ING Groep NV Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Raul Sinha - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Analyst : Two from me as well. The first one, Steven, I was just wondering if you think you have seen the peak in inflation pressure on the cost side? And the reason I ask that is because I think costs came in slightly below where the market was expecting. They seem to be annualizing just below where consensus is sitting for the full year. Would you expect perhaps there to be more or less cost pressure in the second half of the year compared to what you've delivered here? That's my first question. And then the second question, just coming back on NII. Some of the other banks, which do have financial markets businesses where the funding cost of the Financial Markets business is still booked in NII are moving towards banking NII definition, in particular, HSBC and Standard Chartered in the U.K. So I guess you guys have the same accounting asymmetry. So I was wondering whether you considered perhaps at your end to refine the definition of NII or perhaps give us another measure in terms of banking NII.

Question: Kirishanthan Vijayarajah - HSBC, Research Division - Analyst : Yes. A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, coming back to the deposit campaign in Germany. Just a bit more color there on what the thinking was because was it about accelerating the primary customer number because it did feel like you've lost a little bit of momentum at the 1Q stage when I compare you to the run rate of last year? Or is it more about managing your overall deposit numbers because you may have had -- I think you did have some outflows on the Wholesale side, so you wanted to sort of compensate there? And should we view that campaign as a one-off then -- or could we see more of those deposit campaigns being repeated in some of your other geographies? And then secondly, turning to the loan growth side, all looks fairly robust and well balanced across different divisions and geographies. Is the aim to put the deposits to work quite quickly into loan growth, in which case maybe you're hoping to see a bit of a pickup? Or are you happy to let those -- that cash flow into the replicating portfolio. I guess I'm ultimately asking how sticky you think those new deposits are in terms of how you're going to redeploy that.