Morning, Darko. Hi, Victor. Welcome again to the conference. Thank you. Happy New Year, everyone. We're all good? We're all right and by. Had some good sessions. We're going to start. Nothing I like more than a big picture of myself behind me. I stare at that every morning in the mirror, so it's probably better if we put a logo or something else, Darko. I thought it would be better than a picture of me up there, so. So before we begin, I'm just going to remind everybody that Victor's comments today may include some forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from forecasts, projections, or conclusions in these statements. Listeners can find additional details in the public filings of CIBC. So Victor, thanks again for joining us. We've had some pretty wide-ranging discussions, a little bit macro. So I think in every discussion, I'm going to start it off a little bit differently. And I think with your bank, what I really wanted to key in on, because I've been getting a lot of questions on this from investors, is how to think about your medium-term ROE target. And you sort of went from 16 to 15, citing the higher capital levels. So maybe we could talk a little bit about your outlook for 2025 on the ROE. And maybe you can talk a little bit about some levers you can pull or not pull in attaining that ROE and/or potentially going even higher than that ROE target. So why don't I leave it as a very wide-open question to start, and we can hear your thoughts, and then I'll probably hit you with a few follow-ups. It's a good way to start, Darko. Let me just start by thanking all of you who've invested in our bank and those of you who are contemplating investments in our bank. We are focused on the targets that we've laid out in our Investor Day a couple of years ago and monomaniacally focused on it. And that would include ROE. So two real things that we focus on are EPS growth targets that we've outlined and getting our ROE to be at a premium level. And as you've stated, our ROE target is 15% plus. And Investor Day was 16% plus, but that's because capital buffers were at a different level back then. So on an adjusted basis, it's as good as that target was. The question is, how do you get from the target from where we are today to the target that we've outlined? What would the time be? I think it's always a medium-term target, as I would define it. There's really a couple of key levers. One is how we run the business. That would include our outlook on margins over the medium term, as well as our outlook on volume growth, both of which we would see as constructive. Margins would be constructive this year in terms of improving over the course of the year. That is a function of how we manage our treasury function, but also how we do business and our relationship-based approach to banking. The second piece would be volume growth and our ability to grow volumes in what we believe will be a relatively constructive market, recognizing there's lots of political uncertainty we're all dealing with. So you take that operating model and then you ask yourself, well, where are you going with expenses and how are you thinking about operating leverage? Our belief is that we've been through a decade-long investment at CIBC in transforming our bank. The investments that we've made and will continue to make will be at this level that we have today, which is substantially higher than it was four or five years ago. That will translate to expense growth in the mid-single digits and an attempt to deliver operating leverage that's positive on a consistent basis. That, plus our view on credit and where we stand on credit in terms of our risk appetite and what we've been able to deliver to our shareholders, we see as constructive as well. And all of that will contribute to a better ROE. The question is, well, what do you do with your capital, right? You've got excess capital. We do have excess capital. What we're doing is we're investing for that organic growth. We are growing our dividends with growth. We just announced that dividend increase in the fourth quarter for the year ahead. We are buying back stock. And operating capital, right now we're in that above 13 zone. Being in the 12.5, 12.75-13 zone is ideal. How do you get there? You get there by buying back your stock and by growing your business. That's kind of how we think about it. We think that that in aggregate will help us achieve a premium ROE over time. So maybe we can unpack some of those things a little bit there. First and foremost, I wanted to touch on your view on margin and volume growth and within the context of Canada. So within Canada, the great renewal is coming up. Right. Lots of mortgages are going to renew. It's been a pretty competitive space. Some are suggesting that, hey, maybe margins can improve in mortgages. What's your view on the profitability of mortgages today? And how do you see yourself competing during this great renewal 2025 and 2026? Frankly, this is going to be like a tough one. At this moment in time, mortgages, the mortgage margins are constructive, particularly relative to what we've seen the last couple of years, that kind of volatility. Our view on that business is it's anchored to the overall relationship we're trying to build with our clients. If there's anything I can continue to emphasize with all of you, when we say we're building a relationship-based bank, when we say we have a relationship-based strategy, it is at the heart of everything that we do. Whether that's in the personal bank and it's working with our clients on mortgage renewals and everything else that they do with us to the capital markets, lending activities that we have and everything else that they do with us, you can only achieve a premium ROE by running a bank that's relationship-focused, that's mindful of what clients need and mindful of what shareholders expect. So that's my answer to you. The question now is, how do you deal with the great renewal that's coming up? We have, over the next three years, 200,000-plus mortgages renewing in each of these next three years. We're confident that our renewal rates will be high. We have a process in place to reach out to our clients at the five-month mark before renewal. We've invested in digital processes. We've invested in mobile mortgage advisors. All of that is meant to increase the level of renewal rate with our clients and build those deep relationships. So yes, it'll be competitive. We live in a very competitive market, the Premier League of banking, as I see it, but we know that we can hold our own. Our goal is to grow more or less with the market. If the economics are not constructive, we look for the clients that understand the kind of relationship we want to build with them and work with them. But more or less, you'll see us growing with market when it comes to the mortgage market overall. When it comes to loan growth, look, it's anyone's kind of assessment as to what loan growth will look like. Our view is that something in the 4%-6% range across all our businesses over the course of the year is a reasonable expectation, recognizing that there are political uncertainties out there that we need to contend with. I'm sure we'll talk about that in the course of today's discussion. And would it be fair to say that that volume growth is back-ended towards the end of the year just because we have to wait for rates to come down a bit? Or are you seeing good volumes today? You're starting to see constructive volumes today. Look, if rates continue to go down and the economic environment clears up and the political environment clears up, that should provide a tailwind to economic growth and to loan growth. So why don't we touch on that? I mean, why don't we touch on this tariff threat, some of the uncertainty here in Canada now, potentially having an election this year? Well, not potentially. We will. The question is timing. So how is that factoring into what your clients are doing, what you're seeing, and what are you doing in response to some of this uncertainty? The most important thing in a relationship-oriented bank is you stay close to your clients. You try to understand what the issues are and what's kind of on their mind. You may see a world where tariffs get implemented and clients start drawing down on their lines and start managing through that difficult period of time. I would like that not to happen because I don't think that'll be good for Canada. I don't think it'll be good for the United States, and I'm sure that sensible minds will prevail in terms of looking at the integrated nature of our economy and how do we move things forward for the benefit of American consumers and companies and Canadian consumers and companies, but we'll be ready for any of that. We don't own the strategy of what governments do. We own the strategy of how we run our bank. We have the capital. We have the liquidity. We have the deep client relationships, and we'll manage it through it just like we did during the pandemic. We managed through it well. We stayed close to our clients. We helped them. We got answers to them quite quickly. Am I concerned about the situation? I'm concerned about it, but Canadians and our Canadian government, regardless of the context that we're dealing with today, need to control the controllables. We need to think about not what happens in the next six months, but what happens in the next 60 months. We need to get a free trade agreement in our country. Economists would say that boosts your economy by CAD 30-40 billion. We'll take it, but let's get the controllables right at home first. Let's put policies in place that attract risk capital into our country, that help companies grow and prosper. Let's make sure that we have the talent in place. There's a lot of talk around immigration. I mean, we need the talent to drive this economy. We need the right talent coming in under the point system. We need people with skilled trades. We need people reskilling. We need people in the construction trades, the hard skills to drive this economy forward. And Canada is fortunately endowed with the greatest energy portfolio in the world, agriculture, intelligence. And we just need to now start thinking about how we control the controllables on our own. Last thing I'll say is, as we think about defense spending, which is going to be another boost to the economy, let's make sure that Canada has a defense industry that we can all be proud of rather than just simply buying from abroad. Okay. And so that's helpful to think about from a macro perspective. Maybe we can shift gears a little bit then and think about how that macro feeds into the capital markets business and your wealth business. And maybe you can talk a little bit about that outlook for us today. And is it different on either side of the border? Do you think that there's one side of the border that has potentially a stronger case to be made for the capital markets business that you have? Look, the capital markets business has been a real bright point in CIBC's portfolio. If you look at what we've achieved as a leadership team over the past decade, it's got some of the highest ROEs in the Canadian banking industry, the lowest VaR per basis point of capital deployed, highly client-focused business, consistent, sustainable earnings, highly connected to the rest of the bank. I keep going back to a relationship-oriented bank. Over a third of capital markets revenues come from a connection to our bank, whether it's retail, commercial, or wealth, and/or other retail partnerships that we have around the world. That's been based on relationships. It's been based on technology investments and smart strategy. When it comes to the capital markets business in Canada, we're kind of right up there with the leaders when it comes into the U.S. strategy and our immediate Canadian peer group. We're in growth mode. We're growing the business at double-digit levels. The strategy is quite similar. We follow our clients. We follow our Canadian clients. We are deep in the renewable space, in the project finance space as there's an energy transition going on. We work very closely with the rest of our bank in terms of delivering our capital market services to our wealth management clients and our commercial banking clients in the United States. So in Canada, it's about maintaining that leadership position amongst the Premier League. In the United States, it's to continue to grow our capital markets business in a sensible and smart way. When it comes to the other market-sensitive business, being wealth management, wealth is a capital-light business. We are, by all accounts, kind of number two in the Canadian wealth space. We continue to see encouraging outcomes in terms of our mutual fund flows, in terms of our private wealth business. In the U.S., we've been investing to get that wealth business to greater scale. We're kind of knocking on the door of $100 billion in assets under administration. That's not nearly enough in the U.S. And that's why we're focused on organic investment, acquiring talent, opening up new offices, expanding our private banking capabilities, and opening up to tuck-in acquisitions in the wealth space in the U.S. So I think from a market-sensitive space, Darko, we're well-positioned in terms of benefiting from any market dynamic that may be coming. And so what we've seen from some of the other players, and I'm not afraid, I'll use names. So for example, TD decided to acquire more cap markets business in the U.S. and really build on it. And we kind of saw BMO do that a few years ago as well. And this gets back to when I think about your ROE and your target. And I think about what I've seen over the years with CIBC has been a very tight risk culture producing a good ROE. And I think to myself, is there room for more risk here, Victor? Is there room for you to now tack on a little more risk, be it cap markets or somewhere else on the risk curve where you can maybe deploy some capital and go for higher return? One of the hallmarks of the bank that we run is a bank that's very risk-minded in its approach. I think on a risk-adjusted basis, our returns are quite good. As we think about that world going forward, again, it goes back to being a relationship-oriented bank. It's not just about deploying the balance sheet and making sure that we're using that capital for growth. It's about how you grow, who you grow with, is there a prospect in the very immediate term of delivering returns that exceed your cost to capital so that we can build a better ROE. That's how we think about things. Is there room to grow? Look, we have that excess capital to be ready for the uncertainty of the economic environment, but also to be ready for the resurgence of the economic environment. When that does occur, we'll be there. Again, looking for clients that understand the way we like to bank them so that we can build those deep relationships and get that return that's commensurate with building a better ROE. It's a highly consistent strategy. So your question, do we have it? Yes, we do have that capital. Are we willing to deploy it? Yes, we do. But we're going to deploy it with clients who understand the value of relationship banking. Okay. Fair enough. I wanted to touch on something that has become topical in Canada, anti-money laundering. And I wanted to get your sense on the issue and how you think about it developing over time. And if you can maybe touch on how you see the industry in Canada potentially tackling the AML issue, because there is a sense out there that Canada has more work to do. Maybe you see it differently. So I'd be interested in your take on anti-money laundering. Look, defense and banking, whether it's anti-money laundering or cyber defense, managing overall risks, operational risk, managing it horizontally so you understand how these risks might interact with one another is super important. I think we all know that. It's become headline stuff for banks. At CIBC, on the anti-money laundering front, we've been investing significantly over the past decade in terms of our own capabilities. It all sits within a risk management function, whether it's anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, sanctions management. All of that sits within a highly coordinated group that's well-resourced, that has had a focus on making sure that our bank's defenses are working, not only in Canada, but wherever we operate in the world. We have a CAMLO that's got global responsibilities in addition to the individual country-level CAMLOs that manage those responsibilities there. Our board has been very close to it. It is something that every bank is focused on, and we at CIBC have been focused on consistently over the past decade in terms of improving those defenses. From a regulatory framework, you have the superintendent here a little later. I suggest he'd be a good person to ask that question, but I know he's got that at the forefront in terms of how do we make sure that we're coordinated and managing the defense of the Canadian banking system in a coordinated way is really, really important. This is where you don't get competitive advantage. You can get competitive disadvantage. But as a system, we need to work together to protect it. I guess in thinking about that, does it change anything for you? I mean, now that it's very topical, does it change anything for you other than just that there's a spotlight on it and you're going to have to work harder? Does it change your capital deployment? Does it change expenses? I think it just emphasizes the importance in banking of both being really good at offense but being equally good at defense. Banks like to grow. We like to grow in our own defined ways I've described to you. But making sure that reputation, defense is at the forefront of how we protect our bank, how we protect our reputation, how we protect our ability to grow and earn that trust from our shareholders and clients is super important to us. So it just heightens the focus on both offense and defense that are equally important in our business. Okay. Fair enough. I wanted to touch on because I haven't been asking too many questions on guidance because it just happened in December. But I think in this instance, I did want to touch on guidance for PCLs because there's a few noticeable things at CIBC. And one is that your guidance for 2025 on provisions for credit losses was to land in the mid-30s range and maybe trending lower end if economic uncertainties subside. Maybe economic uncertainties just went up a little bit. But apart from that, how should I think about the risk to that guidance, to the upside or downside? Because at the end of the day, the way I see that guidance is that number is actually higher than your fourth quarter PCL. I want to put that out there to talk about how you see the PCL developing over time and what is it that could move it on either side of that range? Right. We ended the year at 32 basis points on the impaired side in fiscal 2024. Frank Guse, our Chief Risk Officer, has been pretty clear that looking at mid-30s into the year ahead. The question you have is, well, 32 to mid-30s seems like it's going up. That, I think, reflects the stance of the uncertainty economy you see today and the political uncertainty that you see today. As I said a little earlier in our conversation, what does the back half look like? Well, if interest rates get more constructive, economic growth gets more constructive, unemployment doesn't climb, geopolitical tensions, including trade negotiations, kind of subside, and we get back into growth mode, that'll be a better, obviously better outcome from a PCL standpoint as well as from a growth standpoint. But I think the mid-30s reflects the reality that we're in today. I mean, there is some uncertainty out there. And it's better to be well-positioned with our investors to say, look, this is how we see the world. What drives it higher? Unemployment drives it higher. Lower GDP growth drives it higher. And the opposite to that will drive a better outcome. So that's why we've kind of guided into the mid-30s, which we feel comfortable with. We feel comfortable with our credit portfolio. We feel comfortable with the risks that we've taken. The broad trend that you'll see in the coming year is probably more consumer unsecured loans kind of going into that space, whereas the U.S. CRE space has been remediated, and that'll take away from that impaired number. So I think on balance, mid-30s is a prudent approach to take. Yeah. I guess just from my perspective, I think that as rates fall, as the great renewal sort of commences, we heard some great statistics this morning on how many people are actually renewing at a lower rate. And so I think to myself that I don't see a big spike in unemployment. And so it just screams to me that the back half of the year could see significantly lower PCLs. I could be wrong. Right now it's a 6.8 in Canada. Our economists don't see it going much beyond seven either. They see that in a constructive way. I think cooler heads will prevail, and you'll see a more constructive outcome in the economy. That's, again, something that we don't control. Okay. So it's time. I promised everybody that I'd go to questions from the audience. So I'm going to look at the questions that have been put in here and ask you the top two. So the first question is, could you provide some color on CIBC Imperial Service, its target market, and how it helps you compete on customer relationships? Sure. So again, if you just distill CIBC strategy down to very clear pillars, the first is the affluent, high-net-worth clients. The second is to drive more digitally acquired clients to our bank. The third is connectivity across our bank to drive better returns and relationships. And the fourth is to continue to simplify our bank to drive better operating leverage outcomes when you look at the first three pillars. The Imperial Service is a key part of our strategy. We've had it in place for the past quarter century. Over the last couple of years, we've had a determined effort to re-energize that competitive advantage that we have in the Imperial Service, where you have over 2,000 registered advisors that manage a client's affairs on both sides of the balance sheet. And in our investor day, our goal is to get 10% growth in that space. So what is happening within the Imperial Service specifically? Over the last number of years, we've invested in our client relationship management capabilities. We've invested in digital financial planning. We've realigned our retail leadership to focus distinctly on that segment while working with the rest of our retail banking partners to drive better banking growth there. Over two-thirds of our clients now have gone through a digital financial planning process. What we see is their Net Promoter Scores go higher than those clients who haven't had a financial plan, 81.9 being the most recent score versus 68 and change for those that don't have a financial plan. So two-thirds have gone through it. We're going to go through the last third and work with them. We've identified a substantial subsegment of clients within our personal bank that qualify for the Imperial Service. So we have the data. We know who the clients are. We have a pretty good view on where the assets sit outside of CIBC, and we're going to focus on harnessing those data assets to consolidate those client relationships. That'll bring a dose of growth. The third piece is the Costco relationship. That started with 2.2 million cardholders. Now it's 3 million cardholders. It's a very affluent client base. So far, we've been able to convert over 180,000 in total to banking, 10% of which would qualify and have qualified for the Imperial Service, which is also delivering funds managed growth and acquiring clients in the open market beyond those clients that we know already that we serve or sit in our personal bank or our Costco clients, and candidly, a lot of clients still don't have a financial plan out there. We're seeing clients come to our bank as a result of that. We're hiring more advisors. We continue to invest in the backbone of the Imperial Service. It is a capital-light business. It does deliver enhancements to ROE. We will continue to focus on growing the aspect of CIBC. Maybe just a follow-up. This is an interesting discussion, and I've always been very interested in it. So you mentioned, look, you've identified a section of your customers that could use an Imperial Service advisor. You've got one-third left on the planning, and you've got the Costco. It sounds to me like you need to do a lot of hiring in Imperial Service. You need what? A lot of hiring in Imperial Service. And at the same time, I don't know what turnovers are like. So maybe you can talk a little bit about hiring and turnover at Imperial. So our voluntary turnover at CIBC overall is the lowest of our peer group, as you see in the published statistics. Within the Imperial Service, it's gotten better as there's been more of a dedicated focus to that segment of our client relationships. If you look at Investment Executive scores from our FAs, we score the highest of all the Canadian banks. And that would be the Imperial Service advisors saying, "I like what we're doing." When it comes to your point around growth, Darko, you're right. Will we have to do more hiring? Yes, we are. That's part of the plan. But part of the plan is also to use emerging technologies to make life, quite frankly, more interesting for our advisors and less onerous. And artificial intelligence plays a role. It'll play a role in charting notes. It'll play a role in KYCs. And that in and of itself will free up advisor time to allow them to serve more clients and deal with matters that clients value most. And that's about their own financial affairs. So it'll be about hiring. It'll also be about using technology to make our advisors more efficient. Okay. Thanks for that. Another question from the audience, relatively straightforward, but I like it. What business lines in the U.S. are you most excited about and least excited about? I'm excited about the focus we have in the U.S. We embarked on our U.S. strategy a decade ago and started off dipping our toe in the wealth space. Then we made our acquisition in 2017 of the private bank. If you look at our U.S. earnings from that period of time, which was less than 2% of the bank's earnings, it kind of is in the 18%-20% zone of our bank's earnings. It's a real private economy focus in the U.S. It's not retail. We have a digital direct deposit-taking arm within our U.S. business. It's all about the transformation of our commercial bank, which includes the investments that we've made. The investments that we've made allow us to grow organically in the U.S. and shifting that more toward our commercial and industrial clients and a little less reliance on real estate, particularly institutional real estate. 65%-70% of our commercial banking clients have their treasury function with us, so making sure that we can grow those clients, again, that value relationships that deliver returns in excess of our cost of capital, so we're excited about the reshaping of the commercial bank. I'm excited about the investments that we've made in the wealth management space. We've opened up offices in higher growth markets. We've been hiring private bankers. We've been hiring talent in the wealth management space and delivering a full suite of private wealth to our clients in the U.S., up 15%-16% of our clients in the commercial space do their private wealth with us. In Canada, it's twice that level. So the ability to continue to build those relationships with our clients in the U.S. organically also gives me great encouragement. And our capital markets business continues to generate strong return on capital in the U.S., building new capabilities, having a leadership space position in the renewable space, working closely with the rest of our bank, and doing things in a sensible, organic, client-focused fashion so that our U.S. ROE continues to get better and contributes to the overall ROE of our bank. So that focus on the private economy that we made years ago is proving to be the right focus as the public markets get more and more focused on the private economy. That includes working with some of the sponsors, both Canadian plan sponsors that are investing in the U.S. as well as some of the U.S. sponsors that value the way we do banking. So it's fair to say the least excited business is the institutional commercial real estate? Institutional real estate, we kind of have dealt with that. I think Shawn and the team and the risk team have worked really, really well in putting that in a better place and now shifting that focus to where relationships really matter. And just that statistic that you shared there, which was interesting to me, where 15%-16% in the wealth business, or the customers have their wealth business with you in the U.S. versus double that in Canada. But there's typically a reason for that, right? I mean, in the U.S., they tend to not like to give so much of the relationship. Or do you see it differently? I don't know if that's true. I think it's just about our approach. I mean, our approach in Canada is like in the eighth inning in terms of how to do this business. Our approach in the U.S. is in the third or fourth inning. So we're early innings. But we're seeing some encouraging signs of clients who own their own businesses, who want to do their wealth management with us because of our approach, our integrated approach. Is there a product gap there maybe that needs to be addressed to bring you over the finish line and get you? We've invested significantly in our wealth management platform. Now over the course of this year, we will upgrade our U.S. mobile banking platform to reflect more of our capabilities in Canada, which are, I think, market-leading. I mean, the competitive set here has got good mobile banking. Getting that U.S. level up in terms of mobile banking, I think, will help in terms of deposit-taking and deepening those relationships. Okay. Well, we're coming up to the point in time where I hand the floor over to you for your key messages that you'd like to leave for everyone here today for 2025. Okay. Well, thanks, Darko, for your time today and having us here today. As I said to you at the outset, I value the time you spend with us and your interest in our bank. So the one message I want to leave with you is that CIBC, over the past decade, has become a fundamentally transformed bank, a bank whose leadership team across the board is deep, strong, and cohesive and has spent a great deal of time building the bank that we have today, a bank that outlined a clear, concise four-pillar strategy at our investor day in 2022 with targets that we're living up to and we will continue to deliver against, a bank that has competitive advantages, that whole relationship-oriented approach to banking. I'm sure many of you know people who do bank with us and who've noted the change at CIBC in terms of our go-to-market approach and building those deep relationships, a bank that's invested significantly in technology and, quite frankly, remade its image in terms of sentiment, in terms of how we do business with our clients, a bank that's delivering consistent returns, consistent with the targets that we've laid out, with a goal of growing EPS within our investor day targets, a goal of continuing to deliver on an enhanced ROE so that we're at a premium level, a dividend that continues to grow, and a smart deployment of capital, which is always led by organic growth but includes share buybacks, as we've announced over the past year, and a bank that is well-capitalized, that has a well-articulated risk appetite, that continues to deliver. And all of that is something that we continue to plan on delivering on going forward in a consistent and undramatic fashion to meet your expectations and the expectations that we have of the clients that we serve, and we will plan to serve anew as we build new relationships going forward. So I appreciate your time. I appreciate your great questions. I wish you continued health and contentment in the year ahead. And I look forward to speaking with any of you and all of you during this meeting and over the course of the year. Thank you.