Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. If everybody could take their seats, we're going to get started. So we're delighted to welcome Charlie Scharf, who's President and CEO of Wells Fargo. I think Charlie is well known to everybody here. He's got a real wealth of experience across the financial services industry. Before joining Wells Fargo, little over 2 years ago, Charlie served in senior positions at JPMorgan, followed by serving the CEO of Visa and Bank of New York. This is the second time Charlie has attended this conference, and it is the first time in person. So welcome, and I'd also be remiss if I didn't say that this is actually the 12th time in a row that Wells Fargo has actually kicked off this conference, and we're very grateful for that. So thank you very, very much for doing that.

So Charlie, I thought I would just start off with a macro question. And I know there's a lot of different moving pieces here, but can you just take us through what your base case is for the trajectory of economic growth in 2022? Perhaps touch on what you're expecting in terms of interest rate structures? And maybe in your answer, you can talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of payment trends, both consumer and corporate over the last few months?

Sure. I think what we see is just a real strength, just very broadly speaking, across our entire consumer platform, but it really continues up into the middle market as well as into the large corporate space. As we all know, there's just a huge amount of liquidity in the system. People are saving, people are spending. And so when you think about even the payment rates that we're seeing in many of our products, like the card business is being extremely high, we are starting to see balances tick up as well. But overall, consumers have -- it's hard to tell, 30%, 35% more today in their deposit accounts than they had when pre-COVID. It's pretty consistent across all wealth levels. So it's not just the affluent. It's those that started with very low balances in their account. And you look around what's going on in the economy and wages are going up, there are more jobs than there are people to fill those jobs. And so as we look forward for the consumer, at some point, it comes to an end, but it's still extremely strong. When we look at our middle market business and it's the large corporate space, slight differences. Large corporate space, tremendous amount of liquidity in the public markets has enabled them to finance everything that they want to do, a significant amount of transaction activity, just creating just very, very significant volumes. And in the middle market space, it really is, I would say, overall loan demand is certainly picking up. It really is differentiated in terms of who you're talking to, in terms of the middle market customers. Many, many have pricing power that they say that they've never seen before. And these are people whose parents start these companies and they're running them. And they just say, we've never been able to raise price like this and get it, and they are getting it. And so when you look at just profit levels, in addition to liquidity levels, things just continue to be extremely strong. So as we look forward to next -- into 2022, we certainly expect unemployment rates to continue to come down. Hard to put a number on GDP growth. I'm not an economist, but certainly, I think it will be strong. And then the question is how long does this all go on for? And I think that gets a little more interesting.

So a couple of follow-up questions. First is, it may be too early to comment on this, but since the concerns around Omicron, have you seen any changes in terms of engagement across client base?

Yes. I would say very, very little. I mean, certainly, we look at our own spend information and all of our activity every single day. And so confidence does matter, and you see little bits and pieces in certain parts of the country in certain industries, but nothing of meaning at this point. I think we're of the opinion that we'll know more in a couple of weeks as the information continues to flow through. I'm personally certainly hopeful based on everything we know now that it won't have a significant impact, but time will tell.

Okay. And then on inflation rates, are you concerned about the prospects of a potential policy mistake, if that perhaps is moving too quickly or not? Fasting up? I mean, how do you rate that?

Yes. I mean, I'm personally not nervous about the moving too quickly. I think that there's certainly a case to be made that they should be moving faster than they've been moving. Inflation is very, very real. The whole debate about the word transitory and what it means and what it implies, it's just -- it's -- I don't think it's really all that relevant. What's really relevant is as we sit here today and prices are significantly higher for inputs across most industries. Labor shortage, wage increases are extremely real. Whether that continues for several years is, to me, not all that relevant sitting here today, but it certainly will have an impact over the next year or so, if it's not reduced in this kind of shorter to medium term. So I would say, we're more concerned about inflation than not. But there is a path forward. And my -- again, I think my guess is now with a little bit more of an understanding of who's going to have what role at the Fed that there'll be a quicker path towards the appropriate actions.

Yes. So maybe we can segue to your strategic priorities. And I think as I mentioned, I think it's just over 2 years that you've been in this role. You've been very consistent in saying that the top priority is dealing with the consent order. But maybe you can talk about your broader priorities for the firm heading into 2022, and maybe talk a little bit about how those will evolve over the course of this year?

Sure. I guess let me just start, if I can just by -- it has been 2 years. Certainly, COVID has made everyone's life a little bit more complicated. And when you come into a company like Wells Fargo with the issues that we have, I think it's certainly -- it's hard to ignore that and say that it doesn't have an impact when you try to bring about the kind of change that we're trying to bring back. So as I sit here today and look back over the last 2 years, I feel really good about the progress that's been made. Not that we've done everything that we want to do have done, not that we have everything completed, but when you just sit and look at the changes that have been made to the company, it's extraordinary. We were not on a clear path towards resolving our risk and regulatory problems. I'm very confident that we sit here today and we are today, even though there's still more to do. The changes in the senior management team were extraordinary. When you look at the operating committee, I forget the numbers, 12 of 17 or something, are new to the company. Most of the rest are new to their roles. Our Board has turned over almost entirely since 2017. We've started to introduce new products. We're spending on our digital capabilities. And these are things that just weren't happening 2 years ago. And so I just think that's to reflect on what we've accomplished in this environment says a lot about what the people at Wells are willing to do and what they can accomplish with some clear direction. So we sit here today and the question is, where do we go? And I do -- I'd be remiss if I didn't say again, we have to get our regulatory issues behind us. There is no future without that. Our regulators, what they want of us, is what we should want, which is to just build the appropriate infrastructure inside the company. And so that, until the work is completed and it becomes part of our culture and a big part of what we do, it has to be the top priority. But that's not all we do. It's not what everyone is doing across the company. And so I think, what you saw in 2022 should just be a peak of the types of things you should start to think about from us. I feel great about the franchises that we have. Every single one of our businesses has done an amazing job, preserving its strength through these really difficult times. Our customers are extremely loyal to us. People want to do more business with us. And so as we sit here and ask the question, do we have the best capabilities in the marketplace across all of our businesses? The answer is no today. But we've got everything that it takes to be in a position to say yes to that. And so whether it's having the best credit cards in the marketplace, whether it's having the best treasury services products in the marketplace, whether it's having the best digital platform in our consumer business, these are all things that you will start to see us continue to launch things throughout the year. So we do have this two-pronged approach to nothing will stand in the way of the risk and regulatory work, but we're not standing still at moving forward at building capabilities across our businesses. And then the last thing is just the continuation of bringing Wells together. Those of you that have followed Wells for a long time know, I think just how independent the businesses were, which is very, very interesting for a company that talked about cross-sell. When you get into Wells Fargo, cross-sell was defined within a very specific business. And there was very little cooperation across the different platforms. So our mortgage business operated almost entirely independently of our consumer banking franchise. Our wealth management business, the same thing, middle market versus the corporate investment bank. And the missed opportunity is just huge. And so as we sit here today, when we think about our mortgage business, our most important customers are our broader bank customers. When we think about our opportunities in card, it's not going out and just competing in direct mail and on the Internet with any card provider. It's taking advantage of the huge customer base that we have. You put all those things together, and we have capabilities that only a couple of other banks have. And the question is, are we going to leverage the platform that we have and leverage the franchise? And that, to me, is the most exciting thing. I mean, I think when you look at all the banks and all the FinTechs and everyone who wants to compete in the space, people would die to have our franchises. The fact that we haven't done a great job over the past decade using those strains doesn't say that the benefits, if you do run it properly, aren't extraordinary. And I just think we're at the very beginning of that and it's extremely exciting.

So, okay. I appreciate there's not a lot that you can say about the consent orders given the fact it's obviously, subject to confidential supervisory information. But I think this year, there was obviously some progress with the CFPB, consent order that expired. You obviously had another one that was issued from OCC. So just at the highest level, maybe you can just give us an update on the progress that you feel that you've made and maybe just talk a little bit about what the process from here looks like?

Sure. And as you said, I wish in a perfect world, we can put up a slide that shows you every one of our issues, shows you the trends, shows you the dates and all that kind of stuff, but we don't have the ability to do that. But that is what we do inside the company. We look at within every consent order, we have a very detailed project plan, just like any company would have on a big project that has to occur. We know exactly who's responsible for delivering what. We have interim dates across all of the different activities that have to be completed. We have them in every consent order. We have them in MRAs. We have them in internal audits. Everything that goes into the control environment, we review those every single week at the operating committee. And the significance there is, there's detailed involvement of the operating committee members, which looks very different than what it looked like 2 years ago. Our ability to identify issues is completely different than 2 years ago. So things that we see -- so we had our operating committee meeting yesterday. We went through issues. We heard something. Something that came up, we wouldn't have heard until 2 years later. But now that we know about it, we get the right people on it, and we can work towards fixing it. So when we look at all of these activities, I've said -- when I first got to the company, I said, we understand the work that has to get done, and we're confident that we can get it done. And now I've done to say that we are making significant progress. And I wouldn't say that if in all of our internal reporting, we didn't see consistent, steady trends and improvement across everything that we looked at, including hitting these dates. But it doesn't mean we're perfect. It doesn't mean that we're not -- because I have said each individual deliverable is not complicated. The fact that we have a bunch of stuff at the same time is what makes it complex. It takes a while to build all of the capabilities. And it's certainly the regulators purview to look at issues that have been outstanding for a long time, like the OCC did and say, you know something, which they acknowledged in their order that they've seen progress since we've arrived at the company, which they generally don't say. But that doesn't change the fact that it's been outstanding for a long time. So you got -- in our minds, as much as we don't like to get anything that's negative, there is a reality of these things have been out for a long time. They've got the obligation to judge us based upon that. But that doesn't change the fact that we feel very comfortable that we know what has to get done and we're on that trajectory.

Okay. So maybe we could talk a little bit about financial targets. And I know you've said that you think that Wells Fargo can get to a 15% ROTCE over time. That doesn't seem -- investment very achievable to us. As the world continues to normalize, do you think a broader set of financial targets and timelines is something that makes sense to start to introduce?

Sure. Yes. No, I think it is -- listen, I would describe it -- when I first got there, we were very reticent to be too specific because when you show up at a company like this, you don't know what you know until you get inside and you learn and you meet people. I think we then sat and we said, okay, our investors should hear more from us in terms of what we think the franchise should produce. So what we said was that -- well, what we didn't want to say is we're going to get to 15%, even though we weren't anything close to that and just say trust us. But what we did say is, okay, there's a path here. And just like in any path, there are interim steps. And the first interim step is to get to 10%. And once we get to 10%, we will lay out a path in terms of what we think it takes to get to 15%. So we sit here today and as we look forward into 2022, we feel very good that at one of the quarters in 2022 on a run rate basis, we will reach 10%. And it is really driven by the assumptions that we've laid out for our investor that said, here's what it would take to get there. And once we get there, I think we should lay out what it will take for us to get to 15%. We have always said that it would include the asset cap being lifted. And obviously, we can't comment on the timing of that. But we'll certainly go through the rest of the pieces. And I would say, as we sit here today, nothing has changed in terms of our point of view about the ability of this franchise to get to around that 15%. And we'll -- one step at a time.

So just in terms of Q4, we did see some good loan growth trends in the third quarter. Things from what we can see based on the Fed data do seem to have -- continue to improve in the fourth quarter. Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen in terms of loan demand, both in terms of corporate and consumer, and talk a little bit about your expectations heading into 2022 for the trajectory of loan growth?

Sure. Yes. I mean, we've seen a continuation of what we saw towards the second half of the third quarter. It's consistent with what you see in the Fed data. When you look across the franchises, payment rates are high in card, but we have very strong performance, especially with our new products that we've rolled out recently. In our Consumer Banking franchise, remember, we do have PPP running off. But if you exclude that, we are starting to see some growth there as well. When we look in our home lending businesses, we do have a couple of portfolios, which are -- where we're not originating at this point, things like home equity. But when you look beyond that, we're seeing growth in auto, which is a continuation of what we've seen. We're seeing growth in nonconforming, excluding the early payment buyouts. We're seeing reasonably strong demand in the larger segment of our commercial business. And we continue to see strength in the corporate investment bank. So almost every graph that you look at shows that things coming down, leveling out and you're starting to see the pickup. And as we sit here today, we would expect to continue into next year. And the real question is what happens with supply chain? What happens with inventories? How much do people need to finance? And our assumption is that you'll start to see those things loosen up, end of the second quarter, into the third quarter of next year.

I mean, related to that, you launched, I think, two new credit card products recently. Can you talk about the decision to do that? Why you led with those products? How you think they're differentiated? And just maybe just touch on the overall competitive dynamic in the credit card industry because it does seem to have picked up recently?

Yes. I guess, I think about it like in a series of different dimensions. I think, first of all, cards and -- the card business and payments are extraordinarily important to what we want to do strategically inside the company, which is just manage the entire financial relationship of our consumers. There was a point of view of years ago that mortgage was extremely important to driving that. And that was an important balance to some of the other risks we had inside the company. But we have a deep belief that if you lose control of the payments flow, it is like losing control of the checking account 10 or 15 years ago. And so we have, I would say, had a reasonably sized card business at $30 billion to $35 billion of receivables. It was almost not discussed inside the company. And it certainly wasn't a strategic priority. In the context of saying, well, it really is, you really need to be in the payments flow, you need to be competitive, and by the way, we have all these consumer relationships, what do we have to do to be competitive in the space? And this is one where it's just not rocket science. Our product was uncompetitive. Our lead products were branded American Express. My own -- American Express is a great company. If you want an American Express card, you're going to go to American Express and get all the benefits that come along with it, not just have a brand that sits on the card. Our rewards were not competitive. Our customer service was not competitive. Our credit lines were not competitive, our fraud experiences...I may go on and on, all the things that make up a great experience with a part. So what we said is, let's just figure out what's going on here. And we've renegotiated our deal with the networks, moved primarily towards Visa, basically taken the economics that we've received, put that back into the product, and that's what allows us to invest in the infrastructure to provide a better product, but also what we think is the best product in the marketplace. So our cash back product, which is the first product that we launched, 2% cash back, it is the best cash-back product in the marketplace. It is 2% cash back on everything. No limits. You have to call to sign up for a category, there's none of that. It's a great product. And we're not doing it for less profitability than we would have done on our own card, it's just because we've been able to reinvest this. So it's just an example, you look at things, you look at the economics, you look at why you're not able to be competitive, and again, across everything that we do, given the scale that we have, we should be able to be competitive. But you've got to just figure out all the pieces that come together to have that great experience. And so I do think, it's important not just -- it's important to me in terms of talking about the card businesses, not just because cards are important or because payments are important. But that -- I mean, when was the last time you heard Wells introducing something, which was the best in the marketplace? And I think you got to go back like over a decade for that. And I just think we've been resting on our laurels. And there's no reason why we shouldn't have against across everything that we do, the best. And so that's just one example, which we got on very, very early because so it was obvious, and honestly so easy to launch, even though people have put enormous amount of work into it, that's what you should start seeing from us across all of our businesses.

So I guess it would also be helpful just to give an update on how you're thinking about the capital market strategy. It's obviously been a real bright spot for the industry. It's obviously been bright spot for you as well. Can you talk about your aspirations in your capital markets business? Maybe talk about it both near term, but also longer term when the asset cap is lifted, and you've got a lot more capacity in terms of balance sheet?

Sure. It's interesting. I would say that our aspirations for our entire corporate investment bank are probably not that different from what they've been. I've just been willing to talk about it. And as a company, we've been unwilling to talk about it because we wanted to differentiate ourselves in terms of who we actually are. The fact is we have a big and important corporate investment bank. When you look at -- we break it apart as a separate segment now, so you can see in terms of how important it really is for us. But you can also see where are the opportunities for us. Our fees, as a percentage of our lending revenues are a fraction of what they should be. And so when we think about how we're going to continue to grow this business, it is very much in line with what we've been doing, which is -- we're not interested in competing everywhere against Goldman. We're not -- or JPMorgan or Morgan Stanley that have these gigantic global trading businesses. But what we are interested in doing is serving our customer set who we've done an amazing amount with for decades, including substantial extension of credit more broadly, and they want to do more business with us. So you can see the progress that we've made in high grade, see the progress that we've made in some of our corporate bond trading businesses, our commercial real estate business. We should be making significantly more in our advisory business. And that's not just true in our large corporate business, but it's true in our middle market business. We sit inside, we have these conversations. We're sitting at the Goldman conference and you -- the Goldman's done an amazing job of sitting there and saying, there's this huge opportunity in the middle market. Some of the other bigger banks have done the same thing. In our middle market business, we bank these companies for decades. We know the founders. We know the CEOs. This isn't an assistant treasurer relationship that we have. And we've never called on them for corporate investment banking products, whether it's interest rate swaps, whether it is advice. And so we look at our customer base. We look at the fees that they paid to The Street and we make a teeny tiny percentage of it. And so the opportunity just to capture more wallet from our existing customer base, is extremely significant. I mean, to me, it's $500 million to $1 billion when you look at the number. And that's not looking at other middle market companies that we don't serve today. Now it takes time. You need to build those relationships. You need to be have the right people covering those industries. But that's the way we're thinking about it now. And so we're not looking at doing anything inside the company, whether it's in the corporate investment bank or in our card business or any place else, which changes the risk profile of the company substantially. And I didn't say it before, but look at our credit card business, the quality of the loans, the accounts that we're booking and our -- the quality of the apps and the quality of the cards that we're booking are better than the cards in the portfolio today. And as we think about where we're going in the investment bank, no step function changes in terms of our risk profile. We're not looking at greatly expanding our limits for some of our trading businesses or even our lending businesses, but just the normal continuum. And when the asset cap comes off, the CIB has probably been the most impacted because we've gone to our customers where we were financing positions and said we just we need room, and that's the easiest place to get it from. And one day we'll be back. We've been difficult about taking on new deposits and aggressive about pushing deposits out. But again, I would say in terms of what we hear from customers is they understand, they want to do more business with us. And when the asset cap gets lifted, we'll be able to certainly, I think, regain some of what we've lost there and just continue a steady progression of building the business in a way that makes sense for the existing Wells Fargo customer base.

So perhaps we can talk about expenses. I know it's a topic that people care a lot about. I think you've said you're on track to get to $53.5 billion of expenses for this year, $3.7 billion of gross savings. And I believe you said you expect absolute dollars of expenses to fall next year. So a couple of questions. First, can you just hit on the key expense initiatives that you're focused on, and maybe just give us an update on the expense trajectory? And then longer term, and I know this question has come up before, is there any reason to believe that you shouldn't be able to get to best-of-breed efficiency ratios across your core businesses?

So on the last piece, no. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to get there. Now you have to look at it business by business, in terms of business mix, that every one of our businesses has the scale for us to be able to get to best-of-breed while still continuing to invest. So that is certainly the way we think about where we should get to. When we think about the expenses of the company, it's really very, very basic. This isn't -- and we've been very, very clear that we think there's a huge opportunity to cut expense without touching these risk programs. In fact, this past year, we spent an additional $0.5 billion year-over-year, funding those things that we need to do. And we've said anything that we can do to make sure the quality is as good as it can be or if we can get something done faster, we're going to spend it over there. And that has nothing to do with taking the wasteful expenses outside the company. So when we look at where we've gone, it's the very basics. It's -- we were very slow on looking at our branch infrastructure, just looking at the basics when we had branches that were in close proximity to each other. Branch staffing. COVID has helped accelerate that with the move to digital. We just -- and so we have way too many people in the branches and we had way too many branches. Our real estate footprint. In fact, one of the CEOs of the big banks called and said, by the way, they were looking through the 10-K, they were shocked at the amount -- the square footage of our real estate versus their square footage. It's like, yes, no, we got it. And that number is down significantly today. It's eliminating layers of management. When we looked at -- we looked at some very basic statistics of spans of control, how many people report to the average manager? How many layers do you have inside the company? The spans were way too narrow and the layers were way too big. And so without being formulaic about it, we've just -- we've driven a huge amount of savings by fixing that, which also makes the company just run much more efficiently. So these expenses that we're reducing, I mean, this is very little is anything that's overly complicated. Now we have a lot more that's in the pipeline, which is a little bit more complex, where we look at duplicate systems. We've got duplicate loan systems. We've got duplicate payment systems. We have two treasury services businesses. One in the commercial bank, one in the middle market. We brought in guy named Paul Camp to run both. We're going to have a single management team. We're moving to a single platform. The amount of time that it takes us to open a new account in our commercial business is going to go from weeks to a couple of days. With that, comes tremendous amount of expense savings. But with this, it's also a far better experience for the customer. And so when we sit here today, there's still a huge amount that we can do to reduce the expense base. And that's not even factoring in getting a little bit of revenue growth that the company hasn't seen for a while.

So maybe we can talk about capital returns as well, obviously, a significant increase in the dividend this year, but you still have a lot of excess capital. And our expectation is, you'll continue to generate a lot of excess capital. How should shareholders think about capital returns versus the need to continue to invest capital in the business? And in terms of capital returns, how are you thinking about the value of dividends versus buybacks today?

We're in an interesting position because of the asset cap, right? Because there is no question that we would love to be able to invest as much as we can in our existing business. That is the way we're thinking about our own resource allocation. But the reality is because of the asset cap, we're limited on how much we can do. And so certainly, when we were in an environment where we couldn't return equity to our shareholders, and when you're sitting there with an asset cap, you just -- you build this extraordinary amount of excess capital. And so that has changed. So we have the ability to return it. So I think our ability to use significant amounts of excess capital to reinvest inside the company will be limited until the asset cap is lifted. And at that point, we look at our dividends, and we look at our share buybacks and we say, we want to have a predictable dividend, which is based upon the sustainable earnings capacity to the company, 30-ish percent. We've done ranges, plus or minus to say what that is. And we wanted to grow with earnings in a way that people can understand and is predictable. And you can sit and say, well, why should it be bigger today if you're limited? Well, hopefully, if we do our work, then we will have more opportunities to reinvest, create optionality for us to figure out how we want to use that capital in the future. And the difference comes in terms of buybacks. So we would -- I think we'll be aggressive about continuing to get to a still conservative, but more reasonable capital level inside the company. And given the amount of capital we generate, when the asset cap is lifted, we still think we'll have plenty of room to be able to invest inside the franchise.

Okay. So we've got a few minutes left. So let me ask about credit, and I think it's remarkable that last year, I think, the first 2 or 3 questions about credit and now it's one of the last questions. I think -- I guess the question is this, I think if you look at just charge-off rates, for you, but across the industry, I think it's the lowest level in 30 years. Does the normalization of interest rates, the normalization of consumer and corporate behavior mean that credit losses should normalize as we kind of get through '22 and head into '23? Or does this elevated level of liquidity, you think, trump the fact that credit costs could actually remain at these types of levels?

No, I think the way you said it initially is the right way, which is, I think these cushions that have been built in with all the success liquidity and demand for labor and things that exist will continue to provide a cushion for a period of time. But at some point, as we get into '22, hopefully, more towards the end than in the beginning, there has to be some normalization. I don't want to overstate this, but I think we have started to see -- I think we would say the bottom has been reached. And very, very small amounts of delinquency increases, nothing meaningful, but just slightly different than we would have seen last quarter is something that you started to see. And there's no -- but the charge-offs aren't going to remain at this level. Now I would say just one of the things that we're certainly extremely conscious when we look at our new underwriting across all of our businesses at making sure that we're thinking about that properly. We're making sure we're thinking about collateral values. Used car prices aren't going to be worthless. New cars aren't going to be sold at premiums forever. The housing price appreciation won't continue forever. And so I think -- and I can speak for us, I think we're being very, very prudent as well as has always been in terms of thinking about our underwriting. But I just -- I will -- there's just -- but there is a -- and so you say, well, where is it all going? There's a huge amount of credit outside of the banking system today. And if you're not willing to invest in the equity markets and you're looking for yield, there's a lot of stuff that's being driven, which I think will be more problematic. But I think, again, I'm speaking for ourself, in terms of what we see competitively, certainly, in our consumer businesses and our middle-market franchise, things are competitive, but somewhat reasonable. And then as you get into the corporate investment banking space, it is more competitive. And we're very focused on the quality of the people that we're extending credit to in addition to the structure.

So I think we've got a couple of minutes left. And let me ask the last question, which is just your views on the broader competitive environment. And I think the disintermediation is something that I think investors are very concerned about, especially in the consumer business. And we've obviously seen a lot of changes in terms of the role that payment companies are starting to play in providing traditional banking products. Obviously, a lot of focus on things like buy now, pay later. If you take a step back and look at some of the innovations, what concerns you? And what do you think the greatest vulnerability of the banking industry is? And how do you best position Wells Fargo to defend against that?

Listen, I think the -- I guess, I would start with there's no reason why we should lose to anyone in any significant way. It doesn't mean that certain companies won't have great capabilities in certain parts of our businesses and figure out how to create something which really works for them. It doesn't mean that we can't go copy it or we couldn't buy something or partner with someone. But the fact is, when you look at what's happened over the past, it's really 6 or 7 years, maybe it's a decade, but it's probably a little bit less than that, there's just been a broad group of very smart people that have said that the traditional financial services industry, predominantly the banks, have been extremely slow to innovate, don't think about what's right for the customer necessarily, think about how to offer things around their own platforms and they've showed up in the marketplace with better solutions. It's just what they've done. And so when you look at -- I mean, just think about the way I described the way Wells Fargo work. You can have a bank account, you could have a mortgage, you could have an investment product and as if you were dealing with three completely different companies and the quality of what we delivered to you, certainly from a digital perspective, wasn't nearly as good as you could get from others. And so I think from our perspective, we understand that. We understand we've got a very, very different approach to it. And we need to break down all the barriers inside the company. Stop asking ourselves about how we deliver something that's easy for us, but put -- really put your minds in front of the consumer and say, what should it look like for them? And then what are the barriers that's been on our way? That is a complete redo in terms of how we think about our business, and how we think about the way -- ultimately, we're organized and work together. But if we do that, again, you sit there and say, other than our capital requirements and our regulatory requirements, which for most things don't stand in the way of being competitive because of the scale that we have, that says that we should be able to compete with every one of those folks out there. And now that's a lot to do. And so we worry about it a lot. So I don't want to -- and I'm not cavalier about it, but when we sit here -- I'd rather have this platform than someone else's platform if you really aspire to have meaningful share in this business.

Okay. With that, I think we're out of time. But Charlie, thank you very much for joining us. We hope we can see you again next year.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.