talking about earlier in terms of their capital position and constraints. And so no, I mean, I think, overall, that underpinning of strong transaction account balance, notwithstanding maybe some mix effects in terms of deposits but then growing into the existing customer base, is our primary focus.

Yes, Tom, maybe just to add, the business bank transaction accounts have grown and transaction deposit balances have grown both over the year and over the half. What you might be referring to is in the institutional bank we've seen a headline reduction in transaction deposits year-on-year. That's actually just a product change.

So in the past, we've had a product which -- a pooling facility product that grosses up both sides of the balance sheet. We've switched that to a new product over the course of the first half of the financial year, which resulted in a netting down of transaction deposits and associated lending against that deposit, effectively an offset account. And so that led to a headline reduction in institutional bank and transaction deposit balances. But ex the mix effect of the product change is actually underlying growth in those underlying transaction deposit balances. So pleased with the growth in transaction accounts and balances over each of the businesses over the course of the year.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of our time. Thank you for joining us for this briefing, and we look forward to continuing the discussions. Thank you.