“We expect a continued benefit from our investment portfolio, including fixed-rate securities and derivatives, rolling into higher-yielding instruments, partially offset by declining US and non-US short-end rates.”

In context

“nt, driven by actions taken over the last few quarters to reduce Citi's asset sensitivity in a declining interest rate environment. Expenses were down 6%, with a decline in legacy franchises, partially offset by growth in corporate other. Cost of credit was $449 million, primarily consisting of net credit losses of $341 million, driven by consumer loans in Mexico. Turning to our current expectations for 2026, starting with net interest income excluding markets on slide 19. Following solid growth of nearly 6% in 2025, we expect NII ex markets to be up between 5-6% in 2026. As you can see on the left-hand side of the page, we expect most of the increase to come from volume growth and mix, primarily driven by higher loan volumes in cards and wealth and deposit volumes in services and wealth. We expect a continued benefit from our investment portfolio, including fixed-rate securities and derivatives, rolling into higher-yielding instruments, partially offset by declining US and non-US short-end rates. Overall, we expect the drivers of NII markets growth in 2026 to be consistent with those in 2025. Turning to slide 20, we show our outlook for operating efficiency and the drivers of our expense base in 2026. In terms of expenses, we will continue to invest in our businesses to support continued top-line revenue growth and expect higher volume and other revenue-related expenses, with capacity generated from productivity savings from our prior investment, reduction of transformation expenses, continued reduction in stranded cost, as well as a lower level of severance versus 2025. We expect our disciplined expense management combined with top-line revenue momentum will drive another year of positive operating leverage as we target an efficiency ratio of around 60% for the full year. On slid”