Hello everyone, my name is Brandon Berman. I am the Senior Midcap Bank Analyst here at Bank of America, and joining me today on stage for this fireside chat is Sean Leary. He's the Chief Financial Planning and Investor Relations Officer at Ally Financial. It seems like, Sean, you have a bit more of a unique role at Ally than your typical IR individual, right? And you have responsibilities that extend well beyond that function, and we appreciate you taking the time today to share some of your perspective. Anything that you want to talk about how 2025 sort of played out before we get into 2026?
Sure. Yeah, I would just say that across the board, really pleased with everything that we saw in 2025. We've been talking a lot about solid operational and execution across all of our businesses, but to see that manifest on the face of the financials was very encouraging. So we take a lot of comfort and confidence, just the underlying momentum that's built up in the business, and really excited about 2026.
Cool. What started at a high level, right? There's been a significant focus on the strategic shift at the bank that you guys announced last year. From your experience, has the organization, the evolution positioned Ally to sort of capitalize on the strategy moving forward?
Yeah, thanks, Brandon. I think that's a really good place to start. Look, our earnings call was about three weeks ago, and if there's one theme that we really hope investors took away from that discussion, it's our overall confidence and optimism about the business. I joined Ally almost 17 years ago and have been fortunate to lead the financial planning organization for the last 10 years or so. Today I'm more confident than ever in our ability to generate and sustain higher risk-adjusted returns. As you mentioned, last year we made a big strategic pivot and have been talking about our decision to double down on the core franchises. I think it's important to keep in mind that those core franchises themselves have evolved considerably over the past five to 10 years and set up what we think is a really durable competitive advantage.
And so just in Dealer Financial Services, we are a truly diversified lender that is OEM-agnostic. We have spent years building and deepening our relationship with our dealer customers. And as you've heard this from us before, but our goal is simply to help dealers be successful in every aspect of their business. It's taken a long time to develop those relationships, and as we sit here today, have a great deal of engagement, and that led to record application flow on the consumer side last year and record written premiums in the insurance business. In Corporate Finance, I think the story there is actually more like auto than you might intuitively expect. This is also a business built on a longstanding mutually beneficial relationship with great asset managers and private equity firms. The team's incredibly well-respected and has built a reputation on speed, collaboration, and certainty of execution.
We absolutely expect to grow this business over time, but rest assured it will not be at the expense of risk-adjusted returns and not to myopically focus on credit, but the track record is quite impressive. Since we've gone public in 2014, the average annualized loss rate in that business has been about 30 basis points while we've grown the asset base considerably. On the other side of the balance sheet, we are thrilled with what we have built in the deposits franchise. It really is the oxygen for everything that we do on the lending businesses. We have a national brand and have been obsessed with the customer since we launched the bank in 2009, and that's contributed to 67 straight quarters, almost 17 years of consecutive customer growth.
So being core-funded, more than core-funded, with the vast majority of those deposits being FDIC- insured, we think really speaks to the strength and stability of that deposits business. And then beyond the financials or beyond the core franchises, just take a lot of confidence in the momentum that we saw in 2025. Earnings were up 62% year-over-year, and if you looked at our guidance for this year, we expect to take another meaningful step forward in 2026. So thrilled about the momentum, but most importantly, just thrilled about the competitive advantage that we've built in those businesses. And I could probably talk about our optimism all day, but I suspect you have some more detailed questions you'd like to get to.
Speaking of guidance, right, and during the call, there was this emphasis of a story of two halves, right? The first half, the second half. But there was this sort of reiteration of just like the mid-teens, the exit rates was also much in focus. So I'm wondering if you could just share with the people here the dynamics that are playing out in the first half and the second half that really are at the core of the year.
Yeah, let me talk a little bit about mid-teens in general because I think that translates into what we're going to see transpire this year. So we've said for quite some time there's really three things that need to be true for Ally to be generating mid-teens return. That's a margin in the upper threes, it's retail auto credit losses of less than 2%, and being really disciplined around capital and expenses. And really pleased that in 2025 we effectively checked two of those boxes with retail auto credit losses of 197, another year of effectively flat expenses, and then a meaningful move higher in the CET1 ratio. And so that leaves, importantly, net interest margin in the upper threes as the remaining leg of the mid-teens thesis. And so let me just talk about how margin we expect to unfold.
I think most know we are asset-sensitive in the very near term, but liability-sensitive over the medium term. So on the back of Fed easing late last year, it should not be a big surprise that we would expect margin to be flat for a quarter or two. That's similar to what we've been talking about, and it's actually similar to what we observed 12 months ago. Incremental to that, we're navigating some headwinds from a lease perspective. I'd start by saying, look, the vast majority of the lease portfolio is performing well, in line with our expectations and yielding from a return standpoint. But there are a handful of models, literally four models, that are underperforming the broader market. And it's a combination of factors that have led to it. These are all plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
Following the expiration of the tax credit in September, that obviously put a bit of pressure on demand on the new side. That led to heavy incentive activity, which also led to pressure on the used side. And then we had a couple of OEM-specific recalls on a few of the models. And so when you put that confluence of factors together, we actually generated lease termination losses in the fourth quarter, and that's a phenomenon we expect to continue to start the year. But if I sort of move beyond those near-term headwinds, we exited the year with a margin of around 350 because of the dynamics that I talked about. We expect to move down a little bit here in the first quarter, but are still confident that we're going to generate 360-370 on a full year basis.
So if you just think about the entry point, the first quarter, and that full year average, it clearly implies a really solid degree of margin expansion the back half of the year. And so we get the question from time to time about exactly what quarter we're going to get to upper threes, which obviously translates to mid-teens returns. We've been hesitant to call a quarter, but you should not take away from that that it has anything to do with our confidence on the destination. It's simply a reality of being near-term asset-sensitive. We don't want to be beholden to a particular quarter because from a timing standpoint, what the Fed does with interest rates does sort of play into that. But rest assured across all of that, as confident as we've ever been in our ability to get to that upper threes now.
And so in piggybacking off that confidence, right, tell us why a changing interest rate backdrop doesn't derail your confidence?
Yeah, well, let me talk about our confidence on sort of that margin trajectory in general. And I would say that we think about we exited at 350, sort of upper threes, let's call it 375-380. So there's about 30 basis points of expansion, more or less, that we're talking about. And we take confidence in it because if you just sort of look at what transpired in 2025, excluding the sale of the credit card business, margin was up 35 basis points on a point-to-point basis, fourth quarter to fourth quarter. And it's a lot of those exact same ingredients that led to margin expansion last year that are going to contribute to the remaining margin expansion going forward.
Look, there's a lot of focus on OSA beta and exactly when we're going to get to that sort of 60%-70% through the cycle beta, and clearly that plays a big role. But there are other structural tailwinds that I don't want to lose sight of embedded in the balance sheet. On the asset side, we do have a really nice sort of tailwind from what we call roll-on, roll-off dynamics. Every day we're putting on retail auto and Corporate Finance loans at 9% or greater from a yield standpoint and rolling off the mortgage portfolio and some portions of the investment securities portfolio that are at 3%, in some cases, lower. So just that natural migration was a nice tailwind in 2025, and we expect that to continue in 2026 and beyond.
Then flipping to the other side of the balance sheet, away from OSA for a minute, CD repricing remains a tailwind. We've got about $35 billion of CDs that are going to mature this year. The ultimate refinance benefit clearly depends on the flow of funds and what products those go into. But as we see it, it's probably a 45-50 basis point tailwind from that refinancing benefit. Those things are more certain in terms of the magnitude and timing. OSA beta is obviously going to depend on market conditions. We feel really comfortable with our long-term assumption, timing to be determined. You ask about confidence, it's really the same ingredients that contributed last year is exactly what's going to get us and sustain us at that upper threes.
Great. Let's sort of dive into each of the core businesses that Ally is now focusing on, right? Let's start with the auto side, if we can, right? It has seen an increase in competition, it seems, as of late, especially last year with some of the core banks coming in. How does Ally distinguish itself from the competition? How do you see the competitive landscape evolving and the impact to your volumes, application flow?
Yeah, as you mentioned, it's not new news that competition in the auto space intensified over the past 12+ months. Frankly, to us, it's no surprise either. It's an incredibly attractive asset class. The way we get comfortable is really this is the core of what we do. It's by far our largest asset class, our largest contributor of revenue. To us, it's not transactional, it's not episodic, it's not an ALCO trade. It's the core of who we are. And so to support that, we've built a value proposition that we think is incredibly comprehensive and unique in terms of what others may offer. Quite simply, as I mentioned, we try to help dealers win in every aspect of their business.
And certainly that means being a full-spectrum lender on the consumer side, but it carries over to commercial lending where we help dealers secure their inventory from a financing perspective. And also on the commercial side, to the extent they want to grow their business, we provide acquisition financing as well. On the insurance side, clearly protecting dealer inventory is a critical part of their operation. We're a huge participant in that market, and we offer a number of F&I, traditional consumer F&I products that, again, that's a meaningful share of a dealer profit pool. And so our ability to participate in that market, all of this comes back to a full-spectrum ecosystem where we're trying to contribute to every aspect of a dealer's success. And look, I can talk about the value proposition all day. We feel incredibly proud and confident in it.
But fortunately, the 2025 results are the ultimate proof point, which is to say, to your point, competition was very intense all year. And we generated record application flow, decisioned $0.5 tr illion in consumer loan and lease applications, and ultimately put almost $44 billion on the balance sheet at 9.7% yields while maintaining a very consistent risk posture. So we think that data point sort of proves that we have real durability and staying power in the auto business. Put simply, we love our dealers, and we work hard every day to make sure that that feeling is mutual.
Does the recent charter approval of GM and Ford by the FDIC change the landscape in your eyes?
Yeah, look, first, I certainly wouldn't speculate on exactly what competitors are going to do with their charters. But I go back to this is a highly competitive, fragmented, but a highly competitive space. And what continues to give us comfort is we've been in the business for a very long time. We have built what we think is a best-in-class and unique value proposition. We have invested heavily in it. And then on the deposit side, similarly, 17 years at this, and we've invested considerably on building that national brand, continuing to ensure that the customer experience is best-in-class. And so none of that is easily replicable, and none of it gets replicated quickly. And so we would never diminish any of our competition. We monitor it all very closely, take them all very seriously.
But as sort of we think about it, it doesn't really change our view of the near-term or medium-term competitiveness.
Gotcha. Sticking with auto finance and just sort of shifting to credit, right? One of the things that was debated post-earnings, and I wanted to talk about it, was the credit guide for this year, the 1.8%, 2% retail auto net charge-off range. What do you need to see to unfold across the guide following very positive revisions in 2025?
Yeah, let me start with a couple of macro comments, which is, and we've said this before, we're very pleased with what we're seeing inside of our portfolio, both in terms of performance and the underlying operational drivers. And to that end, just really proud of what our servicing and collections teammates are doing to optimize outcomes for both Ally from a loss standpoint and ultimately our customers. So feel good about the quality of the portfolio and everything we're seeing. I would remind you to last year when we gave a guide on retail auto losses that had a range on it, and we articulated what would need to materialize in order to be towards the lower end or the higher end of that guide.
We said, to the extent drivers remain consistent with what we're seeing today, so current performance, we thought that actually pointed towards the lower end of the guide. We were pleased to see that throughout the year we were able to tighten it up, and that's exactly what materialized, ultimately coming in a few basis points below the low end of the guide. This year, similarly, had a range, but we're clear that if current performance or current drivers continue, that probably points to the midpoint of the guide. By drivers, I, of course, mean delinquency formation, flow-to-loss rates, and used car prices. I'll just touch on the macro because it got a little bit of attention coming out of the call. Look, our view, again, is that the consumer's been quite resilient. We're pleased with what we're seeing in our own portfolio.
But what we did do is just a factual acknowledgment that the unemployment rate, while still near historic lows, has moved up, call it 30 basis points, over the past 12 months. And so just sort of the calculus of framing our guide, a modest increase in unemployment, while again, still at historic levels, was part of how we thought about it, maybe influenced how much year-over-year improvement we expected to see in terms of our base case. But sort of zooming out from the guide for this year, I would come back to pleased with what we're seeing on the underwriting side, pleased with the changes that we made, thrilled with the performance of our servicing teammates, and ultimately have a high degree of confidence that ultimately we're headed towards that 1.6%-1.8% through the cycle loss guide over time.
Gotcha. So moving to insurance, right? You and your team know how much I know you guys about how little attention it gets, and I think it should get more. But you did talk about it being such a great complement to the auto finance business in one of your earlier responses, right? As you look to support the dealer or customer, how should we think about, on the outside, think about the growth of that business moving forward?
Yeah, I'll start with the punchline, which is our bias is for more in the insurance business. We like the business for a number of reasons. One, it's important to the dealer. And as I mentioned earlier, that's a key part of our value proposition. And generally speaking, if it's important to the dealer and it hurdles, from our standpoint, it's going to be important to us. Two, it's capital efficient, relatively low capital consumption, and drives durable fee income that is less susceptible to changes in interest rates and consumer credit cycles. So a nice diversification benefit in that regard. And then three, it's accretive to Ally's overall return profile. So it's a business we expect to generate returns in excess of that mid-teen sort of enterprise target. And to be clear, insurance, look, the growth is not going to be linear.
We have things like weather loss exposure that has some inherent volatility in it. Even normal course ebbs and flows of dealer inventory can contribute to ups and downs in the P&C business. Then the last couple of years, we've seen some unique phenomenon as it relates to parts inflation on VSC and even changes in used car prices impacting GAP losses. All of that leads to the earnings can be a little bit choppier in that business. Again, I go back to 2025 being a good proof point. We incurred a one-in-200-year weather event early in the year that led to the combined ratio of the business being north of 100%, but we're still able to generate a return on equity approaching 20%, just given the strength in that core investment portfolio. Again, it provides a lot of diversification for us.
It's important to the dealer. It hurdles. So it's a key part of how we think about the future. And in terms of what we're seeing today, we've seen a lot of nice synergies in sort of the combined sales and acquisition engine of both auto and insurance. And seeing some nice synergies there, even seeing things like product density or number of insurance products used by our dealer customers has had a really nice increase. And so I agree with you. It's a business that you don't really see in a lot of peer institutions. We think that probably leads to it not getting as much credit as it could. But it's a great business for us, important to our dealers, and it's a critical part of the Ally going forward.
Gotcha. And just rounding out, the third leg of the tripod, Corporate Finance, right? So the segment printed nearly a 30% ROE last year, second consecutive year of known net charge-offs. The sector did receive a lot of attention in the second half of last year, right? And so how do we get comfortable that Ally's going to grow that business segment responsibly?
Yeah, in terms of the direction, similar to insurance bias is for more. It's a great business. We really like it. I would point out that Corporate Finance has gotten a lot more attention over the past year or so as it's been part of the core that we've doubled down on. But success in that business is by no means new. It's had a heck of a track record, certainly going back to when we went public in 2014, but really at the inception of the business, which was 25 or 26 years ago. And in fact, it's probably one of the longest 10-year middle-market lending teams in the industry. And I mention all of that because sort of our approach to growth going forward, we've done things like diversify the verticals that we're starting to support things like that.
But the playbook of how we've grown and how we expect to grow has remained remarkably consistent. We're the lead agent on senior secured, first-out positions in portfolios with relatively low loss content sourced by private equity firms and asset managers that we've known for years, in some cases, decades. So it's a business that we expect to grow, won't do it at the expense of risk-adjusted returns. The one sort of tie-in to the deposits franchise that's worth mentioning, I said the deposits is the oxygen of the lending side, particularly true in Corporate Finance, particularly when we compete with non-bank lenders. And so to your point, Brandon, the growth and the backdrop of the industry this year has gotten some attention. It's up 8% or 10% on a three-year average basis, but up 30%+ in 2025.
But a couple of things I would point out, it was entirely consistent with the way we've done the business in the past. Nearly all of the transactions that we did, particularly late in the year, were with firms that we've known for a considerable amount of time. Being the lead agent gives us the opportunity to control the structure and get terms that are consistent with our risk appetite and really control the diligence process. While growth has been really strong lately, you only have to go back to 2024 to see a period where the team observed that sort of the economics or the opportunity set weren't meeting our return hurdles, and the portfolio shrank a couple of quarters.
And so I think that's yet another great data point of this team has an unwavering focus on discipline, will not reach in order to achieve growth targets because we're not going to grow the business for growth's sake. So our bias is for more, but the team is going to be incredibly disciplined in the track record to date, fortunately speaks for itself.
Great. So shifting gears to Ally Bank. In 2025, you said balances would be roughly flat. That's how it played out. And then that was in a backdrop where averaging assets were declining, right? So given the inflection in loan growth expected for this year, how should we think about deposit growth for 2026? And what does that mean for pricing? You did talk about how important it was to the first pillar of the NIM ROTCE guidance.
Yeah, it's a great question. I would characterize 2025 performance in the deposits business as very strong. So we articulated that our expectation would be for flat balances overall, which keep in mind, when we say flat balances, it's plus or minus the couple of billion dollars. A $150 billion portfolio, it just can't be that precise. That being said, it did sort of land at that flat balance number. And importantly, saw some nice tailwinds as it relates to customer acquisition exiting the year. So feel good about the momentum there. To your point, we do expect to grow the asset side of the balance sheet, assuming market conditions are appropriate and we see the right risk-adjusted returns. So that in isolation probably points to deposit growth for 2026. But I would point out that we have a variety of alternative funding sources at the bank.
And frankly, they've been to some degree underutilized in recent years. And those transactions tend to go a little bit more effectively from a pricing and execution perspective if you've got that steady presence in the marketplace. And so I say all that to say, even with asset growth on the left side of the balance sheet, if we get to the end of 2026 and deposit balances are more or less flat, but we're seeing nice trends in terms of customer retention, customer growth, and marching towards that terminal beta assumption, we would view 2026 as a success.
Gotcha. Some, including myself, characterize the deposit franchise as a key differentiator. It's a competitive advantage for the bank. Can you speak to that advantage, that strength of the deposit base?
Yeah, we'd certainly agree with you, Brandon. We think in some ways it's the crown jewel of the organization. We started this thing back in 2009 into some that may have looked like a risk, but we saw this is where consumers were headed in terms of digital delivery and less brick and mortar. And we're thrilled with the decision that we've made because we think it's a real differentiator from a stability, strength perspective. And then, of course, the economics are real as well. What really gives us the most degree of pride, I suppose, is just sort of the evolution or maturation of the bank over that same time period. We were thrilled to get to core funded, and frankly, we're a little above core funded today.
Balances have more or less been flat to your earlier point, but we're seeing some nice trends underlying the portfolio, which is to say new customer acquisition tends to be smaller average deposit sizes in aggregate, seeing high degrees of engagement. And of course, retention rates can't go much above the 96%. So we feel really good about where we are there. And just from an economic perspective, when we launched back in 2009, we sort of lived at the top of the rate tables in terms of rate paid. Today, I think we're barely inside of the top 50 because we have spent years investing in a brand and a technology experience that creates a value proposition that goes well beyond that rate paid.
So consistent, disciplined execution and remaining relentlessly focused on the consumer has put us in a good position where we certainly don't have to be the lead rate payer. So if I just sort of put it all together, great, stable funding source, a true differentiator on the Corporate Finance side, the asset generators at our company never have to think about funding alternatives. They can focus exclusively on generating appropriate risk-adjusted returns. And sort of the momentum, both from a portfolio composition and ultimate economic contribution to the company, we feel really good about.
Great. Switching to the other side of the balance sheet and focusing on loan growth, you've given some answers or you talked about loan growth a little bit in some of your other answers, right? Putting it all together, how should we think about Ally growing its loan portfolio over the medium term?
Yeah, yeah. Let me talk about 2026 and then hit the medium term as well. But you saw in the guide, our expectation is for, call it, 2%-4% growth in average earning assets. But again, we'd come back to there's some nice underlying mix dynamics where if you think about retail auto and Corporate Finance in total, that'll probably eclipse that 4% number. And then just natural runoff of mortgage and securities brings the total back down to that 2% and 4%. As we think about growth, this is a day-by-day decision, something that we're looking at. And I come back to right now, we see great opportunities in the lending side of the business. The opportunity set is rich.
Based on the scale and strength of those origination engines, we feel comfortable that the left side of the balance sheet is going to grow in a strong way this year. I come back to our focus is on risk-adjusted returns. We are not at all going to pursue growth for growth's sake. I know we'll talk about capital here in a minute. That philosophy has always been true, but particularly true now that we've got a share authorization in place, which is to say that to the extent we don't see rich opportunity sets in the asset side, we won't hesitate to deviate and deploy that capital into other sources, some of which may include incremental buybacks.
Gotcha. Great. Shifting to expenses, right? It's one area that Michael and the team have stressed, expense discipline. We've seen it in the numbers. The guide for 2026 includes 1% OpEx growth. And this despite implying that revenue growth is going to be in the high single digits, right? So how is Ally balancing the investment with cost discipline?
Yeah, we've been really pleased to see the pivot. And this goes back several years now, with the last couple of years being effectively flat expenses and then controllable expenses as we define them, meaning ex-insurance losses, ex-FDIC and premiums have actually come down the last couple of years. And to be clear, that's had the sort of benefit, if you will, of divestiture activity that won't be the case going forward. But just sort of our view on expense growth in general, the natural expense growth trajectory of the business is clearly north of 1%. We have natural inflationary trends. We have variable cost drivers as we're growing the left side of the balance sheet and growing customers on the deposit side. And then we always will invest in things that make the customer experience best in class.
Then aside from all of that, we clearly have investments to make across the technology landscape, whether it be data, cyber, or even AI. So there is a natural expense growth of the business that's north of 1%, but the team has been incredibly focused on finding efficiencies and opportunities to fund that investment going forward such that we can manage the aggregate number in this year around 1%. I do expect it's probably the right longer-term planning assumption is a little bit north of that. But what you can expect for us is just continued focus on that cost number, irrespective of what we're seeing on the revenue side. We are going to generate really strong operating leverage just based on the fact that we've got tailwinds across the balance sheet from a margin and fee income standpoint.
But that's not going to allow us to loosen the reins as it relates to cost discipline. We kind of think about the two lines and manage the two lines independently. And there is a very clear focus across the entire organization at being really disciplined around cost.
Great. And so just rounding out the whole PPNR discussion, right? We haven't talked about non-interest income yet, right? You did talk about insurance being a clear driver of growth in that line item. But talk to us more broadly about just growth between flat to up 5% year-over-year. That is a wide range.
Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll speak to the size of the range here in a minute. You hit it, Brandon. The largest portion, both from a quantum perspective and the growth, will be the insurance business. But there are some really exciting opportunities or green shoots across other areas of the business that I do want to pause on for a second. In auto finance, you look at our pass-through program where we're taking applications that maybe don't fit our credit box, but we are matching dealers with financing alternatives and earning a servicing fee on the backend. And similarly, on SmartAuction, think of this as a B2B digital auction platform where dealers can source key inventory, critical inventory. And the reason I mention those is less for their contribution, although they do have nice growth tailwinds.
But it's a testament to the way that we think about the business more broadly, which is to say leveraging core competency and what we do to better serve our dealer clients while accruing incremental economics to Ally. So some nice tailwinds from an auto finance perspective. And then one of the many benefits of being lead agent in the Corporate finance side is that we have the opportunity to periodically syndicate some of our larger transactions. Again, won't be linear, but has been a nice source of other revenue growth over the past couple of years. To the guide, 0%-5%, call it 2.5% is the midpoint. A couple of things I would point out. One, credit card sale last year, it was in the results for a quarter. Obviously, out in 2026, that depresses the number by about a point.
Then more broadly, we think a range on this line item makes sense. There's a few things in other revenue that can bounce around a little bit, in particular gains in the insurance equity portfolio and then even our CRA portfolio. We were thrilled with the performance that we saw in insurance in 2025 from a gain standpoint, but aren't going to bank on that as it comes to setting guidance. That speaks to why we see the range. I would say overall, the direction of travel is north. Russ has alluded to this at other conferences. We've got 0%-5% out there for this year. I do think that sort of mid-single digits is a reasonable proxy for the way we expect this line item to grow over the medium term.
Great. I wanted to actually go back to sort of the capital management discussion, right? You discussed the growth outlook. Maybe just spend a little bit of time on the capital allocation at a high level, right? You clearly have room to grow the auto loan portfolio, but with the buyback authorization that you just mentioned a minute or two ago, does that change anything?
Yeah, I would say it gives us yet another catalyst, reason, and mechanism to be incredibly disciplined around prioritizing risk-adjusted returns. You hit it, Brandon. We see rich opportunity sets across the lending organizations, and that's going to be our highest and best use of capital, provided that it meets the right risk-adjusted return requirements. But the really compelling thing we think from a capital management perspective is this is not an or question. It's an and question, which is to say our base case is that there's enough capital generation embedded in the business that we'll be able to support solid loan growth on the asset side of the business, continue to cover the preferred and common dividend, continue to move that CET1 ratio up on a fully phased-in basis.
Of course, we want to be in the nines over time and still have capital to support a buyback, which we know is critically important to investors. So I think of it as this has always been a dynamic discussion, but we've got several alternatives of where we want to deploy capital. It's just going to be an ongoing discussion across the leadership team to make sure that we're capitalizing opportunities that we see in the marketplace and really deploying that capital in the highest and best use.
Gotcha. And sort of just double-clicking on the whole buyback conversation, right? The stock saw great reaction to the announcement in December. But then the mantra was sort of like this low and slow sort of pace. The stock is trading around book value. It obviously clearly doesn't reflect the mid-teens, the sustainable mid-teens returns that you guys have guided to. How does the valuation play a role in the buyback as well as the path to the 9% fully phased-in CET1?
Yeah, I think low and slow for a number of reasons makes sense for us. I just talked about there are several opportunities to deploy capital across the organization and several really important strategic objectives to us, which is to say supporting growth on the asset side, continuing to get that capital buffer to the right place, and then being opportunistic about deploying incremental excess towards the buyback. So we're going to balance all of those things. And then to your point, valuation does play a role in that decision. But based on where the stock trades today and what we think a reasonable fair value is, assuming we hit our return and book value projections, I think we've got a minute before that becomes a binding constraint.
Gotcha. And I know we're sort of running out of time here, right? We want to talk about valuation if we can, right? So what do you think leads to Ally's lower multiple versus peers, right? Is there something people that aren't appreciating? Is it a matter of time or something else that you think, in your opinion, that will sort of help close the Gap to peers on valuation?
Sure. Look, we could speculate on what drives the valuation, but a couple of things I would just point out. We were a mid-single digit ROE company two years ago. We just got to a 10% return in 2025. We see a very clear path to sustainable mid-teens. But when you've got a ramp that's that, in our minds, impressive, there's certainly going to be some that continue to view it as a bit of a showme story. That can be frustrating, but we kind of view it as a challenge and an opportunity, which is to say we're focused on execution. We kind of have a very firm view of where we're headed from a return and book value perspective. And when we get there, we think the stock takes care of itself. And in the meantime, we're happy to buy it for ourselves.
Gotcha. Gotcha. And then just sort of just to close out, is there anything that you would like to leave the audience with respect to guidance or Ally more broadly?
Yeah. I would just sort of conclude with where I started, which is across the entire leadership team, management team, and the board, there is an incredible degree of optimism about the future of the company. A lot of that comes down to the strength of the franchises that I alluded to. We see great opportunities for growth and favorable risk-adjusted returns in auto finance, insurance, corporate finance, all of which is supported by our really great deposits franchise. So we're really excited about the path forward. And as you sort of put it all together and think about the power of those franchises, we think we're going to deliver on a uniquely compelling financial trajectory over time.
Great. And if there are no questions in the audience, we will leave it there. Sean, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.