Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation

Welcome to our results briefing this morning. We have Helen and Darren, our CFO and Helen, our Group CEO, with us. You can see them on screen. Darren's going to take us through the slides and then Helen will take the questions thereafter. Darren, please.

Yeah, okay. Good morning again. Thank you for joining us, everyone. So, we'll start with slide three. Now, for the third quarter of 2021, we reported an across our key markets, and this resulted in a 3% increase year-on-year in our net interest income amidst the sustained low interest rate environment. Okay, I've been sort of passed the message by. Our private banking AUM expanded 6% year-on-year to US$123 billion on the back of continued inflows of net new money. And the net new money is across the region that we operate in. Now on the insurance front, total weighted new sales and new business embedded value continue to grow, rising 29% and 3% from a year ago respectively. and profit from insurance was 18% higher at $311 million as compared to a year ago. Our expenses were higher for this quarter mainly from our continuing investment in people and system to support our business growth while not receiving the same government support grant upon the job front. Now, our set quality remained resilient. NPL ratio was stable at 1.5%, while our allowances in the third quarter, reflecting the improved credit environment, was significantly lower. Our common equity Tier 1 ratio remains strong at 15.5%. I'll now move on to slide 7. Group net profit of $1.22 billion, as I mentioned before, was 19% higher year-on-year and 5% higher on the quarter-on-quarter basis. The exceptional first quarter, followed by two resilient quarters on the back of the improved economic environments, had enabled us to deliver a strong profit of $3.88 billion for the nine months to date. And if I can bring you to slide 8, if you were to look at the net profit from our banking operations itself for the third quarter, it grew 33% from a year ago and 8% from the previous quarter to $1.05 billion. Great Eastern's profit contribution for the quarter, however, was lower comparatively, mainly impacted by unrealized market losses on its investment portfolio. If I can move to slide 10 on our net interest income, third quarter net interest income rose 3% year-on-year while remaining unchanged from the previous quarter to $1.46 billion. Loan growth has been able to overcome lower net interest margin to register an increase in net interest income, at least until this quarter. And you will notice net interest margin had dropped six basis points from the previous quarter to 1.52%, mainly from three factors. A one out of two basis point drop from the impact of interest reversals from the downgrade of Malaysia and Indonesian loans to non-performing. The lower-use rising competition for good quality loans against a backdrop of excess liquidity. And in terms of timing, lower gaping income as we utilize some of the excess liquidity that we have. And we will move on to slide 11 on the non-interest income for the third quarter. Now, including the first quarter, where all segments were doing comparatively better, nine months non-interest income was still 18% higher against the same period last year. Moving on to slide 12, our wealth management franchise continued to generate 35% of total income, specifically on the Bank of Singapore. AUM had dropped slightly to US$123 billion. The decline in market valuation had more than offset the net new money inflows that I mentioned earlier. Moving on to slide 13. Nonetheless, as you can see on slide 13, client activities were relatively robust, such that income from wealth management remained strong. Consequently, net fee and commission income was higher than most quarters before and after first quarter 2021. And in terms of trading income on slide 14, the weaker performance for the quarter arose mainly from unrealized market losses from Great Eastern. in a still higher trading income for the nine months at $611 million. Moving on to slide 15, operating expenses of $1.19 billion for the third quarter were 8% higher year-on-year and 4% above the previous quarter. Expenses arose mainly from staff-related costs arising from high headcount and variable compensation, and also, as I mentioned earlier, the lower government job support grants received this year. The increase in expenses would have been lower at 6% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter, should we adjust for the government grants administered. Moving on to slide 16, allowances for the third quarter were lower at $163 million. A $22 million net write-back in ECL 1 and 2 allowances arose largely from the transfer to ECL 3 as a result of the downgrade of some loans to non-performing. Correspondingly, additional ECL-3 of $185 million was set aside for the quarter. And if you look at slide 17, total cumulative allowances were lower at $4.13 billion for the quarter as we roll off more impact asset. This reduction was more than the additional ECL allowances set aside for the quarter as a result of the lower total cumulative allowances and the slightly higher non-performing assets, which we will cover in the next slide. The coverage ratio was lower at 97%. Now on slide 18, our NPR ratio remained stable at 1.5% for four consecutive quarters. Non-performing assets were $4.24 billion and was about 4% more than the second quarter. The quarter-on-quarter increase was largely from downgrades of secured consumer loans in Malaysia and a couple of Loans grew at a faster pace this quarter to register an increase of 6% from the previous year and 4% from the previous quarter. The largest increase for the quarter were in Singapore and Greater China led by building and construction, general commerce and housing loans. Our loan exposure to China both onshore and offshore currently accounted for 11% of total loans. These were largely lending to SOEs, large local corporates, and our network customers. And of the China onshore exposures of $6 billion, less than one-third were lending to corporates in the real estate sector, and these loans were mostly to our network customers. And if you look at slide 21, our loan composition by industry remains stable in well-diversified core sectors, sectors remain the largest segment at 28% and 21% of total loans respectively. And on site 22, where we provide some update on our total relief loans, you will notice that total relief loans for the quarter were higher at $6.3 billion as compared to the previous quarter of $4.5 billion. The increase in this quarter was largely from secured customers' loans in Malaysia, followed by the rollout of the new per mullet package in July 2021 by the Malaysian government. In Singapore, exit from the relief loans program had reduced outstanding balance to $1.6 billion from $2.2 billion a quarter ago. Total relief loans accounted for 2% of the group loans, of which 89% were secured against collaterals. Majority of these relief loans are still performing. Now, I'll move on to slide 23. Thank you Darren. I hope you all hear me well and good morning again. I have prepared some update but before I go into the presentation slides,

allowed me just to talk about how I see our performance for the third quarter and the nine months of the year. I do feel, I do see that the year demonstrates our strong franchise and was underpinned by the good progress we have made on our strategic priorities. We have three quarters of resilient results which drove our nine months earnings to a new high actually. On a year-to-date basis, loan growth is up 7% or SING dollars 18 billion. And loan growth is on track. I talk about mid to single digit growth for the year. I think we're on track to reach that by year end. As I mentioned in the first quarter results, I expect momentum to grow in the later part of the year and we have seen a third quarter loan growth to be 4% year-on-year. We're also seeing a pipeline pick up in Singapore, greater China, and other overseas markets across both consumer and corporate banking. Another point about loans to take note is our green financing loans saw strong growth trajectory. make up close to S$6 billion or one-third of our year-to-date overall loan increase. Wealth management franchise performed well, performed strongly as reflected by net money growth quarter-on-quarter across our premier private sector and also Bank of Singapore for our private banking customers. Customer-related activity holding steady despite recent tightening measures. We saw the third quarter fee income as higher than pre-COVID levels. Customer treasury flow income is also steady and insurance business also doing well. To some areas to highlight, Darren would have covered most of this earlier, but I also want to touch on these key areas to provide more insight on questions you might have. So trying to address your questions beforehand. The first one is the 8% increase in operating expenses in the third quarter. Without the effect of higher job support grants a year ago, OPEX would have grown 6% instead of 8%. This increase reflected both higher variable compensation in light of business volume growth but importantly, investing in headcount in our strategic priorities, which I will cover later on. Technology costs take up 12% of cost for third quarter and also for nine months in the year, but to continue to see very good progress in our digitalization efforts. I want to emphasize when we say cost, it is investment into the technology. And indeed, this is before technology staff cost, so we are making quite a lot of investments in this area. The second point I want to highlight is I think there will be question on China exposure. particular on mainland. So I just want to recap what Darren has mentioned. Mainland China onshore exposure is only 2% of our group loans. This is largely lending to our network customers and large SOEs. And the reason is very simple. A foreign bank that aims to connect China companies with the rest of the world. And so total exposure outside is always higher than the exposure onshore. So, mainland China onshore real estate exposure is one-third of total loans, and even then, this is lending mainly to our network customers. Focus is still partnering the China SOEs and large corporates as they move out of China into our region, more predominantly, obviously, ASEAN. On credit quality and relief loans, credit quality of our overall portfolio remains healthy and we are committed to help our customers with orderly exit from the relief programs. The group relief loans make up 2% of total loans. It's down substantially compared to last year, this period. This is also nearly 90% secure. This is well below the peak a year ago when relief loans make up, as I said, much higher, which is 10% of our loan book. Another point is regarding Malaysia. Relief loans rose to $4 billion or one-fifth of Malaysian book. Some of these loans were downgraded to non-performing. according to regulatory reporting and accounting, and the associated interest accruals were reversed from our P&L. This makes up for close to half of the six basis points quarter-on-quarter decline in our third quarter NIM. Nonetheless, we are comfortable that we have set aside sufficient provisions, including management overlays to buffer for any unanticipated stress in our book. Overall credit costs, if the credit environment remains stable, I'm still expecting credit costs to be at the lower end of our guidance of 100 to 130 basis points for two years. So for NIEM guidance, it remains stable at current levels. I'd like to just cover very quickly the slides that I have prepared as an update. You have seen it and I just want to share my thoughts. And if you look at slide two, my thoughts on economic outlook in 2022. I would say GDP of ASEAN and China largely expected to be better than the world average. and trade for the region has also rebounded strongly. And you do know that intra-Asia trade is more than 50%, constitute more than 50% of Asian trade. So meaning Asia is trading more with ourselves than with other parts of the world. I do expect a 3% to 6% GDP growth for our key markets in 2022. Western Asian is a very important part we have seen COVID situation in Malaysia and Indonesia improving as vaccination rates grow. Malaysia, 90% of adults fully vaccinated. Indonesia vaccinated about one quarter of population. For our staff, we try to help them and our staff are highly vaccinated in Malaysia and Indonesia. encouraging to see gradual opening of travel links in Asia, and so we expect business activities to continue to pick up in tandem. Another megatrend is obviously sustainability, no longer optional, no longer optional, I want to repeat that, and there is increased global focus on climate change, and of course COP26 is happening at the moment, and we see there's a lot of demand for sustainable financing and products and investments. We remain watchful of some near-term headwinds, concerns on power crunch, especially in China, rising energy prices globally, limited industrial output in the short term, supply chain disruption is happening and continue, dislocation in the container market, shipping, and also shortage of key manufacturing components. These are all threats. And of course, we want to continue to support the China Plus One strategy for the MNCs. And a lot of them are coming into, continue to come into ASEAN. So driving our strategic priorities in the next slide, slide three, I'm pleased on the progress so far, and these priorities will also power our future growth in the next few years. I talked about four pillars in the past, and indeed, if we look at slide four, regarding the continued investments in our wealth platform, and also, you will see that as you look at our numbers, it does reflect in wealth management income and fees, and the robust AUM growth across our wealth tiers. Just announced our partnership with Ping An Bank, as you have read, under China's Wealth Management Connect Scheme for the Greater Bay Area. This will open up a whole new segment of customers. As you all know, Ping An is among the top banks in China. In particular, they're based in the Greater Bay, the headquarters there. They have more than 300 branches in the Greater Bay Area and over 100 million retail customers. Customers in mainland China and Hong Kong and Macau can now open wealth management accounts for wealth management through our partnership with Ping An. This is both for southbound and for northbound. will start by offering investors to access our unit trust and continue to extract value from our business franchise. So for ultra-high net worth and high net worth individuals, we target opportunities from key markets. We're growing our China onshore wealth, emergence of family office, and indeed a lot of the wealth investments overseas. And we continue to see Singapore as the hub for wealth management. And we are helping, we are servicing a lot of customers coming our way here. For the emerging affluent and mass market, we continue to drive acquisition through digitalization and strategic partnerships. So we do build wealth conversation and execution on mobile. You will see more and more new apps actually on the phone, allowing us to do banking a lot more effectively. including not just transaction but wealth management. We continue to build our team to support future growth. We want to double the number of relationship managers for Chinese clients to 500, I mean RMs to 500 by 2023. Go on to the next pillar which is powering growth in the ASEAN Greater China Corridor. We are strengthening capabilities to capture this trade and investment flows in this corridor. Crypto-China loans have expanded 12% since end 2020. We focus on a regional hub and spoke model using TrinHub Singapore and Hong Kong and average regional network strength. We want to enhance our crypto-China transaction banking, investment banking valuable position to support import inbound and outbound clients. I'm happy that we have made some inroads there and we have been winning mandates, in particular helping clients from CryptoChina as they expand into ASEAN. So this would be cross-border support on trade and cash management demand of our clients. We also continue to build our team to support the growth. I announced CryptoChina organizational structure and appointed Mr. Tan Mingming as our head of Crypto China. And we have made major management appointments, including investment banking head for Crypto China who joined us in August. And we continue to target corporates across the region to grow our loans and fee income. So this would include technology contract manufacturers in Southeast Asia and China, Infrastructure Data Centre, which is continued to be a hot investment subject, Logistics, Life Sciences Facilities, of course, Telco 5G, Technology, Biopharm, Medtech, you name it. Of course, healthcare, very important. And agritech, about food and green businesses. And again, the mobility ecosystem, EV, how we help our customers from building, for example, charging station, manufacturing of EV batteries, car loans, EV car loans, etc., etc. So quite a lot to target on. and of course we want to continue to build our emerging business banking through digital channels and we have seen in Singapore in particular 98% of our SME account opening is entirely online. So going on the next one, driving sustainability efforts, I need actually two slides to talk about it. We want to build a leading sustainable regional bank and have set clear priorities and targets. There are many, many growth opportunities in the sustainability space which we can capture. I hope page six summarizes a lot of the things that we have been doing and some of the achievements we have made. We are certainly committed to create lasting value for all our stakeholders, be it our shareholders, our customers, our community, and our employees. We want to deliver positive social and environmental impact. So just to go a little bit deeper into that, on the financing side, we saw strong traction in growth. I mentioned this year's green financing is growing very well and you will remember we have a 25 by 25 target, which is $25 billion on our books by year 2025. I'm glad to say that our commitments have already exceeded that. We are almost $30 billion in commitment. So we are waiting for some of the drawdown, of course, in order to cross that 2025 mark. We will also be looking at a new and ambitious target in due course. and we also grow our sector coverage such as sustainable food production. I mentioned architect which is very important as Singapore in particular go for our 30 by 30 target. We look at renewable energy ecosystem. It is not just financing the creation of energy but how energy is supplied and as I mentioned earlier on how energy is supplied and that will lead to other business such as I use EV as an example just now. Green trade and working capital SME framework. We have a framework for SME to allow them to do green financing without additional cost meaning we create a framework as long as they fulfill the requirements in the framework the certification is already done for them. So we are looking to double sustainable financing to SMEs by year-end. We have EBIT partnership and well-financing green instruments. On sustainable investing, we expand private bank ESG investment solutions and we integrate ESG consideration into our research. and discretionary portfolios. I hope you find some of our research interesting on this front. BOS is also first in Asia to incorporate ESG factors in the assessment of the loan quantum for investment financing, encouraging clients to invest sustainably. I do want to mention, we just have our inaugural TCFD report last month, reflects our commitment to drive transition to a sustainable low-carbon world. And in terms of equipping employees with skills, we launched a suit of sustainability training modules to groom more subject experts within the bank. I did say we need to make the program interesting, and I thought that is truly quite informative for our colleagues. Last but not least, on the fourth pillar, which I always describe as accelerating digitalization, We have high take-up across digital platforms and increased penetration. I talked about high level of SME accounts open digitally at 98%. We also are seeing 85% of transactions in digital. For consumer business, 62% of our new secure loan sales are digital and digital secure loans have grown 3.5 times in a year. digital wealth acquisition and sales is also up four times year-on-year. We have a number of new digitalized offerings this year, announced in mid-October that we'll be rolling out travel with OCBC in the coming weeks as Singapore opened up vaccinated travel lanes. It is a one-stop digital platform that will enable our customers to book airline tickets, hotel, car rentals, at preferential rates, use our card reward points to offset purchases at checkout with OCBC cards using OCBC Pay Anyone and also buy travel insurance. I hope that helps you as you plan your travel based on the VTLs. And I do want to say we also are looking at instant buy-sell of precious metals so we are allowing OCBC digital app on Monday to Fridays 24 hours a day if you are interested in precious metal. So these are just examples and obviously we'll continue to drive initiatives across our digital ecosystem and enhance our customer value and experience. I'll stop here as it's quite a long message but indeed thank you. We'll now move on to questions.

Okay. Thank you. First up is Chania from Bloomberg. Chania, you're on. Chania, I think you're muted.

Oh, sorry. Yes, thank you both for comprehensive briefing and congrats on the numbers. I have three questions. First, Helen mentioned that GDP this year, she expects 3% to 6% in key countries that you operate in. What's the outlook for next year? Are we out of the wood from the pandemic and what What are your key areas of concerns? That's the first question. The second one is about the current wage trend, which you already see higher expenses this quarter. What's your thoughts on pay and compensation to your staff next year to be in line with the global trend? Third question, Siam Commercial Bank last night said they are going to spend half a billion dollars acquiring crypto assets. Your rival is also running one. What's your thought? What's your playbook on crypto? Thank you.

Chania, thank you. Just to reaffirm when I talk about GDP growth rates for our key markets, it is for next year, 3% to 6%. So hope that address your first question. Interesting question on pay compensation. We do see, if you look at our expenses this year, we do compensate higher due to volume growth, and I do see an extent of increase of compensation for next year. Allow me not to mention levels which we are looking at, but indeed we do know there's a strong competition for talents in the market, and particularly in certain areas. and we need to compensate correctly in order to attract the tenants and keep our people. There is a lot of investment. Whenever you talk about investments in digital, it is really not just the hardware or the software, although that is reflected very much in our IT spend, right? But indeed, there will be more hikes for people who will be able to do digitalization. It's not just in the IT department, but around our business units and other functions as well. as we continue to look at using more data and also building more agile transformation sort of team. So I think these are all important, but I do see the need to compensate correctly. On crypto, it's always a big topping on me and also on my management team. We've been looking at it. we see how the region has seen new development and it is important we would look to play a role in it but it is also we'll be addressing demand from our customer base and so that our customers are investing or using it with the right risk consideration so more hopefully to disclose coming to next year but I would just stop here with your three questions so I have ticked them rightly. So, maybe the next one, yeah?

Okay, Gula, you are up next. Gula, unmute yourself.

Okay, can you hear me?

Hello, hi. Hi, thank you, Helen.

Thanks, Darren. Okay, I've got a few questions. First of all, you know, Great Eastern, I just wondered, there's been some volatility in the mark-to-market, and we don't hear about that from AIA and Prudential's bond portfolio. So I'm just wondering why Great Eastern appears to be more volatile on that side. And also, there was a decline in the Malaysian, I think, total weighted new sales. I just wondered what the cause was for that. And there's a falling NBED margin. What is the cause for that? So that's on the insurance side. Then just, can I ask, what are the management's thoughts on web 3.0, because MAS has been talking about it. Is it a disruptor or an opportunity? And do you see problems? Is there a threat there? The last question is for Darren. For the SPs, what were the SPs for?

Gula, I might have missed one or two in the middle, but that allowed me to go with Great Eastern. and Web 3.0. I probably missed out one in the middle, but please repeat that after I address Great Eastern and Web 3.0. So on Great Eastern, thank you for the questions. You mentioned our peers. Obviously, we cannot comment on our peers. However, we do understand that life insurers are generally impacted by market fluctuations as they hold investment portfolios. There might be differences in the metrics used and highlighted by each insurer, so it's very difficult just to compare that. But typically, most will only highlight the operating profit and the new business and better value, as we know, and this will be in the results announcement because these are key industry metrics. Great Eastern has also disclosed these and they continue to do well, as seen as the recent results actually announced yesterday. But as Great Eastern is consolidated into OCBC, is accounting profit, which includes unrealized market-to-market movements, will be reflected in our results. And there may be some volatility as a result. So I just want to highlight that because it's a part of us. My thoughts on Web 3.0. Is it a disruptor or is it an opportunity? I think that is a good question. but for, I think if you look at 3.0, there is not a common definition as yet, as is exactly what it needs to, but it is a, of course, it is a new thing. It is an improvement from web 2.0. So if you look at what we are doing with technology for the first nine months, our tech course, hardware and software, excluding staff course, as I said, accounted for 12% of our operating expenses. This is nearly, I think, 400 million for the first nine months. So when you talk about Web 3.0, I take that as we continue to invest in what is new, what is available, what benefits us in our systems. and in the way we do things. There are quite a lot of things that is very valuable. For example, we continue to use AI. We look at internet of things. And I would just say this is important and it is also an application. that we can use to help us to do many things and to help our efficiency, to help our reaching out to our customer, to help us in managing risk. So I wouldn't say it is a disruptor. I perhaps would say personally I think that it is more an opportunity. Darren, I think there's a question for you. And if we do miss out, please repeat your question afterwards.

is related to customer loans in Malaysia, the relief loans in particular. and also a few corporates in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail space in Indonesia. There's a bit coming from the oil and gas sector, but you will probably notice that essentially pertaining to the oil and gas sector itself is not creating the same headache that we had in the past. So hope that answers your question.

Yes, I did ask about, there's some falling margins on your NBEV in Great Eastern. I'm just wondering what's the cause

This is Collins. I think the MPEF margins, they are a reflection of the composition of sales in a particular period. So let's say in a certain period there are stronger sales in a certain segment, perhaps this may be of a lower margin, then this will be reflected in the overall impact margin.

Maybe if I can supplement that. Helen mentioned earlier that Malaysia, because of the lockdown, there's a general decline in terms of policy sales. And if you were to compare, essentially, the agency force in Malaysia compared to Singapore, and also the history in terms of the proportionate sale of policy in Malaysia versus in Singapore, there is a higher proportion of regular premium products out of Malaysia. And as you know, regular premium products, because of the protection element coming from it, tend to have a higher margin. Hence, when we have lower sales in Malaysia, naturally it translates to lower MF.

Okay, thanks, Golan. Next up, we have Priska from Straits Times. Crisca, can you unmute?

Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, Helen and Darren. Thanks for the presentation. There have been some reports in recent days that some of the banks are moving closer to it.

Crisca, sorry, I think you're breaking up. Could you try that again? Sorry about that.

Hi, is this better? Yes. Hi, Helen and Darren. Thanks for the presentation. Following up on recent reports, that some of the bank's rivals are moving closer to bids for Citi consumer banking assets. Does Citi have an update on whether it plans to bid for that? It's about Citi.

As usual, we tend not to comment about the sale process to be fair to the

Any other questions? Sorry, we are not able to comment on any specific. No, that's all right. Thank you. Okay, thanks. And we have Alice from the Asian Private Banker.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

So thanks for the presentation. I have two questions. The first one would be, could you further elaborate on how the OCBC group will approach business opportunities with ultra-high networks and emerging family offices in the mainland China, particularly on how would Bank of Singapore and the groups China onshore entity collaborate in servicing these clients. So the other question would be a follow-up on the question about increasing staff costs. Would private banking be one of the business segments you mentioned where the talent competition is particularly fierce? And to what extent this staff cost would influence the level of profits generated by this business? Would digitalization help in lowering costs in this aspect?

Thank you for the question, Alice. The first one regarding high net worth customer segment for Greater China. We have been growing our Bank of Singapore team based in Hong Kong for Greater China. Hong Kong a lot of time is the first port where Greater China clients or wealthy clients in that region would look into. look into investment ideas and having a relationship. And we have continued to build our coverage team in Hong Kong, but also we are looking to increase our strength in China inside our Wing Hung China business, where we will be able to serve individuals. And so there is indeed a very strong link between the Hong Kong team and the China team. and we can also find support if we need more expertise from offshore we can also bring some of our guys into China as well and not to actually miss out the very important link with Singapore it is one business so some of our clients would have a relationship shared by an RM in Hong Kong, but they would prefer to park some of their wealth in Singapore. And as you know, we have been seeing a lot more family offices coming to Singapore as well, and that is very important. I think definitely one of the strong advantages we have is we'll be able to serve high net worth clients, not just in their own investments and also their family needs, is that we'll be able to help them with the business they own as well. So there is a lot of cross reference and working together between our wholesale bank in the OCBC Group and with the relationship managers in Bank of Singapore. We see that as a very strong link. If you look at Crypto China, we also invested in Bank of Ningbo and we also have collaborations if Bank of Ningbo has customers looking to invest overseas and there will be a strong working relationship on that as well. So I see we are in a very good position. You talk about competition for talents. Yes, it is fierce. but we also would try to groom from our internally as well. So we buy but we also keep and we also groom internally. Because we have a wide stretch of individual business, I'm just saying that from the ultra high net worth to high net worth to our premier private sector and to our premier sector and in particular in Singapore we have a high amount of customers in the private premier sector and I do see some of the RMs serving these clients as potential sources of RMs for the higher network sector. So I do hope that helps and indeed it is helping Staff course is always something we need to manage but I think the important thing is to have the right team and expand the value created by each individual RMs making use of our overall network in the group.

Okay, thanks Alice. We have one last question from Gula. Gula, you're muted.

Sorry, Ching Ching, I forgot to put my hand down.

Oh, I see. Okay, so you're good. Lower hand. All right. Sorry, everybody. Thank you. No problem. I think we have Natalie. Sorry, Natalie from Business Times. Natalie, yeah, go ahead.

Darren, I just have one question. What is the bank's take on buy now, pay later, given that Stamchart is just partnered with Atomi?

Buy now, pay later scheme.

The question is for me, right?

Daryl, you can take it if you know how to do it.

Binal Pay Later is a consumer... We did evaluate Binal Pay Later. On the consumer banking side, we do have a partnership with a Binal Pay Later provider. Now, in terms of the longer-term direction, is something that we are still watching this space because you could think about that the objective of Buy Now Pay Later is also targeting a different customer base different segment of the customer base so there are many considerations coming from that essentially you know, the quality, the credit quality, the customer base and so on and so forth. So to answer your question, we are watching, having a partnership in Buy Now Pay Later and see how much this Buy Now Pay Later development potentially will take off in the market that we are in.

Okay, Natalie. Chania, do you have a last question? We will close off after your question.

Yes, I do have one last question because in her presentation, Helen mentioned dual hub, Hong Kong, Singapore, but on the Hong Kong mainland and mainland sides, the borders are still closed. Restrictions only tightened. What do you see in terms of impacts on your business and the overall financial industries when such key hub in Shanghai and Hong Kong are closed to the outside world. Do you see that easing over the course of next year? Thank you.

Thank you for that question, Chania. Yes, there is restriction at the border. But thankfully, I think in today's world, as we have been working quite a lot from home, we use virtual means to continue to get in touch with business, with customers. Some of our colleagues changed the way as they travel into China from Hong Kong. They have to go through quarantine, but when they do go through quarantine, they work from the hotel, right? continuously, virtually, which is quite similar to working from home, and then extend the stay afterwards to cover more business. So we're adjusting to that and obviously we do hope that the border will be opening up quite soon as vaccination rates continue to grow up. So that is how we do that, but it does not stop us in expanding our business in China and connecting overseas. is very similar to China working with us in Singapore as well. A lot is going by virtual. So we do hope that I think creating, allowing people to travel more easily, it would help. Likewise, we haven't been able to travel very easily out of Singapore, but we are managing. I think the last 20 months have taught us quite a lot in how to manage our business without being physically present. But I do look forward to seeing people physically because that does build better the trust, the relationship and the way people work together.

Thank you, Helen.

Alright, great. Thank you very much. I think that takes us to the end of our briefing this morning. Thank you again for joining us.