Nationwide Building Society

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Nationwide Building Society's Interim Results Call. I'm Debbie Crosby, Chief Executive, and with me on the call today are Chris Rhodes, our Chief Financial Officer, Muir Matheson, our Treasury, Robert Gardner, Nationwide's Chief Economist. So I'm going to run through the highlights of the period and provide a brief strategy update before handing to Chris, who'll take you through the numbers for the six months to the 30th of September. I'm going to keep it brief so that we've got plenty of time to respond to any questions that you have. So Nationwide has again delivered a strong financial performance. And our mutual model means that we can continue to support our 16 million members through the current economic uncertainty. We've reported profits of 980 million due to growth in income driven mainly by rising interest rates. This has meant that we can further strengthen our capital and leverage positions. We continue to deliver competitive products, high quality services and great customer experiences. We've remained number one for satisfaction amongst our peer group. We successfully grew our mortgage and deposit balances, and we continue to attract new current account members, demonstrating the impact of leading on value and service. Chris will take us through the financial highlights in more detail shortly. But first of all, I thought I would touch very briefly on our cost of living support and our strategy refresh.

We've responded proactively to the cost of living crisis by extending our branch promise until 2024 to provide practical in-person support for our members and we've also launched our new dedicated cost of living telephone helpline which does the same. We've also been very careful to make sure that we deliver real value and reward to our members. And we're doing this with tailored and competitive products, particularly for savings, mortgages and current accounts.

We've maintained our mortgage lending through the recent disruption. and recently moved our switcher rates to below 5% for our current members. We were able to provide this level of support because our mutual model provides us with opportunities that aren't available to many other financial services providers in the UK. Mutuality will remain core to our REFRED strategy. It's central to delivering a distinctive experience for our members today and in the future. This also means we can secure change for the good of society with our social investment activity, our community charity boards and the partnership that we have with Shelter. Our mutual purpose is at the heart of our strategy. We want Nationwide to be considered the number one choice for personal financial services and we'll build member value, service excellence and operational excellence around it. We also want to build upon our reputation for great customer service. Branches will continue to be part of our approach. We're also going to develop our digital capabilities so that members benefit from round-the-clock convenience as well as access to personal support when they need it most. Over the strategy period, we will grow sustainably by attracting more members and deepening the relationships that we have with existing members. Service excellence will go hand in hand with our operational excellence, delivering simple, streamlined and flexible member experiences grounded in resilient controls that protect our members and their money. So I'm now going to hand over to Chris, who's going to take you through the numbers.