Royal Bank Of Canada

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to RBC's conference call for the first quarter 2022 financial results. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would like to turn the meeting over to Asim Imran, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Imran.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Speaking today will be Dave McKay, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nadine Ahn, Chief Financial Officer, and Graham Hepworth, Chief Risk Officer. Also joining us today for your questions, Neil McLaughlin, Group Head, Personal and Commercial Banking, Doug Guzman, Group Head, Wealth Management, Insurance, and INTS, and Derek Nelner, Group Head, Capital Markets. As noted on slide one, our comments may contain forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions and have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially. I would also remind listeners that the bank assesses its performance on a reported and adjusted basis and considers both to be useful in assessing underlying business performance. To give everyone a chance to ask questions, we ask that you limit your questions and then re-queue. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Thanks again for joining us. Today we reported earnings of $4.1 billion. our second highest on record, underscoring the strength and scale of our franchises. Net income was up 6% from last year, and we generated positive all-bank operating leverage while continuing to invest for growth. Pre-provision, pre-tax earnings were up 10% year-over-year, benefiting from robust client-driven volume growth in Canadian banking and City National, strong wealth management results, and record investment banking revenue. These were partially offset by continued moderation in our trading revenue and the impact of lower spreads. Our 17.3% return on equity, combined with a strong capital ratio, enabled us to deploy capital in a balanced manner to support client-driven growth and long-term shareholder value. Our capital position supported $1.7 billion in dividends to our largely Canadian shareholder base as well as almost $9 million of share repurchases. In aggregate, we returned nearly $3 billion to our shareholders for a total payout ratio of 72%. We also deployed our balance sheet across our businesses to support our clients' needs and ambitions, resulting in organic RWA growth of $14 billion in the current quarter. We ended this quarter with a robust CT1 ratio of 13.5%. representing $13 billion in excess capital over an 11% level. This provides significant flexibility to continue investing in talent and technology to accelerate the deployment of capital for organic growth opportunities, and I will speak more to this strategy in a moment. Our strong capital position also enables further share repurchases, as well as providing us optionality to acquire quality franchises in growth segments that align with our current strategy and geographic footprint. Looking forward, we have a consistent and clear focus on creating client and shareholder value and a disciplined, balanced approach to capital deployment as evidenced by our 15% year-over-year growth in book value per share this quarter and a 9% compounded annual growth rate over the last three years. Before I speak to our growth opportunities, I want to touch on the macro environment. We continue to experience market and economic volatility driven by heightened geopolitical risk, continued supply chain disruption, acute labor capacity shortages, energy market imbalances, and resulting high inflationary conditions. However, the underlying economic drivers are still strong. As we move past the Omicron peak, we can look to record household savings, over $200 billion in Canada alone, driving consumer spending on goods and services, renewed immigration, driving demand for housing, increased business investment into just-in-case inventory strategies, and building new digital capabilities. Recent hawkish central bank commentary around the concerning level of inflation and North American economies reaching full potential suggest imminent rate increases and an acceleration of quantitative tightening programs. While the prospect of benchmark rate increases has driven volatility in equity markets, we are well-positioned to benefit from rising interest rates, which Nadine will speak to later. However, we have also seen the yield curve flatten significantly over the last three months. This, combined with tight labour markets and economies reaching full potential, suggests we are closer to mid- cycle economic growth than early stages of an economic recovery. As it relates to Canadian housing, we continue to monitor supply, demand, and balances across the country. We have long argued the supply side of the market must be made more responsive to demand. We encourage policymakers at all levels of government across all jurisdictions to continue working together to implement policies that address the longer-term problems of limited supply which are driving house price inflation and creating a risk to the long-term competitiveness of the Canadian economy. I'll now expand on an increasing number of client-focused opportunities to drive a creative, organic growth across our core businesses. Our leading scale enables us to invest concurrently in technology, sales capacity, and client value, positioning us to deploy capital to drive revenue growth while increasing productivity, which Nadine will speak to later. and we will continue to leverage the significant investments we have made across our businesses over the last number of years. In Canadian banking, mortgages were up 11% year-over-year, adding nearly $9 billion this quarter alone. We expect strong Canadian mortgage growth to continue in the high single-digit range, driven by renewed levels of immigration, pent-up demand met by increased supply, and our continued investment in expanding our mortgage sales force to capture this opportunity. On a payment side, overall consumer spending in late January and through early February was up 15% over pre-pandemic levels, as restrictions continue to ease across Canada. We expect the continued reopening of the Canadian economy to drive increased credit card spend and, in time, a steeper recovery in revolving credit card balances. Our investments to enhance digital capabilities in these businesses resulted in over 55% of all new credit cards being sold digitally this quarter, and our mortgage retention rates are exceptionally strong at 90%. We have also invested in a set of integrated banking and investment solutions to provide even more value to our clients, including last year's launch of RBC Vantage. In addition, investments made to enhance our client value proposition continue to attract new clients. We are seeing increased engagement with our digital payment and investment products, including MyAdvisor, which now has nearly 3 million clients, up from 2 million in just one year. In the last two years alone, we have gained over 80 basis points of market share in core checking deposits and nearly 50 basis points of market share in mortgages. and a gross number of retail clients added in the last four years have contributed nearly $1 billion of revenue to our Canadian banking franchise. We also expect stronger growth in commercial lending from higher credit line utilizations driven by our clients' desire to rebuild inventory levels and adjust business models in light of the persistent supply chain disruptions and labour shortages. We are expanding our commercial account management teams and reimagining our products and services to capture this changing client value chain, including growing Owner and RBC Venture and RBCX, our platform to help entrepreneurs scale up tech and life science and verticals. Turning to City National, average loans excluding Triple P loans grew 15% from last year, with retail loans up 25%. Loan balances have increased to $56 billion, nearly two and a half times the levels from when we acquired this high-quality growth franchise in fiscal 2016. We are in the process of further investing in Citi National's technology and operational infrastructure for the next phase of growth, including deploying improved commercial lending and mobile banking platforms. Looking forward, we expect City National to continue to generate strong, accretive growth through our multi-pronged strategy. This includes expanding private banking capabilities through mortgage-led growth and growing our mid-market commercial division. These strategies alone have added $6 billion in loans over the past two years. Furthermore, City National's leading entertainment franchise, supported by our film track acquisition, is well positioned to benefit from the industry trend of increasing investment in original content and programming. Turning to our broader wealth and asset management franchises across North America, we're continuing to drive growth in these high ROE businesses, building on our current momentum. Canadian and U.S. wealth management AUA increased 18% and 14% year-over-year, respectively. And RBC Global Asset Management increased 9% from last year to nearly $600 billion, with over 80% of AUM outperforming the benchmark on a three-year basis. Looking forward, we will continue to expand our existing team of over 2,000 advisors in Canadian wealth management. Our differentiated technology advantage and investment expertise help drive strong advisor productivity. generating revenue per advisor that is over 20% above the Canadian industry average. In U.S. wealth management, we remain focused on organically scaling our platform by adding experienced advisors and leveraging our investment in new products and technology. Investments we made in new securities lending products resulted in strong lending growth of nearly 3 billion U.S. dollars over the past year. This new portfolio generated nearly 80 million U.S. dollars of revenue in 2021 alone. Since the start of fiscal 2019, we have hired financial advisors who are expected to bring in over 60 billion U.S. dollars of AUA. These advisors are attracted to our client-first culture coupled with our leading integrated technology platform. Our growing investments in people and technology has resulted in considerable momentum in our capital markets franchise, as demonstrated by our record corporate investment banking revenue of $1.4 billion this quarter. We have strengthened our talent in key verticals, including adding managing directors in U.S. investment banking, especially in the technology and healthcare sectors, as well as our M&A group. These investments have propelled RBC Capital Markets to ninth in the Global League tables. and position us to win increasingly attractive mandates going forward in some of the most active sectors. We are also helping our clients execute on their own sustainability strategies. We've provided $84 billion in sustainable finance in 2021, up from $73 billion in 2020, building towards our target of $500 billion by 2025. And AIDEN, our AI-based electronic trading platform, has continued to gain traction supporting our global markets clients during these volatile times. We believe these investments have structurally enhanced the earnings power of capital markets franchise, and we expect to continue to drive pre-provision, pre-tax earnings above $1 billion per quarter through 2022. Our investment banking pipeline remains healthy, given the near-term economic outlook and an increased desire from clients to accelerate their own growth strategies. In this context, we will look to continue to deploy capital into capital markets, including support for our underwriting commitments as our global plans continue to rely on us as an innovative and trusted partner. To sum up, we have started 2022 with continued strong momentum across our largest franchises. Our results reflect significant investments in our people, technology and products, and services to deliver differentiated value for existing clients and to continue attracting new client relationships. We have a clear focus on driving long-term shareholder value and will continue to deploy capital in a balanced manner. Nadine, over to you.

Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. I will start on slide seven. We reported earnings per share of $2.84 this quarter, up 7% from last year. Revenue growth was driven by strong investment management fees and mutual fund revenue, as well as strong M&A advisory fees. Pre-provision pre-tax earnings increased 10% year-over-year, also benefiting from positive all-bank operating leverage. Our effective tax rate increased 270 basis points from last year, mainly due to the net impact of tax adjustments and changes in earnings mix. Going forward, We expect our effective tax rate to normalize back towards 22% to 23% through the rest of the fiscal year. Before I discuss our segment results, I will spend some time on three key topics, capital deployment, rate sensitivity, and our expense outlook. Starting with capital on slide 8, our CT1 ratio was down 20 basis points sequentially to 13.5%. Our earnings added 74 basis points of capital this quarter, well in excess of 29 basis points of capital used to generate client-driven RWA growth. Net credit migration lowered RWA by $2 billion. Balanced capital deployment included 54 basis points of capital returned to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Moving on to slide 9. Net interest income was up 5% year-over-year as strong, client-driven volume growth in Canadian banking and City National continued to offset the impact of lower net interest margins. Now to slide 10. While the impact of low interest rates continued to persist, we started to see a stabilization of net interest margins in our banking franchises on both sides of the border. Canadian banking NIM was down one basis point sequentially as the competitive nature of the mortgage market drove asset spreads lower. We continue to see lower benefits from mortgage prepayment revenue, a trend we expect to moderate going forward. These factors were partially offset by an accounting adjustment that impacted NIM last quarter. City Nationals NIM was up six basis points relative to last quarter, with Paycheck Protection Program loans contributing most of the increase. We expect our Triple P loan portfolio to largely run off by year end. To provide context on our sensitivity to rising interest rates, it's important to remember that the cumulative impact of lower interest rates across 2020 and 2021 reduced our revenue by approximately $2 billion. This was partly driven by lower Canadian banking deposit spreads and lower asset yields impacting City National. Going forward, we are well positioned to benefit from the likely scenario of rising interest rates. We estimate that a 25 basis point increase in short-term interest rates could result in over $175 million of additional revenue over 12 months in our Canadian banking and U.S. wealth management businesses. We expect this benefit to be compounded by higher volumes and a shift in mix towards higher yielding assets over time. At the same time, we expect the benefit from rate hikes to be impacted by the competitive asset pricing environment as economies recover. As interest rates increase, we expect deposit repricing in our low-beta retail banking deposit franchises will slowly increase towards historical levels over time, reflecting trends we experienced in the previous rate hike cycle. An environment of higher interest rates and a normalization of surplus liquidity in wholesale markets would be beneficial to our $300 billion repo business where spreads have declined significantly from 2020 levels. Turning to expenses on slide 11. Non-interest expenses were up 1% year-over-year or 3% excluding the impact of variable and stock-based compensation. Adjusting for the partial release of the legal provision in U.S. wealth management and excluding variable and share-based compensation across our businesses, expense growth was 5% year over year. Salaries and benefits were up 4% as we continued to invest in sales capacity and back-end operations to support increasing client activity in our many growth verticals. We also saw an increase in marketing and travel costs compared to levels in the first half of 2021. The top of slide 12 gives you an idea of how we think about expenses. We have grouped total costs across a continuum of key categories, including the foundational governance costs to run the bank. These would include regulatory and risk management costs. A large part of our run-the-bank spend is also related to operational and technology costs including our core systems. We continue to act on opportunities to drive efficiencies and productivity in these areas, while investing in innovating for the future. We expect our scale and growing revenue to generate inherent operating leverage over this cost base, which is relatively less variable in nature. Our new digital account opening experience for retail clients has reduced the average time to completion by nearly 70%. This has freed up capacity for our advisors to focus on delivering value-added advice and deepening client relationships. Our app dev teams are utilizing our next-generation development platform, which is generating efficiency through automation and reuse. There's another bucket of costs, which are investments to add new revenue-generating products and capabilities, which Dave spoke to earlier. And lastly, there are investments to drive growth. that have a flexible cost structure, which represent approximately 30% of our cost base. These are costs that largely scale up or down with revenue generated, including our commissioned sales force and client-facing employees in our capital markets and wealth management platforms, where we pay for performance. There are also variable non-compensation costs, such as trade execution, where we will look to drive productivity improvements. Now to the bottom of the slide for our expense expectations, excluding variable and share-based compensation. We expect structural costs to be higher this year, partly due to the impact of inflation, along with the realization of previously committed costs, such as higher salaries. We will continue to invest in technology, add to our client-facing sales force across our largest segments, and scale our marketing spend to drive forward our strategic priorities. and we will continue to invest in efficiency initiatives that streamline and simplify our operations and processes. In aggregate, we expect annual expenses, excluding variable and share-based compensation, to grow at the higher end of the low single-digit range in 2022. This includes the recognition and subsequent partial release of the legal provision in U.S. wealth management. And as we recognize the benefits of the forward curve, we expect our full-year Canadian banking efficiency ratio to fall under 40% in 2023. Moving to our business segment performance, beginning on slide 13. Personal and commercial banking reported earnings of $2 billion this quarter, up 10% from last year. Canadian banking net interest income was up 3% year-over-year, as strong volume growth was partially offset by lower spreads. Growth in business volumes was strong on both sides of the balance sheet. While credit card balances increased, this was largely due to higher transactor balances as revolve rates remained near pandemic lows. Higher credit card spend also contributed to higher non-interest income, as did higher mutual fund distribution fees. Canadian banking generated operating leverage of 2.8%, with expenses up 3% year-over-year. Turning to slide 14, wealth management reported earnings of $795 million, up 24% from last year. The segment generated positive operating leverage even after adjusting for the partial release of last quarter's legal provision. Canadian wealth management, U.S. wealth management, and RBC global asset management revenue growth benefited from higher fee-based client assets, reflecting favorable equity markets and net sales. RBC GAM generated positive net sales of over $5 billion this quarter. However, Canadian retail sales were lower than the prior year, partly due to redemptions out of fixed income funds, especially in December, which saw heightened market volatility. U.S. wealth management revenue also benefited from continued double-digit volume growth at City National, partially offset by lower spreads. Turning to insurance on slide 15. Net income of $197 million decreased 2% from record first quarter results a year ago. Lower earnings were largely due to claims experience and the impact of lower new longevity reinsurance contracts. These factors were partially offset by business growth and higher favorable investment-related experience. On to slide 16. INTS net income of $118 million decreased 4% from a year ago, mainly reflecting higher technology-related costs. The current quarter also saw higher revenue from funding and liquidity, client deposits, and asset services businesses. Turning to slide 17. Capital markets reported earnings of over $1 billion, down 3% from last year, including the impact of a higher effective tax rate. Pre-provision pre-tax earnings surpassed $1 billion again this quarter, helping drive our strong book value growth. Corporate and investment banking reported record revenues of $1.4 billion, underpinned by record loan syndication and M&A fees, higher equity origination fees, record lending revenue and higher debt origination fees also contributed to stronger revenue. In contrast, global markets revenue continued to moderate from elevated levels last year as narrower spreads impacted both FIC and repo revenue, which were down 12% and 5% respectively. Equities revenues were robust, but down 2% from strong results last year. To conclude, We are well-positioned to continue growing client-driven volumes and benefit from higher interest rates. Looking forward, we remain focused on disciplined cost management and balancing our capital deployment to continue delivering value for our shareholders and clients. With that, I'll turn it over to Graham.

Thank you, Nadine, and good morning, everyone. Starting on slide 19, allowance for credit losses on loans of $4.4 billion remained largely unchanged from last quarter. as write-offs and the release of reserves on performing loans were nearly offset by higher provisions on impaired loans. This marks our fifth consecutive quarter with reserve releases on performing loans, reflecting continued improvement in our macroeconomic outlook and in the credit quality of our portfolio. However, the magnitude of the releases this quarter were tempered by the economic uncertainty related to the headwinds I noted last quarter, namely the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflationary pressure, and the pace and scale of anticipated interest rate increases. As Dave noted earlier, while the impact of the Omicron wave has now largely subsided, the impacts of inflation and rising rates are expected to persist. Reserve releases of 80 million this quarter bring our total release to 1.4 billion since the start of 2021. When combined with considerable portfolio growth of 17% over the last two years, our ACL ratio is now approaching pre-pandemic levels at 58 basis points. Turning to slide 20, Our growth impaired loans of 2.1 billion were down 167 million, or three basis points during the quarter. Impaired loan balances once again decreased across all our major businesses. New formations of 263 million were at their lowest level in almost 10 years, reflecting the significant liquidity accumulated over the pandemic, the ongoing economic recovery, and the continued benefits to clients from government support programs. Turning to slide 21, PCL and impaired loans of 180 million, or nine basis points, was up two basis points quarter over quarter, but remains well below pre-pandemic levels and below our long-term averages. In our Canadian banking retail portfolio, PCL on impaired loans was up $13 million quarter over quarter, with modest increases across most products. We also saw delinquencies begin to rise during the quarter. These increases can be attributed to a few factors, including seasonality, the winding down of certain government support programs, and the client behavior beginning to revert to more historic norms. Overall, delinquency levels remain below pre-pandemic levels. Our Canadian banking commercial portfolio, PCL and impaired loans, was up $27 million quarter-over-quarter, which is largely driven by provisions on two larger accounts. Despite the increase this quarter, we continue to see positive credit migration and a reduction in watchlist exposure in this portfolio. In capital markets, we had a $12 million net recovery on impaired loans in the quarter, which is the fourth consecutive quarter with net recoveries in capital markets. as this portfolio continues to benefit from a constructive operating environment and strong market liquidity. Finally, in wealth management, PCL and impaired loans decreased 11 million quarter-over-quarter, largely due to the reversal of a provision taken in the information technology sector last quarter at Citi National. And I'll turn briefly to market risk on slide 22. During the quarter, we saw market volatility increase as central banks started to reverse course on monetary policy, the Omicron wave of the pandemic hit its peak, Geopolitical tensions rose in Ukraine and Russia, and inflationary pressure came to the forefront. Notwithstanding the increased market volatility, there were no days with net trading losses in the quarter, as we effectively managed our market risk profile. Looking ahead, while the impact of the Omicron wave has largely subsided, market volatility is likely to persist, driven by ongoing uncertainty around monetary policy, geopolitical tensions, and inflationary pressure. We continue to take a prudent approach to market and counterparty credit risks, supported by a consistent risk appetite and a strong control environment. To conclude, we continue to be pleased with the ongoing performance of our portfolios and the resiliency of our operations through the pandemic. As we noted last quarter, the increase in PCL this quarter was anticipated as losses start to return to pre-pandemic levels. We still expect our PCL ratio on impaired loans to trend back towards historic norms in the course of 2022 and into 2023. As always, the quality of our client base and our prudent risk management approach position us well to manage through any uncertainty. Importantly, we remain steadfast in our commitment to supporting our clients in delivering advice, products, and insight to help them navigate the evolving macroeconomic and operating environment. So with that, operator, let's open the lines for Q&A.

Thank you. We will now take questions from the telephone lines. If you have a question and you're using a speakerphone, please set your handset before making your selection. If you have a question, please press star 1 on your device's keypad. If at any time you wish to cancel the question, please press star 2. Please press star 1 at this time if you have a question. There will be a brief pause while participants register. Thank you for your patience. And the first question is from John Aiken from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Nadine, thank you for the discussion and the outlook on expenses on slide 12. Quick question for you. When we look at the more variable expenses, the sales advice and revenue generation, is there, and I know that encompasses a whole host of different factors, but within that bucket, is there the possibility to generate positive operating leverage within those expenses, or is this more of a function of a one-to-one in terms of expenses versus revenues?

Thanks, John. That is the objective. When we look at when we are, particularly our sales force, I mentioned some comments around how we increase their productivity and efficiency in terms of the tools that we've deployed to them in the way that they work. The other component of that, I would say, is part of that is also the support groups that also travel with the frontline staff. And so there also we're looking to drive optimization through a number of programs such that for every dollar of cost, we generate that much more dollar of revenue.

That's great. And as a follow-on, David mentioned that you continue to grow the residential mortgage sales force. What frictional costs are associated with potential downsizing? So if and when we see a slowdown in the housing marketplace, how much of a lag would that be on the efficiency ratio because of the buildup of the sales force?

Turn it over to Neil, maybe.

Yeah, thanks for the question. I mean, I don't think we really are looking at a scenario where we haven't really contemplated that, to be truthful. You know, these are variable commission-based sales people. So for the most part, I think, you know, we would be looking for them to go out and continue to compete for volume and at the margin if we needed to slim down that sales force, the friction cost would be negligible. I mean, it's not something that would really factor into our outlook on Oplev. Understood.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Ibrahim Poonawalla from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Good morning.

Good morning. I guess I just wanted to go back, Dave, to your prepared remarks in terms of everything that you talked about, mortgage growth, commercial lending, consumer spend, some very bullish, clearly a lot of cross-currents that the market's paying attention to, including inflation, geopolitical risks. Just give us a sense of when you look at the outlook, you mentioned we are maybe mid-cycle, not early cycle in terms of the economic cycle where are risks skewed to do you see more downside risk as we are moving forward to the growth outlook or do you think the markets caught up with some of these things that might be transitory and the underlying trends around immigration things reopening back are much more stronger would love any insights there it's an important question because there's there are a lot of mixed signals out there when we look at the stage of the economic cycle you'd say you know

Commercial utilization and even monetary policy would be early cycle, but capacity left in the economy would be late cycle, and the balance of where the consumer is, where the economy is, is solid mid-cycle, which could mean, and we expect, there's a good solid couple years of growth here or more, we would hope. So the risk factors are all the ones we see, geopolitical risk, inflation risk, One of the top risk factors is the lack of labor capacity in the workforce, and does the liquidity that's sitting on consumer balance sheets lead to inflation, or does it lead to growth? Those are the types of things we're going to watch and see how they play out. Net-net, immigration, consumer spending returning to normal, goods and services consumption, all those are very positive for kind of a mid-cycle growth outlook. So I think to your question, we have to watch economic capacity here and what the inflationary pressures are, to Graham's point, is one of the real risks to our economy. Is it real GDP growth or are we just going to use that $200 or $300 billion of liquidity? $2.5 trillion, by the way, in the United States. Does that just create more inflationary pressure? I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, that's helpful. And I think this is a follow-up. I think you mentioned when talking about capital deployment looking to acquire or potentially looking to acquire quality franchises and growth segments. Unpack that for us in terms of what are things that would be attractive to Royal. You've not been very acquisitive. You've talked about asset generation capabilities in the past. We'd love any color, especially in a period where we are seeing some asset price dislocation correction in the public markets.

We're very focused on the type of growth and quality franchise we're looking for in it. And as with City National, there was no auction around City National. It was based on a relationship I built with the Goldsmith family and Russell Goldsmith over a number of years to the point where we saw a future together. And we're doing very similar things right now. The high-quality, high-growth assets don't come up for auction for obvious reasons. So we are obviously looking to expand our network. The timing is hard to predict. but we always want to be the first call. And there are a number of really attractive assets that exist. When and how they make their strategic decisions, we'll see. So I think from that perspective, we're continuing to maintain, we're looking for commercial and wealth, ultra high net worth franchises in the United States and Europe. And we have active dialogues, but it doesn't mean things are going to happen. So I think from that perspective, it's that continued focus. The city national model works. Look at the organic growth. We don't need to make an acquisition to continue to accelerate the growth and outperform. So when you get the right franchise, you can grow it and run on it for a long period of time. And when we made the city national acquisition, we said we don't need to make other acquisitions. This franchise has enormous organic growth potential. So we are looking for similar platforms to build on like that. As I said many times, capital does not have a half-life. It only dissipates if you misspend it. So we are being smart about it. You've seen the growth numbers, and we are returning some of that capital to you, as you saw in our share buybacks.

Very clear. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Paul Holden from CIBC. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. So I feel compelled, I just have to ask this question because of the magnitude of what's happening in Europe. Are there any kind of first order impacts we should be thinking about in terms of the Russian sanctions and RBC?

Maybe I'll let Graham start and then I'll jump in with my perspective. Graham, over to you.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, I think the first point to make is that, you know, we do not have any direct or meaningful exposure to Russia or the Ukraine situation. I mean, that's a byproduct of the fact that we don't operate in those countries and we don't have a risk appetite that kind of allows us to operate with clients or markets that are high risk like that. And so I think what we're focused on is more the indirect impacts that could flow through and certainly, you know, high levels of commodity prices. You know, those are interesting ones that have kind of multiple effects that we need to think through. On one hand, you know, Canada is an exporter of natural resources and that's a positive for our economy. On the other hand, those are things that are going to continue to fuel and exacerbate kind of current risk concerns like inflation. And so, you know, those would be the areas of concern that we would be focused on in this environment. But again, I think our risk appetite and our operating model serve us well and position us well against these kind of emerging concerns that are happening right now in Eastern Europe.

The only thing I would add is, you know, as you look at how markets react, the obvious volatility coming from investor uncertainty, global uncertainty. But the effect on the yield curve, you've seen a little bit of tightening at the long end of the curve. There's always a flight to quality when you have such geopolitical volatility. You've seen that today, I think, with the tightening in the U.S. curve, about 10 points at the long end of the curve. And does it invert temporarily? What we've seen historically, as you all see, is that geopolitical risk tends to smooth out over time, but can be quite volatile in the short term. I still expect the strength of the economy, the inflationary pressures that we talked about, economic capacity being used, that I would still expect some form of rate increase to continue to move forward and monetary policy to continue to tighten. The underlying four drivers are very strong.

Okay, that's great. That actually leads me perfectly into my real question, which is for Nadine.

You only get one.

Which is for Nadine and sort of the NIM sensitivity or NII sensitivity you provide. Obviously, there's a number of assumptions that go into that and kind of talked about some of the variables in your prepared remarks. What I'm particularly curious on, are there certain factors that may lead to more NII sensitivity? benefit from rate tightening than what you put into your disclosed sensitivities? And if there are, can you give us a sense of what those factors might be and, you know, sort of a general order of magnitude?

Sure. So I think what typically we would have referenced in the slides is the impact on our retail franchises, both Canadian banking and in the U.S. wealth management business, and pointed out, as I called in my remarks, focusing on what it looks like with more of the curve flattening, so the rising in the short end of the rate. As it relates to other businesses, you also have Wealth Management Canada will benefit as well from the spread margin expansion on their deposit base. I would say one of the other big areas that I did call out in my remarks relates to capital markets and the repo business. So we have about $300 billion balance and saw margins compressed there in about 10 basis points. So that business, obviously, as rates start to move up in the short end, would benefit from that margin expansion as well, coupled with the fact that we did see some balances come off with the elevated liquidity levels. Those are primarily, I would say, two of the primary drivers from a pure interest rate perspective.

That's great. That's definitely. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Manny Grauman from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. You've been very clear in terms of your guidance on expenses. I think what's interesting to me is there still does seem to be a disconnect a little bit between maybe the commentary that some larger U.S. banks are talking about with respect to their expenses and the way you are presenting the outlook So I'm wondering if you could kind of delve into that in terms of structural or fundamental reasons why your expense structure is different than, let's say, some large banks in the U.S. So basically trying to get at this idea of how is your outlook on expenses more optimistic? And that's really the fundamental nature of the question.

Thanks, Manny. I would say there's two primary components related to that. First off, we've been investing for a significant portion of time, both in our technology, our infrastructure, as you would have also noticed in our front office sales support staff, really that client acquisition arm of it. So we have been investing in technology for a long time and scaling across our Canadian businesses. You'll also notice that from a perspective of depreciation, that drips in over time. So that doesn't necessarily result in an increasing cost base to the extent that you've been spending equally through the years. I would say that the other thing that we talked about was around our efficiency and our sustainability of looking at our productivity options that we have to deploy not only technology tools, but how we can be more efficient in that cost space I referenced to the far end of the chart there, which can tend to be a bit more fixed over time. So it's twofold there. We look at how we can be more efficient, where we work, how we work, what digitization of processes, automation, and in addition, how we can become more productive in our Salesforce staff. So how we can expand upon the every cost dollar we put out there and the revenue multiple that we generate off of that. So I think part of it, Manny, is really we've been investing over consistently over a period of time. I think others may be catching up to where we've been and having to increase their spend levels. But in addition, we do focus consistently across the organization on the efficiency and productivity arm of it to be able to continue with that investment growth.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Doug Young from Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Just wanted to go back to the capital discussion. I think you've been clear about where you see the growth opportunities. But I guess the crux of my question is, I'm curious if you can put your substantial excess capital to work organically, such that you would be driving down your set one ratio. And what are those best opportunities? And so, you know, we saw risk weighted asset growth reduce the ratio by 29 basis points this quarter. Could we see RWA growth, push that ratio down 50, 60, 70 basis points is really kind of where I'm going.

Yeah, I think that is – you've hit on the primary objective there in terms of our organic growth, and we have seen the significant ability to deploy that capital in high ROE businesses and looking at good returns. You see it both within capital markets and high ROE this quarter continued. around how they're able to deploy it in the higher margin underwriting businesses, the loan book, as well as City National with that double-digit growth. So we are looking at how we've scaled up our businesses, particularly with the advancement of our frontline sales force and the ability to deploy that balance sheet. So that is definitely an opportunity. Obviously, we saw last year some of the model changes with respect to RWA, so that brought it down, and we have Basel III, coming on the horizon next year, which has the opportunity to improve, again, our RWA position. So there's obviously puts and takes on that, but we definitely look to continue to deploy from an organic perspective.

I guess where I'm going with this is this, you know, because everyone talks about M&A and, you know, we can all speculate on that and then buybacks at the margin, but, you know, the real opportunity would be to put 100 basis points of RWA to work or to put it to work organically? And I know the credit card balance is coming back, commercial card balances, but what I'm trying to get at is what are the best opportunities do you foresee? And what's the most capital-intensive opportunities?

I think we are putting a lot of RWA to work. The beauty of the model is that we're generating so much surplus capital from profitability and our scale and our efficiency that it drives a self-funding model, to your point. So I think the beauty is we can accelerate growth. We are accelerating growth, and we're funding a lot of it from profitability. So you're seeing us, as I said, return capital shareholders, and we still have significant strategic optionality to put capital to work in an inorganic fashion when the right opportunity comes to the table. So we're in a great place. You saw strong, strong growth driven by previous investments that we've made. We continue to invest. We generate organic capital. We have strategic optionality. We are in a very good place to continue to drive premium total shareholder return. Great. I appreciate the comment. Thanks.

Thank you. The next question is from Saurabh Movahedi from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

I have two questions. Maybe I'll start with where I think Doug left off. Nadine or Dave, you've mentioned capital markets several times, I think, as a good source of, I guess, capital deployment. Would that be more so in the traditional banking businesses, credit, underwriting, and the like, or could there also be some capital chewed up in market risk?

Why don't we have Derek answer that?

Sure. Thanks, Saurabh. Appreciate the question. I think we see opportunities right now across both the banking business and the global markets business. As Nadine said, we are very focused on trying to make sure we're only deploying capital where we see good returns. But as you've seen with the capital markets business over the last couple of years, partially due to the environment, but partially due to some of the strategic initiatives and changes we've undertaken, we have notably moved up our ROE. And so that is giving us opportunities right across the platform. Clearly, there are opportunities to deploy capital organically through the loan book, and that has the ancillary benefit of also supporting the non-lending or ancillary revenue opportunities through investment banking or otherwise. There's some modest capital deployment through our loan syndications and underwriting business, although we remain very mindful of the risk environment, and so we're being quite prudent and disciplined about that. And then in different pockets of our markets business as we're looking to grow out different areas of the trading platform in both the U.S. and Europe. I think we will see additional opportunities to deploy capital in trading as well. So it is quite diversified right now, but probably led more by the loan book and the investment banking side.

And Derek, just to clarify, with no real change even at the margin and risk appetite?

Correct.

Thank you. And then my second question is for Neil. I think you've provided some statistics, I think Dave did actually, around market share gains, both in checking, I think checking deposit stuff and mortgages and the revenue pickup. Is there any way, Neil, you could attribute how much of that is because of the kind of consistent emphasis on the RBC Ventures initiatives?

Yeah, thanks for the question. I wouldn't point to Ventures as a market share driver there. I would point to the drivers, maybe just start with mortgages. We've talked for, I think, quite a long time just about investments we've made, just picking up on Nadine's point, really thinking about that franchise front to back, about finding processes, investing in digital, investments in our sales force. how we flow leads to those mortgage professionals. So it's really been, I think, a consistent, steady strategy that's really paying off in the mortgage business. A little bit different in the core deposits business, whereas last year we really came away and said we hadn't refreshed the value proposition for a core deposits business and we felt we needed to make some investments there. That was, I think, a great example of a technology investment that we're seeing pay off. Nadine touched on the tools and the ability to reduce the amount of time it takes to open one of those checking accounts, but we also put some of that technology investment into the core underlying value proposition, which really had us double down on our belief in reciprocity and tying it back to a core relationship strategy where when our clients bring more of their business to us, we reciprocate with a fee reduction structure back to them and the ability to put our rewards points to use on their debit products. We'd say that those types of investments and particularly that shift in the value proposition that you're seeing in the marketplace for advertising would be the driver on the deposits business.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Gabriel Deschain from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Good morning. At what point does inflation become a problem? I know we've talked about it as a headwind, but know is there a very simple way of thinking it through that you know over the course of you know five six seven months over a year whatever it is you know canadian inflation at five to six percent and u.s inflation in the seven percent range that becomes something that compels you to you know look at your your credit models and and you know start adding to provisions and then uh from your business outlook uh standpoint uh you know consumption, you know, if they're paying more for gas, people are paying more for gas and other stuff as opposed to TVs and cars. Like when does that affect your revenue growth outlook? Thanks.

Sure. Thanks, Gabriel. Let me, I'll start there certainly on the, on the credit side, you know, certainly if inflation is a factor by itself, but I think we would combine that with kind of a rising rate environment to kind of as a set of risks that we certainly are mindful of in our, in our credit books. And certainly it's something front and center with us on that. You know, we obviously have a backdrop where clients are in a very strong position with very strong liquidity and cash balances, as Dave noted earlier. I think you combine that with the fact that we've had very strong underwriting, very persistent underwriting standards for a long time that are mindful of an operating environment of higher rates and higher inflation. And so I don't think we kind of look at this as a surprise and something that shouldn't be considered, but we always talk about, you know, being prudent and consistent through the cycle. And these are kind of cyclical events that we do worry about and we build into our underwriting standards. I think different portfolios will be impacted different times. I think there's probably more latency in credit in terms of inflation's impact and rates impact than maybe we would see in the revenue and expense lines. And that's kind of largely related to the fact that we built good resiliency into our portfolios. Many of our portfolios, our mortgage portfolio that Neil was just talking about, there's a long duration in that. And so clients both have a lot of capacity there and there's a timeframe there before you would see clients turning over and having to refinance into a higher rate, higher cost environment. So I don't think, you know, kind of reading back to my original comments, that's why I don't think we see, you know, our views on our credit forecast there haven't changed largely since Q4. But those are headwinds that we are considering, and I think will accrue over time into higher credit costs. But those will be offset by positives elsewhere, you know, on the revenue side, as we previously talked about.

So there's a point at which you might have to, I know I'm signaling at Royal, it affects every bank, but there's a point at which you would have to maybe make an adjustment.

Are you referencing a credit adjustment?

Well, yeah, yeah.

Again, I'm not sure you say credit adjustment. Again, when clients come to the door, we are constantly reassessing and assessing their credit quality, their capacity. We build in capacity for rate rises and cost rises in the origination process. And, again, you look at our portfolios, there's a lot of equity built up with clients that gives us a lot of capacity to work with them on that. So, you know, our credits drives, as I said, are really designed to work through the cycle, and that won't change. We constantly reflect these factors, though, into our reserving models. You know, so certainly, as we talked about, we've had some uncertainty that's coming off with, say, things like Omicron and government support, and these are some new headwinds that are coming into play. And so we'll constantly reassess all of those each quarter and reflect that into our reserving models. But I wouldn't say right now that that's a headwind that we would indicate and say that we expect an increase there coming anytime soon. Okay.

To your question, I think the only risk you have to watch out for is if inflationary pressures erode cash flow because salaries and benefits aren't keeping up with it, and therefore it challenges your serviceability ratios. So what we're seeing now is disposable income and salaries are keeping up. and tracking the inflationary pressure. But that's what you have to watch out for. And we're in this unique position where we have over $200 billion of cash sitting on consumers' balance sheets to mitigate a lot of that in most of the economy. But how that gets spent and how that drives inflation versus growth, we all have to watch. So I think that's what you're trying to get at, and that's what we're watching for too.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Mario Mandonca from TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Can I take you to page 26 of your presentation and specifically the all-bank asset yield? I'm looking at the loan yield and how it's dropped by 27 basis points over the last 12 months. Over that time period, the five-year Bank of Canada five-year is up about 100 points. The increase in the five-year has been rather than recent. I would have thought that we might start to see a little bit of a move in loan yields. It might just be mixed that I'm seeing here. It might be just a matter of timing. But could you speak to when that increase in the FIBA that we're seeing will translate into higher loan yields?

Sure, Mariel. Thank you. I mean, I think you're right. A bit of it is going to be mixed overall. Sorry, I've got a bit of feedback. Mixed overall that we're talking about. Some of it we had expressed as part of the comments around the mortgage book and how the competitive pricing there, but as five-year rates have started to roll into higher rates, we have seen those rates go up.

So you're saying we are starting to see that? Do you have a sense for when we might actually, this exhibit on page 26, we'll actually see the inflection in loan yields in terms of timing?

Yeah, we'd have to decompose it a bit for you, Mario, because, again, it's the full book across cash markets and city-nationals, so as rates start to rise, you've got to connect it, but it's difficult. I can probably get back to you and bring you a bit more of a decomposition on it.

City-national probably plays a role, given how much it's impacted the short end of the curve and the long end. It's a significant compression that we've talked about in the city-national NIMH. would distort that number versus have nothing to do with the Canadian long yield. That might be part of it. But we'll have to decompose that and do one driver. We'll look at roll-on, roll-off on the mortgages. And Canada will be another driver, and we can do a waterfall for you.

And I'll look at the Canadian five-year rate.

Yeah, I was looking at the Canadian five-year, but obviously the U.S. five-year is up as well. Maybe not as much as the Canadian, but...

Our balance sheet is completely oriented to the short end of the curve in the United States. We don't have many long-term assets. They all reprice off the short end. So that's what's driving this.

We'll need to see actual central bank rate increases before we might see that margin to governor.

And that's why we gave you the sensitivity with the short end of the curve move because it has a big impact on the U.S. and Canada for us. And, you know, The longer end of the curve is quite flat.

Slightly different type of question. I also care a lot about what you're doing on the liquidity front, looking at repos, cash resources, securities, X trading. Obviously, those balances increased very significantly when the pandemic hit because every bank was building liquidity then. It started to taper off until very recently. Now we're seeing a really big increase again in repos, for example, and securities. Could you talk about repos specifically and the dynamic, the sort of market dynamic that would cause such a significant increase in repos from last quarter to this quarter?

Sure, Mario. It's Derek. What you're seeing there is a couple of things. Quarter over quarter, a big part of that is just what I'll refer to as sort of seasonality or timing of the year. And so because of the timing of our fiscal year end and our quarters versus many of our global peers that are operating on a calendar fiscal year end, many of them will often pull back on liquidity they're providing in the markets as they head into the December 31st period. Because that's intra-quarter for us, that often creates... good opportunities for us to step in with liquidity around the calendar year-end period and support our clients through really just a multi-week period around year-end. And so there's a seasonality element to our repo business where often we can increase our balances to support clients through that time period and then bring those back down. So that is definitely part of what you saw in terms of the quarter-over-quarter. Longer term, and Dean referred to this earlier, with all the liquidity that's been put into the market by central banks over the last couple of years, the demand for financing through things like repo has come down, and that has brought down our volumes, but it's also had a notable spread impact. I think we would expect as liquidity starts being pulled out of the market, we will see an increased client demand for financing, which would be helpful for us, but also we would over time expect that to translate into higher spreads in that business. And I'd say we're very early days in starting to see that. This was the first quarter where we saw a modest uptick in spreads. So it does take time, but we would expect as rates go higher and liquidity comes out of the system, that will help supply spreads in that business. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Lamar Persaud from Cormark. Please go ahead.

Thanks. My question is probably for Nadine. So I think I heard you suggest that inflation is captured in the structural part of the expense expectations slide or expense expectations waterfall on slide 12. So maybe clarify that. Then Would it be fair to suggest that if structural costs were more significantly impacted by, say, higher inflation, could some of that 4% growth in investment and volume spend be deferred? Or is there just not that much flexibility in that? I'm just really trying to assess the possibility that costs could come in above your guidance range here. So any thoughts would be helpful.

Thank you. So the 2% structural does have a component, and the parts that relate to inflation would be where we had increased salaries at the start of the year, recognizing the fact that we were under some inflationary pressure. But that's about a third of that. About two-thirds of that is more scalable related to business volume. So, for example, Tradex, subcustody, et cetera, and also seeing a bit of the pickup in travel. The 4% you referenced of the investment, a large component of that is actually investment in talent. So we've already incorporated as part of that a little bit of inflation as well, Amar, just in terms of expectations around certain of those groups that we're investing in from a frontline perspective, as well as some of the rest of it would be in tools. I would say if inflation was to significantly spike or push through, a couple of things just to note there. So we have put through some of it already into our full across-the-board salary base. The other piece of it is some of our cost base actually is not going to be immediately impacted by inflation. We do have a number of costs that will be fixed in nature. For example, our occupancy is already predetermined cost. Secondly, the depreciation was related to our app dev spend or some of that investment in technology. is actually from historical spend as it pulls through from an NIE standpoint. We do have opportunity to scale on that, but also on the efficiency and productivity side that we referenced there is an area that we're heavily focused on to be able to continue to invest. And if inflation persists further into the future, it's an area that we can continue to look at to continue our investment and play with that lever as well.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Mike Razanovic from Stifel. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. A question probably for Neil. So I do see the market share gains that you had just looking over a longer-term horizon, but you have lost share in the residential mortgage balances I'm referring to among the big six each of the past three quarters. And I know in the past you've had some discussion points around spreads in the market and competitive dynamics and maybe some aggressive pricing from peers. So I'm wondering what your near-term outlook might be on when you expect those market share losses to abate.

Yeah, I appreciate the question. We made some comments last year just about making a decision to take a little bit more margin when we were kind of at the height of the market in terms of volume, just to make sure we didn't lose any volume in the pipeline. We converted all of those. I would say mid-year last year. Since then, we've been competing, I think, very hard and feel very comfortable of what we're taking out of the market. I think one of the things you need to get underneath is the difference between Aussie market share and the CBA market share data. There's different inputs into each of them. One of the differences being just wholesale funding and purchasing mortgages, something we don't do. And at least one of our competitors, we would say that's part of what's driving some of the trends I think you're referring to. It just gets back to our strategy, which is, you know, we believe in owning the channel. We have a proprietary sales strategy. We own the relationship, and it all kind of ties back to owning the client and being able to cross-sell. So, you know, I don't think we have anything in our sights about us losing markets here on the mortgage business.

I appreciate the color. And then maybe just a follow-up on Dave's guidance earlier on mortgage growth remaining in that high single-digit range for the rest of this year, I believe is what the comment was referring to. So I'm just looking at some of the trends that we've seen lately, including you've got like the recent originations, about 60% of them have been variable. And just thinking back to the rate hikes that we saw in 2017 and it sort of pushed the mortgage growth all the way down to that low single digit. I think it troughed at around 3%. So I'm wondering if we do get what the bond market is pricing in right now, something in the range of six rate hikes, would your 2023 outlook be looking something like low to mid single digit range at best in terms of growth?

Yeah, it's Neil again. I'll take the question. So I guess to give you a bit of an extended outlook, Dave made the comment that mortgage outlook towards the end of the year would be high single digits. As we see rates come up, naturally cooling the market, slowing down some activity, we'd see that get into mid-single digits to end 2023. Okay, that's helpful.

Thanks for the call.

Thank you. The next question is from Scott Chan from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Good morning. A lot has been asked on the Canadian P&C, but I wanted to kind of focus on the Sydney national side. And the one thing that struck me was the retail book was 25% year over year, and you kind of called out mortgage growth leading, similar to Canada. So I was just wondering, you know, maybe an update on the strategy there. Anything differentiated, and is it fair to assume that the U.S. growth

um this year would be higher or could be higher than on the canadian side thanks so it's dave i'll make some comments on we're very happy with the city national growth both on the commercial cni side as well as as you pointed out on the consumer side it's a result of our strategy i've been talking about for years hiring private bankers in our key markets expanding our capability to jumbo mortgages cross-selling those jumbo mortgages into core deposit and investment accounts. So you're seeing just the acceleration of the investments and the strategy starting to play out for us, and it's our fastest growing line of business now. Followed strongly by very strong entertainment growth. Our entertainment clients are busy. There's an enormous amount of content investment, as I pointed out in my speech, into global content production. We have a fantastic core capability in entertainment banking from production through to talent. So I think from that, FilmTrack was an important acquisition in the IP side for us to play a bigger role in the entertainment industry. And our core C&I real estate and commercial, you know, we're seeing great progress on our mid-corporate. I think we're at almost $2 billion of growth there already. So that strategy, again, seeded by investment of building out teams and core markets, bringing new clients in, you know, this franchise has a proven ability over decades to execute organically at an exceptional high-quality growth level. And we're seeing as we move into new territories, whether it be jumbo mortgage or mid-corporate commercial, that customer-centric franchise that brings new clients in has proven that it can extend geographically and it can extend into new customer segments. And we're very, very happy with the progress.

Thank you, Dave.

One more question and then we'll cut it off.

Thank you. So the last question will be from Saurabh Movahedi from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Thank you. I just wanted to actually go to Doug Guzman. Doug, you've got the expanded responsibilities now that include, I think, overall wealth. As you think about the opportunities there, should we be thinking you'll be focused more on the top line or efficiency improvements? And maybe you can talk a little bit across the geographies as well.

Sure, thanks. Yeah, first of all, I don't think you should expect radically new strategies across these businesses at all. The wealth businesses, so U.S. wealth, the brokerage business, and our Canadian wealth management business, also a brokerage model, have had the parts of their operations that made sense to be centralized have been throughout. So our operations function, we run on the same rails on the operations side, the products and strategy function. At the margin, maybe there's a little more room for more communication, but I don't think you're going to see much really different there. Dave's talked to Citi National. Top-line growth is really important there. Growing the infrastructure into the size of the revenue base is also important, and expenses are important. So I don't think I'd pick between revenue and expense, but we're optimistic. Both those businesses in the U.S. have shown really strong growth, big investments in technology and U.S. wealth management, the brokerage. A very attractive destination for FAs, financial advisors, in the U.S. We've had good growth on that side. And expense control throughout on the Canadian businesses. You continue to see us outselling the competition. Our market share in global asset management and the retail mutual fund business remains 50% above number two, and it's actually gapping out because our sales exceed our underlying market share. Similarly, in Wealth Management Canada, where we've had great success attracting advisors and a very low direct expense growth. So I think kind of both. The caveat, of course, is markets. We can't control markets, but we feel like we're positioned for any eventuality. Historically, in market disruptions in our home market, we've benefited because we've been able to remain consistent and we've got a higher level of advice content in our delivery. There remains considerable cash on retail customer individual balance sheets and that cash needs to move to longer term investments for their life planning and we're working on that as well. So I feel pretty good about all the bits I just covered.

And Doug, just for crystal clarity, you don't think you need any capital for inorganic engines on this? This is all organic you're talking about?

We don't need capital for inorganic. The growth emphasis in domestic wealth management on the distribution side has been hiring people, so that's expense, investment in people, and building capabilities. And that's the reason we're continuing to gain market share. We're able to deliver more to our customers on a relationship than we have in the past, and that protects fees over time. We don't need more scale in Canada. Similarly, in other markets, while we're open to it, we don't need to do anything on the acquisition side.

Thank you for taking my follow-up question.

Thank you. This will conclude the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the meeting back over to Mr. Dave Mackay.

I'd like to thank everyone for a lot of great questions. As I sum up our quarter again, we're very happy with the way we started the year. The themes that we wanted to really leave you with today was just the impact of the investments and the consistent investment strategy across all our businesses is producing high-quality growth across all our franchises. And your questions touched on all of that growth today, whether it's private banking and CNB and 25% jumbo mortgage growth with high net worth customers. You know, the strong CNB, entertainment, real estate, and now mid-market growth fueled by an expansion and hiring strategy there. U.S. wealth management building completely new technology platforms. That investment has led to an $8 billion secure lending portfolio with $80 million of revenue. Canadian banks are launching Vantage and continue to expand our value proposition, driving really strong customer acquisition and profitability in core banking and market share gains. Capital markets, a long-term strategy, executing against expanded industry coverage, bringing new MDs in, focusing on high-growth stocks, high opportunity sectors like healthcare and technology driving really strong non-interest revenue growth is the consistency and the approach and the focus on the strategy is delivering results. And that's the message that we really want to hear. And as many of your questions pointed to, we have a line of sight and flexibility to manage the uncertainty around the inflationary environment. We have levers. You've touched on those levers with your questions. and very much we feel like we have an exciting year ahead of us. So thank you very much for your questions. Look forward to seeing you in Q2. Be well.

Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.