Good morning. I'm Brian , and I cover the Canadian banks here at Barclays. Our next presentation comes from CIBC. From the company joining us, we have Robert Sedran, Chief Financial Officer. Welcome, Robert.
Thanks, Brian. Good morning.
Good morning. Thanks for coming.
Let's just start off with the health of the Canadian consumer. At the start of the year, there were some concerns: slowing economy, rising unemployment, impact of mortgage renewal cycle. But still, the consumer's pretty much held up better than expected. Do you expect this to continue, and are there any specific, you know, geographic areas of concerns or segments of concern?
Yeah, you know, every cycle has its story, right? We went from a period of, you know, a tremendous amount of monetary stimulus and fiscal stimulus that created the conditions, I guess, where inflation came in for the first time in a very long time, and so then we flipped the cycle to the other side and, you know, pretty rapid increase in interest rates, and the consumer has, you know, had to deal with quite a bit, both the rising inflation and the rising cost of credit. Interest rate increases did their thing. They did what they were supposed to do. We had, you know, inflation now is on the downslope again, and interest rates are back, coming down on the downslope as well, but the, you know, the intended consequence, I guess, of the higher interest rates was slowing economy.
You're always going to get a little bit of an increase in jobless rates as well, and so, you know, we've seen a rise in delinquencies, and we've seen a gradual increase in impaired loss rates. We're satisfied with the performance of our book. We never like to see rising loan losses, but our strategy and certainly within our risk tolerance is performing as expected for us, and we're pleased with the trajectory that we're on. We think from here it's going to take some time for the lower interest rates to start and the declining interest rates to really start to have their impact on economic performance and on the end consumer, but we're already seeing that sort of stabilization come in.
We think comparable loss rates probably continue to grind a little higher from here, but not in any meaningful spike or something that we're terribly concerned about, and from a geographic perspective, from a customer segment perspective, you know, our strategy is very much one of getting to know our clients and really deepening our relationship with those clients, and that's probably the best mitigant against rising loan losses, is just knowing who you're lending to and having that deeper customer relationship, so there's no particular pockets of worry. It's more just a macro trend that we're expecting to continue.
Excellent. And maybe talking specifically in the Canadian part of the business, the Canadian loan portfolio is focused on residential real estate, secured personal lending. How are you looking to expand to other segments of the consumer to add diversity to the portfolio? And do you remain comfortable with your residential mortgage exposure?
Yeah, you know, I'd probably come at it a little bit differently than just as a, you know, a diversification play. Like, or, you know, when you think about why the mortgage is, you know, as large an asset on our books, it's because the home is the largest asset on our clients' books. And so as they're making their payments, as they're working through their mortgages, it's going to be, you know, their largest liability becomes our largest asset. When we think about our strategy, it's not really a product-focused strategy. It's not about, you know, we've got mortgages, we'd like to add, you know, we'd like to add auto lending, or we'd like to add some other loan category to balance things off. It really is about getting deeper relationships with the clients.
So when you think about the various ways you can do that, and we're, you know, the investment product is an area that we would like to, and we do, spend a lot of time engaging with our clients, doing the financial planning, really thinking about their long-term success and the investment side, whether it's on the deposit side, so it is on the balance sheet, or it's the off-balance sheet investment products. In either case, you know, it's not going to really balance off from an asset perspective. And then the transaction account is one. The credit card increasingly is the one with which you interact with your bank almost daily now, because that's become the payment option as opposed to cash.
And so the affinity for, you know, the rewards programs and the various, you know, we've got a strong credit card lineup, and we continue to grow that side of the book. And so it's, you know, we're looking. You'll see that diversity happen, diversification happen naturally, from a customer perspective. But it's not like it's a goal to try to reduce our mortgage exposure, because we're quite comfortable with our mortgage exposure. This is a book that's been tested now in various parts of the cycle, right? We've had very low interest rates. We've had issues in the out west, in Western Canada, on the oil price. We've had now higher inflation and higher interest rates with rising unemployment. The loss rates remain low, and we're comfortable that that's going to remain the case.
You know, for us, it's more of a how do we grow the book, as opposed to trying to do something to diversify risk.
Excellent, thank you. So last week, we saw the third rate cut from the Bank of Canada, and we still got a few more expected before the end of the year. Do you think customers are starting to see the benefit from lower rates, or is that going to come through more in 2025? And with the outlook for rates to be coming down, are you seeing customers starting to move towards, like, a variable rate mortgage to take advantage of that?
Yeah, we do expect it to take some time, right? I mean, the same way that the rise in interest rates did take some time to do their work and start bringing inflation down. The drop in interest rates is going to take some time to really have its impact. So I do think it's more of a 2025 phenomenon, which is why, you know, we've talked about our impaired loss rates continuing to migrate higher on the consumer side. Still comfortable with our full year guidance at mid-thirties in terms of the impaired PCL rate. But you know, it is going to take some time before that starts to kind of work its way lower over in 2025 , we hope.
You know, in terms of customer preference, there's been a little bit more of customers taking, you know, maybe a longer-term mortgage. There had been a lot of the two- and three-year becoming the more popular option. We're seeing a little bit of that trending out. The variable rate really hasn't come back. I mean, we still have an inverted curve. The front end is still low. I think as long as rates are as low as, as, sorry, as high as they are on the front end, the variable rate mortgage is likely not to be an option that people go for.
I think the experience people have had with rising interest rates has also made them a little bit more cautious in terms of how they position themselves. As we look at where, you know, where customers are going and what the advice is, it is more into the longer term.
Long term. Great. And then maybe talk a little bit, too, how the impact of declining rates, you've been able to generate some modest NIM expansion, excluding the kind of trading piece. With interest rates continuing to decline, do you believe you can still maintain a stable NIM outlook?
Yeah, we manage our net interest margin, we manage our balance sheet, really, to try to create stability over time, and we've seen that, you know, that positioning has delivered that more stable margin over time. When I think about the margin, I guess I break it up into a few different components, and the first is just that balance sheet positioning and our hedging strategy. And, you know, considering where rates are today and where they were five and six years ago, that roll on versus roll off phenomenon of our hedges is going to be a tailwind for us. We would expect under most plausible rate scenarios.
I mean, if we're going back to pandemic lows in interest rates, maybe not, but under most plausible rate scenarios, we do think that that's going to continue to be a tailwind. We've, you know, talked about a basis point or two a quarter, for the, you know, for the foreseeable future. The area where, you know, there's the potential for some motion then becomes your business mix, right? And we talked, I talked a little bit about our growth in credit cards. What you saw in the most recent quarter for us was business mix was quite favorable. We had good growth in everyday banking accounts and everyday balances. We had growth in term deposits, we had growth in credit card, in the credit card book as well.
And our mortgage, our mortgage book has been, you know, we've been kind of keeping pace, if you will. And so business mix has been a positive for us, and we continue to think business mix ought to be positive over time, but that's a little bit comes down to, you know, from a quarter-on-quarter basis, it can be a little bit difficult to predict. In the competitive environment, I call it relatively stable, right? There are periods where those product margins can get squeezed. There are periods where you get a little bit, a little bit more oxygen coming into those product margins. I would say when rates are moving rapidly, it can be the market can be a little bit slow to react on the competitive side. A bit more stability in rates, I think the margins tend to find their level.
So as we think about the margin from here, we've talked about flat to gradually rising. That's assuming basically what's embedded in the forward curve in terms of interest rate cuts from here, so that there's still a bit of a positive bias to it, and then it does depend a little bit on how the book evolves and how the macro evolves from here. But from what we can tell, we still think there's opportunity on the margin.
Great, thanks. Maybe a little more. One of the important drivers to NIM is kind of the funding strategy. So maybe can you provide a little bit more color on your funding strategy and kind of where you're seeing the best opportunities for deposit growth? Do you think you need to be more aggressive on rates to attract deposits, or is that kind of not an issue in Canada?
No, I mean, well, so it's a good question. You know, our funding strategy begins with the deposit, right? And I mentioned that we had good performance in everyday banking, the checking and savings accounts. And it's that, you know, we are trying to acquire customers and, you know, as we're acquiring customers at a fairly rapid rate, we think we're getting our more than our fair share of customer growth. The goal then is to, you know, create, get the transaction account and, you know, create activity through the everyday banking accounts, and that's a great source of our funding. When you think about term deposits, there is an element of this, when it's your own customers and you know them well, and certainly they're, there's... I'm not suggesting they're not price sensitive, but they're not as price sensitive.
We're not about hanging the best rate on the window and trying to bring in dollars that way. What you'll find, both when it comes to the mortgage business and when it comes to term deposits, you know, you can move share with rate. It tends to not be sticky share, and where it's sticky as long as your rate's the best. And it doesn't really put you in a place to grow a franchise over time, right? Like, we want customers and clients that are looking for advice, looking for a deeper relationship with us. And so as we acquire those customers, we think it's a great source of funding, and we continue to expect to outpace the market on deposits.
The rest of the funding strategy really comes down to diversified by product, by geography. It's you know our wholesale funding strategy really is you know something that we think about as a long-term advantage, right? We have you know we raise in dollars, we raise in pretty much every currency of size around the world, and we keep that diversified platform because you know even they are covered and unsecured, and the rest really just to make sure we have as wide and as diversified a liquidity base as possible. We're quite comfortable with the way we're positioned on that front, and we actually think it's an advantage for us.
All right. Maybe like, talk a little bit more about some of your, your fee revenue, businesses. And kind of despite increased economic uncertainty, revenues in the financial markets business, both investment banking and trading, have been relatively steady the last few quarters. Do you expect this trend to continue in the near future?
Yeah, the financial markets have been in a constructive place, but part of this is just, you know, our strategy, right? So we've got three main pillars to our strategy in the financial market, in our CIBC Capital Markets business, and that's, you know, we want to be the leading financial services provider for our clients in Canada, our core clients in Canada. We've got a very strong market position, a lot of deep relationships, and it's a significant, you know, it's a significant source of strength for us on a, on an absolute and relative basis. We think we're, we like our positioning in the Canadian market. That said, it is a competitive market, and it's not growing as rapidly.
And so the second pillar comes down to expanding into the United States in particular, but internationally, into businesses that we know well, and businesses where we can export some of that expertise that we have. If you think about energy transition, if you think about renewables, if you think about the just energy infrastructure, those are areas where we're, you know, spending an awful lot of energy, you know, and growing internationally. And you're seeing the growth in the United States in particular, but a lot of these businesses are global, and we're seeing that benefit there as well. And then the third one, and this is an important one, and we think it's a differentiator for us, is really having the connectivity to our commercial banking franchise and to our... and to the rest, you know, even to the retail franchise.
And so when, you know, everything from Global Money Transfer product into retail, that increasingly we are in a position where our commercial banks can offer fairly sophisticated hedging programs and fairly sophisticated financial products, both sides of the border, both in Canada and the United States. That allows for that, you know, third wheel of growth. I think, and it's, you know, that connectivity is something we talk about every day. It's a key pillar of our strategy, and it's providing a lot of that stability and the recurring nature of the revenue. So, you know, for sure, the markets have been constructive.
Mm-hmm.
You know, other than the odd period here and there, where you get some of the extreme volatility that we've seen, the markets have been accommodative and constructive. We think we expect that to continue. We're in that part of the year where there can be a little bit of seasonality. You never know. We've got elections coming up. There's an awful lot of uncertainty in the macro environment, you pointed out in a couple of your questions. You know, but for now, it's a client-facing strategy. It's a client-facing business, and as long as our clients are active, we should be able to continue with the performance that we've had.
Okay, great. Thanks. Maybe moving on to more like the expenses and the efficiency. In terms of operating leverage, what levers do you have to continue generating positive operating leverage? And how do you balance that against making additional investments? And maybe kind of also, when you talk about investments, how do you think you compare maybe your competitors on investing in technology?
Okay. Yeah, the operating leverage theme is something that we spend a lot of time on, and it begins with an efficiency push, right? Like, this isn't about... And it's not tactical, kind of, you know, we're going to put on hiring freezes and manage expenses tactically. There are certainly things intra-quarter or during the year where you can balance yourself off against how the revenues are coming in. But when we think about efficiency, we're thinking about structural costs that we're looking to take out that will enable us to reinvest into our growth initiatives that we're looking to do. And so, you know, we show a slide in our investor materials. That's really the way we come at the expenses, right?
Like, the efficiency gains and the investments that we make, they're not linked dollar for dollar, but they are linked thematically, and so as we remove those, as you know, as we remove those structural costs, which is just an ongoing cultural thing that we do, those dollars will find themselves back into the investment side, and in the meantime, keeping as tight a rein as possible on our controllable costs, right? The cost to just operate the business are very much a focus on expense discipline on that front, and so we're comfortable. We've gotten operating leverage now for the last four quarters. We're comfortable, you know, we're not going to deliver it every quarter.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's difficult to suggest we can deliver operating leverage quarter in, quarter out, but I do think it's something that annually we should very much target, and so when we start thinking about those investments and the technology investments that we make, we're investing at pace, right? And we're both in terms of our client-facing technology, where you can see it, and just our client, you know, the technology to support our front office as well. So you think about our CIBC GoalPlanner, which has really had a transformative impact on the frontline experience in terms of their ability to deepen those relationships and really bring in more assets that may have been outside the bank, into the bank.
We've invested in a client relationship management system that just gives them better intel on their clients, and you can, you know, feel the improvement to the customer service because they get to know their clients better, and it's a more targeted conversation that they're having with them. And so there's a series of those investments we're making into the front office across the bank, including capital markets and the commercial banks as well, that are enabling a lot of that growth. And then we're investing to harden the bank as well, right?
Like, there's all of the, you know, through the use of AI and also through the use of traditional, you know, old technology, to make sure that we're investing properly for the infrastructure that we want, for the risk controls, for all of the, you know, the various hot button issues that are in the market right now. We're investing at pace, and we're comfortable that we're more than keeping pace on that front.
Okay, great. Can you give a little bit more color on kind of credit trends, particularly within U.S. commercial banking? And would you think about maybe executing, you've done some, like, sales of office CRE. Would you think about maybe doing more sales to reduce exposure?
Yeah, we weren't pleased with the exposures that we had in office. But when you think about the structural downturn that you saw in that space, we're comfortable, like, the loans that we made at the time we made them were very good loans. And what we found ourselves with was a structural downturn. Clearly, the pandemic had a transformative impact on the way people work, and, you know, our maturity schedule had a number of those just coming at us early.
Mm-hmm.
We dealt with them proactively, and, you know, you can see now we're, you know, we are on the downslope in terms of the impact on that side. So we did dispose of some, we've refinanced some, we've worked with our clients to get them into a better position. You know, we're always looking at ways to optimize the portfolio, but by and large, we're comfortable that the worst is behind when it comes to our US office portfolio. Excuse me. In terms of the book more broadly, it's performing well. Like, we're, you know, there's those pockets of CRE that are feeling some strain, like the industry is. We're not expecting any material loan losses to come from them.
We are expecting, you know, the loan losses that we put up this quarter in the U.S. were abnormally low, and we, you know, we signaled that on our, on our recent conference call. We do expect them to normalize, but it's certainly not back to the level at which they got previously. So, you know, the nature... I spoke earlier about how the consumer book is performing, and it's been a gradual increase, and it's going to be more of a gradual decline when the rates start to have their impact and losses start to come down. The nature of commercial banking and the nature of wholesale business and government lending generally is, you know, it tends to be a little bit lumpier, a little bit less predictable. Some quarters are going to be there, some quarters are going to be down.
Overall, when we look at our performance over the last many quarters, we're quite comfortable with the strength of the book, and on both sides of the border, there's going to be these episodic, idiosyncratic, whatever adjective you'd like to use, issues that pop up, but we don't see anything systemic that's going to come and be a big problem, so we would expect, like, and that's all sort of rolled into that mid-thirties guidance in terms of impaired loss rates.
Mm-hmm.
-that we're talking about. We're quite comfortable. We've been outperforming it a little bit, but that mid-thirties guidance still holds, and, you know, as we think about the outlook for next year, we'll have to see how the environment evolves, and, you know, we'll give a little bit more guidance as we get closer to the year.
Okay, great. Thanks. Let me get a quick question on capital. You know, capital levels have continued to accrete with the CET1 ratio moving higher over the past few quarters. Like, what kind of CET1 ratio are you targeting for your business? And where are you looking to deploy incremental capital?
Yeah. Well, so, you know, the regulatory minimum is 11.5 at the moment. There's still 50 basis points of room if the regulatory authority wishes to use on their buffer. But for now, 11.5 is the minimum. So we think something 12.5, maybe above 12.5, makes sense as an operating range, especially given some of the uncertainty in the market that we've, you know, been talking about through our chat here. Clearly, sitting at 13.3, we're in an excess position, and so we were comfortable announcing a buyback with our results this most recent quarter that we intend to use. But even there, to your point, we've been generating capital quarter in, quarter out.
Loan growth remains and organic growth remains our, our preferred, you know, preferred output. And we are starting to see some signs that that growth is picking up. And so we expect to see a little bit more, you know, a little bit more loan growth from both the retail and the business side as we think about, you know, the next quarter into 2025 . We're starting to see, like I said, some signs that that's picking up, and that remains our preference. So, you know, when it comes to where we're prepared to operate, like I said, we're, you know, this isn't a, when I say, you know, twelve and a half or a little bit above twelve and a half-
Mm-hmm.
That's not suggesting that, you know, we're in any rush to take that thirteen three down to 12.5 . We like the optionality that it provides us. We have, you know, we feel like we're positioned, again, in a client-facing business and a client-focused business. We don't want to be in a position where we're having to curtail our activities because we're trying to manage capital. And so the optionality that we have now, if that loan growth picks up, when that loan growth picks up, we can stand in for our clients under pretty much, you know, any condition here and continue to grow our franchise and continue to grow and help them grow their franchises. And so that optionality is something that we value. It was hard work to get here.
It's been a journey to get here, but now with the excess position we have, and we'll use the buyback, it's just a capital management tool. But organic growth remains our priority, and we, you know, like I said, we see the opportunity on both business and government and the retail side to start to see some loan growth picking up.
Okay, great. And then kind of my last question is that, you know, over the past year, we've seen kind of ROE in personal in Canadian Personal and Business Banking and Canadian Commercial Banking and Wealth Management has been under pressure. What steps are you taking, you think, to improve returns within these businesses?
Yeah, so the pressure on profitability has come from a couple of areas. One, the rising loan losses has dampened profitability a little bit. Clearly, we're carrying more capital against these businesses, both in terms of the regulatory minimums that have been rising, as well as the excess position that we're sitting in, that can crimp profitability a little bit. When you know, when we think about the trajectory and where our business mix and where our strategy will take things, we do think we have a strategy that will deliver a premium ROE over time. The depth of client relationship, you know, I mentioned earlier, the investment side, the deposit side, the credit card side, the you know, the payment side, the credit card business, these are all areas that should lead to a higher ROE in time.
It'll be a gradual build, but as we continue to execute the strategy, we're going to continue to push on the ROE front. We do think that the execution of this strategy, day in, day out, quarter in, quarter out, will continue to grind that ROE higher. So we got to a 14% ROE in this most recent quarter, and that's carrying the capital load that we're carrying. You know, we think that there's opportunity still to continue to push it higher in time, not in a straight line, particularly again, it's difficult to talk quarter- on- quarter. But we again, I would just call out the fact that we think the strategy will deliver a premium annually over time.
Excellent. Thank you. Can you pause it here and open up to any questions? There's a mic going around. I think we'll start in the front row, please.
Thank you. Some of your larger competitors have been more aggressive in pursuing a kind of U.S. retail acquisition strategy. How do you feel about that? And if you were gonna go down that path, what are the kind of criteria that you would look for? Thank you.
Thank you, for the question. The U.S. retail business is a highly competitive, highly scale-intensive business. And, you know, we find ourselves much more drawn to the private economy, both commercial banking and wealth management, where there's linkages between those two businesses, and we can grow them over time. I think having, you know, a large retail footprint commits you to having a larger retail footprint, and it's just something that we have not entertained and are not looking at the moment. You know, as we think about our U.S. strategy and any inorganic opportunities, it's more likely to be of the tuck-in variety, first off, and attached more to the wealth and fee-based side rather than the banking side at the moment.
It's just an area that we want to continue to build out our capabilities because we do think there's a tremendous opportunity in the connectivity between wealth and commercial banking. To the extent we, you know, we have a retail presence at all, it'll be more, you know, through the electronic digital means rather than having a bricks-and-mortar footprint.
Great. Second question.
Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. You talked about the international opportunity, and when you think about those businesses and business clients, are you talking about more capital-intensive lending business or more of a service type, advisory business? When you discuss international, and international sounded more like outside of the U.S.? Thank you.
Yeah, well, so in the capital markets business, there are certain verticals that are difficult to not think about on a global perspective, right? Like, things like energy infrastructure and energy transition. You know, we've got a practice in the U.K. and Europe as well. And it's very much connected to the rest of the footprint. So our ambition is largely a North American ambition, but there are product areas where to be meaningful, even in the U.S. and Canada, you need to have that global footprint. It's difficult to only get an advisory business, right? Without having any balance sheet attached to it. But we are using our balance sheet smartly, and we are, you know, looking at ways to recycle that capital a little bit more quickly as well.
There's an awful lot of demand, frankly, off of the financial sector, from private credit and the rest, for some of it, some of this activity. And so looking at ways to be a little bit nimbler from a capital perspective. So we're not talking about deploying, you know, a material amount of capital into the business, but it is without having some capital deployed, it's difficult to get the advisory and the fee-based side.
Great, thanks. Another question on front.
Thank you. You've mentioned energy infrastructure and energy transition as an attractive area several times. Can you possibly just give us a bit more detail so we understand better, like your current scale, competitive environment, what kinds of renewables you're lending to and infrastructure, and also what your competitive advantage is?
Yeah, generally speaking, we are following, you know, we're following our clients. And so when we think about the large pension plans, when we think about some of the larger Canadian players, we are working with them and following their ambitions globally. It's not so much a local-led strategy. It becomes more of a we have a strong presence with them in Canada. They expand into the United States. They go onto other infrastructure opportunities and, you know, we'll be there to underwrite and to help syndicate and to give them the advice on that front as well. So it's not a, you know. It is a very competitive space, and it's a very global space, and we know who we are.
We're not going to be, you know, one of the top banks globally on this, but following our clients that are active is we think gives us an opportunity to grow.
In terms of scale, can you get like, maybe some idea, how much is traditional energy?
Yeah, you know, I don't have the breakdown off the top of my head. We can get that for you.
In Canada, the concentrated market, small changes. Where are you seeing meaningful changes in terms of winning market share, given all the changes you've made bottom-up at the bank level?
Yeah, we have, you know, we're pleased with a number of the initiatives that we have. Our Imperial Service platform is an area where we have invested in the technology, and we've invested in people, to bring a bit of a different offering. Think of it as a private bank light to the affluent and mass affluent market. And we're also pleased we've got a, you know, our partnership, our co-brand with Costco in Canada, has been a client acquisition opportunity. They're a very good partner, and it's also been a very good client acquisition opportunity as well. And so as those customers come on, the opportunity to broaden those relationships and deepen those relationships-...
The combination of the assets that we have underlying it and the engine we have now, in terms of customer acquisition, is providing that opportunity. And you're right, our market shares don't move rapidly in the Canadian marketplace. It is a bit of a gradual process, day by day, but we're seeing the impact of the strategy, and we're seeing those market shares start to move.
Just taking a very long view on CIBC, I mean, recently, execution has been great. ROE has been basically on a par with the biggest banks in Canada. Over the long term, the previous reputation of CIBC was a bit of an also-ran where it had slightly lower return on equity than its peers and more volatility. So there's been some fantastic improvement. Can you give us your perspective on what's been different and how the bank has changed?
Thank you. I think it's been a clear articulation and a clear focus on developing, refining, and communicating that strategy that we have, right? If you think about, there's three main pillars. The mass affluent and high-net-worth strategy and deepening our relationship there, and I've spoken about it in a few cases already today. The digital and really being a strong digital bank, both through our Simplii initiative, which is a challenger brand within our bank, but also through our traditional banking channel and making sure that the digital offering is strong, and we've got a good set of digital assets that are performing well.
We think the connectivity, the third piece is the connectivity, which is having our capital markets and our commercial bank really serve as one the private economy and, you know, our core clients. And then the fourth pillar is making sure that we are investing to harden the bank, Enable, Simplify, and Protect, we call it internally, and having that clear strategy and communicating it, not just externally but internally, gives people a better definition of what's on strategy and what's off strategy, and it really focuses on the execution of it. And so we do think we're in a different place. We do think the way forward is just focused on executing that strategy. It sounds, you know, it's not particularly complicated. Good strategy shouldn't be. But we do think we have the assets underlying the strategy.
It's not just about what we want to be, but we have been. We've been investing, and I mentioned our goal, our planning software. I mentioned our CRM software. I mentioned a lot of the investments that we've made are aligned with the execution of that strategy. You know, we think it's a winning one. As I said, we think it'll deliver a premium ROE over time, and for us, it just comes down to executing against it. We expect, you know, that focus on execution is not going to change.
Great. Thanks. Well, maybe, if there's anything else that we haven't covered, do you want to leave us with any closing remarks, or?
No, I... Well, I would say, you know, if I had closing remarks, it might be the things that I just said. Like, the idea here that, you know, we think boring is good. We're focused on executing our strategy. We think it's a clear one, that will lead to that premium ROE and a good, solid earnings growth over time and should deliver long-term value for shareholders, and we're focused on executing against it.
Great. Thank you very much, Robert. Let's please join me in thanking Robert for his presentation.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
Next up in this room, we have Bank of Montreal. Other presentations in the next segment are Comerica, Apollo, MGIC, and NatWest.