‘We recorded a net profit of 925 million euros in the second quarter of 2024. Compared to the result for the previous quarter, our total income benefited from several factors, including higher levels of net interest income, higher net fee and commission income, solid insurance revenues and better trading & fair value income, as well as the seasonal peak in dividend income. Costs were down significantly, since the bulk of the bank and insurance taxes for the full year is always recorded in the first quarter of the year. Disregarding bank and insurance taxes, costs edged up by 1% quarter-on-quarter. Loan loss impairment charges were up on the very modest level recorded in the previous quarter, resulting in – what is still – a very low credit cost ratio of 9 basis points in the first half of 2024.

Consequently, when adding up the results for the first and second quarters, our net profit for the first half of 2024 amounted to 1 431 million euros. At first sight, this is much lower than the result for the year-earlier period, but that period had benefited from a positive 0.4-billion-euro one-off gain on the sale of the Irish loan and deposit books. Excluding that one-off gain, our half-yearly profit was in line with the year-earlier figure.

Our loan portfolio continued to expand, increasing by 2% quarter-on-quarter and by 4% year-on-year, with growth being recorded in each of the group’s core countries. Customer deposits were up 2% quarter-on-quarter and were stable year-on-year. The share of bank and insurance products sold digitally continued to rise: based on a selection of core products, around 55% of our banking and 27% of insurance products were sold through a digital channel, up from 50% and 24% a year ago. Of paramount importance in our digitalisation journey is our personal digital assistant Kate, which we continuously develop further with the aim of ensuring maximum convenience for and support of our customers. To date, around 4.8 million customers have already used Kate, an increase of approximately 40% on the year-earlier figure.

Our solvency position remained strong, with a fully loaded common equity ratio of 15.1% at the end of June 2024. The solvency ratio for KBC Insurance under the Solvency II framework amounted to 200%. Our liquidity position remained very solid too, as illustrated by an LCR of 160% and NSFR of 139%.