Okay, good morning, everybody. My name is Darko Mihelic, for anyone who hasn't met me yet. I am the research analyst here in Toronto. I cover the large-cap Canadian bank space, and I'd like to formally welcome you all to the 2026 RBC Canadian Bank CEO Conference. I see a lot of familiar faces in the crowd. It's wonderful to have you here. Similar to prior years, the presentations today will be in a fireside chat format. Please note that today's schedule and each speaker's biography are available on the website. This allows me to skip past flowery introductions and get right to the meat of the heart of the matter. Like previous years, there is an opportunity for the audience to Q&A.
It's through the Slido app, and I do intend to end each session a bit early so that I can ask the most popular questions voted by you, the audience. If you would like to submit questions during any of the sessions, please scan the QR code on your table to log into Slido with the password. Once you are in Slido, you can choose the room that corresponds with each session to ask your questions. The Canadian economy wasn't particularly strong last year, but it was far from a recession. While there was some concern regarding USMCA negotiations, which may happen this year, maybe towards summer, it's clear that Canada wasn't overly burdened with the existing tariffs in 2025, and the country is slowly adjusting to tariffs and other economic challenges.
We may have even adjusted to geopolitical uncertainty, or at least we've become a little numb to it. Fundamentally, credit loss has stabilized in 2025, and the outlook provided by the Canadian banks is essentially for stable PCLs in 2026 and maybe declining into 2027. Capital markets, while volatile, were constructive. So while loan growth was low, it probably gets better over time, not worse. Interest rates are at a good level for the economy and for lending and other bank products. Banks have been investing. They're becoming more productive. And maybe even the crusade for higher capital requirements seems like it's also finally ended. But the bar is set high for the Canadian banks. Every time I have discussions with investors, they throw valuation at me.
For context, in 2024, when I came up here and I gave my opening speech, the big six Canadian banks had an average forward P/E ratio of 9.9, just under 10. Last year, the forward P/E ratio was 11.9. Today, as I sit here and my associates updated this for me last night, the big six median P/E ratio is 14 x forward P/E. You might ask about relative P/E. Banks currently trade at 83% of the TSX P/E. The 10-year average has been 70%. Canadian banks trade at a half-multiple turn higher than the U.S. banks, and the 10-year average has been a 0.7-multiple discount. Against the Canadian life insurers, the Canadian banks are a full 2.3-multiple points higher than the life insurers. There's a little bit higher for a 17 magic in there, but the 10-year average is 0.7.
What's interesting is when I have this debate with clients and investors on valuation and P/Es, it shifts a little bit when you look at price to book. Against the TSX, the banks have a discount of 21% on a price to book basis, a 10-year average of 15%. They're actually discounted a bit more on a book basis versus the TSX. Against the U.S. banks, the price to book is 16% higher, but the 10-year average is 34% higher. So we're essentially looking at a bit of a tough spot from a valuation perspective. And as I say, that raises the bar quite high for the Canadian banks. But ROEs have been improving, and every company that I cover has been upping their ROE targets. So some of the discussion today is going to wade into ROE and returns and what we're going to do with capital.
And unlike prior years where I might get up here and ask about a theme or two, there isn't going to be any of that today. Today, I'm going to be very bank-specific because in today's world with high valuations and high expectations, I think what we really want to know is where do you want to place your bets? Because the whole group is up here, you really want to be focusing on which banks are producing the highest returns with the lowest risk. So I won't be asking about AI. I won't be asking about private credit or any other themes that are out there because I don't think we'd get substantive answers anyway. And I really want to dive into bank-specific returns and what the banks intend to do with all of their excess capital.
But before I do that, I really want to make one last ask of the audience here. Please chime in with your questions. I can't think of everything when I'm up here, and it's really, really helpful to see a bunch of questions that have been upvoted that I get to throw at the CEO. So with that, I'm going to officially kick off the conference and ask Dave McKay from RBC to step up to the stage.
Good morning, Dave.
How are you doing?
Good. How are you?
Okay. So here I was saying I was going to not talk about themes and kick off and speak about bank-specific stuff, but the very first person I have up here is Dave McKay. And so therefore, I feel somewhat compelled that to sort of maybe set the stage for the outlook. I really wanted to ask you about your macro outlook and maybe sort of set the stage for everybody here on how you're looking at the macro environment for banking and specifically for Canadian banks.
I think to your opening comments, we'll have to dig out of that a little bit. How do we earn into the valuation, I guess, is what you're trying to say. We feel really good about things. I think this is the first time in my tenure we've seen a general risk-on theme from foreign investors on Canada. They've always worried about mortgages and the mortgage industry and corrections there, and it was hard to bring that capital in, and we're certainly seeing that risk-on capital. Part of it is the growth opportunities in the country and infrastructure investment that we're going to make, whether it's energy infrastructure, mining and minerals infrastructure, transportation, and kind of rebuilding a more diversified economy going forward, CAD 60 billion of defense spend, CAD 150 billion of infrastructure.
So when you think about kind of the macro backdrop three to 10 years out, we have an opportunity to get some really big things done for the first time in a decade. And I think that is exciting investors. That certainly excites us as we talk about deploying capital and RWA into long-term growth opportunities. So I think there is a thematic tailwind that you probably should talk about because I haven't felt it in 10 years, and I'm excited about that. The operating backdrop, and I'll start with Canada into the U.S., is I still think resilient and constructive. If you look at the Canadian consumer, yes, they're carrying leverage, but they're not buying homes the way they used to. So we're seeing very little activity in presale, almost no activity in presale. So construction financing is not there.
That's a big part of the Canadian economy that's been slow. Yet the consumer has taken that disposable income, and they're consuming with it. They're consuming services. They're consuming some goods, more at the high end. Certainly, it's helped create jobs and stabilize unemployment in the country. And therefore, that consumer spend redirected from debt servicing, increased debt servicing and housing, lower rates have helped as well. That cash flow we're seeing through our payments businesses are flowing into the Canadian economy, creating jobs that you've seen, helping offset some of the sectoral impact from tariffs and some of the other kind of headwinds of the Canadian economy that you alluded to in your opening comments. So I think that resilience of the Canadian consumer has really helped in that cash flow. We've always worried about how much disposable income goes into mortgage servicing at the end of the day.
So, to see a bit of a pause, to see some of those tax, sort of those interest rate cuts go into consumption has helped the Canadian economy and helped the consumer. Unemployment is still very, very low from a longer-term perspective, and we feel good about that. You've seen that. You saw good credit card growth. You saw very strong deposit growth. You saw probably the top 40% of Canadians by disposable income investing in equity markets and propelling markets. All that was a catalyst for a very constructive environment, particularly for ROE, where we have the leading money-in-motion franchise, whether it's into deposits into investments, and back again. That circular money flow is so critical.
And we saw that deposit flow more than any other franchise, I think, really flow into investments where we earn a higher return on our activity. So all that was very constructive and based on a resilient consumer. You've seen a resilient commercial banking. You saw us drive high single-digit growth in commercial lending. You saw us drive high commercial deposit growth. You've got some sectoral impacts that are regional in nature, steel in Ontario, and you know the key sectors, and that has struggled. But to your point, the majority of our trade with the U.S. is still under CUSMA, and that activity has continued. And therefore, we've had some sectoral differences, but overall, we're seeing good activity across our mid-corporates and our commercials with stable credit loss to your point.
And then we've had very constructive advisory markets, particularly in the United States and Canada around more IPOs, more equity raise, capital raise around debt capital markets, more advisory and strategic M&A, sponsor-based deals, and that activity built through the year, particularly to year-end and continues into 2026 quite strongly. So very constructive advisory markets and capital-raising markets. And then volatile. Volatility levels were fairly high. Vols were high, and therefore our trading businesses did well, whether it was credit trading, obviously macro trading, FX was strong. And therefore, we saw very strong results out of our markets businesses. All that led to an ability to offset slow mortgages, offset a few challenges here and there, a bit higher credit that we had to earn through year over year. All that was a constructive backdrop in Canada and similar in the United States. The U.S. consumer unemployment is still low.
Disposable incomes are strong. They're not buying houses either. Therefore, their consumption levels were high, so you saw strong consumer activity carrying the U.S. economy. Still fairly tepid commercial lending growth, but then very strong capital markets growth in the United States, and Europe had a revival. You just saw more markets activity than we've seen there in a while and a bit of a mix depending on what segment you're looking at in the wealth space, so the macro environment has been really resilient with great opportunities for long-term investment to continue to build sustainable growth, which I think gets everybody excited. There's a new tone in the country, and there's kind of this view among all leaders that now's our time to get stuff done, and we've got to get these projects approved, funded, and in place.
I think given the geopolitical world that we live in, the impetus, particularly for Canada to get these things done, is really, really strong. You feel everyone pulling in the same direction for the first time. Overall, I would say it's constructive, and that bore out in the results, particularly for our franchise where we have such a strong deposit franchise and funding franchise. As you know, we place a lot of that deposit funding into Treasuries. That creates a stabilized income for a number of years going forward. I think that really helps us continue to deliver the type of growth that we've delivered. Net net, while there were challenges for sure, resilience and positioning for the future are, I think, the stronger themes for the year.
I think markets have rallied around that and are pretty excited about the opportunities going forward as we are at RBC.
And so what this ended up doing, I mean, you had very strong results last year. You had an Investor Day. You came out with an ROE target, sort of now hinting that it's going to go higher. And so although this topic was really covered heavily on the fourth quarter conference call, I still feel compelled to go back to it a little bit.
It was a long transcript.
It was. It was a lot. So I wanted to. Maybe we've got time now. We can maybe dissect this a little bit. What I thought we can do is let's think about the ROE in the following way. Let's start with the denominator where you could be buying back stock. You had mentioned that you wanted to operate between 12.5% and 13.5% common equity tier one ratio with anything above 13.5% going to buybacks. How do you decide on that range? Really, what do you want to do with the denominator to push the ROE higher? Should we expect that at some point you'll go all the way to 12.5% and push the ROE higher through that method?
Or maybe I'll just leave it open-ended and just leave it there for you to talk about the denominator.
Yeah. Certainly spent a fair bit of time in the Q4 call kind of going through the balance you have to do between the efficient use of capital and growth at the end of the day. And you run a range of scenarios and what is the best way to create and optimize the shareholder value of your firm. And for us, it's balancing that growth at a market-leading ROE and 17% plus. And that's a plus is a big part of that in that we will constantly try to exceed that. But we felt that as kind of the mid-range target allowed us to both create market-leading growth and profit growth and revenue growth at the more efficient capital deployment returns. And for us, we have scenarios where we can run it at 18% plus , but then we would sacrifice growth to do that.
And we found the best balance between the two. So you're trying to balance your above-market, your above-target ROEs versus your below-target ROEs. I've got businesses outside of Canada that are operating and will continue to operate below that 17% target. But I'm looking at the growth opportunities of the businesses that are Canada that deliver a premium ROE. And you're looking at that balance and trying to optimize the growth in all those marketplaces. And as City National continues to grow and improves, it's going to be ROE enhancing, but it's been a bit of a drag on ROEs going forward. So there certainly is as we continue to reposition the ROE at City National. We're quite excited about that. So you're looking at that balance. So the first thing you have to do is you're always looking to optimize your growth curve at your target ROE.
I think that allows us to do both. The second thing you're trying to do is you're trying to make sure you have a prudent reserve against volatility and uncertainty going forward. Sometimes you'll run the bank a little higher if you're sensing you're going into an economic cycle. There's extreme geopolitical volatility that could impact results and outcomes. You'll bounce around in that range. When we stress test our balance sheet and stress test against different scenarios out there, we always make sure that we have sufficient capital to cover off the scenarios that we need to. Therefore, you'll bounce around in that range a little bit.
So we came up with the range to guide you that we're not going to allow our CET1 ratio to grow unbounded at the end of the day and that we will continue to prune and that we can operate in that range of 12.5%-13.5% and achieve all those objectives. And that shows the earnings power. And if there was a strategic inorganic opportunity that came forward, the other thing you have to remember is we got such strong quarter in, quarter out organic capital growth that we're producing. We can produce 80 basis points net of dividends given our current earnings stream. And therefore, if there's something strategic, we can allow that capital to accumulate very quickly and it allows us to do a cash deal.
So part of the strategy then is also what is your capital generation ability each quarter and how much flexibility does that give you? And we're producing such strong earnings and consistent earnings that you can rely on your ability to build capital in the short term and therefore don't have to carry as much of it on your balance sheet at the same time. So it's all those dimensions, honestly, that you'll look at: risk mitigation, growth, capital efficiency, flexibility to deploy and grow capital quickly if there's an acquisition that comes along. All that flexibility allows us to range-bound that and give investors an idea of how we're going to manage our balance sheet from an efficiency perspective going forward.
Because the number one question I get, how high are you going to let the CET1 ratio run at the end of the day given that 80 basis points that you're building pretty consistently? And I really felt it was important that we all get on the same page as how we want to manage the balance sheet. So it's great to have that strategic flexibility. It's unique. And we take it very seriously how we use capital.
That's an interesting discussion on all of those different factors that sort of have to wade into the conceptually how you get to the 17% ROE. But I think one of the interesting things that I noticed at your Investor Day is buried in one of the slides. Royal has a targeted ROE, a return on assets. It's 100 basis points. For those of you who read our research, we put out a chart book, and in the chart book, we show you return on assets and historical return on assets. And Royal's never been at 100 basis points. Got close a couple of times, but never actually hit 100 basis points. Last year, you were at 85, maybe 87 if you adjust for a few things. So clearly, the high ROE is very much a function of a very high return on assets.
Can you help us understand how you get from 87 to 100 on a sustainable basis?
There's a number of drivers. I've mentioned a couple already. Certainly, the acceleration of the growth and remediation of our U.S. platform, we expect to increase ROEs there, increase its contribution overall to the organization. We're very excited about the growth opportunities across those franchises, but in particular, City National. So we've always talked about the growth potential of City National getting back to its target ROE and being more accretive to our overall target. So remediating the U.S. HSBC, while we've delivered on our cost targets, we have certainly the revenue targets that we're very excited about. And you saw us give an update that we're well on our way to about a third of that already. We still have two-thirds of that to deliver and over CAD 200 million plus of opportunity there. So you think about that great franchise and delivering there.
We have our money-in franchise, which again produces high ROEs as we deploy that into our Mutual Fund business, into our demand Securities business, into our PH&N business at a high ROE. And we won't see that type of growth, I think, in 2026 that we saw in 2025 in the markets. But certainly, that is accretive to our ROEs and our ROAs going forward. And then as you think about the mortgage business, we've come through probably the most difficult three years in the mortgage franchise in the last 25. I would say you've heard me talk about it on this stage and other stages a number of times. We've had this most significant margin compression in our history. We're carrying a very significant mortgage book at above the cost of capital, but certainly well below our target 17% plus percent.
And therefore, the ability, as we're seeing slowly, to get those ROEs higher through margin expansion and cost takeout are very significant. And given the size of that book, you can imagine on a CAD 450 billion book when you start to see 5-10 basis points of margin expansion, that's accretive as well. So you have that business. So you've got your advisory businesses and capital markets are also very strong. And overall, that's accretive to ROE. So ROEs will really come from, then if you summarize that, a third of it will come from NII growth, a third of it will come from certainly other income growth, and then a third of it from a variety of factors. You don't want to talk about AI, but it certainly is one of the most significant forces of change in our society and in the banking industry.
And as the market leader and the third highest rated bank in the world in deploying AI, and this is the third straight year we've been rated in the top two or three in the world in commercializing and deploying AI, it's because we've worked hard on our data. We've been building models for a decade. We have over 100 PhDs in AI. And we've got a lot of experience in deploying these models, and we're accelerating that. And you saw that as part of the investor's theme. But that is certainly a catalyst for better margin, better profitability across the organization. We just articulated nine large projects that you saw on our Investor Day, but there's a lot more going on beyond that as well in the organization. And that creates opportunities on the ROE side.
So for all that, that gave us confidence that our ROAs can improve towards 100 basis points up to there. And then certainly, that's part of the story in driving to a 17% plus percent ROE. So that's a lot of different levers that the organization has at its disposal to get after that. So if one doesn't work as well as we hoped, we've got so many others. And that gave us confidence, notwithstanding the geopolitical uncertainty and the volatility around trade and tariffs. We had enough levers at our disposal to continue to manage the organization in a more efficient way, producing higher ROE growth for our shareholders.
And so to summarize then, a third of NII, a third coming from other income, and then a third, you said other factors, but it sounded like efficiency, essentially.
Part of its efficiency.
Part of it is efficiency and through AI. All right. That's okay. Great.
So there's a number of ways of getting there, a number of paths. And you're always looking for that flexibility and adapting and moving forward. So we have a lot of levers at our disposal. And we've invested heavily in our franchise.
And so one of the other things that I get asked a lot is, all right, ROEs are going higher. Sounds like yours is really ROA improvement, a little less on the leverage. But all the same, the question comes up about risk. So are we moving the risk dial to move the ROE higher? And I suspect the answer would be no there. But what do you see as the biggest risk to your plans over the very short and medium term?
The first answer is that we are not changing our risk appetite. I mean, we recognize that for so many in this room, we're through the cycle hold. We're over-indexed through the cycle hold, and then managing to a consistent risk appetite and risk profile is absolutely critical to our investment thesis. We want to produce the highest ROE premium growth franchise at a lower volatility level, and that is our investment thesis, and that's what drives so many of you into our stock and over-indexed into our stock, and we respect that and certainly managing to that, so we do not take or look at taking a change in risk appetite to create that type of growth. And that's really important to us.
We constantly monitor that and stress our portfolio and talk about risk appetites with our board and everything else we do as a management team. So I think it's really important to emphasize that that's within the consistent risk appetite. And when you have a premium franchise that has such a diversity to it, we don't need to take risk to grow in the majority of our markets. So I think outsized risk to grow. So I think that's a really important statement that all this strategy and how we're managing the business is within a consistent risk appetite that we've articulated to you over the last decade. So I think that's important. I think your second part of the question was, what is the outlook then? And are you thinking about things?
Yeah. What risk do you see in the horizon that could maybe materialize?
I still think leveraging credit risk are still one of the key risks that we have to manage. We still haven't resolved CUSMA. We haven't resolved some of the quota system that you're going to see within the steel sector, within the softwood lumber sector, within the dairy sector. And therefore, that will have impacts to certain firms. And I would say it's hard to sit here and say with confidence that every firm is going to make it through that repositioning. There will be some firms that struggle. And therefore, it could be a little lumpy going forward as we try to resolve some of the sectoral issues around CUSMA. We don't expect any shock to the overall agreement because it's really good for America at the end of the day and it's good for Canada. And I think that's a really important basis for our perspective.
So I think there's going to be some volatility within those sectors. And you should expect a little bit of spiking this overall. Consumer remains resilient at the end of the day. There's a bit of creep as we have a K-shaped economy as everyone continues to talk about. And there's an increasing differentiation between the top 20% of earners in both Canada and the United States and the bottom and the 60% or 40%. And that growing differentiation and disparity is really driving the political agenda in both countries. I mean, you see what's on Canadians' minds as the majority are surveyed. And it's inflation, it's jobs, it's housing at the end of the day. So the 40% part of our overall populace in Canada are driving a big part of our agenda and are struggling. They're struggling to make ends meet.
At the end of the day, they're making their payments. For the most part, they don't have homes. They're renters in the economy. And therefore, as we see the cost of housing come down, as we see interest rates come down, as we see rents come down, I think that's helpful to a big part of our populace that is struggling to make ends meet. That disparity is much greater in the United States and much more severe and will become, I think, is a huge political issue and will become an increasing political issue as you approach the midterms in November. Whether it's electricity costs, partly driven by AI and the impact of AI demand and compute demand on electricity costs is quite severe. And you might see a doubling of retail electricity, residential electricity rates in the United States because of that.
So all those are big issues to be solved. And that will drive a big part of the political agenda. So I think from that perspective, the consumer remains resilient and are largely working sometimes two jobs. And I think we're probably okay there. So I do worry about, so the sectoral credit, there is a significant amount of leverage in the system right now that we're keeping an eye on. So I think that is one of the key risks. And geopolitical risk is obvious at the end of the day. And you can spend the rest of the time talking about that. Then the other things I worry about are cyber risk. I constantly worry about cyber risk. In an enhanced, more fractious, more confrontational geopolitical world, cyber risk continues to increase. It's not just commercial cyber risk that we take on.
It's nation-state cyber risk and trying to disrupt infrastructure within a given country for geopolitical purposes. So we spend an enormous amount of money and time defending against that. And I think that is a big part of the value proposition that leading institutions like RBC offer Canadians and our customers in general. We're offering security, peace of mind, strength and stability, cyber defense. And therefore, brand and trust around that are critical. And when you think about it, I often get the questions, are you worried about stablecoin? Are you worried about fintech disruption? I said, well, when you come back to who are you going to trust to protect you? Who are you going to trust to invest? Because so many fintechs have been hacked at the end of the day. And the resources that you need to defend your perimeter and defend your franchise are growing.
And they're significant. The hundreds and hundreds, if not billion dollars that we spend in defending, not every institution can afford that. And that bar keeps getting higher and higher and higher. So I worry about cyber because it's your brand, it's the system's brand, the confidence in the system. I think that would be a second risk that would get a lot of my focus and a lot of my team's focus. I could go on, but those would be the two big ones, credit and cyber.
On credit, last year, we did see one file that was noticeable.
Yep.
How should we think about that? Is that now maybe par for the course going forward that it can occasionally happen? It just sort of is what it is. You're a big bank. You can handle it. Or should we think about credit risk being less episodic going forward? How do you frame that for investors?
Yeah. We had initially a highly rated external utility that we stretched ourselves into. So I would say there was a bit of a one-off risk where we stretched ourselves into a bridge loan financing that was at the upper end of our appetite because it was a highly rated utility. And I think our learning from that is it doesn't matter if it's a highly rated utility. We're going to moderate some of the absolute hold levels there. So I think we got our heads around maybe a bit of an exception to what we would normally do given the construct there. And we got caught. And we wrote off more than we wanted to write off. And that was we earned through that quite nicely, but still not happy that the situation happened. It may resolve itself over the coming months a little bit. We'll see.
But it's obviously hung up in a lot of political rhetoric as well. So I think that would be our learning that notwithstanding that, we're going to be conservative.
So we've touched upon the outlook, some of the things that you're working on towards higher returns in a somewhat constructive. We talked about risks. Maybe one last thing that I sort of picked up on in the last little bit is could taxes be a bit of a headwind for you? And how should we think about that?
Yeah. I think we've signaled pretty clearly where we expect the range of tax impact to come in. So certainly, there's a couple of headwinds that we have to earn into. One, we've been very clear about the impact, the PPA impact of the acquisition of HSBC, that that was a bit of a tailwind in our consumer NII. And we'll fully earn through that. But just to keep reminding people that it'll take a bit of a point off our growth as we don't have that largely for the most of 2026 point of NII growth in that business. And taxes, certainly, as we go and look at Pillar Two. And Pillar Two gets implemented around the world and enforced around the world. And our overall tax burden will increase, as Katherine, our CFO, has articulated well into that range that we put out there.
So I think there's certainly a headwind there. Notwithstanding the headwinds, we have to earn all those tailwinds we talked about. And the confidence that we still set our medium-term target at 17% plus ROE is that we understand the challenge in front of us. And we're fully prepared to deliver on that. So yeah, they're headwinds. And we'll earn through them.
Are you worried about it longer term?
Taxes?
Yeah.
And how we're going to pay for everything?
Not just in this country. I think even globally, I think where you operate.
Certainly, our governments are carrying a significant amount of debt. I'm obviously more worried about the U.S. fiscal situation than the Canadian fiscal situation, but we don't have unlimited capacity to borrow in Canada as well, and we've got significant commitments we've made to defense and commitments we've made to infrastructure, so I am quite concerned about the U.S. economy as far as U.S. fiscal situation and the significant deficit being incurred. It's a wonderful floor under the economy at the end of the day, and it's kind of washing out cycles of the significant amount of government spend and GDP creation, so it's nice to have, but you just can't count on that being there at that level for a prolonged period of time without more serious things happening, so absolutely, from that perspective, deficits have to be managed appropriately.
I think we're seeing some imbalances that are concerning.
Now, the fun part. We're going to go to some audience Q&A.
Yeah. Fire away.
First one. Would you accept a temporarily lower ROE for a large strategic M&A transaction?
Temporarily and short term. I don't have any significant gaps that I have to close that I would say are strategic. So when I'm looking at a roll-up, I'm looking at a much more accretive short term. Or I'll pass on it. And I've passed on so many acquisitions because they're just not accretive enough. And we have so much opportunity on the inorganic side. So if it was transformational in our ability to compete in the long term, would I look at it? Absolutely, I'd look at it. It's my job. Our currency is really strong. But the story of how quickly we can earn back to that 17% plus would be really important to the overall storyline to even consider doing it. And we don't work for free. So we're not going to give all the synergies to the seller at the end of the day.
And I think you're in a market with so much capital flowing around that the deals are going to get done or are going to be very advantageous to the seller. At the end of the day, there's a lot of buyers out there. So I'm a little skeptical on the ability to really drive shareholder value through M&A right now, to tell you the truth. And we're very much focused on just organic growth. But there are a couple of opportunities in the wealth space that I think in the United States that would be transformational that we would have to look at. And there'll be high-quality franchises. And they'll be hotly coveted. And whether you could be the winning franchise and still deliver all those benefits to the shareholder is questionable. But you want to be there and have a look.
At the end of the day, you want to get the call. And you want to try to make it work. But they're few and far between, to tell you the truth. They may never trade. But you're always ready in case they do and try to make your business case work. So yes, I would look at it. I think that would be crazy not to. But our earn back to 17% would be a big part of the story.
Okay. We're up to the point where I always promise to give the last word to the CEO.
Okay.
Dave, maybe you could summarize or give everybody your key messages that you want them to think about for your company and into 2026?
I think we're operating in a constructive environment that's balanced. I see enormous opportunity for ROI in the United States, whether it's our City National franchise, or wealth franchise, or capital markets franchise. We're very excited about the growth opportunity that we articulated in our Investor Day in the U.S., and in Canada, we continue to take share. We continue to benefit from an overall market-leading franchise in every business we're doing. Canada has, I think, some unprecedented growth opportunities that we haven't seen in the last decade or 15 years, so I've been more excited about Canada than I have been in the last decade. I think the tone at the top is really good. The ideas are in the right direction, and we're all pulling in the right way. And I think we've got to get these things done.
And they're not easy things to get done as far as our infrastructure build. But they're accretive to growth. They're accretive to prosperity. And they diversify our economy and make us a stronger nation going forward. And I think I'm super supportive of the direction we're going. So I think I feel the world is seeing that for the first time. And therefore, I'm excited about the amount of capital that's looking at ROI from outside the country as well to capitalize on that opportunity as we try to grow our investor base and diversify our investor base. So great opportunity to grow and improve on mortgages in Canada. We'll continue to see good spend on the credit card side. We're excited about the deposit and our money, our market-leading deposit business, which is critical to driving ROEs and critical to driving that premium performance. Still, your deposits are key.
And we've invested heavily in our deposit business through partnerships, through technology, whether it's commercial deposit taking, consumer deposit taking. And most recently, RBC Clear. And our senior markets, our capital markets in the U.S., we're very proud of the product we built. And the awards that we received when we built it have translated into customers signing up to the product and using it to the point of we raised $23 billion of funding and of deposits in U.S. senior markets from scratch, from not even having a product three years ago. And we think we can take that to, as we talked about, the $50 billion plus. And that is transformational from our growth perspective. And it changes how we can look at acquisitions where before I could not solve someone else's U.S. funding challenge, like a Comerica having a funding challenge and can't grow.
I could never solve that. Now I'm getting closer to being able to solve that for other institutions that are struggling, and therefore that could change the overall synergy case and synergy story from ROI looking at opportunities in the U.S., so all of that work gives us enormous flexibility, significant growth opportunities in on-balance sheet, off-balance sheet, and it's the balance of our global franchise and our diversified client franchises that I think is the power of RBC, and I'm excited. I'm really excited, and AI is just another wave of opportunity to create shareholder value and client value at the end of the day, so there's a lot of levers to pull in a market that I think is going to have more opportunity going forward, and we're well-positioned to take advantage of that.
Okay. With that, we're going to end the session with RBC. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks, Dr.