Mr. Gavin Kelly:

It is important to talk about the additional resources we are putting in place. It is very important from my perspective but I want to make sure I also talk about the 2,500 colleagues I already have in place for supporting customers across branches and contact centres, and who are working very hard to open accounts. Customers can walk into a branch today and, in the vast majority of cases, open an account with us when they come into the branch. When customers want to book an appointment to that service, we are experiencing a four-day average wait if customers want to open an account. That is from the date they pick.

If they decide to pick next Friday, for example, they will get an appointment and be in the branch the following week. We are tracking this closely. I would like to get the timeline a bit shorter if possible. It is all down to choice, which is why we are redeploying more resources into the branches. We initially put in an additional 50 to help with the account-opening process and we are increasing that to 100 to ensure we will support the 2,500 colleagues who are there.

There is momentum behind this and customers are moving their accounts. We launched a significant awareness campaign last week to help customers understand what is involved in the process, and we are seeing customers respond. Over recent weeks, account numbers have increased already on what we experienced in the first quarter. The good news is that those numbers, such as the 50% of accounts being opened and numbers processed within the same day, are holding. We are absolutely sticking to those numbers and that is important, from my perspective.