The Toronto-Dominion Bank

All participants, please stand by. Your conference is ready to begin. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the TD Bank Group Q3 2020 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Gillian Manning. Please go ahead, Ms. Manning.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to TD Bank Group's third quarter 2020 investor presentation. We will begin today's presentation with remarks from Barrett Mizrani, the bank's CEO, after which Riyaz Ahmed, the bank's CFO, will present our third quarter operating results. Ajay Vambawale, Chief Risk Officer, will then offer comments on credit quality, after which we will invite questions from pre-qualified analysts and investors on the phone. Also here to answer your questions today are Terry Currie, Group Head, Canadian Personal Banking, Greg Bracca, President and CEO, TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, and Bob Dorrance, Group Head, Wholesale Banking. Please turn to slide two. At this time, I would like to caution our listeners that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. that there are risks that actual results could differ materially from what is discussed, and that certain material factors or assumptions were applied in making these forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation represent the views of management and are presented for the purpose of assisting the bank's shareholders and analysts in understanding the bank's financial position, objectives, and priorities, and anticipated financial performance. Forward-looking statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. I would also like to remind listeners that the bank uses non-GAAP financial measures to arrive at adjusted results to assess each of its businesses and to measure overall bank performance. The bank believes that adjusted results provide readers with a better understanding of how management views the bank's performance. Barrett will be referring to adjusted results in his remarks. Additional information on items of note, the bank's reported results, and factors and assumptions related to forward-looking information are all available in our Q3 2020 report to shareholders. With that, let me turn the presentation over to Barrett.

Thank you, Jillian, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. For the last six months, TD's 90,000 colleagues have worked tirelessly to keep the bank fully operational through the COVID-19 crisis, delivering for our 26 million customers when they needed us most. Whether working from home or at a TD location, store, or other location, their hard work and dedication has been inspiring. I'm very proud of their tremendous efforts, often under difficult circumstances, and I thank them for their contributions. TD is a bank, but we are also a community. We care for each other and our customers. Six months into this crisis, our culture and our people remain among our most important advantages. They are what will see us through this period of turmoil, and I'm confident that they will enable us to emerge even stronger in the months ahead. COVID-19 has affected us all in ways none of us could have imagined. But over the last few months, it has become clear that some communities are being disproportionately impacted. To address this, TD has made important financial commitments and introduced new programs to support recovery and community resilience across our footprint. This includes allocating $10 million to the annual TD Ready Challenge to organizations developing innovative and measurable solutions to address the inequities exacerbated by the pandemic. We're also taking steps to confront more longstanding injustices. This quarter, anti-black racism and racism in all its forms moved to the forefront of the global conversation. In response, TD further elevated our long-standing commitment to the active advancement, promotion, and celebration of inclusion and diversity within the bank and across society. We announced concrete targets and important initiatives to grow black, indigenous, and minority executive representation, to invest in organizations that fight racism and promote inclusion, to introduce new training and development across the bank, and to contribute directly to a future where everyone can thrive and achieve their goals. This past quarter, thousands of TD colleagues participated in virtual events to better understand the power of inclusion to elevate us all, to celebrate pride in indigenous history, to join the effort and make a direct contribution. While we may be apart physically, we are, in many ways, closer than ever, stronger than ever. As a purpose-driven bank, This important work is fundamental to who we are, what we stand for, and what we strive to achieve. Let me turn now to the current environment and our performance. TD entered this crisis from a position of strength, and through prudent financial and risk management practices, we remain well capitalized with a high-quality balance sheet and strong liquidity. This quarter, we saw encouraging signs of activity across our footprint, As economies progressed with reopening plans, people started to return to their workplaces. Firms stepped up hiring. Consumer and business spending picked up, and applications for loan deferrals have declined significantly. We know the road to recovery won't always be smooth. The unprecedented actions taken by the bank, our industry, governments, central banks, and regulators have been critical in helping stave off a deeper crisis. And these measures cannot be sustained indefinitely. But they have served as a powerful bridge, sustaining households and businesses as the global search for a vaccine or effective treatment proceeds. The resumption in activity now underway attests to that. The longer-term outlook is still uncertain, and a measure of caution is warranted. But so, too, is some cautious optimism given the positive signs we are seeing As a bank and as a society, we must remain prudent but also flexible, ready to adapt in real time as the situation changes on the ground. That's exactly what we again did in Q3 and what we'll continue to do. Last quarter, I talked about how quickly we were able to reshape our operations to stay connected to our customers and support them through the depths of the crisis. thanks to the investments we've made and continue to make in technology, training, and capabilities. Those investments proved their worth again this quarter as activity accelerated across our businesses. Digital applications have been enhanced with new features, self-service capabilities, and other improvements, resulting in a continued high level of successful online and mobile transactions and engagements. In the U.S., We continue to process tens of thousands of small business loans under the Triple P program in record time, helping support the backbone of the economy. Our new Canadian TD Ready Advice program is bringing personalized and timely digital content to millions of customers in real time. Advisors in our branches, in our TD Ready Advice Center, and on the phone are reaching out to customers to help them think through their financial options during this difficult period. TD Clary, our chatbot, is providing seamless, no-contact information to thousands of customers a week, freeing our TD bankers to provide crucial financial advice to those who need it most. And thousands of contact center colleagues are providing expert guidance, most enabled from home. We are also investing in the future. we continue to modernize our technology infrastructure, including migrating to the cloud to leverage its scalability, security, and speed. We're also enhancing our customer and colleague-facing applications to deliver better experiences for our customers and a more flexible and productive work-from-home environment for our people. As customers become more digitally enabled, we are working to increase the safety and security of customer-enabled data sharing through the launch of FDX in Canada, and other ventures with industry participants. And we were delighted this month to introduce our updated suite of TD Aeroplane Visa cards following Air Canada's announcement of the new Aeroplane program. While we know it's early for many Canadians to be thinking about travel, we will be ready when they are. We are excited to deliver these new benefits, which further differentiate our position as the number one credit card issuer in Canada. We also continue to invest in our people. Through Future Ready in Canada and Be Legendary in the U.S., we are empowering our colleagues to provide customers with the advice they need to navigate these uncertain times with confidence. We're also investing in our colleagues' experience and career development, always central to TD's culture. This is important more than ever today. Where possible, We are helping our colleagues manage the demands of work and home life, and we are helping them develop their capabilities and advance their careers through redeployment opportunities as well as training through TD Thrive, our self-serve learning platform, which now has 60,000 users. And for colleagues working at a TD location, branch, or store, we continue to take precautions to protect their and our customers' well-being. Our financial results this quarter reflect these investments as well as the gradual economic reopening that is underway. In Q3, we delivered earnings of $2.3 billion and EPS of $1.25, much improved from last quarter as continued volume growth, moderating provisions for credit losses, and strong wealth and wholesale revenue helped offset ongoing margin and fee pressure in our personal and commercial banking businesses. In addition, our CET1 ratio climbed a point and a half to 12.5%, lifted in part by the transition of our U.S. non-retail portfolio to AIRB. In Canadian retail, we saw strong quarter-over-quarter earnings growth, led by our wealth and insurance businesses. Net asset growth elevated trading activity and a four-fold increase in online account acquisitions drove record wealth revenue. Insurance revenues climbed on a volume-driven premium growth and strong take-up of our enhanced digital capabilities. And we maintained good momentum in personal and commercial banking, with strong volume growth on high levels of customer engagement and a continued acceleration in consumer spending and new account growth throughout the quarter as economies began to reopen. In the U.S., U.S. retail bank earnings improved significantly from last quarter. We continue to work with our customers through this difficult period, and the results are evident in strong loan growth and peer-leading deposit growth. Together with flat expenses, this helped offset the impact of lower margins and fee income. At the segment level, TD Ameritrade made a strong contribution to earnings, buoyed by heightened trading activity. And we still expect the Charles Schwab transactions which remains subject to certain conditions to close this calendar year, making TD an important shareholder and an industry leader with the strength and scale needed to compete and grow in a highly competitive market. Wholesale banking delivered record revenue of $1.4 billion and record earnings of $442 million this quarter on strong trading and client underwriting activity, including several marquee deals. We were joint bookrunner on Air Canada's $1.6 billion share offering and private placement of convertible notes. We also served as bookrunner on Verizon's $1.3 billion maple issue as our U.S. dollar strategy continues to gain traction. And we built on our leadership in the SSA space, acting as joint lead manager on eight U.S. dollar benchmark trades, including a three-year $1 billion COVID-19 response bond to support the private sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, TD's first book-runner role for IDB Invest. Our third quarter results reflect the resilience of our diversified business model and the power of our customer-centric strategy. Our model is a powerful enabler, allowing us to support customers through these volatile and uncertain times while continuing to make strategic investments to serve them even better in the future. I'll now turn it over to Riyaz to review the numbers in more detail. Riyaz?