DNB Bank ASA

Hello and welcome to the DNB Q2 conference call. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad and if you require any assistance at any point please press star 0 and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host Mr. Rune Helland to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you very much and hello everyone and welcome to D&D's analyst call for the second quarter. Around the table here in Oslo, we are in addition to the CEO Kjersti Bråten and CFO Ivar Lerner, we have Maria Eirik-Loeval, Head of Personal Banking, Harald Ferkhansen, Head of Large Corporate, Alex Oppstad, Head of D&D Carnegia, and also Eline Skramstad, Head of Risk Management. Ida will now start giving you the highlights for the quarter before we open up for questions. Ida.

Thank you, Rune, and thanks everyone for taking the time to participate in this call. The Norwegian economy continues to be robust with a strong and healthy GDP growth this year expected to be at 1.3% and 1.5% next year. Unemployment remains low at around 2% and is expected to remain at this level in the coming years. As you know, the central bank cut the key policy rate by 25 basis points in June to now being 4.25. Our economist expects two further rate cuts this year and then to see a key policy rate to stabilize at 3.75. 14b, this quarter is characterized by continued high activity level with profitable loan growth in all customer segments and strong contribution from capitalized income. Higher margin deposit volumes were up in personal customers while we noted a decrease in low margin short-term deposits in large corporates. NII was down in the quarter affected by the profitable loan growth which accelerated towards the end of the quarter, as well as the product mix effect within deposits earlier mentioned, as well as other elements, non-customer related elements in NII. We continue to have a robust and well diversified portfolio across industries and geographies and taking permit provisions of 677 million in the quarter, predominantly in the large corporate and corporate banking, corporate customer Norway area with still very customer-specific situations. We maintain a strong capital position with a core equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 18.3%, 180 basis points above the regulatory expectation, and also mark this quarter a return on equity of 15.4%, well above the long-term ambition of being above 14%. With that, we open up for questions.