Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Scotiabank’s 27th Annual Financials Summit

Yes. I was here last year, so, thanks for having me back. It's great to be here to see everybody, and a good morning so far. I had the privilege of sitting on the executive team at CIBC for well over the last decade. So I have a pretty good understanding of what's going on in our bank and what to have expected really in the last year or so. What I would say is, I've been pleasantly surprised as I spent a lot more time around our bank with our clients and with all of our stakeholders. The first thing that comes to mind is that this is an incredible franchise. A franchise that goes back to 1867, 2 months before Confederation, CIBC was born as the Canadian Bank of Commerce.

Here we are today, focused on building Canada and helping our clients across North America and around the world. Our client focus is deep. Our franchise is resilient. Our connectivity amongst our team members is exceptional. We're focused on things that matter, around modernization and efficiency. We have an incredibly strong balance sheet, which I'm sure we're going to talk about. Our risk discipline in times of uncertainty is very good. So all of those things have been really great in the first 10 months, as you point out, although not new to me. I would say though, that as we look forward, it is a moment for Canada, for sure. It's a time of uncertainty. We are the most Canadian of the peer group, and we're very excited about the opportunities.

While it's an uncertain time for many of our clients, we're there in the difficult times, but we're also there in the very good times, and we can talk more about some of the opportunities in front of us hopefully, Mike.

Right. Well, I'd like to leave a lot of it to December, if that's okay with you, Mike.

We went in front of all of you in 2022, and I think we delivered on the great majority of those metrics, if not all of those metrics. So we're very pleased with the last Investor Day, which was a while ago. This Investor Day will be a refresher on the strategy in the sense that it's a consistent strategy, but how are we executing in a different way on this strategy, and how are we enhancing the strategy and taking our trajectory to the next level in terms of the earnings power of our organization. So we'll have some metrics that we'll talk about. We'll talk more about the technologies, the efficiency drive, and some of the things that our investors look at that are really important to our investors.

And so drilling down on those priorities and the levers that can take us to the next level.

Yeah, I would say that, of course, it's been a constructive environment for financial services in general. There is no reason to think that that is going to change. If anything, there's probably more opportunity. But I would say that we've structurally moved on from an ROE target of the past. I see our CFO, Rob Sedran, sitting there. He's not looking me in the eye right now, but he did promise 15%+. I bother him all day long every day, by the way. I think we are moving towards a structurally higher return on equity. The challenge, of course, is to balance a targeted higher ROE with growth. As you invest for the future, you need to think about that efficiency frontier of earnings per share growth and returns. We talk about that a lot at our bank.

We think we have the business mix and we have the drivers, and we are well-positioned to capitalize on both of those as we think forward to the medium term. I think it's structural for us, and we're on that journey.