Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Please stand by, your meeting is about to begin. Good morning and welcome to the CIBC quarterly financial results call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would like to turn the meeting over to Jeff Weiss, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Jeff.

Thank you and good morning. We will begin this morning's presentation with opening remarks from Victor Dodick, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Following Victor, Raj Panosian, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our operating results. Sean Bieber, our Chief Risk Officer, will close out the prepared remarks with a risk management update. We are joined in the room by CIBC's business leaders, including Harry Cullum, Laura Dottori-Atanasio, and John Huntalas, as well as Mike Caputides, who is joining us remotely from the U.S. They are all available to take questions following the prepared remarks. When we get to the Q&A, to ensure we allow enough time for everyone to participate, I ask that you please limit your questions and re-queue. As noted on slide two of our investor presentation, our comments may contain forward-looking statements which involve assumptions that have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. With that, I will now turn the meeting over to Victor.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us, and we hope you're all keeping well. In an environment where pandemic-related challenges continue to impact the economy, our diversified business model delivered record adjusted net income of $1.6 billion, which is up 11% from last year. We also continued to build on our capital strength, closing the quarter with a CET1 ratio of 12.3%. Since the onset of the pandemic, we've clearly demonstrated our preparedness and our ability to manage the crisis at hand, while investing for the future. Now, we know that the economic recovery won't be a straight line, but we will emerge from the pandemic, and the CIBC team is well positioned to deliver growth as the recovery takes hold. As we execute on our strategy, we remain very connected to how the pandemic is affecting the lives of our clients and our team. Their well-being remains our top priority. Our strong performance is being driven by the execution of our client-focused strategy which has three key priorities. First, over the past year, we've made significant enhancements to our Canadian consumer franchise as we accelerate growth. This includes adding new leaders and investing in our people, as well as continuing to innovate and enhance our products and our platforms. During the quarter, we made further investments to our market-leading CIBC dividend card, expanding the number of categories eligible for cashback rewards, and increasing the flexibility to redeem those rewards. This further strengthens our offer for clients in the important and growing everyday rewards market. Another area that's driving the improvement in our results this quarter is our continued momentum in our mortgage business. The improved volumes we delivered at the end of last year have continued into this quarter, with year-over-year spot balance growth of 8% and sequential growth of 3%. These results reflect enhancements to the end-to-end client experience, as well as strong results from our focus on retention. In addition, our efforts to improve mutual fund sales were rewarded this quarter with record net flows. Overall, we've made significant progress this quarter to reinvigorate our Canadian consumer franchise, which is very much in line with our strategy. We're confident that the strategic technology and talent investments we've made will continue to support growth into the future. Now let me turn to our second priority, which is to accelerate the transformation of our bank. Over the past five years, we have focused on streamlining our operations and eliminating inefficiencies to reduce our cost base. Through these efforts, we've achieved cumulative cost savings of more than $800 million. Importantly, these savings have been reinvested in the growth of our business, as well as strengthening the foundation of our bank. We've added resources to our revenue-generating workforce in strategic areas identified as high-growth opportunities. Our technology transformation has embraced cloud services, AI and machine learning, as we build a leading-edge data management and analytics function to support strategic decision-making across our bank. And we've also launched client-facing platforms, such as CIBC Goal Planner, which has been performing very well since its launch in November. And another example of how we're investing in technology to enhance the client experience is the recent launch of CIBC Insights. This new feature uses AI and machine learning to provide our mobile banking clients with tailored information and insights into their spending to help them make more informed, everyday financial decisions. We're also continuing to focus on risk mitigation activities, such as cybersecurity and anti-money laundering, which are fundamentally important to protecting our clients and to protecting our bank. In fiscal 2021, we expect to realize over $260 million of incremental run rate cost savings, and we will strategically reinvest most of it back into the business in support of furthering our strategy. Our third strategic priority is maintaining and growing our resilient North American commercial banking and wealth management businesses and our capital markets franchises. On both sides of the border, our commercial banking and wealth management businesses continue to benefit from deep client relationships and the strong culture we've built around referrals, which is driving high-quality loan and deposit growth. As well, our award-winning investment performance, coupled with our emphasis on advice, is supporting strong fund flows in both Canada and the United States. And our capital markets franchise continue to deliver record results, driven by robust client activity in the key markets where we operate. Equally core to our business strategy is our bank's commitment to sustainable economic growth. This is fundamental to our long-term strategy and to our purpose and it guides everything we do. Over the past few years, we've made considerable advances in our ESG strategy and our efforts were recognized by three third-party organizations this quarter. First, CIBC was named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in North America for the 16th consecutive year. Second, we've been included in Bloomberg's Gender Equality Index for the sixth consecutive year. And thirdly, we ranked among the top tier of global banks for climate change actions by CDP, which is formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. We're pleased to be recognized for our commitment toward building a more sustainable future, and we will continue to strengthen our commitment to sustainability as well as further our support for our corporate clients in this area going forward. In closing, February is Black History Month, and I'm pleased to share with you that we are doubling our annual investment in the next generation of leaders and changemakers from the black community. Working in consultation with the CIBC Black Employee Network and our external partners, including the Black North Initiative, this increased investment will be earmarked for education, skills training, and mentorship initiatives. As well, we've launched a new banking program for black-owned businesses in Canada designed to remove barriers for entrepreneurs from the black community. These efforts are all part of our commitment to an inclusive economy, which is key to our long-term growth. Now, with that, I'm going to turn the call over to Haraj for a detailed overview of our financial results. Over to you, Haraj.