United Overseas Bank Limited

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to UOB's fourth quarter 2024 results media briefing. Today we have with us our Deputy Chairman and CEO, Mr. Wee Chong, who will give a broad overview of how our franchise has performed and the operating landscape. We also have our Group CFO, Mr. Lee Wai Fai. Wai Fai will go into more details on the financials and business performance from the quarter and for the full year. After both presentations, we'll be taking questions from the media. I would now like to invite Theo to get us started. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. With ongoing geopolitical tensions and tariffs, the outlook for the year remains uncertain. We are closely monitoring developments. So far, ASEAN continues to be resilient. Mega trends such as supply chain diversification, digitalization, and the green economy are driving investments into the region. ASEAN is also moving towards social cooperation. With recent developments such as Johor Singapore Special Economic Zone, an integrated cross-border retail payment system, and a shared power grid, All this will help boost intra-ASEAN connectivity and growth and reinforce the region's position as a key player in the global economy. In 2024, we achieved a good set of results. Full-year net profit grew 6% to a new high of $6 billion. versus 2023, 5.7 billion. We are pleased that we are making good progress in reshaping our income guidance. In wholesale banking, our platforms and sector-specific solutions enable us to better finance cross-border businesses, leading to higher fee income and CASA growth. 4%, just to be year on year on loans and trade related fees, 16% year on year in CASA balance. Cross border income and transaction banking now contribute a higher proportion of wholesale banking. Also, customer related trading and investment income saw robust growth of 20%. In retail banking, Our city acquisition has helped us scale our business in ASEAN. Gross credit fees grew 18% for the year. Our newly reorganized private bank, along with privileged banking, are driving high net worth AUM. Our total AUM up 8% to $190 billion. We are making good progress in shaping our businesses towards drivers that are recurring in nature and less sensitive to rate cycles. This may take time, but we are happy with the results so far and we will be laser focused on accelerating growth in this area. On the cost front, we are stepping up efforts to enhance productivity. Our cost-income ratio for 2024 was 42.5%, reflecting our cost structure as a regional commercial bank. In 2025, city-related integration costs will roll off significantly. We expect CIR to be in the low 40s in the next few years. Asset quality is sound and our work continues to be resilient. The uptick in specific provision last quarter was in line with our expectations and prudent policies and catered for by management overlay set aside earlier. Total credit costs remain within our guide 25 to 30 basis points last year. While we stay vigilant, we are gaining traction in reshaping our loan portfolio to more trade-related exposures and diversifying our revenue base to more non-loan income. Given our business model and projections this year, we expect total credit costs again to remain 25 to 30 basis points. Funding base is also getting stronger. with solid gain in transaction floats from both retail CASA and business cash management services. Capital positions are at a healthy level with excess CET1 even on the Basel IV fully loaded basis. The board has recommended a final dividend of $0.92, an ordinary share, bringing our full-year dividend to $1.8

represents a payout ratio of around 50%.