Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

And welcome back to our conference. I'm now joined by Victor Dodig, the CEO of CIBC. He's been the CEO since 2014. Before we begin, I've been asked to tell you that Victor's comments today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from forecasts, projections or conclusions in these statements listeners can find additional details in the public filings of CIBC. With that, Victor, welcome to the conference.

Good morning, Darko. Good morning, everyone. Nice to be here.

And so Victor, for your first question, I thought we would first dive into credit quality because one of the things that was interesting about CIBC's fourth quarter was that you gave pretty good guidance on loses on 2021, I think you said an impaired PCL ratio of low-to-mid 40 basis points. And based upon what we're seeing, are you confident that -- has anything changed first of all? We've got lockdowns and restrictions? And maybe you could provide a little bit of color around not just provisions for credit losses, but also around delinquencies and how the deferral book is going? So over to you to just provide a little bit of color and thoughts on credit quality as we enter 2021?

Sure, Darko. Thanks. Good question, good question to start off with. I think what I do, first of all, is just step back and remind everybody of the kind of bank that we've been building since the last financial crisis. And the fact that our underwriting standards are very well within our risk appetite. We've built a very client-focused bank. We understand our risks, our credit risks, our operational risks, our market risks and that, I think, has put us in a very good place as we've gone through this pandemic. As you indicated, during the fourth quarter call, Shawn Beber, our Chief Risk Officer, did indicate that our Stage 3, sort of, impaired losses would be in the 40 to 45 basis point range views, low-40s to mid-40s in the coming year, I think that's a fair assessment. I don't think anything has changed since that time in spite of these new lockdown sounds, I think our overall view remains the same. I think what you'll see within that number is you'll see a couple of different things over the coming year. And it's always difficult to predict as to which quarter it happens in and whether some of it seeps into 2022. But remind everybody that most of our book is Canadian residential mortgages, we're in a good spot there. On the Canadian credit card book, it's been obviously helped by government stimulus. I think overtime some of those delinquent accounts will probably go into impaired. But that's managed and well provided for and we'll cover it in Shawn's comments. I think you may see releases over the 6 to 8 quarter period, if the model worked perfectly, all of the allowances will be put through in terms of realized losses over the course of the 2-year period, but models never work perfectly. They're always based on forward looking indicators. But my sense is that you may see some releases over time. But difficult to predict at this point in time. It's all based on how the economy evolves, I think most people would say the first half will be more difficult and the second half will look more robust. I think that, that generally be the case. I think the most important thing for us is to have a, what I call, a high adaptability quotient to be able to adjust to whatever the market may deliver to us second half.

And when you say adaptability, do you mean specifically to credit quality? Or is it -- are you leaning more towards...

No, I'm talking more about if the tailwinds start showing up in the economy and making sure we get the growth that we can deliver on. And if it becomes much more challenging over time, we have the resources to deal with all of that as well, built a very different bank.

Okay. And one of the things you touched upon there was your underwriting standards, and it puts you in a good place heading into this -- into the pandemic. Obviously you couldn't predict the pandemic but you had changed something at CIBC since the financial crises. And I'm interested in that comment, and maybe you can point to 1 or 2 things that are really different this time around versus the last sort of economic cycle for CIBC?

Well, if I look at our aggregate loan portfolio, our exposure to the most vulnerable sectors today is way below 2%. Kind of like, I put it at 1.3% to 1.5%. So I think that, that's one example of it. Our aggregate commercial and corporate book has a kind of a rating of BBB equivalent is what I would call it. Our mortgage book is quite prudently managed. When I look at the Beacon score, when I look at the loan to values, there's lots of margin for safety there for our shareholders, and we feel very, very good about it. Overall, and this is a qualitative statement as much as is quantitative, It's a very relationship-oriented bank and not a transactional thing. So that is the most important thing to recognize in terms of the big bank that we've built since that last financial crisis and that's shown through in the credit quality. And that will show through going forward as we manage our business for growth, which is really what I want to talk about as things turn around.

Okay. So let's talk about the recovery. And you sort of talked -- you touched on it a little bit, it sounded like it was really back half oriented. I think that's the general sense that we're getting. So maybe you can talk a little bit more about your enthusiasm for the strength, given that we're going to go through a little bit of weakness here. And where do you think the leadership is going to come from for this economic recovery in the back half of 2021?

Sure. Well, let me just temper the enthusiasm because I look at things very practically from a macroeconomic perspective. I think if you put it into 3 buckets, there are positive aspects to what we're dealing with, low interest rates, which obviously don't help the bank margins, but they are stimulative to the economy. And ultimately, we'll be more stimulative. There's ample amount of liquidity. I think it's been well, well-articulated in terms of government stimulus, in fact, exceeding the amount of lost personal income. And you see that in bank deposits across the banking sector and the consumer and commercial sector. I think the second category of how I look at the economy is neutral to positive. The vaccine will obviously get rolled out. The efficacy, we believe will work based on what the experts are telling us a little slower than we like. Government stimulus will continue for some period of time. And I think immigration, at least for the Canadian economy, will be a big contributor as the immigration gates are open again. I think, obviously, the negatives are in certain sectors. I think we all recognize that they're in the -- partially, the discretionary economy, and that they'll take longer to come back. We're looking into the following fiscal year before you're seeing any robustness there. And that is something that we all have to contend with. From our own standpoint, Darko, you know this very well. Last year, we talked about rejuvenating our Canadian consumer franchise. That is the number one strategic priority that we have as our bank. 47% of our profits come from our Canadian consumer franchise. That will be our personal and business bank as well as a direct financial services business. We've seen the largest delta change in our mortgage growth relative to last year because of some of the investments that we've made in our mobile sales force and the coverage of markets beyond the GVA and the GTA were overly concentrated before in the technology investments and our ability to compete. We don't compete on price, but we compete on our relationships. And you can start to see that delta change in the fourth quarter results. You're starting to see the consistency and robustness in terms of our managed money flows. We're not number one yet, but we're closing the gap through the introduction of new portfolios that were more sharply priced, that are well-performing, that are supported by a growing group of mobile investment consultants. And you see that in the credit card portfolio, we've built a much more robust portfolio that used to be dependent on 1 airline and 1 travel rewards card to 2 travel rewards cards and now more of a pivot where it used a lot, but you have to use adhere to the non-travel rewards segment. So I think we're well positioned to continue to close those gaps in our Canadian consumer franchise. You'll see more growth in our Simplii business and our direct brokerage and our alternative solutions group, all which will fall within a direct financial services business. Again, all contributing to the rejuvenation of our Canadian and consumer franchise. The second thing I'm very encouraged by are the investments that we made in the pandemic before the pandemic are going to continue on as we move through this period and beyond the pandemic, and that's in transforming our bank. We've taken out over $800 million in costs since 2015. During the past year, we actually had a restructuring charge. We've completed most of that restructuring, which should result in run rate savings of $260 million in fiscal '21, and we are focused on bending that cost curve, particularly given the low interest rate environment, puts added pressure on making sure that we're getting things right, simplifying the bank, taking out legacy costs, moving more of our applications to the cloud and really transforming our bank that way. And the third thing is not to lose our focus on where we have tailwinds. We have tailwinds in our commercial banking business on both sides of the border. Our Wealth business and our capital markets business in making sure that they stay strong and maintain those tailwinds is pretty key to us. So we feel that we're adaptable. If the market environment turns up, we want to catch up, and we want to catch that proportional and sometimes disproportional share of those tailwinds. And if it becomes prolonged, we have the resources to deal with any protracted downturn.

Okay. There was a lot in there. I want to dive into a little bit of that.

I know there's a lot in there, but I want to lay out the thesis of what we're focused on as a leadership team. And why our stock has performed in the past year and why we believe we can continue to deliver on that because we still have a multiple discount to deal with.

And so maybe if we can just dive into some of those details there. So you mentioned a few things in the Canada side, an investment in mobile sales force, I think also as well, at some point, you were also retaining -- you're now retaining mortgages a bit more than in the past. You mentioned the mobile force in the Wealth side. You expected more from Simplii. So if we had to target this and think about 1 or 2 initiatives that you are most excited about in 2021. And what the investor will see that CIBC is really doing differently in 2021 versus prior years?

I think what you'll see as an investor, as you'll see the gaps continue to close where they existed in our personal and business banking franchise. And that's kind of broadly writ from mortgages to manage money in, so to speak, and our credit card business. I think you'll see all of those gaps continue to close relative to our competitors as we work our way to PR parity and beyond. That is an important factor. The soft factors around that relate to our client experience scores and our Net Promoter Scores and our rewards receiving and mobile banking. Those are all soft factors. But what you'll see is continued closing of the gaps in that business and I get excited about that because I think we're back on track in terms of delivering. And then in terms of the direct financial services business. Look, it's a small segment of the financial services landscape, but it's going to be a growing segment as there is an increasingly larger number of consumers, particularly younger consumers that will be seeking to do-it-yourself banking and investing and the transfer of money, which is what we have through our global money transfer technology that has grown quite nicely from 0 several years ago. And you'll get,, as investors, much more insight into that as we talk about the first quarter and start breaking out that LOB in terms of the numbers itself, P&L.

Okay. And with respect to the capital markets business, just wanted to touch on how that's going to behave in this economic recovery. Most people, myself included, we simply write-off and say to ourselves, you cannot reproduce 2020. Is there any -- would you knock me off of that view? Are you more bullish on the cap markets business? Or do you think that it will have trouble repeating?

I'm encouraged by how we've retooled our capital markets business over the past decade and what we're delivering today. If you look at lead tables, if you look at financials, if you look at capabilities, CIBC capital markets is a leading contender in the Canadian market, and there's a tremendous amount of growth potential in the U.S. market. We saw some of that last year in terms of significant double-digit percentage growth. And that's because we're aligning very much with what our commercial bank is doing and what our Canadian clients are doing as we move South. We're building up more DCM capabilities. We're building up more advisory capabilities, and we're also building out more capabilities in the renewable space, which is an increasingly global space in that regard. Capital markets, I think, will deliver -- whether it will be as good as it was in 2020, what I can tell you is our ability to produce at the top of the league tables and maintain or grow our market share is our goal, and we will do that.

And you touched on the U.S. there for a moment in terms of your capabilities there. So maybe we can talk a little bit about -- so first off, before we dive into your business, just do you see any difference in the recovery and the pace of the recovery in the U.S. versus Canada? Do you see any specific challenges that might be there versus Canada? Or do you think that both countries should have a relatively robust back half of the year, and we really shouldn't focus too much on any differences?

If I look at what our economists say, they're looking at GDP growth in the 4% range in both markets. It might be a little bit more robust in the back half of the year for Canada because more of it's locked down in the front half. The fact is that the U.S. economy is more open than the Canadian economy. We're not seeing any notable credit quality differences. We're seeing good loan growth in the U.S., which signals to me that entrepreneurs are getting more and more encouraged. We're seeing a focus on government stimulus to help consumers where they have a hole, which also helps banking. So I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing in the U.S. aside from economically -- purely economically speaking.

And so maybe you can touch on your expectations for your business in 2021?

Yes. Sure. So again, the focus on our business is organic. If I look at the private bank acquisition, which is more than 3 years old now, we've surpassed all of our targets. It continues to grow market share. It shows leadership position in our growing loans in the, kind of -- you'll see some runoff with the PPP book as it runs off or gets forgiven over the course of the year but in aggregate, our gross loan growth is robust. Our deposit growth remains robust. Our organic growth in commercial banking remains robust. If I look at wealth management, we're seeing net flows of $3 billion to $4 billion on a portfolio of $75 billion. We're going to continue to grow that business organically. It may present some tuck-in acquisition opportunities that we'll look at in terms of growing that business. The business is ranked by Barron's as the #2, RIA in the country last year, which I think is a notable accomplishment from 0, 6 years ago. And then our capital markets business has real connectivity opportunities to our commercial bank, but there's also unique opportunities to better serve our Canadian clients to expand capabilities. So again, I'm encouraged by our organic prospects in the U.S. We've got good, positive operating leverage there. We should expect to continue to see that. We should -- we don't have a large market share. So we're going off a small base and the investments that we made and the team that we have is really proving its metal in this type of a market.

And is the NIM pressure expected to continue? And will that create a bit of a revenue sort of headwind at the beginning of the year that goes away in the back half of the year? Or how should we think about overall NIM pressure and revenue headwinds, let's call it?

Yes. So because we price on a 60-day LIBOR book, most of that has kind of working its way through the system. We saw a lot of NIM pressure in the past year. We'll see the NIM pressure begin to abate as we work through our way of fiscal 2021 in the U.S. I think when it comes to the Canadian market you'll see some NIM pressure continue. Just given what's happened to the yield curve over the past year as it works itself through the system. But nothing significant.

Okay. That's useful to know and I guess the expense growth, I wanted to touch on it because you brought it up as well. I think you messaged it to 4. As contained as possible and you can give us some examples of some of the initiatives that are in place that -- Because I think one of the things that I continually face in terms of speaking with investors about CIBC is, maybe the expense angle is going to harm you in the revenue sides? So maybe you can talk about or give us some examples of the initiatives that you have in place that will help the expense side and not have an impact on the revenue?

Yes. So I'd like our Investors to recognize is that while we're really focused on managing our costs, it's not at the expense of growth. And the ultimate measure of our success will not simply be our NIX ratio, but it'll be positive operating leverage across our platforms. We have it across several of our businesses and our PBB franchise. We haven't had it. And that is now starting to close, consistent with what I articulated earlier. So the investments that we're making are there to drive growth. That holds true for the investments we've had for our mobile sales force and the technology that they have and further moving out sort of legacy costs as our clients adopt digital banking broadly written. That holds true in our personal business bank. We're -- 92% of our transactions are now self-served. Up to 95% or 96%. That will take costs out of the middle and the back office. Our cash management online system and commercial banking is a similar example of that. Our foreign exchange business and capital markets, much of which is self-served and self-directed because of the technology investments is going to work toward that regard. The second thing is just the flattening of the organizational structure is become more nimble and tighter in terms of running the bank and simplifying the bank, something that we undertook over a very difficult year. We were quite clear in our communication to the market and to our team, and we've completed most of that, and that will also contribute to positive operating leverage over time. That's really our goal, is to get the expenses well managed, low single digits is achievable this year. But I think the most important thing is to make sure that we continue to invest in growth. Other growth points, Darko include in our investment in our digital financial planning platform, global planner, our investments in our eCRM system, which is being rolled out this year. Our integration of our U.S. wealth management platform for targeted for September, October this year, which will allow us to accelerate the growth in that business. Because right now, it's been operating on 3 platforms, 3 legacy platforms. All of that is meant to simplify by the bank. All of that is meant to drive growth. So we are all too aware of the fact that we cannot get to the valuation that we want, the appreciation of our stock price without delivering both top line growth and bottom line growth.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to take these back and digest that information back at my office. So maybe switching gears now talking a little bit of capital. I mean, clearly, everybody is aware of the fact that we've got restrictions in place. My view is that banks are generating capital faster than they can organically deploy it. Are you willing to talk about how much capital you're generating now versus what you can deploy? And as we think about eventually restrictions being lifted, what would the focus be for CIBC would be earnings per share growth? Would it be ROE? Maybe touch on your preferences in terms of those metrics to give us an idea just how interested you might or might not be in organic growth?

Well, let's just start off with what's happening in the global world of banking from a regulatory perspective, and with respect to, specifically to capital distributions. You've seen that in the U.S., starting this quarter, the regulators have allowed share buybacks to continue. They put a hiatus on them for most of last year. And then you have the other end of the spectrum where the European regulators have allowed, what I would call, relatively de minimis increases to capital distributions to shareholders. The Canadian regulator has basically said you can pay when you pay in dividends, you can increase, you can increase share buybacks. I don't expect that, that will change. I don't know. But I don't expect that will change until the back half of this year. So we kind of live with that. What happens in a world where you can't have distributions, capital will start to creep up over time, but it's all a function of your RWA growth and your credit migration. So I'd expect in our capital level, 12.1% to kind of stay in that zone of 12.1%, 12.2%, 12.3% over time. When the restrictions get removed, we'll make a new series of decisions on capital allocation. I keep going back to our 4-point narrative on priority #1 is organic growth, and that's what you're starting to see in our franchises across the board. You're seeing some of them longer term. The second is dividend payout ratio being the 40% to 50% zone, we'll be at the high end of that payout ratio as earnings begin to normalize and share buybacks will be something that we consider as another lever. The fourth is M&A. And I think on that file, our goal is to focus on organic growth and if there's small and organic, tuck-in opportunities to provide some tailwinds to our businesses. We're okay with that. But it will be smaller, will be tuck-in in nature. In terms of capital generation, we to generate 25 to 30 basis points of capital in the quarter, probably could. But again, it's a function of RWA growth and credit migration.

Okay. Fair. Excellent answer, and I don't think I have any follow-ups for you on that front. The only thing that comes to mind on capital is -- haven't touched on this with the other CEO. So given that I have a little bit of time, I'm going to maybe just ask you. The one thing that became very clear is there were liquidity relief measures provided by OSFI to the Canadian banks. And is it possible that liquidity rules need to be updated? Is it having a big negative impact on your bank? Maybe you can speak to just the liquidity side of the equation and what your expectations are on that side for 2021 and maybe even beyond, if you have any thoughts on that?

Yes. I mean I think it's a function of a lot of things, including where interest rates are and how the Bank of Canada gets involved in the banking system, we go through a situation which we've just been through. I think the rules of service and the banking system quite well. I think the most important thing is the work that the authorities and particularly, the Bank of Canada, OSFI, the Ministry of Finance were to provide liquidity of the banking system at a time where it was evident that we need to make sure that there's ample liquidity. And now there's too much liquidity, partly because the government stimulus, partly because of the support from the Central Bank. But I think that's a good thing for banking as you go through a crisis. And I'm not so sure that, that would lead me to the conclusion that these liquidity rules need to change. Yes, we all have heightened LCRs. And yes, it is a bit of a drag on earnings in terms of where interest rates are today. So I think it's like everything else, never black and white answer. I think the rules work fine. I think what I'd like to see is a more normalized interest rate environment, which would be a sign that things are beginning to recover. Because whenever money is too cheap, you get a lot of unintended consequences.

Okay. Great. So I'm going to flip over to the questions that we've got from the audience. We've got a few here. So the first question has been up voted. #1 question is, can you provide an update on your wealth strategy? Why have we not seen stronger wealth sales? And I'm guessing that, that question probably means stronger relative wealth sales.

Yes. I think there's a couple of things that I'd say on our wealth business. With respect to our private wealth management business, the advisory component of that Wood Gundy continues to rank #2 in the marketplace in the full-service brokerage world and our private bank continues to be an important part of our strategy as we grow our business. So it is a good business. I think you're going to continue to see more growth from that business as we go forward. Our connectivity to our commercial bank in terms of our own construct has driven a lot of referral activity from entrepreneurs who've monetized their business, and that holds true in Canada, U.S. because the structure works the same in both markets. And that's been a real big positive. When it comes to our asset management business, our mutual fund business, what you saw in the early part of F '20 was a little bit of inconsistency in terms of performance. We've created much more alignment in terms of our business with our personal business banking franchise and our Wood Gundy franchise. We've launched a new series of portfolios that are much more sharply priced for investors. They're multi-asset portfolios. And you're seeing very good growth come in there, and you're starting to see the flows consistently improve, and we believe there are gaps to close there, and you'll start to see that. Much of that growth coming through our personal business bank is part of rejuvenating our franchise. When you look at our investment performance, we would be in the upper quartile of investment performance. We've got very strong capabilities, both north and south of the border. And I think all of that will contribute to improved growth. When it comes to our self-directed brokerage business, we've been growing market share there, that's been consistent, and that's something that you'll continue to see as we invest in technology in that business. So Wealth overall ranks quite highly on our agenda because it drives fee-based income, which I think is a good offset to a tighter NIM and a world of low interest rates, and that's something that we're very focused on both the Canadian market and the U.S. market.

You mentioned the self-directed part. And are you nervous about pressure there on fees at all?

Not really. I mean we have an opportunity, we're not the number one player there so we can have more disruptive aspects to how we do business. We've got some unique aspects to our pricing proposition with our higher net worth clients that also like the trade on a self-directed basis. And we're very sharply priced when it comes to the broad population. I think there's an opportunity for us to continue to grow market share. There's some disruptive elements to our value proposition. People ask me about 0 cost trading. That's not going to make a large financial dent to us if that ever were to occur in Canada. But I think our goal is to have a relationship-oriented bank, where it's not about 0. If we want to have a 0 cost business model, we think radically differently about our costs. And we get to do that more in our direct financial services business because of how we set it up.

Okay. Thank you. And then so another question that's come in through the app is -- or they're kind of tied. So I'm going to have to try and get both of these.

I can answer them both.

Okay, we'll try. Can you touch on your branch strategy. What's the possibility of closing branches short-term and long term?

Well, I think if you -- and I think -- I know what we've done over the last number of years, we've focused on reducing our footprint in select areas where it made economic sense, and that's kind of been at the rate of 2% a year. If you go back far enough, we had 1,700 branches across the country, about 100,025 today. The focus, however, is not on a branch closures because almost all branches are profitable. The focus is on -- has been on network transformation and making more of our branches advisory in nature, so a smaller footprint, much more advice oriented as more and more transactions get pushed outside the banking centers. Building community banking centers, which are -- and a hub and support models of clients need a full transaction banking center, it's within that kind of a driving distance. But more recently, we've pivoted our capital expenditures to further accelerate the transformation of our bank, the digitization of our banks. So we've overhauled about 250 a quarter of our banking centers into advice centers. Now we believe, just given what we've gone through is further acceleration of the digital experience for our clients, whether that's claiming your credit card rewards to advising you on a nonsufficient funds alerts, you don't go into nonsufficient funds to -- putting more self-search transactions in front of our clients on their mobile phone or laptop that is the focus as well as providing mobility technology to our advisers. So whether they're mobile advisers or advisers within the banking center, providing the more financial planning tools that are digital in nature, all of that is what we're focused on today that goes well beyond our banking centers. Banking centers will continue to play an important role in terms of our brand, in terms of our advice center presence. But there's a decided shift to putting more effort on our relationship management skills and our sales skills and our mobile technology for our advisers to strengthen those client relationships we're building.

Okay. You actually kind of answered the second question there in terms of what the pandemic may have. Well, maybe just to be very clear, I mean, I'm going to ask it, as has the pandemic changed CIBC's point of view on the role of technology at the bank? It sounds like you kind of touched on the answer there. But maybe all encompassing. Is there another way you answer that question?

Well, I kind of look at the journey that we've been on. And when it comes to our front-facing client technology and the user experience, we continue to receive accolades and awards from independent research houses on our mobile and online banking platform. We're very proud of that. That is something that is really key for us. We will continue to kind of build on that lead. But the second thing I'd say is we're putting more and more power of technology in the hands of our relationship managers, whether they're mobile mortgage advisers who are looking for more e-documentation and simplicity and completing a mortgage to doing those digital financial plans to investing in a CRM system. So that's a big part of our technology investment to strengthen those relationships. The other part of it is to transform the thick middle of the bank, putting more apps to the cloud and allowing us to be more agile as the word is too often used, but an easier, more fleet of foot bank. And that also is much more efficient from a cost standpoint.

I thought I'd squeeze this one in here because it's the first time we saw this question come up today. So you get the new novel question of the day. How does your bank incorporate ESG factors into risk management assessments?

ESG is becoming sort of top of mind for investors and top of mind for our bank. So there is the E, there's S, there's the G. The one thing I'll tell you is we've made it a part of our compensation structure for executives this year for the first time an explicit part of our compensation structure, 10%, to be very explicit of variable compensation. We have hardwired aspects to it, and there's always also qualitative aspects. So on the E things like $150 billion renewable target by 2027, we're already well over $40 billion. That's a target that we laid out 2019. Working with our energy clients in the nonrenewable space so that they are continuing to advance the reduced carbon footprint as we lend to them, becoming carbon neutral as a bank by 2024. And all of those are responsible aspects of the E, and there's much more to it than just that. When it comes to the S, it's about inclusion, it's about diversity, it's about sort of investing in our communities, and all of those are factors that we look at. And the third is obviously governance, which goes not only to the diversity of the Board but good governance factors as a bank. All of that is going to become an important lens through which investors look through, and we want to be a leading financial institution when it comes to ESG. We've also put the portfolio of ESG as it's been as the entire bank under the leadership of one of our Executive Committee members. Now Kikelomo Lawal is our Chief Legal Officer, and she's assumed the ownership -- not the ownership but the responsibility for shepherding that along in our bank and then working with our colleagues to make sure that we deliver on all those fronts.

Okay. Excellent. So we're now at a time where we're at our end. And I want to pass the floor over to you for the final thoughts and what it is you'd love investors to take away today from this conversation, what are your key messages?

Well, thank you, Darko. Thanks for the questions, and thanks for the time today, and thank you for your interest in our bank. The first thing I'd say is we're very pleased with how we've managed through the pandemic from a client standpoint. From an employee standpoint. And from a shareholder standpoint, our returns delivered in the past year. And our goal as a leadership team is to deliver top interior shareholder returns over the cycle. And we're going to do that by focusing on 3 specific areas: continuing to close all the gaps and to drive parity beyond a Canadian consumer franchise, to continue to focus on transforming our bank, which is not something that we woke up to because of the pandemic. It's something that we've been on a journey on for the last 5 to 6 years. And these things are always a journey, but that will be to invest in technologies that help us grow, help us transform the bank and help us protect the bank. And the third thing is to make sure that we continue to have tailwinds in those businesses like our commercial bank in Canada and the United States, like our wealth management franchise in both markets and like our capital markets franchise to make sure that those tailwinds are maintained through core organic investment and the opportunity where a tech can present itself to strengthen our organic hand. We're a bank -- a leadership team that's very focused on delivering those returns to our shareholders. Very focused on doing it right through our clients, and I'm confident that we're going to continue to deliver in the year and the years ahead.

Excellent. So with that, we'll close the session. Thank you very much for participating, Victor. It's always fun.

Thanks, Darko. It's always a pleasure. Take care. All right. Good luck with the rest of the conference.

Thank you very much. And with that, we will close the session.