It's our pleasure. Harry, I'd love to start by just asking you. Obviously 10 months into the role, really exciting 10 months I'm sure it's been for you. What are some of the sort of ups and downs? Any high level thoughts to offer investors, just given that you're relatively. New to the seat and it's a bit of a different perspective?
Yes. I was here last year. So, thanks for having me back. It's great to be here to see everybody, and a good morning so far. I had the privilege of sitting on the executive team at CIBC for well over the last decade. So I have a pretty good understanding of what's going on in our bank and what to have expected really in the last year or so. What I would say is, I've been pleasantly surprised as I spent a lot more time around our bank with our clients and with all of our stakeholders. The first thing that comes to mind is that this is an incredible franchise. A franchise that goes back to 1867, two months before Confederation, CIBC was born as the Canadian Bank of Commerce.
Here we are today, focused on building Canada and helping our clients across North America and around the world. Our client focus is deep. Our franchise is resilient. Our connectivity amongst our team members is exceptional. We're focused on things that matter, around modernization and efficiency. We have an incredibly strong balance sheet. Which I'm sure we're going to talk about. Our risk discipline in times of uncertainty is very good. So all of those things have been really great in the first 10 months as you point out, although not new to me. I would say though, that as we look forward. It is a moment for Canada for sure. It's a time of uncertainty. We are the most Canadian of the peer group, and we're very excited about the opportunities.
While it's an uncertain time for many of our clients, we're there in the difficult times but we're also there in the very good times, and we can talk more about some of the opportunities in front of us hopefully, Mike.
Awesome. I know you've got an exciting Investor Day coming up December 9th, I believe. I'm not trying to preempt the content on that event, but maybe if you can provide to the extent that you can provide, any sort of high level thoughts or should investors expect a bit of a refresh on the strategy, maybe something more meaningful? Anything you can provide would be great.
Right. Well, I'd like to leave a lot of it to December, if that's okay with you, Mike.
Yeah.
But what I would say is that we really want to talk about the path forward. We went in front of all of you in 2022, and I think we delivered on the great majority of those metrics. If not all of those metrics. So we're very pleased with the last Investor Day, which was a while ago. This Investor Day will be a refresher on the strategy in the sense that it's a consistent strategy, but how are we executing in a different way on this strategy, and how are we enhancing the strategy and taking our trajectory to the next level in terms of the earnings power of our organization. So we'll have some metrics that we'll talk about. We'll talk more about the technologies, the efficiency drive, and some of the things that our investors look at that are really important to our investors.
And so drilling down on those priorities and the levers that can take us to the next level.
Okay, looking forward to that for sure. Maybe just switching over to the ROE, obviously, 16.8% last quarter. Very strong number versus where it was about a year ago. The efficiency down to sub 53%. When you think about the traction that this bank has gained. It's 12 consecutive quarters of year-over-year operating leverage being positive. How much of that would you suggest is more structural versus just a good revenue backdrop on the market-sensitive businesses?
Yeah, I would say that, of course, it's been a constructive environment for financial services in general. There is no reason to think that that is going to change. If anything, there's probably more opportunity. But I would say that we've structurally moved on from an ROE target of the past. I see our CFO, Rob Sedran, sitting there. He's not looking me in the eye right now but he did promise 15%+. I bother him all day long every day by the way. I think we are moving towards a structurally higher return on equity. The challenge, of course, is to balance a targeted higher ROE with growth. As you invest for the future. You need to think about that efficiency frontier of earnings per share growth and returns. We talk about that a lot at our bank.
We think we have the business mix and we have the drivers, and we are well-positioned to capitalize on both of those as we think forward to the medium term. I think it's structural for us and we're on that journey.
Okay. Appreciate that. Maybe on capital allocation, before you talk about priorities, which I think you've been very clear on the last several calls. Just in terms of the D-SIB range coming down, the capital ratio sitting at a very healthy level here. How do you sort of look at where capital levels for the bank goes from here? I know that most of the commentary that we've heard since that D-SIB change was that there's a lot of uncertainty and capital levels likely stay elevated, call it in that 13% range for the time being.
But there does seem to be an opportunity to maybe over time drive that further down. What's your position on the bank's sort of destination CET1? If you think of maybe a more constructive backdrop, macro stability, which hopefully is going to still be there in a couple of years. What's the long-term sort of thought process?
Well, the first thing I'd say is we do have that really strong balance sheet. You mentioned the CET1 ratio is one of the components of that balance sheet, and we feel very comfortable where it is now. Of course, we are focused on driving organic growth and deploying capital to our client franchise. We're hopeful that there'll be more demand from our client franchise across the businesses. When we look forward, we see a movement. It's not automatic and there's no time limit, but to a lower CET1 ratio on the back of that moment in time I talked about for Canada and for the U.S. and for our global businesses where their demand will come back. We have seen decent loan demand. We have seen decent opportunities to deploy capital.
We do think that there's an opportunity as we move forward into 2027 and 2028 and beyond to deploy significantly more capital to our clients. We have I think, CAD 9 billion of excess capital Rob, above our floor. So there's ample capital. We're generating capital, and we deploy capital with our clients. So we think the franchise will continue to grow and we think it's an opportune time. We're well-placed, if you think about the areas of opportunity across the commercial landscape, across the corporate landscape, and of course, across our retail franchise. So we are pretty optimistic that we'll be able to deploy more capital over time and bring that level down, meaningfully.
In terms of larger scale M&A, any sort of high-level thoughts there? I know it's not a priority.
Right.
You've been clear about that.
Yeah.
Just given the valuation of the whole group here, it does seem like it is a lot easier if you are using your equity to fund larger deals. What is the appetite right now, for example?
There is no appetite for a large M&A transaction. There is nothing on the radar. We are very focused on organic growth. We are very focused on returning capital to shareholders when it makes sense to do so. Organic is number one priority. I would also say that, if you look out a year or two and there is a bit of a J-curve effect here when it comes to investment, we are going to see continuous results at the next level that will allow for the accumulation of capital. We will have excess capital to deploy. We are very excited about that. We plan to deploy our capital organically. We will look for the odd tuck-in that is a good cultural fit that is ROE accretive over time, and that is in the areas that we are focused on growing.
Here you mentioned the build Canada dynamic. How do you look at CIBC in terms of how you are positioned to benefit from any sort of infrastructure build?
Yeah. No, listen, we feel very good about it. We are very involved in what is going on next week. Of course, with the Canada Investment Summit. We are very excited about that. We hosted the Defence and Resiliency Summit at CIBC Square back in May, where we had 600 or 700 participants across government, investors, corporates, and commercial clients. We are very focused on where we can be helpful in these uncertain times. But also, in the times to come, which will be more positive, I am sure. We are well-placed across the industries, in the geographies that matter, in the products that matter. Our expertise, our insight, advice will matter, and we plan to be extremely helpful as we help re-nation build like we did in 1867. I think we are well-placed to deploy capital to our franchise and help the franchise grow and help our economies across North America grow.
Okay. Maybe switching over to credit. CIBC has actually been a positive outlier this credit cycle. Do you see that as a structural change? Is it something different that the bank has done versus what the book might have looked like, whether it is exposure levels, just the underwriting process itself? What has changed for CIBC to actually be a positive outlier this cycle?
I do not know if anything has changed. What I would say is we are just consistent. We are trying to be very predictable, transparent, consistent. We have excellent underwriting capabilities, of course, and you have seen that over time. We have a consistent strategy. It is a client-driven strategy. The team is highly focused on delivering the entire bank to our clients. It is a performance-driven culture, of course. Everybody is focused on the same things. We have got enterprise alignment about driving client results. The better we know our clients, the better risk management is. We of course, we are using new tools. New AI tools, which we can talk about. That goes for risk management as well. But the better we know our clients, the more we are focused on the details, the discipline around resources, consistent risk appetite. That is all working in our favor. The business mix is also working well.
If you think about some of our strategies around the mass affluent space, clearly that is less risky. The focus on, in commercial areas that we know well, and we know our clients really well, I think bodes well for the future as we look at our credit books. We are very confident in our credit books, and I think [Frank was vocal] on that on our last analyst call.
Just on the housing market itself, it is the biggest part of your portfolio in Canada. Any concerns there? Obviously, the GTA, GVA have seen a little bit of stress, but it has not really shown up in the PCLs. Anything to flag there? Anything you are looking at there?
No. We're not concerned. We have confidence in the strength of our credit book. As I mentioned. I would say that the mortgage business is just, as everybody's aware, is less than 10% of our P&C number. It's a smaller portion. It's important. It's important to our clients, and it's an area that we focus on, but we focus on delivering our entire bank to those clients not just a single mortgage product. That feeds into risk management as well. So we're very comfortable with our mortgage book.
I did ask one of your competitors earlier this morning, just in terms of the res portfolio and how meaningful it is on the P&L, just to the bottom line. Is it fair to assume that it's not a big hindrance if the market stays relatively anemic here?
Right
In terms of volumes, and it doesn't quite recover as robustly. It's not necessarily going to hinder CIBC in its ability-
Right
To grow its PTPP earnings.
That's correct. Less than 10% of our P&C earnings is a result of our mortgage business. What we've released recently a 9% revenue growth in our personal and business bank. We've got 10% pre-provision, pre-tax growth. We've got 17% NIAC growth. This is all in the back of a very slow mortgage market where we're participating in a reasonable manner. We're fighting for our renewals, of course, for those deep relationships. We are past the peak to your risk point earlier, past the peak of the price adjustment on renewals. We feel really good about it. Of course, we're going to compete for business, especially on the renewals. But it isn't as material as one would have thought given our diversified platform our focus on mass affluent, our focus on checking accounts, our partnerships, our CIBC Imperial Service, for example.
All of this is feeding through to a very well-diversified business that reveals those numbers I just mentioned.
Got it. Maybe just talking about the U.S. business. Just in terms of where you see that moving in the next say, three to five years. Just high level, what are you looking to build here in terms of your geographic scope
Right
or your capabilities, the breadth of the products that you offer? I'm guessing wealth is a big part of it as well. Maybe just talk about the high-level ambitions in the U.S. for CIBC.
Sure. Obviously, the U.S. is a very important market. Our clients are very active on both sides of the border in general. Our plan is to continue to grow in the U.S. If you think about our platform, we have a commercial banking business. We bought the private bank about nine years ago and that is really well-positioned now for growth. We are very excited about doing what we do really well in Canada also in the U.S. from a deep relationship commercial banking perspective. We have a wealth management platform. Together, commercial and wealth, and that is high net worth by the way, in the U.S. That commercial and wealth business is highly connected in the U.S. It accounts for about 10% of our earnings overall and the other 10% of the 20% of our bank is in capital markets.
We have a capital markets business in the U.S., a commercial business and a wealth business. Very well diversified, highly connected, and the growth trajectory is quite significant. We have invested heavily in the foundation of all of those businesses over the last, call it five years to ensure that we are ready for growth. We are trying to drive that ROE higher in those businesses, and some of them are actually higher from an ROE perspective. We are seeing great results.
What about scale in the commercial business in the U.S.? Is that something you are looking to expand on? Maybe just touch on the geographic mix.
Yeah
If you are looking to maybe expand beyond your current footprint.
We are expanding. We pulled back in certain areas. Institutional real estate's a good example of where we pulled back. We're unafraid to pull back where it doesn't make sense from a stakeholder perspective. What I would say is we're looking to build deep relationships. I mentioned the words earlier. We want to do what we do really well in Canada in the U.S. That's deep relationships. That's referrals. That's connectivity. That's delivering capital markets products. Delivering a wealth franchise to our commercial clients. In Canada, almost a third of our commercial clients would have a wealth relationship with us. In the U.S., it's not there. We need to do better and we will do better. The team's very focused on that. We see the opportunity to grow in the commercial bank across the U.S. We're in most of the major centers, and we're building organically.
We're hiring people, we're hiring relationship managers, and we're building deep relationships. I might also add that the movement of capital from north to south and south to north is profound. Regardless of the tariff uncertainty, clients are active on both sides of the border, and we need to be able to follow our clients and work with our clients on both sides of the border.
Maybe that dovetails nicely into my next question, just on the resegmentation.
Right
Having sort of commercial on both sides of the border. Maybe talk about that interplay between Canadian or I guess cross-border clients.
Sure
For the most part.
I'm going to make
Like, is there much more upside there? Because you've had a really good amount of traction the last couple of years.
Right.
What's the next leg?
Yeah, the next leg is significant growth across all three of those areas I just mentioned. We're going to lay out some of our growth trajectories at Investor Day. We want to leave some of it for December, Mike. We're very excited because we don't want our clients to stop at the border. We want them to work with us on both sides of the border. Regardless of which way they're going. So we've aligned our businesses north-south. Provides more transparency. It allows us to drive efficiencies across the platform to really allocate capital in a disciplined manner to the highest returning areas. Again, it goes to that discipline around resources that we're really focused on. It allows us to ensure that we are coordinated. I mentioned connectivity. We talk about connectivity.
Most investors would say, "Well, tell me the numbers around connectivity." It's how we live each and every day. Operations, technology, risk management, frontline, highly connected. We can do a better job north-south, and that's another reason for the alignment north-south.
Is that something that's still being worked on? It sounds like you have the infrastructure in place, or is there more maybe potential investments that are needed to broaden out your breadth?
Yeah, there's more investments to be needed, to be required. We see an opportunity to drive efficiencies across actually all of those businesses. Having a north-south business quite often will make it easier to do so.
Okay. Thanks for that. Maybe switching to Canadian P&B banking, just in terms of the push toward the mass affluent. How that strategy's sort of playing out and what you expect to see in the next couple of years. Then maybe sort of touch on the Costco portfolio and how that client base is-
Right
Transitioning and becoming more fulsome clients of CIBC.
Yeah, the mass affluent strategy is something that we are very focused on. It's higher ROE, obviously. It's something we're very good at. If you think about our Imperial Service platform, we've been in this business for a long time, and we've been investing heavily for the last several years. We ask ourselves, where are we in the baseball analogy? We think we're kind of third or fourth inning. We think there's a lot of upside. When we look at our core client base, we see perhaps 1 million clients based on our use of technology that we understand could be, should be, maybe it's better for our clients, hopefully it's better for our clients, it will be better for our clients to be an Imperial Service client. By the way, the profitability of an Imperial Service client is multiples of a core client.
You've got the lending, you've got the banking, you've got the advice, you've got the insight, et cetera. All of this comes together in a mass affluent strategy that's growing with a lot of potential. You couple that with what's going on at Costco, with 3 million credit card accounts. [There's 8 million] other potential clients. We are active. Costco and CIBC see our clients in the same way. It's everything to us. Their members are everything to them. We're very much aligned. It's ahead of plan. We're very excited about Costco's contribution to our mass affluent strategy.
How difficult is it to transition those clients? Obviously, it sounds like there's a lot of low-hanging fruit still there but does it get progressively harder as that number moves up?
We don't think so. We think there's great opportunity. I would say that we're making great progress. We have kiosks in Costco now located. Very productive. We partner in a very meaningful way. I think the partnership is working exactly as we had hoped it would, and we're very optimistic. The franchise numbers are very strong.
What areas are you looking to improve on? Is there any gap that's going to maybe hinder that progress or that's been hindering that progress, whether it's technology or what are you investing in right now to just keep moving that?
Well, it's interesting you mention that. I was just out in Vancouver, and I was with an Imperial Service advisor. We have 2,500 Imperial Service financial advisors. We have another 1,250 associate financial advisors. So, it is a proper, educated and well-funded sales force that really understands our clients, with excellent technology. I talked to a 35-year veteran a bit like me, actually.
I said to this lady, "How's it going?" She said, "Well, I have one challenge." She told me what it was. I won't tell you what it was. We're going to fix it. We'll tell you on Investor Day. "I want to thank you for helping me be more productive. CIBC AdvisorAssist that you've put in," with the team not me our team, "has made me 50% more productive. I no longer have to do this. I can focus on our clients." If we can be 50% more productive with our 35-year veterans, can you imagine what we can do with our new recruits? We're really excited about technology helping our people be much more productive. That's CIBC Imperial Service, as one example. It's happening everywhere across our bank.
Right. I'd love to stay on the topic of CIBC Imperial Service. Just in terms of the digital-only competitors that are out there right now and how they've sort of gotten a lot of progress in terms of catering to that sort of just below that mass affluent
Yeah
level that you're targeting. How do you see that playing out? Is it speaking to maybe CIBC needing to do a bit more to keep those younger Canadians engaged, or is it product mix? Is it technology? What's sort of been the big push-
Yeah
To have them go the other route?
The first thing I'd say is, we're not complacent. But we're also not worried. We think we have some very good defense mechanisms. We think we are strategically organized, and we're going to talk to all of you hopefully at Investor Day about this. We do have some excellent businesses. If you think about Simplii, if you think about our Alternative Solutions Group business. If you think about our Investor's Edge. And these are good defense mechanisms and potentially offensive mechanisms. In fact, they are in certain ways, and I can talk about that for the disruptive or the disruptors coming our way. And there'll be more over time. I think it makes us sharper if anything. We've invested heavily in technology. Our Simplii franchise is an area that we are focused on. You'll hear more about that at Investor Day as well.
I think we're well-positioned, but we're not complacent.
Okay. Fair enough. And just in terms of I guess, the success that some of these disruptors have had, does it make you worried at all about maybe a change in the dynamic of in times past or what we probably still currently see for the most part is as people accumulate wealth-
Right
At a younger age, they have a family, they buy their first home. And they get into that accumulation phase, and they become those mass affluent clients.
Right.
But is there a risk of maybe the DIY customer just stays DIY as they accumulate, and it sort of-
Right
Touches into the targeted area that you're focused on?
It's interesting. When you think about it from a defensive perspective, we will be well-positioned to defend against client attrition. But I think as important is our mass affluent strategy and what we're doing. And the tie-in to Simplii Financial to CIBC Investor's Edge to private banking. All the various different areas that matter to clients as they accumulate wealth as they get a little older. All the things that matter. The financial planning, et cetera. We're going to be well-positioned through the lifecycle of a client, but also for the different demographics or segments of clients when it comes to wealth management and banking. It all ties together, and we offer trust. We've been around for almost 160 years. We'll be around for another 160 years. And I think we're there well placed to service those clients.
Okay. Thanks for that. Maybe turning to expenses. I guess more of Rob's question, but I'll keep it with Harry. How do you see expenses in terms of it being a lever to pull when you need to? Obviously, the market-sensitive businesses could see a bit of deceleration in the near term. Whether that happens or not is anybody's guess.
Right.
But if that does happen, what's the sort of magnitude of the levers that you have to offset that and keep that operating leverage positive on a year-over-year basis going forward?
Right. Yeah. So is it 12 quarters Rob, of positive operating leverage? We always try to get there every quarter. We promise on an annualized basis, so we're going to continue to do that. We do view our expense base through an operating leverage lens. And we do have the opportunity to move that up and down. We have grown our expenses at a higher pace too, and it's been an environment that has been conducive for higher revenue growth. So if that normalizes over time. Which it may, we think we're very well-diversified. We think we have great levers to pull. We're targeting lower expense growth, and we think that the new tools will allow us to do things much more efficiently. We're also focused on the operating model across our bank, specifically in the P&B Banking.
We're focused on how we operate with fewer layers, with more integration delivered for our clients with less process. So we're looking at how we have that enterprise alignment working together to deliver for clients in a more meaningful way and a more efficient way. So we think we can take costs out across the platform. And we have many large initiatives, and we'll talk more about that at Investor Day. But upwards of 15 large initiatives that will drive efficiencies at a significant number using new technologies, but also new ways of working over the next three to five years on a run-rate basis that is significant. So we think we have very good direct line of sight on what we can do to take costs out or at least drive efficiencies and increase productivity. So we're very excited about how we can manage that.
It's all about discipline and resources, and I think that's something we're very good at.
And just on that same theme on the cost side, how does AI play into it for CIBC? You've given a good amount of color on some of the stuff that you're doing in the background there.
Right.
But, I guess I have to ask, should investors expect maybe an AI target on your Investor Day?
What do you think, Rob? We are working through the numbers. It's very interesting because you could categorize some of the AI results, the outcomes, through productivity, through risk mitigation, through efficiency driver, through revenue growth. So it's all of the above. And we look at it that way. We look at it from an offensive perspective, what we can do from a client acquisition or penetration perspective. I talked a little bit about the core clients moving to CIBC Imperial Service. We look at it from an efficiency perspective. I talked about CIBC AdvisorAssist. There are many others. From a risk mitigation perspective, it's very important too if you think about fraud and the impact there as an example. So we're using it across our platform to be much more productive to drive revenues, but also find efficiencies.
And I think you'll hear a lot more about that from us on Investor Day.
Definitely looking forward to that. Maybe I'll turn the floor over to you, Harry, just for some key messages you wanted to leave for investors about CIBC and what to expect going forward.
Thank you. Thanks for having me again. It's a pleasure to be with you all. We're on an exciting journey. We believe we've got the right strategy. We continue to enhance the strategy. We're focused on executional excellence, really driving our bank to that next trajectory of earnings growth in partnership with ROE growth. We're going to come back to you with some really relevant targets that we're very excited about at Investor Day. We'll talk to you about how we're going to get there and we really appreciate your interest in our bank. Thanks for having me, Mike.
Thank you very much, Harry. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the insights.
Thank you.