EQB Inc.

Welcome to EQB's earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 28, 2026. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Limar Persaud, Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Your hosts for today's Q2 results call are Chadwick Westlake, President and CEO, Annalisa Sinani, CFO, and Marlene Lenarduzzi, CRO. Also present for the Q&A session is Darren Lorimer, EVP Commercial Banking, and Daniel Rattazzi, EVP Personal Banking. After prepared remarks, we will open the lines for questions from our pre-qualified analysts. We encourage you to also log into our webcast and view our quarterly presentation, which will be referenced during the prepared remarks. On slide two of our presentation, you will find EQB's caution regarding forward-looking statements, which involves assumptions that have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. I would remind listeners that all figures referenced today are on an adjusted basis where applicable, unless otherwise noted. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chadwick.

Thanks, Lamar, and good morning. Before getting into my formal remarks, I want to start with spotlighting talent. I'm excited to welcome Daniel Rotazzi to his first call with us as our head of personal banking. He joined in April from CIBC to drive our integrated personal business, including PC Financial. It's early days, but he is already making his mark. A generational talent in banking for the generational change EQB is embarking on for our industry. And in a matter of weeks, when we close on PC Financial, we're very excited to welcome many new world-class leaders. We'll speak more about some of them later in Q3. Our team will be stronger than ever. Now, three topics I'll cover before Annalisa shares more on results. First, we're entering an inflection point. This marks the final quarter of our standalone earnings model, with PC Financial set to close on Canada Day, July 1st, an important and symbolic day for our country and for the start of our company's new differentiated growth curve. As I shared in my remarks at the Canadian Club earlier this month, Canada needs stronger competition to perform on a global stage and better serve everyday Canadians, especially in an uncertain macroeconomic environment. I'll say again that I applaud our federal government and regulator for their quick action to ensure change is delivered with urgency. Being a Schedule I bank matters. And the regulations that guide responsible structure, capital, and the privilege to be a deposit-taking institution directly matters. But this needs to be matched to the requisite speed, innovation, and flexibility to compete, to ensure all Canadians have a fair chance to own a home, and that small businesses are supported as the key growth engine for the Canadian economy that they are. This applies to EQ. where we have particular strength helping self-employed borrowers who remain underserved in Canada. The small business banking platform we launched last fall is also resonating with new customer growth of 53% quarter over quarter. We're going to add the scale and relevance to champion more of this by combining banking, payments, a leading credit card offering, insurance, and the most relevant rewards with PC Optimum's reach of 18 million members We have a unique opportunity to deliver a differentiated value propositions plus expanded distribution channels. We will move from a niche player serving hundreds of thousands to millions of Canadians with our transformed business model and capabilities. Our integration plans are well advanced and we're focused on flawless day one execution. At the same time, we remain anchored in the fundamentals of our bank sustainable profitability, prudent risk management, and strong capital discipline. Those areas of focus don't change on July 1st when we quadruple our customers, nearly double our revenue, and diversify our entire business and earnings mix as EQ evolves to an omnipresent brand from coast to coast. My second point this morning is that we continue to strengthen our core businesses that underpin everything we're building. This was our first quarter of neutral operating leverage in two years, maintaining our significant progress from Q1. This reflects deliberate actions to restore efficiency as a competitive advantage. We did this while expanding our balance sheet thoughtfully and not chasing growth. For example, in commercial banking, we increased loans under management by 17% year over year and 4% quarter over quarter, reflecting continued strength in our insured multi-unit residential lending program and supporting the need for more affordable housing. The market remains difficult in uninsured commercial real estate lending, and we continue to focus on quality opportunities at strong yields. Importantly, we saw improvement in uninsured commercial impaired loans, with a decline of 8% from Q1. A key focus of commercial banking also continues to be supporting our credit union partners, including through our treasury and securitization consulting services and our registered product programs. In Q2, our securitization team reached a new milestone with nearly $9 billion of loans under administration. Our team was honored to receive two Canadian Public Relations Society ACE Awards for our outstanding work in raising awareness across Canada for registered disability savings plans. In single family, a slower than expected housing market has intensified competition. Within that backdrop, we've been able to preserve market share in portfolio margins. Renewal rates reached record highs in Q2, in the high 70s, enabling us to keep loans on the book at lower cost than new originations. Our strategic approach to insured originations delivered a strong pipeline of applications in Q2 and sets the foundation for the return to profitable growth within that portfolio over the long term after de-emphasizing growth for several quarters. Our decumulation business continues to show strong margin performance combined with assets that increased 26% year-over-year and 5% quarter-to-quarter, driven by continued reverse mortgage market share gains In the provinces where we compete, reverse mortgages are a top priority growth business for us. EQ Bank deposit balances surpassed $10 billion. New digital customer acquisition continues to be strong, with about 30,000 new customers joining us in the quarter, in part due to our focus on improving the application and onboarding process. This has been a deliberate effort ahead of our integration with PC Financial. We will continue to invest significantly in digital capabilities that will present cross-sell opportunities between EQ and PC customers as we integrate the platforms. We're accomplishing all of this while investing in the innovation of our capabilities. We've often talked about the advantage of EQ Bank being cloud-based with an open API stack and a partnership approach with FinTechs. We have always been digital first and cloud native. AI is increasingly enabling our strategic agenda, including through the tools and agents we've developed to amplify employee capabilities and enhance customer experiences, ultimately flowing through to improved bottom line earnings. At the same time, we're embedding strong governance and security practices to ensure our teams can adopt and use AI with confidence and responsibility. Employee adoption of AI-assisted tools has increased five-fold this year, with over 80% now actively using AI assistance daily. Our teams have self-built nearly 200 productivity agents, demonstrating strong grassroots adoption. 100% of our engineers have adopted AI-enabled coding tools, including a strong acceptance rate for agentic coding suggestions. All of these tools are designed to help empower our teams with AI, helping them work smarter, faster, and unlock their full potential. Some of this is already reflected in our efficiency ratio improvements. We're moving faster and able to scale without friction, and those benefits will only strengthen as we integrate with PC Financial. We'll share more detail on this and other capability investments when we host our Investor Day, which we are pleased to announce this morning will be on December 7th this year. And on credit for the quarter behind us, Marlene will provide an update shortly. We now expect recovery to be weighted toward late 2026 and into 2027 for our mortgage portfolios, reflecting geopolitical tensions, trade uncertainty, higher energy prices, elevated unemployment, and a softer housing market. And my final point, shareholder value. During the second quarter, we continued to sharpen our focus, slowing or stopping in areas where we're not winning. This is a priority I outlined when I became CEO about nine months ago. Following our exit of insurance lending, we also exited the merchant payment business. It was not core to where we're going. This is consistent with our approach that began last fall. Focus, simplify, and allocate capital where it drives the highest long-term value. Our objective remains that we're intent on doing a few big things well as we evolve to a household name and a competitor at a new scale. We will continue to make portfolio decisions consistent with that discipline. We remain committed to returning to our 15 to 17% medium-term North Star ROE target. In support of that goal, we're taking a prioritized approach to capital allocation with flexibility as a strategic advantage. While our bias is toward internal reinvestment, We will remain opportunistic, including for-share buybacks, dividend growth, and selective inorganic opportunities. Stepping back, all these actions I've discussed ladder to one outcome, stronger, more sustainable returns for our shareholders. Now, over to Annalisa.