good morning. Happy Year of the Horse.

Thank you for joining us today. As we enter 2026, the global environment continue to remains very fluid.

Geopolitical tensions, ongoing shift in supply chains, and evolving trade and tariffs regime. However, operating conditions in our core markets have remained broadly supportive.

Across ASEAN, momentum towards deeper regional integration is building up. You look at trade, capital flows, and cross-border investments continue to expand, reinforcing the region role as a key growth engine.

This create opportunities well-positioned regional bank like UOB to support clients across ASEAN. Now, against this backdrop, we deliver a resilient full-year operating profit of $7.7 billion in 2025, 4% down.

Our diversified business model remains a core strength. Net interest margins moderated as rates declined, but strong fee momentum across wholesale and retail businesses helped to offset the impact, lifting our full-year fee income to a record high.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, trends were positive. Net interest income increased 4%.

Margin rose to 1.84% as we lowered funding costs. Net fee income was up 2%, while expenses remained flat.

On the asset quality front, following our portfolio review in the third quarter, we proactively strengthen our provision buffer. Credit trends improved in the fourth quarter and are moving in the right direction, with NPL ratio lower at 1.5% and total credit costs at 19 basis points.

Our balance sheet remained strong with higher CET1 ratio at 15.1% and robust liquidity ratios. The board has recommended a final dividend of 71 cents per ordinary share, bringing our full-year dividend to $1.56 per share.

This represent a payout ratio of around 50%. In determining the final dividend, we excluded the pre-emptive provisions of $615 million recognized in the third quarter last year.

In addition to our regular dividends, we also returned excess capital to shareholders through a special dividend of 50 cents per share paid over two tranches during 2025. We remain committed to our capital return plan announced last year, ongoing till 2027.

Our diversified income stream helped ensure earnings stay resilient even in uncertain conditions, and we see promising momentum in our ASEAN strategy. We see increasing contribution from our ASEAN-4 markets across both wholesale and retail business.

In fact, just for your information, if you add the ASEAN-4, total income is up 5% year-on-year versus group total income down 3%. The ASEAN is actually positively trending upwards.

Now, let me talk a little bit about the wholesale banking. It's also delivered a solid growth in trade, transaction-related activities, and deposit flow.

For trade, I think 2024 we generated $36 billion, 2025 $45 billion, actually a growth of 26% year-on-year. Global markets also benefited from active clients hedging amid market volatility.

Customer-related treasury income hit a record high. Retail banking delivered healthy growth across card billings, up 6% year-on-year, CASA up 12%, and high-net-worth AUM up 6% as we deepened customer relationship across the region.

Our wealth franchise, continue to scale, net new money inflow lifting AUM to $201 billion, and the invested AUM mix continue its steady increase. Our digital wealth momentum, this is dealing with the mass affluent market, actually remained very, very strong, with sales more than doubled year-on-year.

That is actually they apply through our TMRW app. Just to tell you the volume, I think for two 2024, we generated $1.57 billion.

For last year, we generated $3.84 billion, up by 144%. That is through our digital platform.

Now, looking ahead, we expect the region growth to continue to be powered by structural trends, including digitalization, infrastructure investments, and deepening regional integration. We are confident that our enlarged regional scale, stronger platforms, and capabilities, we are well-placed to grow in tandem with the region.

At UOB, our strategy is clear and consistent. We are deepening our strength in connectivity, enhancing our expertise and digital capabilities to support the flow of trade, capital, and investment across ASEAN and Greater China and with the rest of the world.

We are also unlocking synergies, such as through our One Bank program across wholesale and retail customer base, strengthening our digital wealth platforms to enhance our services and solutions. With our strong balance sheet, network, and franchise, we are well-placed to support our customer through cycles and capture emerging opportunities.

Our guidance for this year is low single-digit loan growth, full-year NIM of 1.75% to 1.8%, high single-digit fee growth, low single-digit operating costs growth, total credit cost of 25 to 30 basis points. Thank you for continue to support us, and now I invite my CFO, Yung Chee, to share more.

Thank you, Ee Cheong. Good morning, everybody.

Let me take you through the financials update. For the full-year 2025, our net profit came in at $4.7 billion on the back of operating profit of $7.7 billion.

The fee income for us was at a record high. What you see there is the net fee income number.

On a gross basis, that number actually came out to $3.5 billion. On net interest margin, I think this is something that comes up, quite often in terms of the media and analyst questions.

Our full-year NIM was 1.89% on the back of continued pressure on benchmark rates. Actually what's interesting is if you look at on the right side, the fourth quarter NIM for us was at 1.84%.

If you recall, our third quarter NIM was at 1.82%. I can discuss more on the NIM in a subsequent slide.

On trading and investment income, we have all-time highs for customer treasury income, but the overall trading and investment income for the full year came in slightly below, $1.6 billion compared to the year before, because last year was exceptionally well. Next, please.

If I go through some of the numbers on this page maybe specifically for fourth quarter, if you look at the operating profit line, we generated $1.8 billion of operating profit, slightly below quarter-on-quarter. If you look at the net profit line, that's $1.4 billion.

Our expenses remained stable at roughly $1.5 billion, and total credit costs for the quarter was 19 basis points. Next, I'll go through some of the segmental breakdown in terms of the financials.

If you look at our Group Retail's operations, profit before tax was at $2 billion. This income was largely supported by double-digit growth in wealth amidst some of the pressures from lower rates, as well as market competition.

Our credit cards business continue to achieve new highs. On the bottom right, you see that the gross card billings grew by 6%.

On the left side, the corresponding cards income, this is net, is at 1%. On a gross basis, that figure is actually 8%.

Both wealth as well as cards business is demonstrating strong growth. The credit card business for last quarter of for the year, effectively, was because of our loyalty rewards alignment in Thailand.

That was a one-time cost, going forward, we expect that to more closely mirror our gross rate. Asset quality for the retail business remains sound.

Maybe I'll move to wholesale banking next. On the wholesale bank, profit before tax declined amidst lower rates and keen competition.

Our transaction bank continues to power about 50% of wholesale bank's income, driven by largely very encouraging trajectory in our CASA business and our trade business. As CEO mentioned earlier on, our trade loans actually grew by 20-over percent in the in the year.

If you look at the bottom of the total gross loans, I think you will see the trade numbers growing from 35 to 45, that's more than a 25% growth year-on-year. Elsewhere for the wholesale banking business, if you look at our deposit growth as well, at the bottom, you see the deposit growth at 7%, but our CASA portion of the deposits grew double digits, leading to overall CASA ratio for the wholesale banking business now at 60%.

Retail CASA is 57%, wholesale at 60%. Overall, the bank's CASA ratio is now at about 58.5%.

Next, on global markets, year-on-year, our global markets business grew 23%. This is again an all-time high for us for our global markets business.

It's largely led by customer treasury activities from hedging as well as wealth demand. The non-customer portion of the business was positioned to capitalize on liquidity and trading conditions.

There is some normalization on in the fourth quarter, but year-on-year, you saw a 23% growth in this line of business. Next, I'll go through some of the specific financial categories.

Let's talk about net interest income first. Overall, net interest income inched down by about 3% on the back of largely interest rate movements, but it's also negated by the fact that our average interest-bearing assets grew.

At the bottom, you will see 477 to 495 as demonstration of the loan assets that we grew over the year, but it was not enough to mitigate the pressures from benchmark rates. Net interest margin, however, for the year, even though it's at 1.89%, if you look at the quarter-by-quarter trends, third quarter net interest margin, we reported at 1.82%, fourth quarter, we reported at 1.84%.

The red bar is actually showing the pressures and effects of the asset repricing, both because of rates, but also keen competition. The green bar is the actions that we've actively taken to mitigate some of the funding costs.

We've also done some changes in mix in order to balance the requirements of having the right NII versus NIM outcomes. On this page, what's interesting to note as well, a natural question would be, although that's a reported fourth quarter, where is exit NIM today?

As of the end of January, our exit NIM is at 1.82%. You will see that NIMs are sort of bouncing around that level already, giving us some confidence in terms of where NIM and SORA rates are looking like for 2026.

Next page. We mentioned earlier on that our fee income is at a record high.

This page shows that year-on-year, our fee income grew 10%, and it's consistently across all categories, whether it's in terms of our loan, our wealth, credit cards, as well as others. Next.

Expenses, we've continued to maintain very disciplined on our cost while prioritizing some of the technology and regulatory investments. Year-on-year, our overall costs actually fell 2%, but when you look at it from a cost-to-income ratio, it ticks up because income actually fell.

Next. On performing assets, our NPL ratio remained broadly stable.

It dipped slightly to 1.5%. If you look at the bottom of the chart, you'll see that our NPA formation has come off from the 800-over million in third quarter.

It is now just shy of $600 million. The trend is for NPAs to continue downwards for us.

We did have some spike in the third quarter, but it's now getting better. Next page on the provisions.

Again, our third quarter provisions caused a spike in terms of the specific credit cost as well as total credit costs, but for the fourth quarter, this trend has normalized. Specific credit cost is now at 26, and our total credit cost at 19.

If you recall, our guidance previously on total credit costs was a normalized range of 25 to 30. Next, on provision coverage.

With the exceptional provision top-up that we did in the third quarter, we brought our coverage up to 1%, and it remains at 1%. What's also interesting is NPA coverage at the bottom, from 100 to 97, but our unsecured NPA coverage actually went up to 254% once you include the collaterals into consideration.

Just to give you a snapshot on where the key hotspots are, we highlighted earlier on that the key hotspots for us in terms of credit costs are in Greater China and in US. We indicate here the size of the loans in those markets, as well as the credit costs associated with it.

On the left-hand side, you will see that for Greater China, the credit cost from 2024 to 2025 went from 40 basis points to 72 basis points, whereas in the US, from 173 to 110. It's still elevated, but directionally, we have taken active steps to restructure, to recover some of the impaired assets in that country.

On the right side, it shows you what we have actively done to increase the provision coverage. For Greater China, from 1%, we've raised it to 2.1%, and in the US, from 0.8% to 4.7%.

What this goes to show you and to assure our investors is that the provisions that we've put aside for these two hotspots are more than adequate for us to navigate any potential issues coming from this hotspot. The following page talks about the customer loans going up 4% year-on-year.

It's stable quarter-on-quarter. I think I can probably move a bit quicker through this page.

Funding, from a liquidity and funding positions for our continued CASA growth, it continues to remain strong with our LCR at 147% and NSFR at 116%. These are all comfortably above minimum requirements.

Our CASA deposits, as I mentioned earlier on, on an aggregate basis is now at 58.4%. Next, on capital.

Capital position remains robust with CET1 at a healthy 15.1%. Even on a fully diluted basis with Basel IV requirements, it's 14.9%.

This allows us the ability to continue to deliver steady and sustainable returns for our shareholders. On the last page I have is on dividends.

As mentioned earlier on by CEO, our core payout ratio continues to be 50% as we committed. This includes the adjustment that we did when we did the provision for Q3.

We said we would adjust it so that shareholders would not be worse off. Overall, the payout ratio at 50% means a total dividend for us at $1.56.

The final dividend component of that is 71 cents. I would also mention in terms of the capital return plan that was committed to shareholders in February of last year, $3 billion.

Of the $3 billion, we have already done more than 50% executed. $1 billion of which was in the form of special dividends and another $2 billion in the form of share buybacks, of which we've completed a third of the plan.

In total, more than 50% of that capital return plan has been done, and we are well on track to execute on the rest of it across the next two years. That brings me to the end of the presentation.

Maybe we open up for questions.

Vibeka with Bloomberg. I have three questions today.

My first is for Mr. CEO.

Why did you revise down fee income growth for 2026 to high single digit from a year earlier, a range of double digit and high digit?

What is your question?

The fee income growth, we had revised it down to high single digits. I think the backdrop of it was our loan growth for the year, for 2026, we expect it to be low single digits.

In terms of fee income, there are multiple components. There's the loan component, there's credit cards, there's wealth.

Both credit cards and wealth and customer treasury, investment banking, all those are all still demonstrating very strong growth. The primary reason for that adjustment was more because of a more conservative loan growth outlook.

Where do you see UOB's 2026 growth trajectory from here? What are some of the biggest risks you anticipate?

I think the market is very uncertain, right? Biggest risk is something that is a little bit beyond our control.

The ASEAN we're talking about, I feel quite confident. As you can see, the ASEAN-4 actually growth 6%.

We continue to focus on connectivity, we focus on less capital-intensive activities. Trade, you still need to trade, cash management.

These are all the initiatives you want to make sure that we're able to weather, rather than just purely based on loan growth. It is very uncertain.

Nobody is sure.

Lastly, how is UOB using AI to boost productivity?

I think is on top of this, I think definitely we train our 20,000 people. We tied up with industry expert, Accenture, see how we can spearhead AI initiative.

I think it's a tool. I think it's important.

It's an important tool. I want to train my people to make sure that they are taking full advantage of the tool to increase productivity.

Have there been, or do you anticipate, any changes to headcount due to automation in the workforce?

I think certain job maybe you can't avoid it, right? I think our challenge is we do have a HR initiative program to make sure that we are able to convert some of this into better use.

I think important is this environment, the last thing we want is to inject fear to our staff, to give them the opportunity to learn as much as possible. If they learn, I think that would be, to me, I think that is most important.

Learn as much as possible, take full advantage of AI. We have a dedicated unit to look at AI to see how we can transform them.

Then if we hit a certain optimum scale, then we know how to reallocate our people. Make better use.

End of the day, the ownership is the person itself.

If I could add to that, of our 30-over thousand staff, most of them have all been given AI tools at their fingertips already today. The only countries that have not been rolled out to is because of regulatory considerations.

Any country that allows us, we've already rolled those tools out to our staff. About 20,000 of our staff have already gotten some of the basic training in terms of AI.

We have set up an Innovation Academy to roll out training programs for our staff. Now, we see these tools as enablers, right, to enhance productivity, to help us gain insights into customer behavior, to improve service quality for customers, et cetera.

It's not a tool for cutting headcount. The focus continues to be enhancing client outcomes.

It's about enhancing our banking relationships with customers. It's also helping our staff with advice-driven solutions so that we can enhance their productivity.

Any other questions? Maybe Asian Banker, Russell.

Hi, Russell from The Asian Banker. Firstly, congratulations, Ee Cheong and Yung Chee, on the resilient set of results.

I think your strategy driving fee income from the retail side and wealth side, has really paid off. My question is on the trade loans.

Recently, during last year's ASEAN conference, there's been talk about the global supply chains and how businesses are moving from cost and efficiency to more this resilience and responsiveness. Trade loans has been a huge part of your growth.

How has that allocation shifted between trade on the intra-ASEAN side and Asia and Greater China? How has that shift changed over the past year?

How has your bigger scale in the region contributed to UOB having a greater advantage in this space?

Actually, the trade loans constitute about 13% of our total. It's not that big.

We are actually working on that because it's more capital-friendly, right, and also short term. Right?

Even the volatility, this is why we are emphasizing on that. The growth is actually double-digit, but in terms of percentage of our total loan is about 13%.

That's right. To give you a bit of sense on that, our overall loan portfolio grew 5%, but the trade loans component of it, the 13%, grew at 26%.

The speed at which trade loans are growing, again, this reflects our connectivity for ASEAN trading economy. That growth remains very resilient.

Despite what you hear about the geopolitical tariffs situations and so on, I think there's active realignment of supply chains, and the trade loans actually demonstrate that. Why we concentrate on trade loans even though the margins are slimmer is that trade actually encourages a lot of other activities that are cross-selling in nature.

For example, if you do trade, they tend to be cross-border. Cross-border requires FX.

If you are doing the FX, then you could pretty much package together interest rate hedging, cash management. The broader wallet associated with trade isn't because of trade alone, but it actually has implications on how we shape the business.

Trade continues to be a very active, very important focus for us driving our ASEAN footprint. Then

another question if I could add, on the SME banking side of things, you're anticipating single-digit low growth for this coming year. How is that impacting how you're conduct banking with SME clients?

Are you pivoting more towards fee income for that? I understand that UOB has quite a whole entire ecosystem for SME clients.

I think generally I would say we are very much market-driven, right? SME customer, because of the market uncertainty, they themselves also take a wait-and-see attitude.

It's not like I want to give them loan, they will accept. They're also cautious, right?

We also share our experience, our advice, what should they do. If you look at even today with the latest tariff, right, from Singapore 10% to 15%, that is overnight thing.

They also have to wait and see, right? It's something that they cannot plan.

This is where UOB, we are right by our customers. We have to help them to how to restructure, how to prolong the tenure, how to help them to grow.

This is where our franchise value is, right, rather than just focus on ourselves. Now we take a question from Ryan from BT.

Good morning, Ryan from BT. Happy New Year to everybody.

My question is on the tariffs that you mentioned. Also, I think in January, we sort of saw the Venezuela crisis, fairly short-lived.

How does all this sort of impact your ASEAN outlook for 2026? The opportunities you sort of see there?

I think definitely I don't have a final number here because it's just been announced. The whole intra-regional trade is also, irregardless of US, look at China trade with ASEAN, I think the number is quite encouraged.

In ASEAN, we have no choice. We have to support each other.

I still think that is quite robust. You can see from the trade volume.

Last year, we started this, and this year. Then, in fact, the tariff will be even higher.

Today, we try to equalize. The fact is, if you equalize everybody, then there's no competitive advantage or disadvantage.

You understand? Because now US sweep in, can say everybody is 15% or 10%, back to square one.

There is no advantage to you or disadvantage.

If I'll dial back a little bit in history as well, we sat here in April last year reporting on first quarter results, two weeks after Liberation Day, and we were like, oh no, all this tariff being announced, what's going to happen? If you look what happened in the subsequent quarters was, yes, there was some dampening effect in terms of loan growth because customers in general, corporates, took a step back, we have to reassess and realign our supply chains and where do we position our capital and where do we place our factories and so on.

Loan growth did dampen, but by and large, the activities continued. Trade continued.

The supply chains shifted, which is why you see year-on-year our trade loans, our growth in those activities continued to be double digit. Fast-forward to now, you see realignment in tariffs again.

I think there will be some time required for the system to absorb, comprehend, and react to it, but we are confident those activities will continue. As in the companies' business activities will find a way to navigate through that and continue.

The important thing is for us to stay focused on helping our customers navigate that.

Chanya.

The credit costs, can we look at slide 14 again? Because over there, you've broken down your your Chinese, your, as in Greater China and your your US

Yeah. Hotspots.

Hotspot, okay, hotspots. Of the Greater China hotspots, what is what is Hong Kong CRE?

Is it all Hong Is it, and what portion, you don't have to Just give us a rough, double-digit, low double-digit, teens, that that sort of thing for Hong Kong versus China itself. Is it all CRE on both those buckets?

Also for the US buckets, was it Were you lending directly, were they mortgages, or were they like loans to funds, funds because you had a financial institution group customers?

Okay. A couple of questions there.

Maybe I'll deal with the US one, it's a little bit easier. The hotspots have been commercial real estate, right?

All those billion, whatever billion was there,

not all of that is commercial real estate. That's our loan book.

The $45 billion and $17 billion is the loan book.

That's the loan book of our business there, right? That's not the problem loans.

If that was problem loans, no, no, that's the size of our loan book there. In terms of the problem that we've been facing

are

specifically in the asset class of commercial real estate. That's only a small fraction of that.

A small fraction?

Yes.

As in 1%, 2%?

Was it, one thing One, yeah.

1%?

1%.

Of both of that?

Approximately. It's specifically commercial real estate.

Your other part of the question was, are these to clients, are these to funds? It's a good mix.

Some of it are to our clients whom we support network clients from Asia who have decided to operate in the US. There are some who are our global financial institutions sponsored clients as well.

There's a good mix of that. Coming back to Hong Kong, I think a similar question, you mentioned about mortgages and so on.

We actually do not have a significant mortgage book out of Hong Kong. The problem assets, again, are commercial real estate related.

We don't give the breakdown on how much of that is Hong Kong versus China.

What is your outlook for, I know you said it's normalized, but what is the outlook for the asset quality this year?

I think given some of the macro conditions, I think there is still some potential challenges to be navigated, right? That said, I think we have preemptively already anticipated many of these.

What we see in our pipeline, what we see are the potential hotspots, we have, in the last quarter, put aside that $615 million of provisions because we were anticipating some of this. What I would say is that our buffers that we have put aside today allow us to navigate these potential hotspots for us and stay within our guidance of credit cost between 25 to 30 basis points.

Can I ask one more question? I don't know how many I'm allowed.

You had a small write-back in 4Q, of $59 million. What was that?

Was that a recovery? Let's

double-check that. It's small,

in the fourth quarter, $59 million. Also, DBS has been Yeah,

that was a write-back. Yeah.

Also

on the other parts. Your peer has been very open about how much it has in management overlay.

I think at one point,

One peer.

One peer. I know, I know, but you have also talked about your overlays in the past, you don't have to give the exact number, $1.358 billion, but it used to be above a billion, towards the $1.4 billion area.

Please give us an idea whether it is around there, below, or above, just below or above.

I think we'll stick with not giving that information as we have not given it before. Again, I'll emphasize that the GP buffer that we put aside is 1%.

Okay. All right.

If you look between Q3 and Q4, even though we raised it to 1% in Q3, it's still 1% in Q4.

I have to calculate, oh my god.

It's still 1% in Q4, and it's enough to support our guidance. Also,

the unsecured portion is 254%.

Okay. That

is actually something very important to note, the unsecured number. When you look at credit cost, there are quite a number of metrics to look at,

and

it looks at different things. The unsecured number is, after taking collateral into account, what is the portion that's unsecured?

How much coverage do you have against unsecured? At 254%, we are actually very well-covered in terms of the exposures to unsecured.

Any other questions?

Rae from Reuters.

Hi. Thank you for the presentation.

I'm Rae from Reuters. Just a question, you mentioned about ASEAN growth.

There's also been some headwinds facing the Indonesian market in recent times. How do you see that impacting the business and the outlook for the market there?

I think we have to focus on long term, right? If every day you talk about short term, very difficult to manage organization like this.

Short term, I can tell you, Indonesia, our loan exposure is 3% of the total loan. 8% in Thailand.

Thailand also going through all the volatility. End of the day, I think we have to take a look at the whole ASEAN.

Indonesia being the biggest country in ASEAN, 300 million population, there is enough opportunity for us. Obviously, is selective, customer choice, and I still think there are opportunity there.

The fact is today if you look at most of the foreign banks, they already exited the market. Most of them, they slowed down.

That actually give us a lot of opportunity, being closer to the ground, being able to maybe get a lot more nimble and faster. Having said that, our focus is still basically on trade, right, so that we are a little bit more flexible.

Unless the customer is good, yeah, we're prepared to give a term exposure. The overall, if you can see, the growth, despite all this tariff, the ASEAN-4 is actually growing quite well, right?

We still can continue to grow because we have a very small market share. You look at Indonesia, 300 million, 3%.

I can grow to 5%. Thailand, yes, going through the up and down,

but

I believe things are stabilized. You can see the portfolio quality seems to be sustainable.

On

Vietnam, it's still exhibiting high single digits in terms of GDP growth. I think we look at the region as a whole, there are continuing opportunities for us.

Yeah. It's a portfolio, right?

It's a whole portfolio.

I think just to address Chanya's earlier question on Thailand, not to forget Thailand. I think the stability there actually encourages FDI as well.

It's definitely a country that we're very optimistic about as well. Our operations last year, we had one-time credit cost as well as loyalty rewards.

Those were behind us. We actually believe that Thailand operations this year will contribute more significantly for us.

You say Thailand will attract more FDI?

The political stability now encourages more FDI, and it will solidify its position as one of the key nodes in the supply chain in this region.

ASEAN is still generally quite attractive. You look at family offices coming in.

We're talking about 6-3. I think these are the kind of liquidity.

ASEAN being ASEAN, I think is a little bit more flexible. Yes, there are some political risk, but in terms of structuring, in terms of union, they're pro and con.

You tell me which region is better? You tell me.

US? Europe?

Where? We are in this region, and it's proven.

We're just dealing with ASEAN, which is within our reach. It's easy for us to manage.

If I can add one more question, the net new money has been quite positive. Do you see that much growing in 2026?

No, I think it will continue to grow. It will continue.

This is something that the bank is making a big effort to see how we can not only just supporting loans, right, because we do have a very strong private banking. Our investment advisory unit within the private bank has actually done very well.

As I just now, in my speech, the digital platform, these are people like every one of you, the average size is $1,000. People put money there, they're able to generate good return.

144% right, in terms of growth. This is just the beginning.

In terms of number of customer, it's still quite limited, but in terms of volume. This is where I see the power of distribution, and also the trust that the customer have with us.

Not only just Singapore, the whole region.

The wealth income grew 14% year-on-year. That's an area we think continues to be a highlight and bright spot that we want to focus on coming to 2026 as well.

Let's

ask about coal financing. Do you finance current customers of yours who decided to buy a coal plant?

We have stopped financing new coal plants or new projects involving coal since a few years ago. We can confirm the year.

Including nickel?

No, I'm thinking of Sembcorp, but Nickel? Let's just focus on coal for the time

being. We have stopped financing new coal projects or new clients doing coal projects since a few years ago.

We can come back to you on which year.

A few years ago. Four years ago.

We will confirm the year.

However, that said, the existing customers with existing facilities with coal, our priority is to help them transition out of it.

While

not doing anything new or more, the existing facilities that we have to clients, we are actively every time we refinance, we actually put in encouragement, incentives for them to transition. Okay.

Then you ask about nickel.

No, no, no, I said nickel plant is powered by coal.

That's why. What is it?

What are those things?

The problem is a rabbit hole, right? The value chain.

The value chain.

The

value chain, yeah. Which is this nickel plants are powered by coal.

Do you finance the nickel plant?

It is difficult to answer that precisely. Let me give you an example, right?

If we finance coal mining equipment companies,

they're

not doing coal-fired power plants. They're doing equipment.

Equipment can jolly well be used to mine other types of products as well. Do you not finance that?

I think we have to be quite deliberate here. We are very focused on addressing climate considerations, coal-fired power plants, right, CFPP.

Those are areas that we have very specifically, deliberately articulated what we will do, what we will not do. It's a slippery slope to then start broadening that definition out

to

others because you need coal-fired power plants to do power generation for power companies.

Then

do you stop financing power companies? It's hard.

Our commitment was made in 2022, about four years ago.

With what's happened in the US, are you still committed to that roadmap to whatever net-zero? You have a roadmap

to net-zero.

Although Trump

has already withdrawn, I think it's the right thing to do. We are pacing it.

We're doing it in a more practical way. Environment is for our future.

It's not because of the regulation we're doing.

Any other questions?

Just to touch back on the AI bit,

could

you give us some insight as to which parts of the bank are furthest in AI adoption? Is it wholesale, is it retail banking?

I can give you some examples, but it cuts across the bank in multiple areas. I think what's important for us now to focus on foundation and knowledge layers that we build, and we can then use that to quickly replicate across other parts of the bank.

Some key areas of use cases, for example, are in customer servicing, contact centres and branches. Maybe one practical example is every time you have trouble, you call a contact centre, and sometimes you get a runaround, right?

This person can't help you, and frustration among customers grow. Part of the problem is because the attrition rate with customer service contact centre operators are fairly high.

They get yelled at by customers all the time. It's not a pleasant job.

Attrition rate is high, they're not well-trained, they don't have enough knowledge, and they don't address questions. With AI tools, can you just imagine that we are able to curate faster, better responses?

Whenever a query comes in, what is the appropriate knowledge and response to deal with that? That helps us address the questions hopefully at one touch rather than multiple touches.

Accelerating that knowledge-based accumulation, testing, making sure the models are correct, and we're responding correctly, that's important. Part of the challenge for us is, unlike US where it's a homogeneous market, everybody speaks the language in the same tone and same accents, when we use these tools to help accelerate for our staff, the listening tools sometimes misread what is said because of the different accents and expressions.

The accuracy continues to be refined, and we need to make sure that that's done in a speedy manner to address. Sort of customer servicing is just one aspect of it.

AML, KYC, preventing frauds and scams, anticipating, looking at the data analytics to look at where there are new modus operandi, how do we circumvent that? That's where useful cases of our AI team is focusing on as well.

Just a couple of examples to share.

What about the branches? You've deployed it across all our branches?

Okay. When the answers are very complex, things like estate accounts, is that all assisted by the AI?

It's always with the right set of prompts and conditions. It's all deployed?

And

You still have a human interface,

but

the human interface is helped by the

AI. Thanks.

One example is people will call up to ask the latest promotion rate for a certain product, right? The promotion rates do change because we do have promotions at different times of the year.

It's important to make sure that the operators who are interfacing with customers have the most up-to-date and most accurate information at every interaction. Have you, for

those positions that the AI is helping augment function, have you stopped hiring for new roles in those departments?

Not at the moment. Given the economic climate, I think we have been very disciplined overall with our headcount, but it's not targeted specifically at job family types.

You did see, there's income pressure definitely in the macro sort of state. You have seen our slides on cost discipline.

That cost discipline actually extends across the bank. It's not about specific roles.

The human cost, you can actually see is coming down. Partly, you want to make sure we're able to train all these people, rather than keep increasing.

End of the day, you have a situation where, as you say, AI, how are you going to retrain people? Within ourselves first, retrain them so that the damage would be less.

Hi. Good morning.

Kelvin from The Edge. Just two quick questions.

I think one is on what's your interest rate outlook, in terms of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve in the coming year? The second one is whether or not there's any comments on the potential sale on UOB Asset Management that was reported by Bloomberg a couple of months back?

The house view is interest rate will likely to cut maybe one or two times. If you look at Singapore interest rate, it's already overdone.

Okay? I think is quite stabilized at this point.

Asset management, I think G is on top of this. Yes, I think market is aware that we are

We are reviewing our strategic options.

We are looking at it. This is not something that we want to see who are the strategic buyer, because end of the day, UOB, we want to have a platform to distribute what is the best product for our customers.

On the stand-alone, scale is one thing, but we want to make sure we offer the best product for our customer as a choice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.