Next up, very pleased to have BNY. Did I get that right? You sure did. In practice. Congratulations. Oh, it's even on the screen we got it right. That was all Jessica. But, if we could put the first ARS question, from BNY, very pleased to have Dermot McDonogh return, Chief Financial Officer. Great to have you back. I think last year was your first appearance at an investor conference. You've done several since, but, you know, maybe fast-forward twelve months on, a lot's been going on at BNY, and maybe just start off by catching us up on what you've been up to last year and maybe key lessons so far. Okay, well, listen, first of all, thanks for having me here, and it's great to see you all. What a 12 months for us. Yeah, very pleased. It's gone by very quickly. We just celebrated two years of Robin's leadership at the firm. Over the last 12 months, the market and the investors who've put their trust in us have given us a good return. The stock's up over 50% since I was last here. S&P is 22%, and the KBW, a little over 30%. So the market's happy with the work that we've done. And so just to go back to September and roll forward a bit, in the fall of last year, internally, Robin outlined the three strategic pillars in which we wanted to really kind of drive the firm forward, and that is, be more for clients, run our company better, and power our culture. And we spent a lot of time internally with comms, talks, strategy sessions, really kind of communicating to our 53,000 people around the world what that means day in, day out. In January of this year, as our year-end earnings call extended, earnings call, we outlined what that meant for our medium-term financial targets. We feel that the market and our investors responded well to that. The stock was up 4% on the day. They liked it. They digested it. They reflected on the fact that we set out to do a few things last year. We executed well. We set out to do a few more things this year, and we're on target on executing the hell out of that strategy. In the spring of this year then, we kind of outlined five principles to support what the three pillars are: Be client obsessed, stay curious, own it, thrive together, spark progress. That's the kind of what, the pillars are the how, and then we underpin that with Platform Operating Model, which is that changing the way we work day in, day out, and we went live with the first wave of that in March, 7,000 people. We go live next week with wave two, another 7,000 people, and by the spring of next year, we will have 50% of the firm operating in the model, which is a different way of working on delivering for our clients. Also, along the way, this year, we kind of did the corporate rebrand. You joked a little bit about it at the start, but I think Robin and the leadership team felt we needed to reflect where we were as a firm today, bringing a sense of modernity to us, the brand, the color, and kind of, kind of give more of a sense of belonging on what we're about in terms of the corporate strategy, we did this in a year where we kind of look back and we reflect on the history of 240 years as a firm. So it's been a really good year in terms of the things that we've accomplished, the financial goals that we've set out to attain, and three quarters since I've been here of, I think, solid financial results. So overall, a lot of hard work every day, and we feel like we're executing well. Yeah, you referenced a lot in that response in terms of what you've done to strategy and action plans and laid out the financial targets. Maybe in the near term, you know, what are your top two or three priorities and just where you're kind of focusing your immediate attention? So if you kind of go back to when Robin took over as CEO of the firm, I joined as CFO a couple of months after that. It really was a bottoms-up analysis of where we were as a firm and what we felt our capabilities are. And I think there was a general sense inside the firm that we were. We needed to demonstrate to everybody that we could run the company well and kind of deliver on targets. And so I think we've done that over the last 15 months. And now we kind of. And we've talked a lot about on earnings calls and in other investor shows, that the firm historically has been a very siloed organization, and so we set about dismantling those silos, and we've talked about some of those things in previous interviews. But I think we've come a long way in kind of getting people to communicate, and we kind of synthesize that and then operationalizing one BNY, and that's about delivering different parts of the firm in a holistic way for clients. I had a client lunch yesterday, where the purpose of the meeting was to talk about custody and how do we retain that client as a custody client, and we ended up talking about eight other things in addition to that, but they didn't fully appreciate that we provided those services. The person on the other side of the table was asking me, "What exactly is Pershing?" and so when I finished explaining what Pershing was, he said, "Oh, could we do that? Can we have that? Can we..." So it really is equipping our teams to be able to talk about the firm as one BNY to their clients. The other point I would make, which is really our focus going into budget season, is Cathinka Wahlstrom joined us last year as the Chief Commercial Officer, and her mandate is to really kind of unify the sales force of BNY, as opposed to a sales force by line of business. And she spent the last 12 months putting the scaffolding in place, the infrastructure, the training, the accountability of the sales force. And that kind of culminated in a three-day on-site, off-site coming together of all our salespeople around the world, which hasn't happened for a very long time at BNY. Where we did a lot of presentations, talking to each other, the different products, how we can show off the clients in a different way. One person was doing a presentation, a senior person from another line of business. "Wow, I didn't realize we had that product to sell. I can sell that all day to my clients." And so it's been kind of demystifying the firm for internal clients, and I think that is really a big opportunity. We won a nice piece of business in May of this year, that we just couldn't have won two years ago because we were able to kind of pick different parts of the firm, put it together, and deliver a solution to a client that no other firm could do. We feel like we have unfulfilled potential to do a lot more of that for clients. I guess, to be honest, that you kind of referenced the stock price performance, and I think one of the drivers of that is also the big organic growth opportunity I think you think you just referenced. Maybe just put external factors aside for a moment, like rates in the market or whatever, and just talk about the opportunities to drive kind of sustainable, higher underlying growth at BNY over time. You know, where do you see the greatest potential? I think it's, like, to be honest with you, Jai, it's everywhere. The one that we talk about the most or have talked about the most over the last year is Wove and Pershing, which has been an exciting opportunity for us in terms of developing a completely new platform software. You know, very sophisticated clients love it. We guided in January that we would kind of do $14 million of sales this year. Through the end of Q2, we'd signed 21 clients. We continue apace to deliver that, and so by the end of this year, I suspect we'll meet or beat our target in terms of our expectations for Wove. It's a steady burn. It takes a lot of effort, but we're attracting new clients to the firm, and existing clients are adding that capability into their portfolio. I think if you take our most profitable segment, which is Markets and Wealth Services, the two other businesses in that segment are Clearance and Collateral Management, and we've had a good year there. We've performed very well through H1, and Brian, who runs that business, kind of said at the beginning of the year, international is where we were going to see the big opportunity this year, and that's where we're doing it, and we're out there, you know, hustling for business and doing well, and then Treasury Services, kind of a digitized business, very sophisticated. We're a top five dollar clearer in the world, and we're growing with new clients, new products. You know, if you kind of take a step back and look at that margin, it's a 45% margin, and we're growing at the margin. So I would say, you know, Wealth and Asset Management, which, you know, I constantly get challenged on, and, you know, with, like, José Minaya joined last week, and he's spending all the time with the team and understanding the strategy that we've put in place. We kind of expect great things from that business now that José is with us. I would say there are lots of things that will add up to allow us to sustainably grow organic growth into the future. I guess, you, and even Robin before, have talked about this operationalizing the steps you're taking to improve underlying growth into kind of a nuts and bolts processes of BNY. Sounds easier said than done, given kind of what we've seen. Just how are you going about that? So we kind of go back to the three pillars: be more for clients, run our company better, empower our culture. Like, for me, I fundamentally believe it all starts with the culture. And so you get the culture right, and you evolve the culture into, like the way I kind of think about it, we want to be high performing, but human. And so we've done a lot over the last two years to do that. We're investing in. You know, when Robin took over as CEO, one of the first things he did was to launch an analyst class. And so the first year was 500, the next year was 1,000, this year it's 2,000. So we're seeding BNY with fresh energy, good schools, fresh energy, growing the leadership of the future. We want to be known as a world-class learning culture. We're investing in learning. People go on a really good training program when they join the firm. We're giving people all the financial skills to really do their job in a first-class way. We're spending a lot of time digitizing and automating the firm so that people are doing higher quality work, and they're not doing spreadsheets and reconciliations. It's a kind of more work of the future, and we're embracing AI in the way that everybody else is. So there's a lot of kind of cultural energy in the firm and optimism. As somebody said to me yesterday in one of my skip-level meetings was, "Dermot, in the past, people talked about risk and conservatism and manual processes, and now we're talking about opportunity." You know, it's a big shift in the mindset of the firm. And when you get 50,00 people talking like that, opportunities come and people are talking and they're networking, and you get the network effect of salespeople reaching across the aisle to talk to each other. It results in good outcomes. And that then kind of feeds to running the company better. We don't talk about cost management in the firm. We don't talk about expenses. We talk about does this run the company better? Would you do it at home? If you were an entrepreneur, would you spend the money like this? As I say, I'm not cheap, but I hate waste. Yeah? That has really instilled good financial discipline in the firm, and people are stewards of their own budget, their own resources, and when they want money, they come and ask for it, and if they have a good project, we'll fund it for them. Then all of that shows up in being able to deliver better things for clients. Client service is everything, and we want to be, as we kind of say now, we want to be unreasonably hospitable to our clients, and that's what it's all about. Then maybe, like, shifting gears to the inorganic growth fund. Last week, you know, you announced the acquisition of Archer, which provides managed account solutions for the Wealth and Asset Management industry. Maybe just talk about the strategic rationale for that acquisition, and how does it help with growth? So I'll say a couple of things about that. One is, it's an important signal externally because it tells you that we feel good about how we're running the company internally, because over the last couple of years, we said, "We'll... When we're ready, we'll be ready, and we'll tell you." So that's a signal to say, we feel like we have the firm in a good place in terms of we know what we need to do to run the company better from an internal standpoint. At the beginning of this year, we did a strategic business review on a particular topic, and we realized that we had a capability gap, and so then the analysis build versus buy. And so we were doing too many things in terms of building for ourselves. We kind of felt that if we were to build this capability, it would distract from other priorities. So I think this year we've funded $500 million of investments for the future, and we kind of felt that was going to be a bridge too far for our engineering folks to take on an additional project. So we said, "Okay, who's the best at this?" We scanned and we talked to our new friends, and we met them a few times, and culturally, it was just a super fit. As I was saying to the team before I came on stage, this was an acquisition that we did five years ago. Asset Servicing would have brought us into their business, and the rest of the firm wouldn't have really seen it. Now, the firm is buying it, and it's going to deliver capabilities to four different lines of business. So it's going to close in November. We really like the team. The CEO, Brian, is a top-class individual, and I think culturally it will be a great fit, and we're going to integrate it in a first-class way. So we're very excited about the project, and it generates a lot of kind of optimism internally as well. I guess the natural follow-up question is, should we expect more M&A from BNY? And then are there other maybe acquisitions where you're thinking or other areas maybe you think you need to lean into acquisitions? And then, I guess, in that vein, any other businesses maybe you think you need to exit? I think Robin has said a few times that we don't see anything transformational on the horizon, but for sure, where we kind of feel we have capability gaps, we will look for opportunities. Now that the bankers around the city know that we've done an acquisition, we look for plenty of ideas for them to bring ideas about capability gaps that we might want to have. You know, will we do more? I think so. Is there anything, like, immediately in the horizon? No. Got it. Maybe if we quickly kind of run through the key businesses, and kind of what you're seeing. Start with, you know, Asset Servicing. There's a lot of talk about improving the pre-tax margin, in the Security Services segment through profitable growth, and Asset Servicing. Hey, what are you doing differently to improve profitability in your largest business? So, last year I funded two big projects with Emily, who's the leader of that business, to really kind of get it to where it needs to be in terms of leading edge. It had suffered from a lack of investment over a period of years, and so they needed two big projects in terms of tax processing and corporate actions. So to really kind of get it to where it needs to be in terms of leading edge, and we're delivering those. The other thing that we're doing a lot with clients is if you change your behavior and do it this way, we can reduce all these manual processes, give you a better service, will result in less risk, operational or otherwise, and you'll get a better product. And we've had great conversations with clients this year who have changed their behaviors, which result in a lot more straight-through processing. And also we've hired a bunch of leadership where we have gaps in our bench, who are adding new ideas and new products, and we're just showing up in a better way with clients. This time last year, we had a very good momentum going into the fall. We had a lot of good sales wins. This year has been very good for us in terms of client wins. The conversation is less about repricing downwards. It's not a conversation that we're having with clients at the moment. And so I keep saying when I meet clients, "We don't want to be the cheapest. We want to be the best." And we walk away from business if it doesn't hit our hurdles. We won't take it at any price. So we've kind of put in pricing standards, and so it has to be profitable business that, you know, hurdles our margin. And so I continue to work with the team to kind of figure out how we take costs out, so we can improve their margin, so that they can price more competitively. And we have a number of initiatives underway to achieve that. Then maybe in Issuer Services. On the last earnings call, you highlighted the pickup in Corporate Trust activity and also market share gains. Can you just talk to some of the secular drivers of that business, and do you think of that business more as a kind of top-line growth story, a efficiency story, or combination? I think it's an everything story, to be honest with you. A trivia question: How many clients do you think Corporate Trust have? I would say a very large market share. We've got 21,000 clients. And so that's a great opportunity. And so again, a business that was neglected for many years in terms of investment because I think it had a high margin. And so we ended up with a lot of manual processes, a lot of operational risk in the business, and our market share declined. And so last year, we made it a strategic decision to invest more in the infrastructure, to hire high-quality people, and to go after market share at good margin. And we've achieved all of those. And it's been a beneficiary of the Platform Operating Model, what we went live with in March. So our loans platform went into the model in March, and so that services Corporate Trust, it services our on-balance sheet lending activity, and it services our loans activity and Asset Servicing. Three years ago, that would have been three separate projects. Now it's one strategic project for the firm, done once, done well to a very high standard. Last week, we had a review of the platform, and we've processed 54% more loan activity. You know, volume of actions from $2 million to 3 million, with less headcount. So it shows that we're now able to scale the business and in a position to grow market share with our clients. So I'm kind of very excited about the future for that business. And yeah, more to come in that space. And then maybe on- And the last point, which is really important, as you said, top line and bottom line, is it allows us then to have more strategic conversations with the C-suites of those companies where we're doing the servicing for them, so we can kind of go in and offer more products and services. So it's a good kind of way in, and so that's one of the reasons why I liked about the investment we're making there. Makes sense. I guess on Pershing, obviously serves the U.S. wealth management market, I think over $2.5 trillion of AUC on the platform. You've obviously talked a lot about Wove, which is your platform for wealth advisors. Maybe just talk about what level of organic fee growth do you think is realistic in that business, you know, over time? You mentioned kind of in line to better than planned for this year, but maybe longer term. Yeah, look, you know, the thing I like about that business. Jim Crowley runs it. Great team. It's been. We've earned our way through a kind of a tough situation with the FRC takeout, because that's pretty much gone and behind us now, so I don't really have to talk about it on earnings calls anymore. On this one. Yeah, and that undisclosed one, yeah, that's gone or finished, and so I think we've said on a bunch of calls in the past, we kind of believe that we can grow that business low to mid single digits. That's still our underlying thesis. We are number one with broker-dealers. We have very, very strong market share with RIAs. It's a very fast-growing, very competitive segment, but we believe our kind of unconflicted position in that space allows us to do things with clients that others can't, so we feel very strong about that business. And then just lastly, on Clearance and Collateral Management, you know, we've seen double-digit fee growth the last several quarters now. Is that sustainable? And if not, you know, what level of kind of growth do you see for the foreseeable future? And, you know, what are you watching in terms of evolving headwinds or tailwinds for that business? So look, treasury markets, yeah. Treasury market growth, we grow. Volumes are there. We're going to do well, yeah. So you see a lot of volume in the treasury market, you kind of think positive things about BNY. So I feel very strong about that. Like, the headwind is, is treasury clearing coming up, but we believe we're going to earn our way through that, and, we have an opportunity to do more with clients internationally. So kind of fundamentally, I feel, again, very, very strong about the future of that business because we are, you know, a dominant player, and, the network effect of once clients come onto our platform is very, very strong. Helpful. All right, now the financials. There we go. The next- I thought we were nearly done, no? We got at least another 15 minutes. Net interest income. Last year, you kept your NII guide unchanged throughout the ups and downs of 2023. You ultimately outperformed that. This year, again, you kind of stuck with your guidance through the beginning of the year, although H1 did come in slightly better than expected. Can you give us an update on maybe how Q3's playing out? I know you typically experience a seasonal decline in deposit balances over the summer months, but any further insights would be helpful. Yeah. So last year we guided 20%. We ended up at 24%. We had, you know, used the word skew to the upside throughout the year because it's just a volatile time. And I was chatting with the team yesterday, and this one is an interesting time for us, too, in that if you think about it, it's the first time in 30 years where we're probably going into an easing cycle, which is kind of a classic one that for, like, maybe the economy is softening a bit and the Federal Reserve just wants to get ahead of it, as opposed to the last 30 years, it's been, like, from 5% to 0% in 24 hours because of bad stuff that's happened, whether it's 2008, 9/11, COVID. You know, so this is kind of a different type of easing cycle, so for specifically for the quarter and for the year, we guided down 10%. As best I can tell, the models of the analysts have it down 6% to 7%. We're probably closer to down 6% to 7% than we are down 10%, and so I feel reasonably confident, you know, nearly three quarters in, that we outperformed the down 10% guidance. As it relates to balances, NIBs kind of largely behaved as we expected them to do in Q3, and IBs you know, behaved a little bit better, and so, yeah, Q3 is... You know, we're doing well for Q3, which kind of gives my kind of confidence in being able to say we're at where the analysts have us at the moment in terms of the full year. So when you say down six to seven, that's 202- Four. Q4, full year. Yeah. Helpful. Okay. Let me talk on deposits. Yeah, maybe bring up the next-- I get, I guess, you know, the audience kind of has a view on betas. Fed's going to cut next week. We saw, obviously, trust banks have a very high betas on the way up. How are you thinking about betas in the down cycle? I think, like, largely symmetrical. Yeah. I feel okay. I have to say, and I've said this many times before, the way we have structured our team between the treasurer, the CIO, and the head of our deposit book, it's working really well. We've done a bunch of things over the last few months to make it even better, and so we're having much more proactive conversations with our clients. You know, we don't lead with deposits, so when we're doing well on deposits, it typically means that we've got good flows and good volumes in our other businesses. Overall, that kind of feeds to, you know, decent fee performance as well. And the other piece that's kind of resonated with the market is just the change in expenses, since you know, Robin and you kind of took over that. But you know, I think 3% growth last year, you know, core expenses this year are up about 1% in H1 of the year. Let me just talk to kind of what are some of the actions you're taking to continue to drive you know, a lower rate of expense growth as we've seen. And then, you know, you've talked to kind of flattest expenses for this year. How do you think about that? Just to recap, again, it was 8% in 2022. We guided 4% last year, we ended up at 2.7%. Mm-hmm. We guided flat this year. Now, and I, I think it's just important to anchor everything in this in terms of like, when we set the budget and when we talk as a management team, we kind of anchor everything in, in positive operating leverage, all in. And so you've kind of got three levers. Yeah, you've got fees, you've got NII, and you've got expenses. And we set up the firm this year to deliver, you know, some positive operating leverage to the market, which in turn fed our medium-term to financial targets in January. And so we think we're accomplishing that for our investors. And, and so the thing that we control the most is, you know, the $12.5 billion of expenses that we get to invest every year. And as a firm, we've become very disciplined about how we spend that money. And so we've done a lot of hard yards over the last couple of years, and I feel like, as I said in a couple of questions ago, we've instilled a sense of financial discipline in the company that wasn't there before. And when we make investments, we want to see a return for the investment that we're making, and we have very high standards, and we hold people to account. And so that has created a very good kind of stewardship of our financial resources. It's not just me as the CFO doing it, it's the whole firm doing it. And I think the EC, the Executive Committee under Robin's leadership, has really come together to deliver that for the firm, not just for each line of business. I feel very proud about that. It feels like an easy thing to say, but when you do that every day, it kind of adds up to a lot of money. I think we've become really good stewards. For this year, I think we'll be kind of in that zip code that we guided. If we're a smidge up, it'll be due to revenues being higher, and so more brokerage, you know, revenue-related expenses. Ex that, I feel very good about where we kind of guided at the start of the year and where we're going to end up. Got it. And I think we get a lot of questions from investors. Are you doing things that you shouldn't be doing to prove you can manage expenses? Like, are you starving businesses? ... from investment, and then when the next CFO comes, he'll say expenses will be up 10%. And so the answer to that is absolutely not. As I said a few minutes ago, we invested $500 million this year in future projects. So we're investing and running our company well at the same time. And then, on the revenue side, we talked about net interest income. I kind of glossed over fee income. I know originally you kind of talked to up 4% through the year there. Any kind of updated thoughts in terms of what you're seeing? So look, you know, I think Eric said as well yesterday, constructive markets, you know, when the S&P is at where it is, we benefit from that, and you know, the flows have been good, and so we feel like that's working well, and we feel the firm is running well at the moment. Got it. And maybe talk on capital returns. You know, we talked about the Archer acquisition earlier, obviously, evolving macro backdrop, lower interest rates, helping things like AOCI. Just, you know, how do you kind of put that all together when you think about, you know, buybacks for the rest of the year? You talked about this 100% return of earnings, 100% or more- Yeah. return of earnings to shareholders, dividends, buybacks. So look, I think we pay a good dividend. It's competitive. We increased it this year, 12% to 14%. We've been consistent in our messaging on buybacks. We have a capital light business model. We've been running at the upper end of our management buffer as it relates to capital for the Tier 1 leverage ratio, which is our binding constraint, comfortably absorbing the acquisition. And our guidance is consistent, you know, in the kind of 100% plus a little kind of zip code for capital buybacks for the year. Helpful. I'll acknowledge up front, I appreciate it's only September, but I suspect you're starting the 2025 budgeting process. Four hours on it today. Just so you know, before I came up here. If you want to share your first cut, we're more than happy to listen, but I guess maybe just fast forward, you know, when we have you back next year, you know, what do you think we'll be chatting about, and you know, any early views on that plan? So I would say, I think, look, Robin has done a terrific job in assembling a world-class team. It was kind of interesting, at the commercial lift-off Salesforce event that we had a couple of months ago, the general remark from a lot of people in the audience, and we had, you know, a few hundred people there, was how well the leadership team were gelling together. That makes a very important cultural signal to the firm, that we're not running in silos. People enjoy working together and kind of delivering for clients. And so that collaboration really is like, our attrition levels are low, we're attracting really good talent. And so, you know, people are showing up in a different way, and that really is down to Robin's stewardship. So I kind of keep thinking that we're just going to execute the hell out of the strategy that we have, and then over time, we're going to- you're going to see more products. You're going to see more interesting things come from us because we've kind of- we're developing a flywheel of innovation, and the client engagement is very strong. So, you know, I was really excited to join two years ago. The two years have gone by in a heartbeat, and I feel more optimistic about the future for the firm than I did when I joined first, and I felt optimistic then. I think last year at this conference, you signed up for Positive Operating Leverage for the following year. I remember. So I don't know. If you don't see me next year, that means Robin won't be happy with the answer I'm about to give you. But I personally will sign off Positive Operating Leverage for next year. Fair enough. Yeah, I did write something I wanted to go back to if we had time, and it looks like we have some time. But you mentioned before, kind of moving people over to this platform operating model. Maybe just what... Kind of what does that mean? What does that do for you? Just maybe delve more into that. So I'll, I'll give you two examples. So if you kind of click underneath the three segments, we kind of have roughly seven lines of business. Three years ago, we would have had seven different client onboarding platforms, each, everybody had their own. And so that seemed, from a regulatory standpoint, inefficient, from an operational standpoint, inefficient, from a deployment of technology and leadership, inefficient. And it ended up, if a client was dealing with more than one line of business, very unsatisfactory and clunky client outcomes. So earlier this year, we put it all into one platform, all under one leadership, Brad O'Keefe. And so you come to BNY to be onboarded, no matter what the business, you come through one funnel. And so you end up with a much better client experience, a more seamless outcome, and then so we can deliver top-line satisfaction and over time, hopefully, top-line revenue because of that satisfaction, better regulatory outcomes, and greater efficiency in the process. I talked about loans, so very unwieldy, clunky loans, servicing infrastructure built up over many years, acquisitions, legacy tech, mainframe, you name it, we have it. One platform, one leadership team servicing the firm, one set of KPIs, one set of OKRs, one spend envelope for investment, and you can manage the metrics, which resulted in me sitting down with the team last Thursday and they saying, "We're up 54% in volume, less errors, less manual, less heads, more efficiency, more strategic, happier clients." You do that to 53,000 people, you're going to have a much more culturally strong organization, a better run company, and really, we're going to deliver for clients, which will drive organic fee growth. Great. On that note, please join me in thanking Dermot for his time today.