So, again, very balanced across all the businesses and with different contribution from different geographies and different businesses that are more positive sensitivity to the lower rates. The Corporate Investment Bank will continue to grow very well, mostly on fees. As you’ve seen there, we’ve put specifically some operating metrics that show that we are not planning to increase the size of the business, we just wanted to be more profitable, but not the size in terms of capital. So, that should remain basically where it is today. It’s a 13% of our revenues, but the composition of our business is really different from our peers. So, a lot of transactional banking, a lot of corporate customers that we now expect to do more fee and advisory business with, I mean, both Hector and I have met with a number of top CEOs that are now already engaging with us in this new context, right?
So, we are very, very focused on what you said of playing to our strengths of not doing, what we are not either the best or could be the best at and leveraging on our corporate relationships, which are incredibly strong across Latin America, Europe and increasingly the U.S. So, that is really the focus of the strategy there. In terms of more specific guidance on specific countries, I think I would suggest that the CFO reach out to you if you want some more. Thank you.
Operator: Next question is from Carlos Cobo from Societe Generale. Please go ahead.
Carlos Cobo: Quick couple of questions from me. One is on, fees. I’m sorry, you touched on this already. Feel free to refer to the call because I couldn’t connect until recently. The thing is that fee income is the area where you have sort of under delivered, you promised a stronger growth and only grown by mid single digits in ’23. I would like to understand why do you think that was the case and why are you bullish for 2024? Or were you again expect to grow by high single digits? I understand the hiring in the U.S., but other than that, what is driving that strong growth across the board? And the second one is about the cost income ratio in digital consumer versus retail. It’s just a little bit comparative. We’re looking at similar cost income ratios in both segments where in theory, we would expect the digital consumer to be and more efficient business line than retail with the network.
Could you explain what extent the cost income ratio in the retail consumer is affected by investment needs and IT development? And what will be a more normalized cost in commercial? Thank you.
Ana Botin: So, let me just very briefly answer the second question. You’re totally right. There’s a lot of upside in our consumer business. Remember that this is mostly Europe, but also the U.S. So, we invested a lot in this, especially on the retail side — sorry, on the, well, its retail and consumer. The bank side is exactly the same backend. But you’re totally right. So, that should improve a lot next year. So, we’re actually targeting lower cost absolutely, for our consumer bank again driven not just by Europe but also by the U.S. So yes, absolutely, that is a big goal we have. Fees, so again, we’re not always going to deliver exactly how we said, but we’re going to deliver because diversification, because we’re working on different angles, and so you’re going to get some lags.
One of the reasons, our retail commercial bank has had much lower activity, especially in Europe in some markets, and that is a big driver of fees. We are targeting fees in our retail commercial to turn positive next year. So from zero growth this year as you saw in Hector’s presentation that should be up maybe not much. We’re expecting fees to be much higher in our consumer bank. Again, as we said, our diversification is a huge strength. It’s differential against most of our peers, if not all of them. So as rates stabilize and come down, you’re going to see a much better performance in our consumer business, not just on the cost side as I just explained, but also in revenue growth, net interest income and fees. And fees should be high-single-digit in our consumer bank, which is pretty big.
And yes, absolutely, our Corporate Investment Bank should grow fees much faster. That is one of the goals. That is one of the reasons that we brought the team we brought in the U.S., because they can help us grow fees on the back of our existing customer relationships. So you’re going to see CIB fees doing as well or maybe a bit better than this year, double-digit for sure. And you’re going to see a lot of that in the U.S. Again, so you will see the U.S. as a country, both consumers doing better, CIB doing better, the whole of the U.S. going to, above double-digit returns next year. But again, you’re going to see hopefully. You see payments also doing very well this year and next year and Wealth Management doing better next year than this year.
So that is the reason we are confident that our fees will improve more in ’24.
Operator: Next question is from Sofie Peterzens from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
