Mm.

Um, but the reason that we have, we have specialist lenders is that f- is that if you're not focused, uh, on trying to deliver a, a different outcome for a quite niche set of customers, then you won't get it right.

And so, you know, in our case, uh, obviously if you're running big ticket point of sale lender, uh, b- big ticket point of sale retail, um, you've gotta be quite focused on how are you underwriting that, how you're pricing it, how you're collecting against it.

It's a different niche.

And similarly in business finance, looking after pr- professional property investors, again, you've gotta have a quite different outlook to one that you might have a, a more generalist, uh, business.

Uh, I, I, I guess the other thing, and this is less of a Secure Trust, uh, comment and more of a sort of, I guess, macro comment, is if you look back to when I started my career, a lot of these specialist lenders, uh, wouldn't have existed because actually the big banks had a much broader risk appetite.

And I do think that we've gotta ask ourselves how we've ended up as a country with a bunch of big banks that sort of take everyone's deposits and then lend them to quite a narrow group of, uh, uh, of both, uh, consumers and, uh, and SMEs.

And just for our, um, our sort of non-banking expert listeners, of which we definitely have some, what, what are the sort of two, three numbers that they should have in their own, their own minds around thinking about how you're, how you're being successful in driving shareholder value?

A full video version can be seen on piworld.co.uk where you can find many more videos of interest to investors

Hi, I'm Ian Corfield, Chief Executive of Secure Trust Bank, and I'm gonna spend a few minutes highlighting the key points from our twenty/twenty-six half-year results.

We delivered a strong first half performance with growth in lending, profits, and returns while making good progress against the strategic priorities we announced earlier this year.

Importantly, we remain on track to deliver our twenty twenty-six guidance, driving targeted growth for higher returns while continuing to build a simpler, stronger, and more focused bank.

Our financial performance demonstrates that the actions we've taken over the past year are delivering results.

Profit before tax increased by nine percent, lending balances grew to over three point five billion pounds, returns continue to improve, and we strengthened our capital position.

We're also returning capital to shareholders through our ten million pounds share buyback program, reflecting confidence in both our strategy and our future prospects.