Home Capital Group Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Home Capital Group third quarter financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jo McCrae from Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jo McCrae Thank you. Good morning and thanks for joining us today. We'll begin the call with remarks from Yusri Basada, Home Capital CEO, followed by a presentation by Brad Kodesh, our Chief Financial Officer. To answer your questions, Ed Carthouse and Mike Forshee are here from Sales and Underwriting, James Pelletier from Commercial, Benji Katchen, Chief Digital and Strategy Officer, Victor DiRisio, Chief Information Officer, and David Clough, Chief Risk Officer. After the formal presentations, we will have a question and answer period where we'll take questions from investors and analysts. On behalf of those speaking today, I note that this presentation may contain forward-looking statements and that actual results could differ materially from forecasts, projections, or conclusions in these statements. Please refer to our advisory on forward-looking statements on slide two of the presentation. I would also remind listeners that Home Capital uses non-GAAP financial measures to arrive at their adjusted results and that Yusri and Brad will be referring to both reported and adjusted figures in their presentation. Finally, a link to the slides accompanying this live webcast is available on our website at homecapital.com. With that, I will hand things over to Yusri.

Thank you, Jill. Good morning and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter results conference call. This year, our earnings call is taking place on Remembrance Day. Every year on this day, we take time to remember and to honour men and women who have served and continue to serve our country. to secure for us all the privileges of freedom and peace. May we all remember to keep a moment of silence at 11 a.m. in their honor. I hope you all continue to be in good health and good spirits through these unprecedented times. HOME is reporting another quarter of solid results today as we continue to manage through the impact of COVID-19 on our economy and our industry. I will speak with you about some of our accomplishments this quarter our progress on deferrals, and our Ignite program. Then Brad will take you through the financials in more detail, and we will conclude with a question and answer session. As a company, HomeTrust has a lot to be proud of this quarter. Our originations reached nearly $2 billion, a meaningful increase over Q3 last year, reflecting strength in both our residential and commercial segments. We delivered a net interest margin of 2.51% while keeping non-interest expense lower on a sequential basis. Combined with a recovery of provision for credit losses, we reported earnings per share of $1.12 and an increase of 67.2% over the same period last year. We delivered return on equity of 14.7%, and increased our industry-leading CET1 ratio sequentially to 19.35%. We concluded the disposition of the point-of-sale component of our retail lending portfolio, and we continue to make progress toward our strategic objectives, including our Ignite project, as we prepare our company to be a leader in the financial industry of the future. All of this happened while keeping the health, safety, and security of our partners, customers, and employees. Our performance this quarter is directly linked to the continuing resilience of the housing market. All our major residential markets are reporting increase in sales volumes and prices. The more time people spend working from home, the more it becomes important to have a home that fits that lifestyle. Instead of choosing to live somewhere close to work, people are choosing to live where they can get work done. With the background of the pandemic and recent resurgence in COVID-19 cases subsequent to the end of the quarter in some of our major markets, having a home as your bubble and your sanctuary takes on even a greater importance. At home, we recognize the purchase of a home is probably the most important financial decision someone can make. Becoming a homeowner is an enormous commitment and people do not enter into it lightly. It represents an investment of much more than just money. When someone buys a home, they generally do whatever they can to keep it. Our experience with deferrals during this year makes that clear and I'll provide more details on the next slide. You may remember from earlier calls that we initially allowed lending clients to defer up to two months of loan payments beginning in Q1 this year. As of the end of April, 23% of our loans in terms of dollar value were under deferral. By the time we reported Q2, the total had fallen below 8% as of July 31st. Today, I report to you that the value of loans is now less than 1% of all our total loans outstanding. The work we have done to find appropriate solutions for our lending clients has successfully helped them through this temporary hardship. Nearly 98% of loans that were previously granted deferrals have either been discharged or resumed regular payments. Borrowers are highly motivated to stay in their homes if at all possible. At this time, we're not accepting any new pandemic-related deferral requests outside our normal lending practices, and the remaining principal balance is not material to our operations. The deferral program was a coordinated effort by lenders, insurers, and regulators to provide support to Canadians affected by the onset of COVID-19 conditions. It was timely, appropriate, and effective. I'm proud of HOME's participation in this program. at the time as our people were transitioning from home we were able to move quickly and smoothly to implement a deferral program that conformed to our own risk appetite slide six gives an update on our ignite project we have adapted to remote working conditions and everyone is working diligently to move this project forward significant achievements so far this year include Our deposit automation system for home, or DASH, system for straight-through processing of deposits, has been launched and rolled out across multiple channels in the company. This improves the customer experience with rapid turnaround of GIC transactions. We implemented several robotic process automation activity throughout the company where repetitive transactions can be automated for efficiency and accuracy. Examples include processing of deferrals, property tax disbursements, and renewals. We created a number of business intelligence dashboards within the company for advanced data analytics and insights. Having access to improved analytical tools makes us more agile, improve our decision-making, and supports our sustainable risk culture. We launched a new customer relationship management system for our marketing team, replacing our old legacy marketing information. Ignite represents a multi-year journey for all of us at home. We have progressed in our implementation timeline in spite of the additional demands of managing the deferral program and navigating our pandemic-related disruption. Our digital transformation is delivering the operational and service capabilities we need to grow and thrive in the banking world of the future. I will now invite Brad to discuss our financial results.