And on the next slide, you’ll see how these actions will improve efficiencies in each of our businesses. We expect to drive better cost income ratios across all of our divisions and not all of them, however, will be top quartile compared to peers by 2026. Whilst the leading cost efficiency is a goal for all of our businesses over time, for some of them, we don’t believe it’s a credible ambition within this plan period. Barclays UK and the investment bank fall into that category and together represents some 70% of the cost savings we’re expecting. And whilst the 2026 targets will take us more in line with the top quartile of peers, they don’t represent the scale of our ambition, and we’re committed to driving further efficiency savings beyond that point.
In BUK, our ongoing transformation program has been successful in streamlining and digitizing, but there is more to do. And you’ll hear more on how the identified savings will offset inflation and facilitate growth. In the investment bank, we spent about £3 billion since 2021 to sustain and grow future income, and around two-thirds of that is in market technology whilst the focus in banking has been more on people. And we will now monetize the investments. So in the future, we aim to self-fund further investments, and total costs are expected to rise only modestly from 2023 levels. Turning now to our risk positioning. I explained earlier that we plan to increase RWAs in Barclays UK, UK Corporate and Private Banking and Wealth by an aggregate £30 billion.
This is a substantial shift in capital allocation and will reflect significant growth in lending across all three businesses in the planned period. When considering the associated risk, it is essential to understand where we start from in balance sheet terms. We’ve grown lending between 2019 and 2023 by £29 billion but that’s through mortgages at low LTVs and lending to corporates over which we have significant loss protection through risk transfer trades. Our unsecured lending has fallen despite US cards growth. So, at this point in the cycle and as inflation continues to fall, we see an opportunity to reestablish our position in lending in the UK and unsecured in particular. And because of where we start, we’re comfortable that we can do that within our existing risk appetite whilst maintaining our 50 to 60 basis point loan loss rate through the cycle target.
In Barclays UK, as we grow, we expect the normalization and loan loss rates towards 35 basis points, consistent with the 2019 level. In the US Corporate Bank, we expect the loan loss ratio of about 400 basis points through the cycle as we grow a more diversified portfolio and optimize our credit mix, still prime but not exclusively super prime like our LI files. And finally, as we grow our UK corporate bank lending book, we’ll maintain our diversified portfolio, including our long-standing prudent approach to commercial real estate. And we’ll continue to use significant risk transfer protection where appropriate, and I expect a loan loss rate of about 35 basis points. Over recent years, we benefited from our diversified business model through a range of macro environments.
And this diversification has provided us with relative stability to RoTE during the 2020 to 2023 period that we’ve just experienced. For example, in 2022 at the onset of the pandemic, our global markets business supported our performance when elevated impairment charges impact to the rest of the group. In 2023, we’ve seen a weaker investment bank income and decreased volatility and lower deal activity. But in this environment, our consumer and corporate businesses have provided ballast to group returns. We believe there’s a natural offset built into our diversified business model by income and by geography and further supported by the stabilizing effect of the structural hedge. And reflecting this, we are confident that we can deliver consistent returns in a range of scenarios, providing a floor to our ambition.
And on this slide, we’ve provided you with our macroeconomic and market assumptions, which we view as realistic. The next few slides describe how our drive towards higher and more predictable returns come together for our shareholders. We have a clear hierarchy for capital allocation. In order of priority, first, how much capital do we need to run the bank, taking into account regulatory changes including Basel 3.1. Our 13% to 14% CET1 ratio range remains unchanged with sufficient flexibility and appetite to operate within the range and absorb headwinds. By doing so, we’ll deliver for our investors, our customers, our clients and our colleagues regardless of the environment. Our next priority, having maintained our target regulatory capital is to our shareholders, and going forward we expect to generate a greater amount of free capital for shareholder distributions.
And third, we will balance this thoughtfully as we invest selectively in our higher-returning divisions, resulting in a more profitable RWA mix over time and a better bank for our stakeholders. We set a high bar for investment returns relative to the importance we place on shareholder distributions. In 2023, our 9% statutory RoTE delivered more than 125 basis points of CET1 capital accretion. By 2026, with higher returns, we expect this to grow above 200 basis points. We expect meaningful capital generation over the next three years. Taking into account capital demands from regulatory change and investment in higher-returning businesses, we expect to have meaningful free capital supporting our distribution plan on the following slide. We have distributed a total of 7.7 to shareholders over the past three years compared to £5.7 billion over the preceding 7, and we expect this to increase further through to 2026.
We’ve made one step change. And as you’ve heard today, we plan to make another and return at least £10 billion to shareholders between 2024 and 2026. And this is in addition to today’s announced full year final distribution. Including those distributions, the total would be at least £11.8 billion by 2026 and represents approximately 55% of our current market cap. From this year onwards, we plan to keep the total dividend broadly stable and grow dividend per share progressively through lower share count. Over the past three years, we’ve reduced our total number of shares in issue by around 13% and do expect further reduction from the higher planned share buybacks from here. So to summarize, there are three key points of reset in today’s targets.
First, we’re targeting a RoTE of above 12% in 2026, up from 9% statutory in 2024. Second, we expect this improved profitability to support our plans to distribute at least £10 billion to shareholders between 2024 and 2026. And finally, the proportion of the RWAs in our investment bank to the rest of the bank will reduce to around 50% by 2026. We have also set ourselves some supporting targets, which allow us and you to track our progress. We expect to grow our income to around £30 billion by 2026 with more stable income streams growing by around 15% and maintaining a high-quality mix. We aim to improve our cost-income ratio to the high 50s as we balance future investments with further efficiency savings and capitalize on the cost actions we’ve taken already.
And we maintain a 50 basis points to 60 basis points loan loss rate guidance as we grow our loan book within the existing risk appetite, all the while maintaining a solid foundation and operating across our 13% to 14% CET1 ratio range. Now I’ll hand back to Venkat.
C.S. Venkatakrishnan: Thanks, Anna. So to summarize this first part of the presentation, what is the investment case for Barclays? As I said, we have very strong foundations. We have a high returning UK retail and corporate franchise, which complements our top-tier global investment bank with scale in our home market in the UK and in the US. We manage our capital in a disciplined way, growing our higher returning divisions, while improving RWA productivity within the investment bank. And over the medium-term, we will rebalance our capital allocation between and across our consumer and wholesale businesses, and we do this in order to support more consistent and higher returns to our shareholders. So from a strong foundation of double-digit returns over the life of the plan, we plan to deliver over 12% RoTE by 2026.
And I think this reflects both ambition and realism. We are well-capitalized, have deep liquidity, sound risk management. And when you combine that with consistent and improved profitability, we believe it enables a higher return of capital to you, our shareholders. And we plan to return at least £10 billion, as Anna said, to shareholders between 2024 and 2026. This is our vision for a better run, more strongly performing and higher-returning Barclays. So I will now open for question and answers, for which we have about half an hour assigned. Please limit yourself to two questions per room that we can get around as many of you as possible. As always, please introduce yourself, and there will be more time for Q&A after the business presentations.
A – C.S. Venkatakrishnan: Alvaro.
Q – Alvaro Serrano: Thank you. Alvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley. Again, just a couple of questions on, I guess, capital allocation and distribution. The disposals you’ve earmarked, Germany, sort of, the mortgage — Italian mortgage business and the payments merchant acquiring, is this about, sort of, simplifying the business, sort of redeploying capital to sort of your core regions that you identified? And/or how much do you need this to further £10 billion distribution? I guess where I’m coming from is, there’s quite a bit of headwinds, as Anna pointed out probably earlier than expected on credit card. Do you need these disposals for the £10 billion distribution to happen? How much are they dependent? And should we think about the £10 billion to be a progressive number? Or is it back-end loaded? Or can you maybe talk about that? Thank you.
A – C.S. Venkatakrishnan: Yes. So let me answer the first part about the actions and then Anna can cover the capital piece. We’re doing this to simplify our business, right? We — in fact, one of these things was identified many years ago is something we wanted to do in Italian mortgages. And German cards, we are not the best holder for that asset. It’s a non-core to us. So that’s the reason to do it. Obviously, if you gain some benefits from it, you can deploy it elsewhere. But the primary purpose is the simplification of our business and concentrating on our core capabilities.
