A good few months ago, we reviewed our contingency arrangements, and the board agreed that Paul was the short-term successor, then a sort of Number 11 Bus scenario hasn’t been a number 11 Bus exactly, but something a little bit similar. And we — that was all agreed with the regulator. So we implemented that. Paul and I agreed that the sensible way of doing it was to say he would be CEO for 12 months. So an initial period of 12 months, which could be extended, which would allow time to find my successor, get my successor in and that successor, then to decide how he or she wants to proceed, whether they want to have open contest, looking at external candidates or what they want to do. So I think the position is quite stable for 12 months. And thereafter, my successor will have to take a view.
Very grateful to Paul for agreeing to do it. On that basis, he’s very experienced in the bank. And the mood in the Executive Committee and elsewhere is positive about this. So I can’t say it’s exactly what one would normally have done. But I think it’s a pretty good interim solution.
Katie Murray: Thanks, Howard. And then, Andrew in terms of that liquid asset buffer question, the labs, average interesting assets reflect changes in the customer funding surplus. So of course deposits, we think the deposits are broadly stable. So you should see stabilization in the lab, AIEA as well as a result. Thanks, Andrew.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Cant of Autonomous. Chris, if you could please unmute and go ahead. Chris just double check that you’re unmuted and go ahead, please. And in the meantime, let’s move on to Fahed Kunwar of Redburn.
Fahed Kunwar: I just had a couple of sort of follow up, I think on the Guy’s question on the loan growth. I think one of your peers talked about the remortgage spread being a lot lower than the new business spread. Could you give us the completion margins on that? Are you seeing similar trends right now? And I guess looking forward now on mortgage, it probably does shrink from here if people are paying off and if you’re talking about a macro being an effect, is that the right way of thinking about it? The second question I had actually just on the NIBS question, if I look at your NIBS, it’s always been the mix off like 40% now, 37 is going well ahead of your peers. You sit about 25%, I’ve always assumed it’s because of your SME business.
So the drop off from 40 to 37 in the mix, was it retail customers or was it SME customers? What differences in behavior are you seeing and I’m going to sneak in a third question if you don’t mind. In 2024 your costs are sitting at I think 1% year-on-year growth and consensus. How realistic is that given wage growth is running at 7% in the U.K. Thank you.
Katie Murray: Yes, sure. Thanks. Thanks so much, Fahed. So I’ll deal with the cost one first. What we’ve said on costs is that this year, we are looking to hit a cost income ratio of lower than 52%. We’re currently sitting I think, 49.6, that’s a little bit lower than reality because of that FX recycling game, we’ve got an income. So it’s better to think of it as a 51, 51.5 kind of number. What we then said to you is, that we’d expect to get to a cost income ratio below 50, by 2025. And expect that 2024 would be something on the journey towards that. I think we do manage our costs incredibly carefully, we’ve got a long history of that in the bank. And we’ll continue to make sure that we do that. So cost is always a challenge, but comfortable in terms of the direction that we’re kind of heading on that.
