Barclays - Q4 2025 Fixed Income

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to Barclays' full-year 2025 fixed income conference call. I'll now hand over to Anna Cross, Group Finance Director, and Dan Fairclough, Group Treasurer.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Good afternoon and welcome to the full-year 2025 fixed income investor call. I'm joined by Dan Fairclough, our Group Treasurer. Let me begin with a brief overview of our financial performance in 2025 and key areas of the progress and targets update announced this morning. Barclays achieved all financial targets and guidance in 2025. We generated a return on tangible equity of 11.3%. Top-line income grew by 9% year-on-year to GBP 29.1 billion, and we achieved our NII guidance for the group and for Barclays UK. Our cost-income ratio once again improved year-on-year to 61%, and the group loan loss rate, the 52 basis points, was comfortably within the 50-60 basis points through the cycle guidance. Finally, we remained well-capitalized, ending the year at the top of our 13%-14% target range after accounting for today's buyback.

This positions us well to deliver against our 26 targets and provides us solid foundation for future progress. Taking a step back, since 2021, Barclays has been on a journey to sustainably higher returns. So far, this has been through stabilizing the bank's financial profile and exercising capital discipline, keeping RWAs stable in the Investment Bank and building on its strongest areas, while prioritizing growth in our highest-returning UK businesses. Alongside this, we have simplified our processes to drive efficiency and exited non-strategic businesses. Year by year, we are improving the profit signature of the group, and by delivering stronger financial results, we create capacity to invest to secure sustainably higher returns, which extend beyond 2028. We believe that our plan continues to be constructive for fixed income investors, and Slide five provides the highlights.

Looking forward, we are confident in delivering Group RoTE greater than 12% in 2026, building to more than 14% in 2028. Stable income streams in the retail and corporate businesses will materially drive income over the next three years. This is supported by the structural hedge, which will drive circa 50% of total income growth. We expect modest cost growth supported by planned efficiency savings and normalization of the elevated cost base in 2025. This combination will deliver positive jaws in every year of the plan, as we have done in the last three, yielding a low 50s group cost income ratio in 2028. Meanwhile, the group has operated around the through-the-cycle loan loss range of 50-60 basis points for the past decade, and this range remains appropriate going forward.

Our strong risk management position is supported by our risk transfer capabilities, where we executed our first UK consumer loan securitization in Q4. We will continue to grow in our home market. So far, we have deployed GBP 20 billion of the GBP 30 billion planned business growth RWAs over the three years to 2026. We expect this momentum to continue, enabling more than 5% loan growth annually to 2028, and we will continue to maintain broadly stable Investment Bank RWAs at around GBP 200 billion. As a result, we expect Investment Bank RWAs as a percentage of the group to fall to circa 50% by 2028. This is later than the initial target of 2026, as it reflects the postponement of previously anticipated regulatory changes. And finally, a word on our capital priorities.

Stronger returns will drive capital generation of more than 230 basis points in 2028, an improvement of more than 30% over the next three years, and we continue to exercise disciplined capital allocation. First, by holding a prudent level of regulatory capital, which remains our top priority. As you have seen, we have been operating around the top of the 13%-14% target range ahead of the expected regulatory developments, which Dan will cover shortly. Second, by distributing capital to shareholders. Third, we will maintain capacity for selective investments to support structurally higher returns beyond 2028. Given the strength of capital generation, this capacity does exceed the level of investment set out in the plan today. I'll now hand over to Dan for detail on the full-year performance.

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Thanks, Anna. Let me begin first with capital on Slide eight. We ended the year with a CET1 ratio of 14.3%, generating 173 basis points of capital from profits. Given this strong capital position, we've announced a GBP 1 billion share buyback and a GBP 800 million final dividend equivalent to 5.6 pence per share. Adjusted for the buyback announcement, the CET1 ratio is 14%. Looking ahead, we continue to expect between GBP 19 billion and GBP 26 billion of regulatory RWA inflation. Within this, the circa GBP 16 billion effect of IRB migration in the US Consumer Bank remains our best estimate.

Around GBP 5 billion of this will now happen with the implementation of Basel 3.1 on the 1st of January, 2027, with the remainder anticipated later that year. In addition, we continue to expect a Basel 3.1 day one impact of GBP 3 billion to GBP 10 billion of RWAs.

We expect to provide further guidance later in the year as we work through the final rules. We are likely to use the option available to implement some elements of FRTB later on the 1st of January, 2028, which may defer a small amount of this impact. We expect a reduction in the Group Pillar 2A requirement following each of these changes. We have been operating around the top of our 13%-14% CET1 range, with the returns and distributions in the plan announced today based on this level. Post-implementation, we will consider where we operate across the range. On the broader regulatory landscape in the UK, we welcome the constructive tone in the recent FPC review around bank capital requirements and the considerations of other major jurisdictions.

However, it's important to emphasize that the FPC's reduced system-wide benchmark for Tier 1 capital does not affect the industry's current capital requirements or operating levels in itself. Instead, the review represents the start of a process of engagement. We will continue to work closely with the Bank of England with a view to promoting international alignment and the competitiveness of our business and of the UK financial services sector. Moving up the capital stack, on Slide 10, we show our Tier 1 and total capital requirements as a proportion of RWAs. We continue to target a prudent buffer against each of these requirements, which helps us manage any RWA and FX movements, as well as our issuance and redemption profiles. Our Tier 1 ratio is 17.9%, maintaining a healthy headroom above our 14.6% regulatory requirement. Within this ratio, we had an AT1 component of 3.6%.

Looking ahead, we expect to maintain robust ratios across all tiers and have a light capital redemption profile this year, including no AT1 calls. Turning now to Slide 11, we issued GBP 16 billion of MREL in 2025 with an MREL ratio of 35.8%. In 2026, we expect to issue GBP 10 billion with a skew towards senior, reflecting more limited requirements for AT1 and Tier 2. This target is lower than last year, given pre-funding in 2025 and the maturity profile throughout 2026. We have continued to seek currency diversification where it makes sense. We've also extended our weighted average life, our historically tight spreads. This included a non-call 10 euro AT1 and a non-call 20 senior, with both seeing strong investor demand. This can be helpful in reducing sensitivity to credit spreads and our go-forward annual issuance requirements. Onto the next slide on liquidity.

Our average LCR of 170% represents GBP 131 billion in excess of our regulatory requirements. Our average net stable funding ratio was 135%, and the loan-to-deposit ratio was 73%, both demonstrating a continued robust liquidity position. On Slide 13, you can see that our deposit base increased by GBP 25 billion across customer segments. We saw strong corporate growth driven by the development of our US dollar offering in the International Corporate Bank and an improved market share in the UK Corporate Bank. Retail deposits also grew, both across our UK businesses as well as in the US Consumer Bank, reflecting the ambition to build core deposits as a percentage of total funding. Our deposit base continues to demonstrate a high level of diversification between customer segments, geographies, and currencies. A significant proportion also benefits from longstanding operational relationships and deposit insurance, reflecting its stability as a source of funding.

Stable deposits across the group led to the full reinvestment of maturing structural hedges throughout 2025, compared to our prior planning assumption of 90%. We also reinvested these hedges at interest rates of circa 3.8%, higher than the 3.5% assumption. As a result, gross structural hedge income increased GBP 1.2 billion to GBP 5.9 billion, contributing 46% of 2025 group NII, excluding the Investment Bank and head office. Looking forward, we've already locked in GBP 6.4 billion of gross structural hedge income in 2026 and GBP 17 billion over the next three years. This income will build materially and predictably as we fully reinvest maturing hedges at higher yields. The increase in the average hedge duration to three and half years reduced the quantum of maturing hedges to circa GBP 35 billion per year from around GBP 50 billion in recent years.

This slows the pace of structural hedge income growth, but therefore prolongs the expected positive effect until at least 2029. Turning to Slide 15, another area of focus in recent months has been digital assets, which are gaining significant traction within traditional financial services and present an exciting opportunity for Barclays. In the keynote talk this morning about our ambition to leverage digital technology to better serve our clients. We are playing a leading role in the U.K. industry innovation and are well placed to bridge developments in the technology space between the U.S. and the U.K. We are developing the tokenization of our own deposits, which will lead to quicker and more straightforward transactions for our clients. Over time, we expect this to enable the tokenization of other assets, in particular across our capital markets businesses.

In this space, we are participating in the Sterling Tokenized Deposits, or GBTD, pilot phase. This is focused on connecting traditional and tokenized deposits in the UK and overlaying new functionality such as programmability. GBTD will allow us to test both retail use cases such as remortgages and wholesale use cases such as corporate bond issuance and investment. We are also exploring our role in the stablecoin value chain and use cases for clients. Here, Barclays is working with other leading G-SIBs to investigate potential benefits and implications of jointly issuing a one-to-one reserve-backed form of digital money. We are actively engaged with authorities in core jurisdictions to foster innovation while ensuring key risks are mitigated. Digital assets present the opportunity to significantly transform key activities within the financial services industry for our clients, and we are excited to drive this transformation. Finally, a quick word on credit ratings.

Our target remains for Barclays PLC senior to qualify as single A composite across all indices. This would require an upgrade from either Moody's or S&P. We believe the outcomes of our strategic plan and the targets announced this morning support the subjective in terms of increased profitability, greater capital generation, and a continued rebalancing of the group. We will continue to engage with all credit rating agencies on this topic. With that, I'll hand back to Anna.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Thank you, Dan. To summarize, these targets represent a realistic ambition of what we expect to achieve in the next three years and is underpinned by our robust capital and liquidity positions. We'll now open the call for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator (participant)

If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to remove your question, please press star followed by two. Our first question comes from Lee Street from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Lee Street (VP)

Hello. Good afternoon, and thank you very much for taking my questions. I have three questions, please. Firstly, obviously, Barclays has been linked in the press with various inorganic growth opportunities that have been acquired ultimately by the banks, and you've just highlighted selective investments to support high returns and you're operating at the higher end of your CET1. So I guess the question is, what is your appetite for inorganic growth? It kind of sounds like you're hinting that something's quite likely to happen. So that'd be my first question, please. Secondly, you highlight the large contribution of the structural hedge. So my question is, how easily can you add structural hedge balances given the high reinvestment rates and the fact you're going that long along the curve? And my third question is, what's the constraint on the amount of SRTs that you'd actually be willing to write?

Is it your own risk appetite? Is it the regulator? Is it leverage? And we get some idea of the benefits of CET1, but is there a way of us better understanding the benefit to asset quality and how that shapes and impacts, be it stage two or stage three, loans, just to understand the real sort of benefit there? So that'd be my three questions. Thank you.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Thanks very much, Lee. Thanks for joining us. I'll take the first of those three questions, then I'm going to hand to Dan. So in terms of inorganic, we've done sort of three recent transactions, and they all have a number of things in common. And I'm really talking here about Kensington, about Tesco, and now Best Egg. So the first is that we want them to be clearly sitting within the strategy, furthering that strategy. So with Kensington, it gave us a risk capability we didn't have. With Tesco, it gave us some significant bulk, if you like, and unsecured, which is one of the areas where we really wanted to expand as part of this plan.

And then thirdly, in Best Egg, it really is helping us tilt the USCB towards more capital-like revenue, but also broadening out the product set that we can give that we can sort of supply to our partners, if you like, making it more of a consumer bank than a cards business, which it's been in the past. So they're either going to fit within our strategy and deliver volume or capability. The second really important thing for us is price. And we're clearly looking at absolute RoTE or absolute ROIC, depending on what kind of investment we're looking at. We're also thinking about whether or not this can drive the EPS of the firm. That's very important to us. But also, we are looking at the relative return versus a buyback.

That's extremely important to us because of the strict capital hierarchy that we have that you might remember as first regulatory, second shareholders, third investment in the business. And the third one that's really essential here as well is that we don't want to embed ourselves with a very, very complicated integration that might distract the business from executing the plan. So that's a critical part. So as we look at things, we're looking at those three lenses. If we've done things, it's because we've been able to tick each one of those boxes. If we haven't, then it's because one of those boxes remains unticked. In terms of your point around operating towards the top end of the capital range, that's really because of the Pillar 2 comments that I made sort of earlier in the year.

With IRB not yet implemented, we are carrying higher levels of Pillar 2 than we otherwise would. We're also expecting some changes in Pillar 2 that might come off the back of Basel. We do expect that to be the case, but we don't know what they are yet. And what we don't want to do is set either our capital levels or indeed our distributions on top of a regulatory quantum and timing that is not clear to us. We don't want to be sort of moved around by those things if they were to change. So we do think that the right capital level for Barclays in the longer run is between 13% and 14%. But until we have that regulatory clarity and the NDA drops again, then you should expect to see us towards the top end.

So that's why we're operating at that end rather than any expectation that you should link that to an inorganic move. Sort of beyond that, what we did say today, though, was given the capital generation of the group, we are holding back some investment capability here. Now, if we're unable to use that sensibly with all of the criteria that I set out before, then we will return that to shareholders. We're not going to sit on excess levels of capital. Dan?

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Yeah. Thanks, Lee. So on the structural hedge, we're really pleased that we're now rolling 100% of those balances. So we're already doing quite a lot to protect the hedgeable balances. Obviously, a lot of those balance deposits come from really core markets for us, and we put a lot of effort into protecting that through the client proposition, through technology. The MRD book, obviously, is a component of the hedgeable balance. Every time we make a pricing decision there, we're really balancing commercial outcomes versus protecting the balance. So quite a lot goes into that. Although most of the hedgeable balances are from mature markets, I'd probably call out the International Corporate Bank. That's clearly an area where we have ambition to grow, and we've been quite successful in growing balances.

We tend to start with those client propositions with non-operating balances, but over time, we've definitely got ambition to transition that to operating balances, and obviously, they would be hedgeable. So it's a real focus for us. You asked questions about SRT as well. But we really do think about SRT as a risk management tool. So the hedge ratios that we want to run across the portfolio is a key factor that goes into how much we do. As we've said before, our biggest program here is Colonnade, which you should view as sort of being broadly at scale. It's very mature. The thing that we focus on there in particular is the RWA amortization per quarter. So this is the amount the protection decreases per quarter. And obviously, to the extent we want to refinance those clients, then that could create an RWA drag for us.

So that's why we think it's sort of broadly at scale. Elsewhere, it's probably much more of a targeted risk management tool. So in the U.K. business, for example, we've done a number of mortgage transactions, and we did a consumer loan transaction as well. But it's more about areas where we're growing, where we think the risk is higher, and we want to manage that. And then I'd probably put Best Egg in a slightly separate category. Obviously, that's more of a business model point where we've got an originate-to-distribute model. But in the grand scheme of things, activity there will be relatively modest. I hope that's helpful.

Lee Street (VP)

Yeah. And just a quick one. In terms of understanding the impact or benefit to stage two or stage three, or is that just not a lens you look through towards that? It's purely about RWA?

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Yeah. Yeah. We don't disclose that, but it is a real benefit for us. On the corporate loan book, lower down our watchlist grades, there will be good coverage of SRTs as well. So we clearly do benefit from that as we migrate. And sometimes we will look at that very directly in terms of the more surgical transactions. So in mortgages, we've done a transaction that is specifically targeted stage two, stage three, for example. But yeah, we don't disclose the benefit, but it's clearly a factor here in the SRT trades.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Sorry, Lee, the other thing I would add is it's not just sort of in the day-to-day, but we also get benefit and stress from the Colonnade program. That is also important to us. Thank you, Lee. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Paul Fenner-Leitão from Société Générale. Please go ahead.

Paul Fenner-Leitão (Managing Director and Head of Financials Credit Research)

Hi team. Congratulations on the results I've got. Well, Lee stole my third question, so I've got just a little bit of an add-on, but the other two are still live. First, on supply, thank you for clarifying that you intend to do less overall. You do make the comment that you're very well positioned in AT1 and Tier 2. Would it be wrong to think that given spreads are tight and you've got a Tier 2 call coming up that you're still quite likely to do a Tier 2? Is that fair, notwithstanding the comments on I think it's slide 10? So it's just some clarity around that. Or is there no intention to do capital? That would also be quite helpful. That's question number one. Question number two, in terms of ratings, thank you for the slide discussing your ambition to be single-A at senior level.

I guess my question. I mean, that's all very helpful, and it suggests that you care about ratings. But given spreads are so tight, what real benefits does it bring you, or am I being too myopic about thinking that it might just bring you a couple of basis points in senior, or is that enough to make you want to get upgraded? And together with that, what's your sense around how close you might be? It's been three years since you were upgraded, I think, by S&P or Moody's. Who do you think is the closest? I mean, officially, the outlooks are stable. It'd be great to get a sense of timing. And then just an add-on to these SRTs thing, did you say that you don't disclose how much sort of benefit you've got from the SRTs you've done to date?

So in terms of basis points of RWAs, can you give us that number and what you think? And if you can, then what you think the maximum capital benefit from SRTs is fair to expect of a group the size of Barclays? Is it 150 basis points? Is it 75? Yeah. That'd be great to get a sense. Thank you.

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Okay. I'll start with those, and I'm sure we'll add in. Yeah. Look, in terms of the issuance, so we've got GBP 2.4 billion of Tier 2. GBP 900 million of that is a call. GBP 1.5 billion of it is a bullet. That bullet will have largely amortised down in terms of capital treatment. So it'll be just over GBP 1 billion in terms of Tier 2 that's coming off. So you should expect us to do something, but not lots. You wouldn't expect me to rule out issuing AT1, but hopefully, you've got the steer there that we're going to be limited or small in our activity given the no-call in 2026.

Next question, I think, was on ratings, right? Look, I think I'm an optimist, so I'd love to think that if we got a ratings upgrade, our credit spreads would continue to tighten and would compress with others.

We view that it's overdue, and we view that the credit profile has materially improved, and it would be good to get the ratings to go along with that. But obviously, the market will determine where our spreads trade. We're in a very active dialogue with all the rating agencies, as you would expect, including talking to them about the targets to 2028. And if you read the reports and you read the things that they're focused on, including profitability, sustainability, and the rebalance, we think everything that we're doing is absolutely on the right track. But clearly, the rating agencies will make their own decisions. I think it's two years since we got upgraded rather than three, just a nitpick. But we would agree with you. It'd be good to get an upgrade.

In terms of SRT, we don't disclose the RWA amount, but we have put out that there's GBP 54 billion of total notional. You could probably trawl through and get a reasonably good estimate of the RWA benefit. As I said, the Colonnade program is kind of at scale. You shouldn't expect it to grow. You should expect us to do things sort of ad hoc in the UK, but we're not looking to kind of take that up to big, big size. And Best Egg will be reasonably small. So you shouldn't expect major, major changes in the SRT volume that we're going to do in the near term.

Paul Fenner-Leitão (Managing Director and Head of Financials Credit Research)

Super helpful. Thank you.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Thanks very much. Yeah. Thanks very much, Dan. And thanks, Rob, for the question. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Daniel David from Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Daniel David (Director and Senior Analyst)

Stephanie Noor, congrats on the results. I've got a couple of questions. The first one kind of related to leverage and the second one on capital. I think in the call this morning, you talked about how you deploy leverage balance sheet, or you could, into some parts of your business, one being IB financing. I guess one way of improving or increasing that ability is by issuing more AT1. So I guess my question is, do you have a ceiling on the amount of AT1 you want outstanding that you could use to deploy in lucrative businesses around the group? And then linked to that, I guess the FSR that came out before Christmas was a bit disappointing in terms of the regulatory easing that we saw. But there was mention that there's potentially a review of the leverage framework.

So do you think it's warranted that the leverage framework is revisited, and do you think there might be some relaxation there? And then the final one was kind of picking up on some of your comments earlier. I think that operating at the higher end of the CET1 range is a very powerful message at the moment. I guess what makes us nervous is that you could become more aggressive like some of your peers. So I just wanted to understand, are there certain things that could happen which would make you become more aggressive? So I guess you mentioned the Pillar 2A reduction and a few other bits. But is it right to assume that it'll be at 14%-28%, or are there certain things that could happen that could see you maybe pushed to the lower end of that boundary in the interim? Thanks.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Okay. Thank you, Daniel. I'll let Dan take the leverage part of that, and then I'll follow up with your capital question.

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Yeah. Thanks, Dan. Okay. From our perspective, we think that the AT1 quantum is at about the right level. So you shouldn't expect us to change that materially. Obviously, there is a cap on AT1 in the leverage ratio, and obviously, we focus on that through stress. So it's broadly in the right spot. In terms of the FPC, I mean, you're absolutely right. Leverage is one of the things that they have focused on, and they're interested in that as a dialogue topic. We would agree with the comments that they have made that leverage across the UK banking sector has moved more towards being a front-stop measure. And that's as a result of the reduced levels of risk in the UK banks. And although for us, CET1 is still constraining, we would support that as well.

So we'll have to see where we go, but I think it's encouraging that they've made that a focus of the review. I'll take the third one.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. So just reflecting on the 14%, look, we are comfortable operating at that level, as you say, perhaps reflective of the environment, but for us, very much this sort of anticipation of reg change is not impinging on our ability to either deliver returns or indeed distributions. So given the momentum we have in the business, we're really waiting for 2027. So what will happen on the implementation of Basel 3.1 at the beginning of 2027? And then we do expect the IRB implementation during 2027. So that's the IRB's advanced model. So we'd expect a further Pillar 2 update at that point in time. And it's only really when we have those that we will be able to make a decision about where we want to run within the range.

I wouldn't conflate that with any sort of movement to a change in discipline at that point in time. We're very, very clear that we are capital-generative, but at the same time, that capital hierarchy remains in place, and we hold it very, very carefully. So firstly, reg. Number two, shareholders. Number three, investment in the business. And we do feel like we put considerable investment into the business in this plan. We're doubling the organic, if you like, run rate of investment. And we do think that there's only a certain amount of change that the organization can take on at any one point in time. So we're going to remain disciplined. All we're calling out here is that we're waiting for reg change. It's nothing more than that.

Daniel David (Director and Senior Analyst)

Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Okay. Thank you. Perhaps we can go to the next question, please.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Robert Smalley from MacKay Shields. Please go ahead.

Robert Smalley (Managing Director)

Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and thanks for doing the call. Really follow up on one or two. I think, Anna, you talked earlier in the earlier call about RWA rationalization. Equity derivatives are RWA-intensive. TB can be. Now we're in a M&A cycle that's in full swing that'll need some more financing. So when we look at your IB balance sheet, what's the best use of balance sheet as a competitive advantage here, and what's the optimal mix for your balance sheet in this environment? Can you give us an idea of where you see that breakdown and where it stands today? And if you could quantify a little bit of that, that'd be great. And then secondly, and this is an ongoing topic, just exposure with respect to private credit sponsor business and exposure to BDCs. Thank you.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Okay. Thanks very much, Rob. I will take those. So just on the first one, I think it might be useful just to have a look at slide 64 of the presentation we did this morning because what that does is it gives you the split. And this is the only level at which we do give a split of IB RWAs. And what you'll see is that over the last three years, we've reduced the level of IB RWAs deployed into banking. And the reason that we've done that is what we set out at the very beginning of the plan, which was we felt like the loan book had a very heavy level of capital within it, within banking, that wasn't necessarily generating the kind of returns that we thought they should.

So over the last two years, what you've seen is us get through about 2/3 of that loan book, and we're making tough decisions with those clients around whether or not we extend those loans again, fundamentally looking for better returns from those clients. And that's what's leading to that reduction in RWAs in banking. And you can see that much of that has been deployed into the markets business, which certainly over the last couple of years has had the opportunity to deploy it very, very effectively. From here, we've obviously got another year's worth of that loan book review. So I'm expecting more efficiency to come from there. And that's really important for their story because fundamentally, we will then have the opportunity to deploy those RWAs that come free, if you like, into the IB as a whole. Now, what the optimal mix is changes over time.

That's really how we think about the IB. We think about it as a single business. So what you're going to see over time in different quarters or different years is we will be deploying more into some businesses depending on what we think the market opportunity is. And certainly, given this trajectory so far, it's not holding us back in DCM, which is probably the most capital-intensive part of investment banking. In that particular part of the business, we have been growing share over the last year. We're just being much, much more disciplined with capital, and that's really what's happening. So we don't feel like it's holding us back. In terms of the second part of your question, which was really sort of about private credit sponsors, let me say from the outset, sponsors are an important part of our business.

We do feel like the debt part of our sponsors' business is pretty mature. I'm just remembering back to our original presentation, and I'm sure Jordan and the guys can find that for you, where we showed that our share responses in DCM was actually very similar to that of our US peers. What was different was we weren't getting as much M&A and ECM business from them, which is inherently capital-light. So if I were to look at our sponsor strategy, it's leaning more into those sort of capital-light fee areas of ECM and M&A, and we have made some progress there. In terms of your private credit question, I'd encourage you to look at slide 100. Sorry, there are so many slides, but I think it's nearly the last one in the pack. And that sets out our private credit exposure.

It is what's committed, so it includes drawn and undrawn. We really set out on that slide how we feel about it, the fact that we are really focused on the top managers, that we really are focused on ensuring that we have valuation rights. We are focused on businesses that are generally relatively larger in this market, and we're very focused on LTV. So we manage that with real discipline. Obviously, we have risk concentration limits. So across any particular part of the industry or any particular counterparty, you would expect us to deploy those with real discipline. So we've got no immediate concerns, and really, the private credit story is much as it has been over the last sort of three to six months. Hopefully, that's helpful, and we'll get you that other slide.

Robert Smalley (Managing Director)

Thank you for all of the detail on that. I'm now looking at slide 100, so I appreciate that. I appreciate all the work that's gone into these decks. Thank you.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Okay. Thank you, Rob. I think we've got one more question in the queue. Perhaps we can go to that, please.

Operator (participant)

Our final question today comes from Gildas Surry from Crédit Agricole. Please go ahead.

Gildas Surry (Managing Director)

Thank you for taking my question. Can you hear me?

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Yes, we can. Thank you.

Gildas Surry (Managing Director)

Yes. Great. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on Richard's question about private credit. Back in 2024, around April, there was a partnership maybe or an announcement made with private credit or alternative credit platform, AGL Credit Management. I just wanted to know if you have partnerships in place where you would share maybe some economics on the pipeline or on the financing. Also, if you look back so two years from this announcement, whether you see those partnerships as successes now and achieving what you expected them to achieve. That's my first question. My second question as well is a follow-up on SRTs. It's difficult to triangulate between the notional amounts that you hedge through Colonnade and the Pillar 3 disclosure in the SEC 1 table. So we have to make assumptions.

Would it be fair maybe to assume a range of RWA density, about 60%-70% maybe for your risk transfer activity? Second question. My last question is on liquidity, your liquidity coverage ratio. Back in December, the threshold for the FSCS guarantee has been increased to GBP 120,000. I would expect a change of category between the stable deposits and the less stable deposits to the denominator of the LCR ratio, in particular the weighting for the outflow rates from 5%-50%. So can you just guide us whether this increase of the deposit limits has actually led to a change of categories for the retail deposits between stable and less stable deposits?

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Okay. Thank you for that. You were a little bit faint at times, but I think we got your three questions. The first was on our private credit joint venture, so I'll answer that, and then I'm going to pass to Dan in terms of the last two. So you're right. Back in 2024, we announced joint venture. I mean, it's successful, but I would say not particularly material in the context of our business, so nothing that we would separately call out or give metrics on. I'll just, again, guide you back to page 100, which tells you more broadly how we feel about private credit. It's no different to any other credit decision that we make. So we're very focused on choosing the right counterparties, getting the right visibility, and then managing the credit when it's on our balance sheet.

That's probably the message I would leave you with on that one. Dan, SRT?

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Yeah. Look, the penalty-free disclosures and securitisation will include a broad range of securitisation, so not just SRT. We can probably have the investor relations team follow up with you, but I think probably a more accurate way to kind of approach this question is to kind of look at the RWA density in the books, and we can help you kind of walk through those RWA densities. And that's probably an easier way of getting at it rather than the three because there'll be other things in there as well. In terms of the point on the guarantees, this was a relatively minor change for us. It was about GBP 1 billion of liquidity value, so it was not a material moving impact in the LCR. Obviously, as we said in the prepared remarks, the LCR is very strong. So yeah, no material impact and comfortable with the liquidity.

Gildas Surry (Managing Director)

Thank you very much.

Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)

Okay. I think that brings us to the end of our fixed income conference call today. I can see no more questions in the queue. So I'd just like to thank you all for your continued interest in Barclays and for joining us this afternoon. And no doubt, we will see many of you on the road over the coming few weeks. So thank you so much. Have a great rest of day.

Dan Fairclough (Group Treasurer)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for joining, everyone. That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your line.