Put it down for you. Okay. Good morning. Welcome to the annual general meeting of VersaBank. I'm Frank Newbould, Chair of the Board, since last year. In accordance with the by-laws, I will act as Chair of today's meeting, and I appoint Stacy Stokley as corporate secretary of VersaBank, as secretary of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I appoint Arlene Agnew and Heather Conrad around the corner from Odyssey Trust, who are joining us today as scrutineers for the meeting.
The secretary has confirmed that notice of this meeting was duly given in accordance with the Bank Act, and the scrutineers have reported that the requisite quorum of shareholders as described in the bank's by-laws are present in person or represented by proxy. I therefore declare this meeting to be properly constituted for the transaction of business and call the meeting to order.
I further direct a copy of the notice of this meeting, together with proof of mailing, be kept by the secretary with the records of the meeting and that the scrutineers' report be annexed to the minutes of this meeting. If all this sounds scripted, legalistic, formalistic, it is. We're told we've got to mind our Ps and Qs and cross the Ts and dot the Is.
There's a whole lot of formal stuff in here. We're fortunate to have in person, except one, all the members of the VersaBank's board. Rick Jankura, unfortunately, came down with a bit of flu yesterday, so he's participating remotely. What I would like to do is, let me get my script here. I'd like to ask each member of the board to stand, and you can all hold your violent applause until the end.
I am already standing, and I ask Sue McGovern, as Vice Chair, Interim CEO. Gabrielle Bochynek, Director. Robbert- Jan Brabander. David Bratton, you can get up. Peter Irwin. Rick Jankura and you can wave to Rick, but he's not here. Art Linton. Art. Paul Oliver and David Taylor. He's our President. We also have senior management here.
It's a large slide, and I'm not going to ask the members of senior management to stand up, but several are here recognized. Our auditors for fiscal 2025, Ernst & Young, are also joining us today. Thank you. We thank you for your service. Now we'll move into the formal part of today's agenda. Today, we'll consider the matters of business set out in our management proxy circulated March 9th, 2026.
The notice calling this meeting, the circular, the form of proxy were sent to registered and non-registered shareholders as of February 24, 2026, on or around March 18, 2026. I, for one, didn't get it because it was sent to my Toronto address. I was in Florida, but enough people have got it and voted, so there is a quorum. Unless there's an objection, I'll dispense with reading of the notice of meeting. There's no objection.
T o best utilize our time, specific individuals have been asked to move and second the resolutions which are set out in the notice of the meeting. Now, before moving on to the business, I would like to comment on voting procedure. With respect to our auditors and administrative by-law amendment resolution, which is a special resolution, each of the holders of common shares are entitled to one vote per common share.
Only registered shareholders appearing on the bank's register of shareholders, as provided by the transfer agent, and those persons who are authorized proxy holders who are eligible to vote at today's meeting. I propose to conduct a vote on the appointment of auditors and the special resolution by a show of hands.
Please note that any registered shareholder or proxyholder present in person is entitled to demand that a ballot be conducted either before or after the show of hands. If a ballot is required, we will then go through that, and the proxyholders will also be entitled to vote. The financial statements. The first item of business is the reception of the bank's financial statements for fiscal 2025. As indicated in the circular, copies of the auditor's report and the financial statements have been mailed to shareholders.
We're not asking shareholders to approve the financial statements, but we will be pleased to answer any questions pertaining to those financial statements during the general question period after the formal meeting. I'm going to move to the appointment of auditors. I'm going to ask Conrad Nicholas to move the resolution appointing auditors for the current year and Nick Kristo to second it. Conrad?
I move that Ernst & Young.
Take all that.
Ernst & Young LLP be appointed auditors of the bank to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders or. Until their successors are duly appointed, and that the directors of the bank be authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditors for the current year in such amount as they may in their discretion determine.
Thank you. May I have a motion seconded, Nick?
I second the motion.
Thank you. The motion's now open for discussion. As there's no discussion, I now put the resolution to the meeting. For this resolution to be carried, it must be approved by an affirmative vote of not less than a majority of the votes cast by shareholders present in person or by proxy. All those in favor of the resolution, please signify by raising your hand. Contrary-minded? I declare the resolution carried.
The election of directors. We'll now proceed with that item of business. I'm going to read something, and afterwards I think I'm going to ask Mr. Bratton to repeat it, because I know he's going to follow every word. The voting for the election of directors is to proceed by way of cumulative voting.
As required under the Bank Act, where directors are to be elected by cumulative voting, each shareholder of the bank has the right to cast the number of votes equal to the number of votes attached to the shares held by the shareholder, multiplied by the number of directors to be elected. Shareholders may cast all such votes in favor of one candidate or distribute them among the candidates in any manner.
If a shareholder has voted for more than one candidate without specifying the distribution of the votes among the candidates, the shareholder is deemed to have distributed the votes equally among the candidates for whom the shareholder voted. If the number of candidates nominated for director exceeds, the candidates who receive the least number of votes will be eliminated until the number of candidates remaining equals the number of positions to be filled. Did you get that, Mr. Bratton?
Would you like me to repeat it for you?
Well, to save time, I'm not going to ask you to do that.
Oh, sorry.
All right. In order to comply with the provisions of the Bank Act, the election of directors is to be conducted by ballot. Where a ballot is conducted, the appointed proxy holders will vote by ballot all proxies submitted to them as required. Now, first, before we elect the new directors, I want to acknowledge Paul Oliver, who has been a director for many, many years. I first got to know Paul when I was previously on the board of the bank. I've been impressed by him from the beginning, how knowledgeable he is, how careful he is, how what a great person he has been as a director. Paul has himself decided it's time to step down as a director. We are all sorry to see Paul leave the board, but I want to thank you, Paul, for all your services.
I'm going to ask everybody to join me to thank Paul. Now, we're now open for the nomination of directors. This year, the number of directors of the bank is fixed at 10, and the individuals listed in the circular proposed for the directors are me, Mr. Taylor, David Taylor, Gabrielle Bochynek , Robbert- Jan Braba nder, David Bratton, Peter Irwin, Rick Jankura, Arthur Lipton, Sue McGovern, and Scott Verity. I'm going to ask Scott to stand up because Scott will become a new director. We're very fortunate to have Scott join the board. He used to be involved in the audit of the bank when he was at KPMG, so he knows the bank well. The information on all the proposed directors is in the circular.
I'm now going to ask Mike Dixon to nominate each of the individuals listed in the circular that are proposed for election, and John Asma to second it.
I am pleased to nominate each of the 10 persons named in the circular for election as a director of the bank to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders, or until their successor is duly elected or appointed.
Okay, thanks, Mike. May I have a seconder?
I second each of the nominations.
Thank you. Are there any further nominations from the floor? Seeing none, I declare the nominations closed. Mike Dixon will now move the confirmation resolution.
I move that it is resolved that each of the 10 persons named in the circular be elected as a director of the bank to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders, or until their successor is duly elected or appointed.
May I have a seconder?
I second.
Thank you, John. The scrutineers have distributed the ballots to any registered shareholder here today who had not voted prior to the meeting, and any authorized proxy holders present. Each shareholder then should record their vote, which has been put due in accordance with all the lengthy instructions I provided before. I assume that those people voting will not have affected the outcome. I'll ask the scrutineers to confirm what the effect of the voting here today, if any, is.
Yes. The voting shareholders voted by proxy, while only 764,972 shares out of 38,069,044 shares, for a total of 39.6%.
Thank you. The scrutineers reported the resolution with respect to election directors has been duly carried by a majority of the votes cast, both in advance of and at this meeting, and I declare the resolution carried. Following the meeting, any registered shareholder who wants detailed information about the voting can obtain that by contacting the secretary of the meeting, Stacy Stokley.
Next order of business is the confirmation of the amendment to by-law number one, which allows the roles and responsibilities of the Chief Executive Officer and President to be held by different individuals. I think that's been explained elsewhere as what the requirement is and why the need for that. It was approved by the bank's board on May 27, 2025, and now requires confirmation of the shareholders. It's a special resolution, and it was attached to the secretary.
I now ask for a motion to approve the special resolution.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that the special resolution attached to Schedule A to the circular be hereby passed in its entirety as a resolution of the bank.
Thank you, Brent. Seconder?
I second the motion.
Thank you, Mike. The motion is now open for discussion. If there is no further discussion, I now put the resolution to the meeting, and it must be approved by affirmative vote and not less than 2/3 of the votes cast by persons here or by proxy. All those in favor of the special resolution, please signify by raising your hand. Contrary, if any?
Thank you. I declare the special resolution carried. Is there any further business that is part of the formal part of the meeting anyone wants to raise? As there is no further business to be brought before the meeting, this concludes the formal business of the meeting. I think I ask Brent to move the final resolution.
Thank you, Chair. I move that the formal business of the meeting be terminated.
All right. That motion is accepted, and I declare the formal business of the meeting terminated. Now I turn it over to the person you're really waiting to hear, our President, David Taylor.
Well, it's certainly great to be here again and see the familiar faces. In fact, some of you, I think, have been four decades of familiar faces. Now, did I mention I'm a pilot? You know, I started flying in 1957. Oh, sorry. Enough about me. Did I tell you about my airplane? Right? Well, I'll be a banker now.
`The Londoners here should be very, very proud, and those that have been shareholders for a very long time, in that VersaBank has been recognized throughout the world as one of the leaders in banking innovation. In fact, I've been invited to Westminster Abbey fairly soon, the first part of June, to address the lords and ladies of the land.
I'll be really, really careful that when I say that the center of banking innovation is London, that I don't make a mistake, and think the other London, that's trying hard to get there. I've got a small slideshow here to lead you through. Feel free to ask me questions if you like, throughout, as we go along here. It's just a little bit of the highlights. Last year was a great year for us. As you know, we initiated the operations in the United States of America, and that's worked out extremely well. Sometimes I have to pinch myself, when I'm talking to the U.S. regulators, that they are regulators.
Having grown the bank in Canada and facing all kinds of opposition to innovation, the U.S. regulator, well, case in point, Jonathan Gould would have asked me, "Could you come to Washington and tell me how this new innovative cloud-based bank works?" "Of course, Jonathan, I'll be there for you, buddy." Or the FDIC, wondering if we could propose a regulatory framework for our tokenized deposits. "Yes. Sure. We'll propose a regulatory framework for you."
Make the bar a little high for the others that are to follow. Anyway, it's been a very good year, and we've got a few slides we're going to pop through. Lawrence, are you on the projector here? As I was saying, we've got on that slide there, validated our hypotheses that our securitized receivable program would work well in the United States, and of course, it's working extremely well.
I'll reminisce a tiny bit with a really good Canadian regulator, a guy by the name of Nick Le Pan. Back in the good old days when he'd promoted us getting the first Canadian bank license in 18 years, I was sitting having the annual inspection with Nick and Bill Mitchell. I remember. Where is Paul?
Bill Mitchell was with me, Nick Le Pan, and the annual inspection consists of sitting at a table with Nick, who'd chosen some really nice wine, and he would first, because he's a regulator, say, "Anything keep you awake at night, Dave?" Of course, I would say, "Nothing. I fly experimental airplanes. What could keep me awake at night?" Right? He said, "Yeah. Have you got anything on the go?
Anything new?" I said, "Well, I've got this automated Receivable Purchase P rogram idea, Nick." Nick said, "Wow, that'll take off like a grass fire." The grass took a little while to get going because he left. Another terrible regulator showed up and slowed us down a little bit. Nevertheless, that program has now evolved into what we call the securitized receivable program.
Of course, it's a mainstay of our business in Canada and now the United States. Flipping along. Sorry, I have to look down here with my reading glasses. Thankfully, there's a lot of green dots there. We've been very successful in executing our plan within United States, getting customers on board and executing and providing them with the financing that they're looking for. Somebody asked me once, "So have you got a marketing team?"
"Have you got guys that are out in the street hustling?" I said, "No. We just lift up the phone and say, "Sure. We'll talk to you about that." It's that easy, isn't it, Mike? No, it's the usual thing. When you design something that is attractive, then you don't have to do a lot of marketing because it just sells itself. Right, Mike? Sorry, I can maybe see it a bit better.
All righty. Flipping along there. Well, it was a record year. Total assets, virtually every category heading upward. For those that follow us closely will know that we've engaged in a massive reorganization to sort of make our bank's structure look like that of the other U.S. banks. We have in mind a U.S. bank holding company called The Bancorp.
I think a good 50% of them are called Bancorp, so we're going with the flow. Unfortunately, that thing required a fair amount of spending on our friends in the legal profession and in the accounting profession. I'm sure they're represented here. We're happy to help feed their families, but hopefully you'll see the end of these large one-time expenses at the end of this quarter that we're in, April 30th. Other than that, all the stats, as you can see, are well in the green. Those are enormous growth numbers for a bank, particularly a bank that's in Canada, where we're looking at perhaps one of the worst economic environments in Canadian history.
Thankfully, our program is designed to work well both in recessionary times and, of course, where we're looking at a U.S. market that is in the trillions versus Canada, hundreds of billions or so. Moving along. This slide, it just gives you some rough math for those that like to do some analysis. As our assets grow, so does our revenue. You know how banks work. We make a net interest margin on our assets. In Canada, we've been one of the banks with the highest net interest margin. I'm not sure there's been one in the last 10 years that's approached our margin. We have one of the highest margins of banks in the country.
The other claim to fame that our bank has is not providing much for expected loss provisions, because the way our model is set up, we have to give very little back to look after the inevitable bad loans that others have to suffer with. The other thing about our bank is we do this to make us by far the most efficient bank in the world, and that's a matter of growth. As the assets grow, the net interest income grows, and I hope the fixed costs don't grow in step with that. That's why our IT guys are here to make sure we're using the latest in technology so that efficiency ratio can get less and less.
The U.S. bank is a little more efficient than a Canadian bank, and we're projecting by the end of the year it might get down to about $0.25 to earn $1 of revenue. That'd be about half what a really good bank has. That sort of behooves us with this model to be the most efficient because what we're really doing is we've got a big vacuum cleaner, some may call it a Hoover, back in the British days, Hoovering up FDIC-insured or CDIC-insured deposits and then putting them back out to our point-of-sale partners so they can earn a decent margin, and there's enough left on the table for us to earn our margin.
Really, our bank's all about getting that money out of the risk-averse depositors' pockets back out to the guy who wants to drive a motorbike or an airplane and get financing with the least amount of slippage or friction in the way. That's what this model shows. Flipping along. Well, this is kind of exciting. This is the sort of stuff that I've been alluding to.
This is something we created a good many years before other banks even thought of it. In fact, when I mentioned this idea to Jeremy Rudin, the superintendent at the time, he said, "Wow, that's highly encrypted or crypto." I always say highly encrypted when you're a banker. If you say crypto, people run for the doors, but as they should probably. Anyways, we're revolutionizing the banking industry with the first publicly available, retail available tokenized deposit.
This means the deposit that you're used to seeing in your CIBC account or RBC or someone's account, it is in a digital format, but you'll be able to see it through our VersaView looking into the blockchain, so Algorand, Stellar, and Ethereum digital representation. You might say, "Well, who cares?" Well, because it's on these blockchains, it will be able to be used for a payment vehicle, not unlike the old-fashioned check that you'd write. Only now you don't have to mail the check. You can use our VersaView and hit a button, and it'll go to pay Amazon or somebody for payment. I think it's the way the world's going, and I'm happy that we're up front. If you want something to look for, a milestone event will be when you see the U.S. government confirm that our tokenized deposits are indeed FDIC-insured.
Hopefully, they do soon considering we just sent them in the blueprint for the regulatory framework. In Canada, we hope CDIC does the same thing soon too. I think, Shah, we've sent them a Canadianized version, or we're about to send them a Canadianized version so they can have a look at it. That's a breakthrough in banking, because at that point, these tokenized deposits will be available in Canada and the United States, and theoretically anywhere in the world too. Anybody in the world that wants USD and wants FDIC insurance will be able to put it into their e-wallet. John, for little earlier. The precursor to tokenized deposits is stablecoins. We're bankers, so when we go to the horse track, we don't want to be skunked betting on one horse. We bet on two or three horses.
The precursor is the stablecoin. You probably noticed in the news that we have been asked to be the custodian for stablecoins in Canada, the very first one being the QCAD. Yesterday, somebody else was looking for us to be a custodian. Of course, we'll be your custodian. We'll take your money. Yes, we will. For our big bank friends, where are we going to put that money? Back in their treasury account with our big bank friends. It's kind of a nice cycle. It's a wonderful new business for us in that there's some fees to earn by looking after this. When I was talking about pinching myself in the United States, the regulator, her name is Sally Merrill, the Deputy Comptroller.
We're having a coffee, and she said, "Hey, did you know that as a national bank in the United States, you can be a custodian of these crypto assets and things?" I said, "Oh, yeah. Thank you, Sally." She said, "And to make it clear, we're going to write a clarification note for you, and so that you know that you can be the custodian." Wow. This is your regulator telling you that you've got a brand-new business in the United States to be the custodian. Now Canada wasn't too bad. Tiff Macklem kind of bought into the program. The Bank of Canada is the regulator of the stablecoins. He asked me to address a little private meeting like this. Tiff said it would be like a wedding.
I'll be at the head table, and then I go up on the stage and have a fireside chat with none other than the heads of the central banks for the G7. My message to them was, "Get the regulatory rails in place before you let anything like this happen in your country." Because as we know, there's a fair number of charlatans that will perhaps use these methods of payment for nefarious purposes. You can be sure what we built into the guardrails were things that criminals just wouldn't like. We built the ability to be able to trace the token anywhere it goes in the world. Could go to Botswana. Possibly will.
That's one thing to be able to trace it if law enforcement came to us and said, "Can you tell us where that money went to?" We'd say, "We went right there." That was okay. While we're raising the bar, we thought, well, maybe we should be able to lock it up too, so then that nefarious person can't actually use the money for any nefarious purpose. That's good. Finally, some law enforcement people thought, well, that's good. This one is just going to scare the hell out of the criminals of the world, and that ours can be evaporated. In other words, we can burn it sitting in their wallet no matter where it may be, which is music to the ears of a bank regulator. They will end up being currency for criminals.
If it goes to some other jurisdiction in the world, it'd be hard to put the honor of the law on their shoulder or somewhere else. Hopefully, that's what we built into the latest version, so that the regulatory authorities on both sides of the border can take some comfort in knowing that VersaBank will not be a place that the criminal element will want to deal. Last slide here, of course, this is a pretty important period of time for us. As I think some of you know, I invented this type of bank in 1993. Here we are, what is it, 33 years later. Finally, it looks like the industry and our fellow humans' reception to this type of super modern banking is finally here. Stay tuned. You'll see us grow the stablecoin business.
Hopefully, sooner or later, you're going to see FDIC saying, "Yeah, indeed, these tokenized deposits are insured." Hopefully on the north side of the border, the CDIC says the same thing. That means that our tokenized deposits on all those things. Of course, the business that feeds the family is the securitized R eceivable Purchase Program, and you should be seeing that growing very rapidly in the United States.
I'm not so sure about Canada. There's some tough times out there. You've probably seen the stats for the GTA area. I think as far back as I can remember, there's more delinquencies in homeowner loans. Whoa. That's not a good time. I don't expect a whole lot of growth in Canada, although there are some innovative new additions we have to that product that probably make it more attractive.
I think Dave Thoms knows what I'm talking about to help with the Canadian growth. Sizzly hot stuff that we've got on the stove ready to go, and just kind of the mundane old funding that banks do and earn a spread income. Looks like a very good year that we're heading into. Any questions at all before I hand it back over? Yes, John. You're a pilot, too, right?
I used to be.
No, you're obviously a pilot.
Too old now. Couple questions. When the tokenized deposits get approved, what sort of yield do you get on those deposits to the bank?
Well, we're able to pay yield unlike a stablecoin, which is still in the works. They're arguing about a reward point. We're able to pay yield as we see fit. Considering the market is almost zero, I have in mind, say, 50 basis points. Putting them back in U.S. Treasuries, I can get 450. I can get a 400 basis point spread with zero risk. It's manna from heaven. Thank you.
Well, that's your style, so. The other question I have is what about the margins in the point-of-sale business in the United States? Number one, in terms of net interest income on those transactions, and secondly, are you able to maintain the same safety levels in terms of money left on deposit with the bank to support the recourse aspects to those loans?
Well, those are really good questions, John. Originally, we were thinking the margins in the United States might be a bit wider than the ones in Canada, in that our cost of funds in the United States vis-à-vis the risk-free rate is quite a bit less. In Canada, we run 50-60 basis points over Government Canada bonds. In the States, we're running about 10-15 over US Treasuries.
Targeting around 3% versus, say, 200-250 in Canada, all in. It should be a little better in the States. With respect to quantifying the amount of credit risk we take on these, I'm working on a new technique using some mathematical techniques to arrive at a confidence limit, how confident we are that we have enough cash held back. I think in the early days in Canada, we probably had a bit too much held back.
There's never too much, David.
Well, that's from a banker's perspective. From our customers, they might. Do we have any customers here that use that part of our program? Because, for example, during the COVID time, 2020, when the accountants did calculate the intrinsic risk of our receivable portfolio, they came up with a certain figure, and maybe it was CAD 100 million, that the ECL should have been, the expected loss provision.
We were holding on to about CAD 200 million at the time. Twice as much cash as you reasonably could expect to take a loss on the portfolio. I think that's getting a little steep, to tell you the truth, for the customers. I have some. Actually, I plan to hire a guy from University of Western. Of course, hire our Western students summer.
Probably have a look at being a little more precise with respect to the stats that are involved in that. Probably dial it down a little bit, leave a bit more on the table for the customers to facilitate growth.
Well, thank you, David. One final question. What about the scalability? Do you see a strong competitive environment in the United States? You're at CAD 6 billion now. How do you see the trajectory of that growth?
Well, we publicly said we expect about CAD 1 billion more in new receivables going on this year. I was hoping to triple, quadruple that. There's a famous Canadian, he's famous to me anyways because I'm a banker. The guy's got a big head of hair called Steve Hudson. Hair Club for Men guy.
He just simply said it to me this way. "Well, it's rinse and repeat, Dave. Let's get going.
Thank you, David. Great job, by the way.
Oh, thank you. Anybody else wonder about aviation or anything like that? Oh, there's one in the back there. Doug.
Can you give us an update on the sale of the cybersecurity business, number one? Number two, can you talk a little bit about licensing software?
Well, those are actually interconnected, Doug. You must be clairvoyant. Well, we've got a fair number of other parties that are interested in us, the bank, providing a comprehensive technology partnership that would include cybersecurity. Originally, we were thinking we would just carve out the penetration testing aspect of it.
That's okay, but there are some potential purchasers who could use the whole suite of things that VersaBank does, including cybersecurity. Now I'm thinking in the United States, for example, they have 4,400 little banks. 4,400. Fantastic to be part of that group. Here in Canada, we've got these huge elephants wandering around. You have to be careful we don't get stepped on. In the States, there's 4,400 of them, and they all have cybersecurity challenges, right? The hackers are trying to get in all the time.
Here we have a beautiful suite designed for banks, and in fact, we look after the penetration testing, app testing for some of the large Canadian banks. I think some of you know, the largest retailer in Canada. Warren Buffett's energy companies, all that stuff. It looks to me now that it might be just a component of a full comprehensive service for those 4,000-odd little community banks that maybe need tokenized deposits, for example, maybe need their stablecoins looked after. The whole thing. We don't want to be greedy here up in Canada. Here, we're going to share for a little fee. That's a good question, Doug. Well, if that's it, I guess what we should do is-
David, we do have one from the internet.
Yes.
People are out there listening.
Oh, yes.
The question is: when do you think we're going to be able to vote, we meaning the shareholders, on the restructuring? There was some belief or hope that it'd be today, which obviously wasn't the case, but what's the timing look like for that?
Well, for those that know how this thing, the process goes, the next thing we have to do is have our most recent S4 sent to the SEC to be accepted. I think a week for the S4. The S4 goes into the SEC. Hopefully, they say, "I love this. It's fantastic," and say it's accepted. Say, give them another week. Then when we've got the accepted S4, we're going to send that to both the regulators on both sides of the border. They know it's coming, by the way. The Federal Reserve Bank on the south side and OSFI. I almost said OCC. I got to get my American OSFI on the Canadian side. Both sides have promised us to process this as quickly as possible.
We would be looking, if once we get sort of the green light from these two regulators, we'll be setting the date for the special shareholders meeting. Because the date, the approval will be shareholders are in favor of doing it, and then the regulators will say, "Okay, our approval was subject to that," and so now it's a fait accompli. We're looking maybe a month all in. I'd like to go a month. I know that François-Philippe Champagne's department did say they'd do it as quickly as they could. The Federal Reserve has given us similar assurances that they'll process it quickly. In reality, it's kind of a nice thing for regulators, what I have in mind.
The typical bank holding company owns the individual banks, but each regulator gets to look at its own jurisdiction and see how its own rules apply, that they're not mingled in together. It's a neat, tidy thing to do. Hopefully, I suppose, Brent, you're wincing when I said a month. Let's go a month and a half then. We just don't know. That's what my lawyer friend's saying here. Well, we'll do whatever it takes for a while, like I did when I got the first Canadian bank license in 18 years. I think that was Maurizio Bevilacqua. Sometimes you just got to be there. The first OCC national license in about 30-odd years, too. You get these things by being persistent. Any more questions from the crowd? Cyberspace? No? Okay. Well, Paul, we have a presentation for you here.
The two nice ladies are going to bring them over. Look at this. Oh, my goodness. Geez. Is that a pope in the middle there?
You do look like the pope.
Paul, if you can come up, we'll just hand you. These are for you. Geez, somebody should have p hotoshopped my hair in this.
Wow. Very nice.
Well...
If I could just say thank you, everybody. Thank you to VersaBank. It's been a great ride, and it's going to be even a greater ride going forward. Thank you very much.
Well, the thanks is all ours. Paul's been with us almost three decades. Wow. Fantastic.
Now you make me feel old.
Yes. We owe it all to Paul. Thank you, Paul.
Thank you very much.
Well, we'll see you. Thanks.