“Looking ahead, we expect NII growth to continue to outpace growth in balances for the year.”

In context

“lt for the higher annual fee, and we have seen no change to our very high retention rates relative to pre refresh. Net interest income was up 12% FX adjusted again this quarter, growing faster than balances. Notably, we are driving strong growth in NII, while growing balances, largely in line with spending, and while maintaining best-in-class credit results. In fact, write-off dollars are up by only 4% year-over-year, while NII is growing at double-digit risk pace. We also continue to see strong demand for our deposit products with high-yield savings and direct CD balances up 9% year-over-year. As we see -- as we see with our premium card products, our savings products is resonating with millennial and Gen Z customers, which make up over half of the accounts and about 1/3 of the balances. Looking ahead, we expect NII growth to continue to outpace growth in balances for the year. Turning to expenses. The VC to revenue ratio was 44.7% this quarter, in line with our expectations. There is some quarterly variability in the ratio given seasonality. For the full year, we continue to expect the VCE to revenue ratio to be lower than Q1, around 44%. The step-up versus the first half of last year reflects the investment we made in the value proposition of our U.S. Platinum cards when we refreshed these products last year. Marketing spend was $1.5 billion this quarter, flat to last year. Given the strong performance we saw in Q1 and our confidence in the balance of the year, we plan to increase our marketing investments to support long-term growth. We now expect marketing expenses to grow in the mid-single digits for the full year. Moving on to capital. We returned $2.3 bil”