Sarah Rivett-Carnac
Head of Investor Relations

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining the Standard Bank Group Pre-Close Call this afternoon. My name is Sarah Rivett-Carnac, and I'll be managing the call. The purpose of this call is to provide a little bit more color to the voluntary trading update we issued on SENS this morning. On the call today in the room, I have Arno Daehnke, the Group Chief Financial Officer; and we've also got the 4 CFOs from the 4 different business units online as well.

Arno, I'll now hand over to you. Thank you.

Arno Daehnke
Chief Finance and Value Management Officer & Executive Director

Thank you, Sarah, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I will assume that most of you have read the announcement we issued this morning, so I can be brief on the call this afternoon. In the comments that follow, where I will refer to the current period, I am referring to the 5 months to 31st of May 2026. And where I refer to the prior period, it is the 5 months to 31st of May 2025.

Year-to-date, the global and regional operating environments have been mired by uncertainty. Despite this, the group recorded a resilient performance underpinned by its scale, reach and diversification. In the current period, earnings growth