East West Bancorp, Inc. (EWBC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

We'll go ahead and get started. So next up, we have one of the best banks in the industry in terms of most financial metrics, East West Bank from Pasadena, California. From East West, we have joining us, Chris Niles, CFO. Chris, thank you so much for making the journey.

Always a pleasure to be here and great to spend some time with your customers and one of...

Our shareholders, hopefully.

Absolutely.

So maybe I think just to kick it off, you're talking about this earlier, but, as we think about -- it feels like as much of optimism is out there, there's enough volatility in the macro in the markets week-to-week, day-to-day. When you think about just the customer sentiment and like you've done this for a long, long time, just talk to -- would you agree with the view that 2026 right now, to the extent we know, is shaping up to be a very constructive year for growth outlook for banks and East West relative to the last 5 years? Like how would you compare and contrast getting into '26 versus any year post pandemic?

Well, I think I won't try and compare it against the entire universe of the last 5, 6 years, but 2026 is shaping up to be a very auspicious year. It is year of the horse. And I don't know that our clients are galloping away, but the early read is both loans and deposits are meeting our expectations and continue to be in positive territory. And so we look at that as a great way to start the year. Oftentimes, we see January where there's a little bit of pullback in terms of lending balances. There's a little bit of pull drawdown or pull down in deposit levels. And the reality is it's been a relatively smooth start and off to a positive trajectory. So we're encouraged by the activity we've seen, and we have no reason to suspect at this point in time, things moving down. Our guidance is effectively slightly more optimistic this year than it was last year. So last year, we guided 4% to 6% loan growth. This year, we're guiding 5% to 7%. And that reflects our optimism, but it's informed by the customer optimism that we see. And we see that on the C&I side, we see that on the consumer small business side. And to a lesser extent, we see it with some of our strongest customers, where I'd say the CRE market has thawed from the relative frozen transaction levels that we saw in the past to one where we're seeing more activity today and one where we expect we will see increasing opportunities for our most sophisticated clients to capitalize on in the year ahead.

Got it. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it feels like things are trending better than your optimistic view.

Now you're putting words in my mouth. But yes, I think we came to the table with what we thought were very reasonable outlooks. And I'm not modifying those outlooks today at all, but I think we feel comforted that the early returns have us on the right trajectory.

Got it. Maybe I think just going through the 3 loan buckets you mentioned. Let's start with commercial real estate. And maybe let's start with from a credit quality standpoint on CRE, a year or 2 years ago, there was some concern around interest rates and debt service coverage ratio. How big of an issue is credit quality when you look at the entirety of your CRE book? And where are the stress areas? Is it still old office buildings? Or is it just on a case-by-case basis? Or is there no stress?

So I think about 18 months ago, Dominic made the comment, if we saw 150 basis points of rate cuts, we would see some of the stress abate. And I think we've seen both those rate cuts and the stress abate. So today, it's less specific to a single asset class or a single geography, although let's be honest, hotels in San Francisco still aren't charging full freight. So there's still upside that we think for that market. But in most other markets, things seem to have begun to clear at reasonable levels and refinancing is an option. And if we see a couple more rate cuts later this year, it probably gets even better for all the asset classes. And so I think as we sit here today, our concerns remain real around our portfolio exposures, and we're clearly reserving for those. But we're also guiding for a slightly higher net charge-off level and in recognition that things will shake out when there's transaction flow and there'll be transaction flow increasing likely in 2026.

And we've heard today in terms of a couple of other banks talked about CRE could be bottoming out in 1Q, seeing more production picking up. I'm just wondering, are you seeing the same? Like does CRE become a much stronger contributor to loan growth even in '26?

Well, I think we're trying to balance what we see as significant opportunities with a disciplined view around portfolio construction and our desire to shape the portfolio the way Dominic has envisioned to be closer to 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. So we'd like to see 1/3 C&I, 1/3 single-family and 1/3 CRE. In order to achieve that, it means we'll be constraining some of our CRE growth. And so the reality is we already know that we're not pursuing a lot of opportunities that would be available to us. We're not chasing new customers. We are banking our most reliable, most consistent, most dependable, strongest character, strongest credit quality customers in whatever they want to do, but we're not necessarily trying to find new ones in today's environment.

Got it. And I guess, in the past, there were time to time where CRE would probably index more than 1/3 of the portfolio. It feels like that's not where you want to get there even temporarily if there are opportunities.

Yes. Look, I don't think there's any particular time line for that 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 to manifest itself. But I think the reality is we'll continue to try to grow, and we're continuing to hire folks to help us grow the C&I side of the house. We'll continue to support the single-family side of the house as we have consistently for our customer base. And we'll be thoughtful about how we support our best customers over the cycle in the CRE space.

Understood. Maybe just -- you mentioned C&I. Talk to us when we think about C&I verticals, it used to be like technology, the entertainment industry. There were a bunch of like growth drivers for East West. When you think about it today, what are the areas that you expect to be driving C&I growth? And then where are you hiring bankers?

Yes. No. So I think we've had great initiatives. We've hired bankers in things as the [indiscernible] chartered schools and ESOP and aerospace. And so those are just 3 examples of folks where we've hired. We've moved from a coverage model focused on -- let's say moved on. We've expanded from a regional coverage model and a personal relationship-driven coverage model to increasingly an expertise-driven model. And so you're going to bank the charter school space, you better know how that works. You're going to bank the aerospace space, you better know how that defense contracting payment process works. You're going to bank the ESOP universe, you better know how those tax rules work and how those programs need to be set up. And so we've been hiring the expertise to help us better penetrate the opportunities that, in many cases, are right in our backyard, right? California is a large charter school space. California is a large aerospace industry. California has a significant number of large ESOPs. And so one of the largest in fact is in Pasadena, right? And so it makes sense for us to be in these areas. We just hadn't targeted the specific expertise the way we are now. And I think we're identifying places where we can plug in additional expertise and bringing that to the market.

Got it. And then you think about those verticals you mentioned, are those sort of expected to be the drivers of growth this year? Or is it more broad-based than that?

It's broad-based. They're complementary to the current -- undercurrent of positive momentum that we carried in from the fourth quarter into what appears to be a good start to the first quarter into what we hope will be an auspicious outcome for the full year.

An auspicious, I'm taking as better than expected. But...

There's a range. It would be good to be at the part of the range, be better than be at the low end of the range, sure.

And maybe, Chris, talk about there's this view around the tax bill having incentives around bonus depreciation. Is that a big deal for your clients? Like are you seeing them act on that today? Or is it still a lot of conversations but yet to materialize?

No, it's real. I was at a client dinner not 2 weeks ago, and we were talking about different things, and we started talking about the way they were thinking about the bonus depreciation and how that was accelerating their investment time lines. And clearly, that was part of their conversation. And so they were absolutely thinking about it and thinking about how they were going to benefit from that and leverage it. So yes, and this is a real money client doing real transactions with us, and it was part and parcel to the loan they had just completed that we're celebrating with them.

Understood. You also have a unique lens in terms of supply chains. As we think about the ongoing discussion around are we seeing reshoring our business is going to make investments that are longer dated? I heard last night where some of that was happening because the expectation is no matter who's in the administration post 3 years from now, some of these investments in defense and national security type sectors are going to be based in the United States. I'm just wondering, are you seeing that at all in your clients where some of those movement of supply chains and investment dollars are moving into the U.S. or North America, I guess?

Yes. And I think it comes back sometimes to the tax benefits and sometimes to sort of the way people position. So just because you have a manufacturing capability some place on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, doesn't mean you wouldn't want to have either warehousing, manufacturing, sales and distribution companies and employees in the United States. And it turns out that when you do it that way, you can be very nimble in how things are done. But by and large, perhaps the buyers, if the ultimate buyer is a Costco or Walmart, is perfectly comfortable dealing with your U.S. entity or your overseas entity. But in general, they want to pay you in U.S. dollars in the U.S. bank account. And so whichever entity ends up "getting the order." The deposits tend to still come into East West Bank. And so we've noticed that. And so our goal is to stay close to the management teams as they navigate the changing landscape in the structure that works best for them and help them, whether that's with the financing of whatever they're bringing over from wherever it comes from, to the reinvestment of those proceeds or perhaps even the further capital investment and leveraging of whatever profits they've accumulated back into the U.S., we're here to support all of that in that channel.

Got it. And maybe one last one in terms of from a C&I business expansion standpoint. Like we've talked for many, many years around you acquired a small bank in Texas sort of as a nucleus to grow in Texas. New York has been a market which I think has been underpenetrated as far as what East West can achieve. Just where is that in the priority list today? And how are you investing towards that goal in terms of -- because it feels like it could be a significant growth runway for the bank and it already is, but, yes.

Look, I think we've got really nice market share in several of our key markets in California. Frankly, we're probably relatively underpenetrated in many of the others. But overall, we have a great market share. And so when we think about this from a network perspective, sort of we have the network halo. The question is, where can we incrementally add to the network to give us even more throughput. And as we look at that, that's on the East Coast, New York is a market that we look at in New York, New Jersey broadly. When we look at Boston, we see opportunities. We look down the Mid-Atlantic, D.C., Tysons Corner, Fairfax, all that has potential for us. And we just need to identify opportunities where we think about do we grow there organically. If so, how, if we grow there through acquisition, what's appropriate. Again, we're not trying to materially increase our CRE exposures. We're trying to make sure we have a diversified granular customer deposit base. And so finding something that brings the right mix of things to the table as well as potentially fee income and wealth capabilities is, I won't say, looking for the unicorn. But at a bank that's smaller than us that's trading at a value that would be attractive for us to acquire is a challenge, right? And so we're looking for all of those things, and we'll recognize opportunities as they present themselves and evaluate them. Obviously, we haven't pulled the trigger on anything yet, but we're also cognizant that while valuations for all bank stocks have risen and that makes things more expensive in nominal terms, our currency is also appreciated. And so on a relative basis, many opportunities still can make sense. And on an absolute basis, I don't think we're looking to do anything that would change the character of who we are, which means we're looking at things that are smaller, which generally -- they'll have a niche specialty or 2, but they probably won't have the full package, and that's okay. We're looking to incrementally build and grow. This feels like a regulatory environment where incremental activity will be able to pass muster relatively quickly. And I think that's conducive. When we -- when every deal was subject to 9 to 12 months of -- we'll get back to you. That was tough in a world where things are -- things that make sense are getting approved relatively quickly. We think it's worth spending some time looking for those opportunities.

Sounds like [indiscernible]. I guess when we think about small deals, I mean, I'm thinking $20 billion, $30 billion in assets. I mean, I guess where I'm going with that is, it is possible that if you do something in organic, you cross $100 billion in assets. Does that mean anything? Like we just had a regulatory panel this morning and some of the conversations about the Basel end game would be limited to the G-SIBs, huge focus on just tailoring, et cetera. So I'm wondering if you did a deal and you cross $100 billion, is that no longer a big deal?

I think we're thinking about it more flexibly today. And I think we are informed in that view by Dominic and I were both present from Miki Bowman's comments at the January California Bankers Association meeting, where she indicated that new Fed policy would like to be promulgated, at least in terms of opinion papers or direction before the end of the first quarter. And she referred to indexing and other approaches, indexing meaning indexing the 100 either on an inflation or some growth factor or something else. And so if we take that message to heart and things are going to be reevaluated, it feels like we would have more room than we would have to worry about in the near term. And so I think that's given us a different perspective on how we can think about the landscape. I'm not saying there's anything particularly -- there's nothing in our DNA growth and structure that tells us we have to go do a deal, right? We haven't done a deal since 2014, and yet the organic growth has been fairly robust. We haven't done a deal since 2014, and we've delivered probably as much efficiency gain as anybody and probably as much return on capital as anybody who has done a deal, right? And so the reality is we feel pretty good about our organic path. But if there's something we can find that's complementary to that, that could get announced and closed in a reasonable period of time, that certainly is something we shouldn't pass on the opportunity to explore.

That's fair. And I think, again, not to harp on M&A too much, but is it fair to assume like for the longest time when you talk to investors, the sense is if East West acquired something, it would kind of be at least somehow linked to your roots around the Asian-American community kind of densifying that market share. Is that still the right way to think about it? Because I know the bank's grown, evolved in many different ways.

Yes. If I think about the 3 bankers that we hired that I just mentioned, none of them came to us from the Asian-American community. They came to us with specific capabilities and skill sets that we could leverage across our infrastructure and marketplaces. And so I think it's more capabilities focused from our lens. We have trust powers at East West Bank. We're not currently exercising them because we don't have trust personnel or trust platforms. We could build those. We could hire for that and that the ability to build that way or we could buy it. We don't have a fully in-house RIA. We have investment in a group that has some RIA, and we have a partnership with an external broker-dealer that provides some aspects of those services, but we could also look at bringing that into a model where we would have ownership. Is there a way we could acquire that ownership interest that would make sense for us, right? And then leverage that brokerage or RIA capability across our entire footprint. If we could, I think that would make sense. So those are the things that we're trying to solve for. How do we deliver as full breadth of services as our customers are currently seeking. And the reality is we know our customers are currently banking with Merrill Lynch, and we know our customers are currently banking with [ Merrill Direct ] and Schwab and others. And so how do we bring that aspect of their wallet into our ecosystem in a way that's appropriate.

Got it. I guess maybe just on the deposit growth side, give us a sense in terms of just the deposit growth outlook. Do you expect that to go hand-in-hand with loan growth? And what's the competitive pricing environment look like?

Yes. So we do expect to largely, if not completely fund our loan growth out of deposit growth. And that certainly, we've done that the last several years, and we would expect to in 2026. As we sit here today, the competitive landscape for deposits, we think, is actually tightening. And I say that because while everyone is wanting a 6-year CD because it's the time of year, at least in the bank where has their sort of lunar CD special at about the same price point. Ours was launched at a rate of 3.73% for 6 months. I think our competitors will probably come in a few basis points higher. We've seen the ads already. They all waited for us, I guess, and they started launching. So we'll see how that comes together. And they'll pay more apparently. So we've set the floor to peers. But when we look across the landscape, we look at the market for brokered CDs as an example, as a proxy for pricing, despite the fact that there are a couple of rate cuts in the forwards, there's no rate cut priced into the forward CD levels. And so for those that are [indiscernible] it's easy to bet on a couple of rate cuts. For those that are making a market on the other side and earning a positive return from providing the hedge, pricing a few rate cuts with a little bit of spread for the market maker is good business. But for those that are apparently borrowing money 9 and 12 months, they're willing to pay the same flat rate, which is interesting. And so we look at that and we say, okay, well, what does that really mean for the tightness of the deposit market as we look forward. It implies there's at least more than a few people who think there'll be loan demand. And therefore, they'll need the funding and they're willing to pay for it, which is interesting. And it hasn't really been the case up until now. So we'll see how that plays out as we move through the course of this year.

Got it. If I recall correctly, you still had some of the higher rate CDs coming up for maturity through the first quarter. So it seems like you're going to still pick up some benefit in terms of the back book repricing and you're retaining a good chunk of those deposits, right?

We have been. I don't know that we've priced to grow the deposit book, right? We haven't. We're below brokered levels. We're below where we've seen competitors price. That's okay. We're not trying to grow our way out of this. We think we'll -- retaining the book will be a good starting point for the year and allow us to move forward with a focus, which we have been focusing on small business account growth, which has been working well and consumer money market and checking growth, which has been working out okay, too.

Got it. And I guess for the last year, you've talked about like NII growth mostly being a function of loan growth or balance sheet growth that still holds. Like when you think about the risk to that view, what's the biggest risk, just interest rate cuts being sharper and deeper?

So I think if we hit the 5% to 7% loan growth, then we're also calling for simultaneous 5% to 7% net interest income growth. So those things imply together, implicit in that is not a significant change in the level of back book repricing from a spread perspective. So spreads hold. And if spreads hold and the growth comes in, then the margin we're thinking will largely hold because the 2 or 2.5 rate cuts priced in the forwards will be offset by the back book effects, right? So it's kind of a flat-ish implication. We haven't said that specifically, but you can derive that. So what are the risks there? The risk there are -- well, there are Fed cuts, in which case, the risk is NIM goes higher, I guess, and margins and NII goes better. That's a risk. The risk is that there's more cuts, in which case, perhaps the $2 million per 25 basis points works against us on the downward and offsets and off paces the back book repricing or worse yet, there's so many rate cuts that the back book starts to reprice negatively, right, which is not likely, but it's possible, right? And so that scenario is more conducive with a very aggressive rate cutting from, say, a new Fed Chairman. We'll see.

And just from an ALCO standpoint, or risk management standpoint, are you doing anything differently in terms of just managing the balance sheet, putting on hedges? Like what's...

Fixed rate securities. We bought -- fixed rate securities. We were a fairly significant buyer of floating rates, and we've basically shifted to a fixed rate security. So the portfolio has remixed back to more predominantly fixed rate and our purchases are very focused on fixed rate. And today, fixed rate securities are still yielding north of 5% in Ginnie Mae mortgage product. So it's a reasonable place to put liquidity dollars to work. And so it's great. I think we were -- just before we started, there was a commentary about the Fed is changing its approach to some repo facilities and some other things. I think we're one of the smallest participants in the Fed standing repo facility, but we maintain a standing repo position. Not that we borrow against, but we have enough collateral. We can maintain a portion of it in the facility. And so we have secured our liquidity. Obviously, every bank has a discount window facility and collateral, and we also have stand repo facility collateral because we've got $11 billion of 0 risk-weighted treasuries and agencies that fit the criteria. And so it makes it a very liquid place for us to be at very economical terms should we ever need to. Today, we're fully basically funded with deposits. There's a little bit of Federal home loan bank just so that we're still in the mix. But we've -- the capital and liquidity position of East West Bank have never been stronger. And so we think we're well poised for whatever challenges may come and also perfectly liquid and able to meet the needs of our customers should 2026 turn out to be even more auspicious than we expect.

Got it. And just on the capital and liquidity position, I mean my understanding is Dominic has never been a big fan of buybacks. I'm just wondering when you think about...

He's opportunistic. He has 100 million reasons to be fully aligned with shareholders, and he is.

Fair enough. And -- but when we look at the stock, just from a return on buyback standpoint, like do you think -- how do you think about just the stock valuation versus buying back stock as opposed to just holding on to that excess capital, it never hurts for a cyclical industry to have excess capital. So I'm just wondering...

Yes. I think, look, having dry powder is something that Dominic doesn't feel as a problem. On the other hand, there is not a light bulb at the bank that shouldn't be replaced yesterday with an LED light bulb that has like a 2-year earnback. And so the answer is we should absolutely be doing that, right? And there are any number of properties that were leased at some point in time by a bank, maybe in certain rate environment or context where it made sense to pay that lease and it made sense to pay the implied return on the equity investors and the bank that funded the property on other side of that. And you look back at that now and you say, we could just do that out of cash. And the math actually pencils, right? And so I think we're looking at the full gamut of how do you deploy capital in a way that drives value for shareholders and making sure that we're doing stuff that has a good earnback and making sure we're doing stuff that drives earnings in a positive and consistent accretive manner.

Got it. Maybe let's just spend some time on the expense side. I mean, I think there was a period of expense build-out as you were getting for the $100 billion in assets. You're building out the fee and wealth management sort of product capabilities in-house. Maybe list for us, Chris, if you don't mind, like what are the top 3 areas of investment spend today at the bank?

People, technology, people, technology. And so if I go through that, it's people on the front line to help us build expertise in verticals, people to help us build out relationships. So frontline salespeople and frontline relationship folks is priority #1, probably has been for a while and continues to be. Cyber defense technology just because you have to, and that's a consistent need to continue to invest. I was on the phone Friday with our Head of Info Security, talking about the build-out he needs and the people he needs to support that, but that's constant. But then people again in that we recognize that we had this extremely successful branch manager-led small business campaign last year, culminated with phenomenal fourth quarter small business checking growth. And we look back on that and like, wow, we wish we had an army more of folks in the branches that could help us go out. And we recognize that there's plenty of more small business opportunity in our core markets, and we just hired people to support our retail so that we could think about where we could have more coverage, where we can have more branches. Those are all things that we should be investing in and we need to. And then lastly, just the general technology. And it's not just AI. I think we look at stuff like that all the time, but it's -- we'll use stablecoin as an example for conversations, like yes, there's a stable -- there's this peg currency called the Hong Kong dollar that our customers transacting with some regularity. Before I think about what stablecoin, I'm going to put on my screen next to my U.S. dollar accounts, I put the Hong Kong dollar on the same mobile app page. put the Hong Kong dollar payments instantaneously, which we can do. I want to move money back and forth. We can do it for you as a journal entry, same day, instant credit, make a payment to a third party. We've tested making payments. Our capability between U.S. and Hong Kong now is down to minutes for some institutions, right, not all institutions, but for some institutions, your payment can get from a U.S. account across the ocean into your third-party account in minutes. And that capability is one that only a handful of banks have, and we're competitor there. But offering that in a seamless package so you can see it and then the ability to transact in different currencies, we think is critical to the next phase of banking, and we're going to make sure we create that environment and that capability for the currencies that we already support regularly for business. As much as we can in 2026, and then we'll hopefully be prepared for whatever comes next in 2027 and beyond. And that technology investment in making our customers' lives more transparent, more seamless, more consistent so that they know what to expect. We had a conversation with an investor earlier who was lamenting about his experience in moving dollars from the U.S. to Singapore using stablecoin and how we end up paying a 1% fee, which turns out is a lot more than a $30 wire fee. And it turns out that's not always the best way to go about things. And so I think for real customers doing real business, banking is a much more secure will be more efficient and will be more effective way to move funds and transact. And so we're going to make sure that we consistently deliver a competitive offering that is as transparent as those systems and hopefully even more efficient.

And just lastly, on the expense side, so I appreciate the regulatory backdrop is shifting. But in terms of things that you had to do and invest in to become a Category 4 bank, is that like 70%, 80%, will that still be in place regardless? Or...

Well, let me maybe bifurcate that answer, right? So the first part is, if I look back -- it's in our investor deck, if pages on, you look at our expenses for the last 4 years, our 4-year CAGR on expenses is 10% growth, right? 10%. So if we're guiding 7% to 9%, that's down 100 to 300 basis points from the run rate. I would have thought that would be a remarkably well-received message. Somehow people seem to be thinking that we have like the 60% efficiency ratio like everybody else does. We don't. And so when you start with a base of like 35% and you say, okay, I'm going to grow that number at 7%, that barely covers like a 3% merit increase, right? And so the reality is we need to do something there, right? And so that's what we're dealing with is, hey, we're going to continue to invest in the business, technology and people because that's really what's driving opportunities for us in a way that's consistent with supporting the business growth that we've seen. And despite the fact that we've grown expenses at 10% a year for the last 4 years and might grow them at 7% to 9% next year, we've grown revenue even faster. We've grown loans even faster, not loans, but fee revenues and other revenue streams. And we continue to grow those. And so the reality is as we look forward, even with 7% to 9% expense growth, we'll have revenue growth that outpaces that again in 2026 and beyond, and we'll continue to drive positive operating leverage and what we think will be likely top quartile returns with best-in-class efficiency.

The only thing best-in-class -- is not best-in-class is the stock valuation that needs to be fixed, but...

We're appreciative of the fact that once upon a time, we trade at a discount. and that now we trade more in line with our peers. And what's disappointing about that is given the consistent delivery of top quartile ROTCEs and given the generally fairly consistent long-term shareholder returns that have outpaced most of the industry, we're surprised people don't award a premium for that value. But we'll keep working to make sure people understand that value. And we appreciate your continued engagement to make sure the story gets out there.

Sure, no. I'm just doing my job.

You do it well. Thank you.

So I guess the other point, you mentioned Hong Kong dollar. Let's just talk a little bit about the Greater China strategy. What's going on there from a lending deposit standpoint? Like where are we growing? What's next year?

Our customers over there predominantly are those that are engaged directly in the U.S., right? They're selling goods. We are not their banking entities that are oriented to the domestic marketplace on the other side of the Pacific. They're oriented to serving the needs of American consumers on this side of the Pacific. And as long as the American consumer is still walking into Costco and Walmart and pick up goods that are made some place overseas, it's likely a portion of them will come from the other side of the Pacific. And in that supply chain, we play a disproportionate role because it turns out that while Bank of America has offices on the other side of the Pacific and JPMorgan and Citi and Wells, although Citi has fewer than used to, there is no U.S. bank branch on the other side of the Pacific. And you can go down the list for the next 20 banks until you get the East West, there's nobody else there. And so there's a giant blue ocean of activity, particularly for smaller and midsized enterprises that the needs aren't perfectly met by the big 4, and there aren't too many other great choices. And so yes, there's always going to be HSBC or Standard Chartered or even ICBC for some. But for those that want to work with an American bank, we think we're a very good alternative to the big 4 and frankly, in many cases, the only good alternative to the Big 4 for those looking to transact across borders. And that's a big enough transaction volume even after Liberation Day that even a small share of that will continue to be a positive driver to our foreign exchange business to our transfer business to other activities. But the reality is our customers are global, right? They've already seen how this movie plays out, and they've already started to buy warehouses if they hadn't had them already in the U.S. and build entities and distribution companies in the U.S. And they'll continue to invest in the U.S. because the marginal investment proposition in the U.S. today has a different value proposition than it did to you when you were considering where you could invest. Maybe 5 years ago, Vietnam was the answer for that marginal dollar. And today, maybe the answer is the U.S. And if you're going to build, invest and repatriate or reinvest your profits from export activity someplace and that ends up being here, then working with East West turns out to be a great way to further that partnership. So it's been good and will continue to be good.

And if you see more of that, my sense is we should see more lending opportunity for East West.

More commercial lending opportunity.

Got it. I guess -- have a couple more minutes. Just one last question on fee income, like it's been a big driver of growth, a big focus on the sort of wealth management side over the last few years. Just talk to us around the -- organically, what the growth runway is for fee revenues? And is it still sort of driven by wealth, but obviously, there are other aspects of the business driving that growth?

Yes. From a percentage growth basis, wealth has been standout. And it continues to track fairly positively. And so we're encouraged by early read in Q1 and continue to expect that to be a good contributor to our growth for the full year. Deposit fees have been a positive contributor within the deposit fees include things like wire fees, transfer fees, et cetera. And foreign exchange has been a great contributor. And so that combination of managing the payment needs of our customers as payments, including foreign dollar payments or foreign currency payments and managing their wealth altogether is a great package that has been, I think, wind in our sails here for the last couple of years. And in a curious way, the more disruptive the environment, the more activity we see in those spaces.

Why is that?

Because when things are disruptive, people make moves. And when people make moves, there's a transaction. And when there's a transaction, there's usually a fee. So it turns out that a little bit of chaos on those things is not a bad thing. I think there's probably a broker-dealer in your coverage universe that said something similar.

I think we can't count on anything else, the one thing we can count on is continued chaos. So, Chris, thank you very much.

Appreciate that. Thank you, Ebrahim.