Welcome and thank you for joining the Wells Fargo Q3 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the closing remarks, there will be I would be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time simply press star one, if you would like to withdraw your question press star two. Note that this call is being recorded. Now like to turn the call over to John Campbell, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin the conference. Thank you, Brad. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today, where our CEO, Charlie Scharf, and our CFO, Mike Santomassimo, will discuss third quarter results and answer your questions. This call is being recorded. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that our third quarter earnings materials, including the release, financial supplement, and presentation deck, are available on our website at wellsfargo.com. I'd also like to caution you that we may make forward-looking statements during today's call that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are detailed in our SEC filings, including the Form 8-K filed today containing our earnings materials. Information about any non-GAAP financial measures referenced, including a reconciliation of those measures to GAAP measures, can also be found in our SEC filings and the earnings materials available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Charlie. Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. I'll make some brief comments about our 3rd quarter results, the operating environment, and update you on our priorities. I'll then turn the call over to Mike to review 3rd quarter results in more detail before we take your questions. Let me start with some 3rd quarter highlights. We earned $5.1 billion, or $1.17 per common share in the 3rd quarter. These results included a $1.7 billion decrease in the allowance for credit losses as credit quality continued to improve. Revenue declined on lower gains from equity securities, which were elevated in the second quarter, though still strong. Expenses continued to decline, reflecting progress on our efficiency initiatives, and included $250 million associated with the September OCC enforcement action. For the 1st time since 1st quarter 2020, we grew both period end loans and deposits in the 3rd quarter. We continue to see that our customers have significant liquidity and consumers are continuing to spend. While lower than the peak in March, our consumer customers' median deposit balances continued to remain above pre-pandemic levels, up 48% for customers who received federal stimulus, and 40% higher for those who did not receive federal aid. Weekly debit card spend during the third quarter was up every week compared to 2019, and in the week ending October 1st, was up 14% compared to 2020 and 26% compared to 2019. Areas hardest hit by the pandemic have recovered, including travel, up 2%, entertainment, up 39%, and restaurant spending, up 20% during the week ending October 1st compared with 2019. Consumer credit card spending activity continued to increase, up 18% in the third quarter compared to 2019 and 24% compared to 2020. During the week ended October 1st, travel-related spending, which was hardest hit during the pandemic, was up significantly from 2020, but remains the only category that has not yet fully rebounded to 2019 levels, still down 8% compared to 2019. Commercial banking loans were up slightly at the end of the third quarter, while line utilization was stable at historic lows. Supply chain difficulties and labor shortages continue to represent significant challenges for our client base. As I said earlier, overall credit performance continued to be strong. Now let me update you on the progress we've made on our strategic priorities. First, building an appropriate risk and control infrastructure has been and remains Wells Fargo's top priority. We reached a significant milestone with the termination of the CFPB consent order issued in September 2016 regarding improper retail sales practices. Its expiration reflects years of hard work by employees across Wells Fargo intended to ensure that the conduct at the core of the CFPB order will not recur. As a reminder, this is the second important regulatory milestone we achieved this year, with the OCC terminating a consent order related to our BSA/AML compliance program in January. The recent OCC actions are a reminder that the significant deficiencies that existed when I arrived must remain our top priority. I believe we're making meaningful progress, and I remain confident in our ability to close the remaining gaps over the next several years. Having said that, it continues to be the case that we are likely to have setbacks along the way. We are a different bank today than we were several years ago. We run the company with greater oversight, transparency, and operational disciplines. We have a new leadership team. 15 of 18 operating committee members are now new to their roles. I've spoken of our new leaders in many of our control functions, but we also have many new business leaders. This includes new leaders in consumer banking, small business banking, auto lending, home lending, credit card, merchant services, retail services and personal lending, digital, strategy, wealth and investment management, and commercial banking. Our control infrastructure is different, and we continue to invest in it. We take a different approach to the consumer today. We created a sales practice oversight and management function and an office of consumer practices. Our approach to consumer remediation is dramatically different as we have meaningfully increased the amount paid to consumers and have accelerated payments to customers. While we are committed to devoting the resources necessary to our risk and regulatory work, we are also focused on improving the products and services we offer. We're making investments in digital capabilities and making it easier for customers to do business with us. In the third quarter, we announced our new long-term digital infrastructure strategy that will move us to a multi-cloud environment. This is a critical step in our multi-year journey to be digital-first and offer easier-to-use products and services. We also joined AutoFi's North American network to provide car buyers and dealers with fast and easy online sales and financing. As I've spoken about previously, we're on track to roll out a new consumer mobile app at the beginning of next year. We've also been making significant enhancements to our payments capabilities and are seeing that momentum pull through in our customers' Zelle usage, with Zelle users increasing 24%, transactions up 50%, and volumes are up 56% from a year ago. We're executing on our work to simplify our products and build compelling offerings tailored to different customer segments. Clear Access, our no-fee overdraft checking product, now has over 1 million outstanding customer accounts. As a reminder, this launched in September 2020. All of our retail accounts which receive ACH direct deposit have our Overdraft Rewind feature, which automatically reevaluates transactions from the prior business day that have incurred an overdraft. This feature has helped over 1.3 million customers avoid overdraft-related fees on 2.5 million transactions in the third quarter. For the emerging affluent and affluent segments, we're making substantial changes to more consistently and intentionally serve these customers, including products, service, marketing, and management routines. You'll hear us talk more about how we're executing on this in the coming quarters. After successfully launching Active Cash, our new cash back credit card, in July, earlier this month, we launched the Reflect card that rewards customers for making on-time payments. Our new Head of Small Business, Derek Ellington, will start in just a couple of days, and we believe this is another attractive growth segment for us. Next month, Paul Camp will be joining Wells Fargo as the Head of our Global Treasury Management businesses. This new role brings together our treasury management and global payment solutions teams into one organization, which will enable us to be more efficient and leverage our capabilities more effectively to help clients manage their funds and process payments worldwide. While we've been focused on improving the products and services we offer to our customers, we've continued to support our communities. We voluntarily committed to donate all gross processing fees from PPP loans funded in 2020 and created the Open for Business Fund to support small businesses impacted by the pandemic. We've now donated $305 million in support of small business recovery, including 215 CDFIs, which in turn is expected to help nearly 150,000 small business owners maintain more than 250,000 jobs. Additionally, in the third quarter, we launched Connect to More, a resource hub for women-owned businesses, and a mentoring program partnering with Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center to empower 500 women-owned businesses. We committed to invest $5 million through the NeighborhoodLIFT program to help more than 300 low and moderate-income residents in Philadelphia with home down payment assistance. We published our updated ESG report in goals and performance data, which includes new disclosures on our workforce by race, gender, and job category. As we look forward, while there certainly are risks that remain, including the latest wave of COVID infections, the recent U.S. fiscal policy stalemate, and inflation concerns, the outlook for the economy is promising. Consumers' financial condition remains strong, with leverage at its lowest level in 45 years and the debt burden below its long-term average. Companies are also strong as well. We remain on target to achieve a sustainable 10% ROTCE, subject to the same assumptions we've discussed in the past, on a run-rate basis at some point next year, and we'll then discuss our plan to continue to increase returns. I want to thank our employees for continuing to work hard to make Wells Fargo better for our customers, shareholders, and communities. I will now turn the call over to Mike. Thanks, Charlie. Good morning, everyone. Charlie summarized how we're helping our customers and communities on slide two, so I'm going to start with our third-quarter financial results on slide 3. Net income for the quarter was $5.1 billion, or $1.17 per common share. Our results included a $1.7 billion decrease in the allowance for credit losses. This is reflective of the continuing improvement in credit performance and the economic recovery. Pre-tax, pre-provision profit grew from a year ago as lower revenue, driven by a decline in net interest income, was more than offset by lower expenses. We continue to execute on our efficiency initiatives, which has helped improve the expense run rate. As Charlie highlighted, the third quarter included $250 million in operating losses associated with the September OCC enforcement action. Non-interest income was relatively stable from a year ago. Within that, equity gains declined from the second quarter, but increased $220 million from a year ago, predominantly due to our affiliated venture capital and private equity businesses. We also had an increase in investment advisory and other asset-based fees from a year ago, as well as in card, deposit-related, and investment banking fees. These increases were more than offset by declines in other areas, including lower mortgage banking revenue and lower markets revenue and corporate investment banking. Our effective income tax rate in the third quarter was 22.9%. Our CET1 ratio declined to 11.6% in the third quarter as we repurchased $5.3 billion of common stock. As a reminder, our regulatory minimum will be 9.1% in the first quarter of 2022, reflecting a lower GSIB capital surcharge. Under the stress capital buffer framework, we have flexibility to increase capital distributions, and it's possible we will be able to repurchase more than the $18 billion included in our capital plan over the four-quarter period, depending on market conditions and other risk factors, including COVID-related risks. Turning to credit quality on slide five, our net loan charge-off ratio was 12 basis points in the quarter. Commercial credit performance continued to improve, net loan charge-offs declined $42 million from the second quarter to three basis points. The improvement was broad-based and included modest net recoveries in our energy portfolio and in commercial real estate. The commercial real estate portfolio has continued to perform well. The recovery in retail and hotel properties reflected increased liquidity and improved valuations. While we have not seen any widespread stress in office, we continue to watch this sector closely and believe that any impact as a result of return to office or hybrid working plans will take time to play out. Consumer credit performance also continued to improve, with strong collateral values for homes and autos and consumer cash reserves remaining above pre-pandemic levels. Net loan charge-offs declined $80 million from the second quarter to 23 basis points. We continue to have net recoveries in our consumer real estate portfolios and losses in both credit card and auto declined. Non-performing assets declined $321 million or 4% from the second quarter, driven by lower commercial non-accruals with declines across all asset types. Energy was the largest driver given significant improvement in fundamentals on the back of higher commodity prices. Our allowance level at the end of the third quarter reflected continued strong credit performance, the continuing economic recovery, and the uncertainties that still remain. If current economic trends continue, we would expect to have additional reserve releases. On slide six, we highlight loans and deposits. Average loans were relatively stable from the second quarter, with a decline in residential mortgage loans largely offset by modest growth in most of our consumer and commercial portfolios. Total period end of loans grew for the first time since the first quarter of 2020 and were up $10.5 billion from the second quarter, with growth in commercial and industrial loans, auto, other consumer, credit card, and commercial real estate. Average deposits increased $51.9 billion or 4% from a year ago, with growth in our consumer businesses and commercial banking partially offset by continued declines in corporate and investment banking and corporate treasury, reflecting targeted actions to manage under the asset cap. Turning to net interest income on slide seven. Net interest income grew $109 million or 1% from the second quarter and was down $470 million or 5% from a year ago. The decrease from a year ago was driven by lower loan balances and the impact of lower yields on earning assets, partially offset by decline in long-term debt and lower premium amortization on our mortgage-backed securities. We had $20 billion of loans we purchased out of mortgage-backed securities or EPBOs at the end of the third quarter, down $4 billion from the second quarter. These loans do contribute to net interest income. We expect these EPBO loan balances to decline substantially by the end of 2022. At the end of the third quarter, we also had $4.7 billion of PPP loans outstanding. We expect the balances to steadily decline over the next several quarters and to be under $1 billion by the end of next year. We continue to expect net interest income to be near the bottom of our initial guidance range of flat to down 4% from the annualized fourth quarter 2020 level of $36.8 billion for the full year. Turning to expenses on slide eight. Non-interest expense declined 13% from a year ago. The decrease was driven by lower restructuring charges and operating losses and the progress we've made on our efficiency initiatives. During the first nine months of this year, these initiatives have helped to drive a 16% decline in professional and outside services expense by reducing our spend on consultants and contractors, an 8% reduction in occupancy costs by reducing the number of locations, including branches and offices. Occupancy costs have also declined from lower COVID-19 related costs, and a 5% decline in salaries expense by eliminating management layers and increasing spend controls across the organization and optimizing branch staffing. Let me provide some specific examples of progress we're making on some of the initiatives. We are continuing to work on reducing the underlying cost to run our consumer banking business. The pandemic accelerated customer migration to digital, which continue with mobile logons up 14% in the third quarter from a year ago. While teller transactions were flat from a year ago, they were over 30% lower than pre-pandemic levels as transactions have migrated to ATMs and mobile. Over the past year, we've reduced our number of branches by 433 or 8% and lowered headcount in branch banking by 23%. We continue to focus on generating efficiencies in our branches and have a number of initiatives designed to further reduce expenses, including reducing cash handling time and simplifying certain branch processes. Wealth and Investment Management has had strong increases in revenue-related compensation. However, by executing on efficiency initiatives, non-revenue-related expenses in the third quarter declined 6% from a year ago, and non-advisor headcount was down 10% from a year ago. We have aligned our wealth management business under eight divisional leaders, creating better coordination and efficiency. We have also implemented a more efficient client service model across all distribution channels and have reduced total square footage by rationalizing our real estate footprint. Corporate and investment banking has continued to make progress on various efficiency initiatives. These efforts include reducing headcount supporting products, regions, or sectors with low levels of market activity and opportunity, optimizing operations and support teams, vendor optimization and insourcing, and reducing spend on contractors and consultants. We're also working on initiatives in centralized functions, including operations, where we have realized savings from location optimization, lower third-party spending by eliminating consulting arrangements, and consolidating vendors. The operations group has also reduced spans and layers with savings coming from eliminating manager roles. Automation efforts and strategy enhancements have driven process improvements while reducing costs in many areas, including fraud management and card collections. We've also been working on additional opportunities through technology enablement that have longer lead times but should result in benefits that we expect will reduce operations-related expenses over time. With three-quarters of actual results already, our current outlook for 2021 expenses, excluding restructuring charges and the cost of business exits, is approximately $53.5 billion. Note that we had $193 million of restructuring charges and cost of business exits during the first nine months of the year. This outlook includes an expectation of higher operating losses and higher revenue-related expenses than we assumed earlier in the year. Our expense outlook also assumes a full year of expenses related to Wells Fargo Asset Management and our corporate trust services business, and we expect these sales to close during the fourth quarter. We will update you on the expense impact of these initiatives after they close. As mentioned, the outlook accounts for the fact that we expect full-year operating losses to be approximately $250 million higher than our assumptions at the beginning of the year. This includes approximately $1 billion of operating losses incurred during the first nine months of the year, and our outlook assumes $250 million of operating losses in the fourth quarter. Just a reminder that operating losses can be lumpy and unpredictable, especially as we continue to address the significant work needed to satisfy our regulatory requirements. Our current outlook also assumes revenue-related compensation will be approximately $1 billion this year, which is higher than the $500 million we assumed at the beginning of the year. Strong equity markets have driven revenue-related expenses, which is a good thing, as the associated revenue more than offsets any increase in expenses. Turning to our business segments, starting with Consumer Banking and Lending on slide nine. Consumer and Small Business Banking revenue increased 2% from a year-ago, primarily due to an increase in consumer activity, including higher debit card transactions and lower COVID-related fee waivers. Home Lending revenue declined 20% from a year-ago, primarily due to a decline in mortgage banking income, driven by lower gain-on-sale margins, origination volumes, and servicing fees. Net interest income also declined, driven by lower loan balances. These declines were partially offset by higher gains from the re-securitization of loans we purchased from mortgage-backed securities last year. Credit card revenue was up 4% from a year ago, driven by increased spending and lower customer accommodations and fee waivers in response to the pandemic. Auto revenue increased 10% from a year ago on higher loan balances. Turning to some key business drivers on slide 10. Our mortgage originations declined 2% from the second quarter, with correspondent originations growing 2%, which was more than offset by a 5% decline in retail. We currently expect our fourth quarter originations to decline modestly given the recent increase in mortgage rates and the typical seasonal trends in the purchase market. Despite strong consumer demand for autos, inventory shortages are putting downward pressure on industry sales and driving higher prices. The competitive environment has remained relatively stable, and we've had our second consecutive quarter of record originations, with volume up 70% from a year ago. Turning to debit card, transactions were relatively stable from the second quarter and up 11% from a year ago, with increases across nearly all categories. We had strong growth in new credit card accounts, up 63% from the second quarter, driven by the launch of our new Active Cash card. Credit card point-of-sale purchase volume was up 24% from a year ago and 4% from the second quarter. While payment rates remain high, average balances grew 3% from the second quarter, the first time balances have grown since the fourth quarter of 2020. Turning to commercial banking results on slide 11. Middle market banking revenue declined 3% from a year ago, primarily due to lower loan balances and lower interest rates, which were partially offset by higher deposit balances and deposit-related fees. Asset-based lending and leasing revenue declined 12% from a year ago, driven by lower loan balances and lower lease income. Non-interest expense declined 14% from a year ago, primarily driven by lower salaries and consulting expense due to efficiency initiatives as well as lower lease expense. After declining for four consecutive quarters, average loans stabilized in the third quarter. Line utilizations remained low, and loan demand continued to be impacted by low client inventory levels and strong client cash positions. However, there was some increase in demand late in the quarter, and period-end balances increased $1.6 billion, or 1%, from the second quarter. Turning to corporate investment banking on slide 12. In banking, total revenue increased 12% from a year ago. This growth was driven by higher advisory and equity origination fees and an increase in loan balances, partially offset by lower deposit balances, predominantly due to actions taken to manage under the asset cap. Commercial real estate revenue grew 10% from a year ago, driven by higher commercial servicing income, loan balances, and capital markets results in stronger commercial gain-on-sale volumes and margins and higher underwriting fees. Markets revenue declined 15% from a year ago, driven by lower trading activity across most asset classes, primarily due to market conditions. Non-interest expense declined 10% from a year ago, primarily driven by reduced operations expense due to efficiency initiatives. Wealth and investment management revenue on slide 13 grew 10% from a year ago. A decline in net interest income due to lower interest rates was more than offset by higher asset-based fees, primarily due to higher market valuations. Revenue-related compensation drove the increase in non-interest expense from a year ago. I highlighted earlier the progress we've made on efficiency initiatives to reduce non-revenue-related expenses, including salaries and occupancy expense. Client assets increased 13% from a year ago, primarily driven by higher market valuations. Average deposits were up 4% from a year ago, and average loans increased 5% from a year ago, driven by continued momentum in securities-based lending. Slide 14 highlights our corporate results. Revenue declined from a year ago, driven by lower net interest income, primarily due to the sale of our student loan portfolio, and lower non-interest income due to lower gains on the sale of securities in our investment portfolio. The decline in revenue from the second quarter was primarily driven by lower equity gains from our affiliated venture capital and private equity businesses, and expenses included the $250 million operating loss associated with the OCC enforcement action in September. With that, we will now take your questions. Our first question will come from Scott Siefers of Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Morning. Thanks for taking the question. I guess I was hoping you could sort of address the cost outlook. I certainly appreciate the commentary regarding the fourth quarter in particular. I think as we look forward, you guys have had the expectation that costs could come down year-over-year for the next couple of years. That, of course, puts you guys in a very unique position vis-à-vis many of your peers. So many people are talking about things like wage inflation right now. I'm just curious, to what degree are you seeing that? More importantly, is there enough flexibility in your existing outlook such that even despite higher wage pressures, you could still see costs down year-over-year for the next couple of years? Sure. This is Charlie. Thanks for the question. I guess let me start with the wage inflation. I think we certainly are seeing wage inflation. I would say it's very different across different parts of the company and very different across different job categories that we have. As we approach it, we're trying to be very thoughtful about ensuring that we're continuing to be as fair with people as we can be, as well as paying competitively. We actually are making awards to people in our branches, which equate to roughly $2.50 an hour from the beginning of October through the end of the year to thank them for what they're doing, but also address the competitiveness that exists out there, and we're evaluating what makes sense for the longer term. In places of the company where we do see wage pressure, we're acting accordingly. I would not say that it's something that we see everywhere across the entire company in every single job. We're certainly prepared for it and look at it very regularly as we look at things like attrition and whatnot. To the broader question, I think first of all, we're in the middle of doing our budgets now, as I'm sure you hear from everyone when they do these calls at this time of year. Our goal is still the same that we've said in the past, which is we still would like to see net reductions in the overall expense base. We are in a unique position in that I would say in two ways. First of all, we do have the significant amount that we're spending on regulatory orders, and we're not assuming that we get efficiencies out of that in the near future. One day when we've built all that's required, that will be an opportunity for us, but that's not even on the radar screen for us right now. We still have just tremendous excess expenses across the company. You can see it in headcount. You can see it in efficiency ratios across the businesses. What I've found here is the same thing I think that Mike and I have seen at a lot of other places, which is it's like peeling an onion back. You think you see what's incredibly clear. Once you actually get rid of those inefficiencies, you then start to see the next level. It becomes part of the culture, and we engage the entire company in moving that way. We still think that there are extremely meaningful efficiencies that we can pursue for quite some time here which hopefully will both allow us to have net reductions, but also invest appropriately, whether it's in technology or products, which, as we've said, we're extremely focused on as well. Perfect. Thank you very much. Then there's something, Mike, you might be able to expand on, a comment you made about loan demand improving later in the quarter. There seems to be a little bit of a divergence emerging between the kind of demand we're seeing at, say, smaller and middle-market companies, for instance, versus what we're seeing with larger corporates that might have better access to the capital markets. Curious if you could just provide a little more color on where you're seeing that improved demand, please. Yeah. I assume we will see some divergence across some of the peers as you look at this. If you look at the commercial bank as an example, we're actually seeing the demand and the pipeline build in the middle and upper end of the client base, with a little bit less of demand emerging so far on the lower end. Which I know is counter to the way you asked the question, but I think that's what we're seeing right now. I think in part that's because the clients in the lower end of our client base still have a lot of excess liquidity, and they're still dealing with supply chain crunches and other issues that are impacting their need for credit. I think we'll start to see more demand, I think, more consistently across the client base over time as things play out. That's what we're seeing in the commercial bank. I think when you look more broadly, and you look at the consumer side, we have seen balances grow in auto, we've seen them in card. When you look through the home lending data that we give you, we are seeing growth in our core non-conforming mortgage book as well. That's offset by the declines in these loans that we bought out from securities last year. We are seeing some growth there too. Then you see some growth in the corporate investment bank, and that's really a little bit of a lot of things happening across the corporate investment bank, whether it's real estate, subscription finance, and other sectors that are really driving some of that growth. Again, it's still relatively modest so far in terms of what we've seen, and I think it'll take some more time for it to really play out in a more meaningful way. It's encouraging to start to see at least a little bit manifest so far. I would just encourage you to make sure that you look at the period-end balances as well as the averages because it certainly gets to the heart of the question. Just one final thing I'll say on this, which is we're not stretching in any way in terms of credit or pricing or things like that to try and get to a result. We're continuing to have the same disciplines that we've always had, and it's going to be a question of our balances are rising because of greater customer activity. That's terrific. Thank you guys very much. The next question comes from Ken Usdin of Jefferies. Your line is open. Hey, guys. Thanks. Good morning. Just wondering, Mike, if you could just talk a little bit about just some of the ins and outs underneath NII outside from balance sheet movements, meaning you saw a little bit of increase in premium am. Can you just remind us how that mechanism works in terms of what rates need to do to have an ongoing improvement there? How close are you to the point where your incremental purchases or replacements on the securities book are getting closer to what's rolling off? Thanks. Thanks, Ken. I think when you think about premium amortization, I think you said it backwards, but we're getting a benefit from premium amortization coming down in the quarter. You saw that in our results as roughly $90 million, a little bit, maybe a couple bucks less. We expect, as we've been saying, we expect that to continue to come down. I think it'll be somewhat gradual as we look at the next couple quarters. You're not going to see big step downs. I think it'll come down again in the fourth quarter, maybe a little less than we saw from the second to the third quarter. As you've seen over the last 3 months, rates have been a little all over the place. It's a bit of a function of where mortgage rates are, and there's a little bit of a lag to it as it comes through the data. We still expect the general trajectory to be coming down on premium amortization. It's just a matter of exactly how fast and over what time period that'll happen. I think on the second part of the question, what was the second part again, Ken? Just about reinvestment rates versus the underlying portfolio on the securities book. Yeah. No, again, even on that, I keep reminding people as you look at the third quarter, rates were much, much lower than they are today for most of the second quarter. Really, we've seen them rally at the tail end of the quarter and kind of stabilize to come down slightly since then over the last week or so. That gap is closing, obviously, in terms of what's rolling off and getting closer to kind of the overall average in the portfolio. We still have a little ways to go for reinvestment rates to match what's rolling out of the portfolio. Okay. Got it. Just last quick one, just long-term debt, you've been meaningfully reducing the footprint and helped by the mix improving on the balance sheet. Just how much more of an opportunity is that to continue to lower the long-term debt footprint and reduce the cost of it. Thanks, Mike. Yeah. No, it's a good question. I think our constraint's going to be TLAC, how much TLAC we have to hold. I think you can probably model that out a little bit. We have a little bit more room to go to continue to optimize the mix here and bring the long-term debt down. It's likely at some point next year that'll start to change. The next question comes from Steven Chubak of Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Hi, good afternoon. Wanted to ask a follow-up on Ken's last line of questioning around the NII outlook. If I take all the different component pieces that you mentioned and just throw it in the blender, more constructive loan growth commentary, some modest but steady premium and benefit, but still some reinvestment headwinds. Is it reasonable to expect that you can grow NII versus the lower end of the guidance range for 2021? Separately, what's your appetite to deploy excess liquidity, just given your excess reserves parked at the Fed, at least as a percentage of the overall balance sheet, is still quite elevated relative to many of your peers. Yeah. Maybe I'll start with the second one, and I'll come back to the first part, Steve. As we think about redeployment, we're still being pretty patient. As I just mentioned to Ken's question, you look at what's been happening over the last few months. Rates were much lower. They rallied recently. At the same time, the basis between Treasuries and mortgages has actually compressed a bit, so made them a little bit relatively more expensive. If you look at what's happening in inflation and with tapering coming, and we still think that there's more risk to upside on rates than there is downside at this point. So we're still being patient as we sort of look at our redeployment there. When opportunities present themselves, we'll take advantage of them. We did that a little bit right at the end of the third quarter where we accelerated some purchases that we were making given the spike and the rally that we saw there. We'll continue to do that, but we're going to be patient as we see how things develop over the coming months. As you sort of think about the range for the full year, we've been giving a range for a reason, right? There's a lot of moving pieces, right? There's still a few months to play out. I think if we obviously see faster loan growth than we expect, that'll be a positive. If we see rates move a little bit higher than what the forward curve has, that'll be a positive. We still have to just to keep up with where the securities portfolio, we have a lot of purchases to make in the fourth quarter. Where rates end up throughout will be important. On the margin, there's things like PPP and other factors that sort of drive that. That'll be determined based on the client forgiveness trends that we see in our client base. I think there are scenarios where we could be a little bit better than what we projected there. There's some scenarios where we could be a little bit worse depending on how all those factors play out. That's great, Howard. Thanks for taking my question. Thank you. The next question will come from John McDonald of Autonomous Research. Your line is open. Hi, I wanted to follow up on the expenses. When we think about the aspiration for expenses to be down next year and understanding that you're going through budgeting and that's a goal right now. Mike, can we think of it as that's your goal kind of relative to the $53 and a half and wouldn't include help from the business exits? John. No, I think we think about the business exits just separate from the core efficiency we're driving. For lack of a better way to describe it, if we think that there's going to be a savings of $X as these businesses roll off, take the 53.5 and subtract the X, that'll be our new goal. Starting place in your starting place. Yeah. Yeah. We gave you at a high level some detail about that in April. When these close and we've got good clarity on it, we'll be very transparent about how to reset the baseline and the starting point. Sure. In terms of you expect some gains on sales, I assume those are you're thinking the same lines, and those should probably come in the fourth quarter is what you're currently thinking? Yeah. They may not all be in the fourth quarter given how the deals were structured. Not 100% of the gains will be in the fourth quarter, but a good chunk of it will be in the fourth quarter. Obviously, we'll be clear on what that was when it happens. Okay. The last thing for me is if we want to dream about loan growth coming back to the industry, how do we think about how much capacity you have to grow loans while staying under the asset cap? Where does that come from? Does it come from cash liquidity mix and moving other stuff around the balance sheet? Can you just give us some thoughts on that? Yeah. We all dream of faster loan growth. I think we're aligned there. I think we've got plenty of room to grow on the loan side. Whether it comes initially from cash that's sitting at the Fed, or that would be kind of the first place. If we needed to, we could reduce the securities portfolio as well if it grew much faster than what we expected. That would be a nice problem to have. At this point, we have plenty of capacity to grow. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. The next question comes from Ebrahim Poonawala of Bank of America. Your line is open. Hey, good morning. I guess just one big-picture question, Charlie. Appreciate you mentioning the risk of setbacks as you go through the whole regulatory process. At the same time, when we talk to investors, I think there's a franchise the longer you stay within that asset cap. I was wondering if you could address, just in terms of when we think about the franchise, both from a talent and client standpoint, how worried should your shareholders be about that, or do you think that's well taken care of? Well, I would say I do think it's well taken care of. I'll start there. I think we think about it every day that we take actions to stay below the cap. I think, as Mike just spoke about, we have significant room on the asset side of the balance sheet, which is where you really want to be there for clients where they need you. When you're out hustling for business, we're certainly able to fulfill their needs. It doesn't matter whether it's a consumer or whether it's a corporate. Our experience has been that we continue to find ways to optimize the balance sheet in a way that has very little client impact. Where we have to move deposits off the balance sheet, we work with customers to come up with other off-balance-sheet solutions for them. I think our experience has been that customers are very understanding of what that is. Again, and by the way, we have not limited the growth of deposits on the consumer side at all. We're trying to be very smart about having as little franchise impact as possible when we make these decisions, and make sure we're communicating with customers. I think the people here at Wells have done an amazing job of striking that right balance. As I said, I think we're as open for business as anyone on the asset side, and I think customers appreciate that as well. Got it. No, thanks for sharing that perspective. Just one quick one, Mike, on the NII. When we look at the fourth quarter, I hear you on your full-year guidance. Does the net of all of that imply that fourth quarter NII should at least grow from third quarter levels? Can you disclose what the PPP impact was for the third quarter NII number? Yeah. I think on the fourth quarter, you can model based on what your assumptions are, right? As I said, we'll be sort of near the bottom of the range, and you can sort of pick where you think we'll be based on how you feel about it. I think for third quarter, the PPP impact was about $115 million. Just to give you a little context, that was a little bit lower than what we saw in the second quarter, and we would expect the fourth quarter to be a little bit lower than that, potentially. That'll all be based on the pace of forgiveness requests that we get from clients. Overall, a pretty small sequential impact. Got it. That's all baked into our forecast. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from John Pancari of Evercore ISI. Your line is open. Good morning. On the expense side, how should we think about the timing and the magnitude of the remaining $4.3 billion in cost saves? Would you say that any of the latest regulatory developments impacted how you're thinking about the magnitude or the timing of the realization of those saves? Thanks. Yeah, John, it's Mike. As we said in the beginning of the year, we were going to get about $3.7 billion of the $8 billion this year, and the annualized impact starts to build as you go through the year. Some of that you get in the run rate coming out of 2021. Some of that will take more time to get at. As I mentioned, where we have to introduce new technology or other new capabilities, it just takes longer to get at some of it. As we sort of said in the beginning of the year, this is a multi-year plan, so we're not going to get all of that in the first 12 months by any stretch. As we get to January, we'll give you a better view of what to expect on 2022. Okay. Got it. Separately, on the loan front, can you just maybe give us a little more detail on trends you're seeing in the card business, including spending volume as well as payment rates? Separately, any thoughts on the impact of the buy now, pay later product on how you're thinking about your product set? Thanks. Yeah. I think when you look at payment rates, they're still really high. They bounce around a little bit month to month in the last quarter or so, but they're still really high. What you're getting when you look at the balance growth you're seeing, you're really getting that through an increase in the point-of-sale purchase volumes that are coming through. Charlie highlighted a bunch of stats based on what we're seeing in the book. I'd say overall spend patterns, spend is still pretty strong, pretty stable from what we saw in the second quarter, up versus the comparable periods last year or in 2019. As you'd expect in any given week or month or quarter, the different categories move around quite a bit depending on what's happening based on that time period. You can see that point of sale volumes are up 24% from the quarter a year ago, 4% sequentially. You can see the new account growth, which is up quite a bit, 150% from a year ago, and 63% from the second quarter based on the new products we've launched. I'd characterize it as still really strong activity levels, despite the noise you see out there related to the Delta variant and other things. This is Charlie. On the buy now, pay later, I would describe buy now, pay later as another option of providing credit and serving the merchant. I think as others have said, it's still overall a relatively small portion of the market. I think there'll be a place for it, but it's not going to supplant all the other types of credit that exist out there. We have our own retail services business. We have our own personal lending business. We've got a significant number of merchant relationships ourselves. It's a place that we will be in addition to the products that we have. Over time, my guess is you're seeing a proliferation of people involved now. At some time, at some point, it will become far more consolidated for all the reasons that these other industries have been consolidated, including those that can really provide a differentiated experience for the merchant. Hopefully that helps. No, that does. Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it. Thank you. The next question comes from Matt O'Connor of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Hey, guys. Charlie, I wanted to follow up again on the comment about likely to have additional setbacks on the regulatory stuff, and just to push here for a little bit, if you don't mind. Is this kind of like a broad risk statement just in case, like you never know? Should we just be prepared for something more meaningful, whether it's a speed bump or potential landmine between here and specifically the end of the asset cap, which I think everyone views as the key turning point? Yeah. I would describe it just this way. Everyone focuses on the asset cap, I understand all the reasons for that for sure. I think just what's important to us is that we want to make sure that there's complete transparency, which we believe we have if you read our 10-Q. Also we want to make sure that you're just thinking about the broad set of things that we're dealing with. The reality is the asset cap embedded in the Fed consent order is one very important order, we still have other consent orders with other agencies which are still extraordinarily important. We have other inquiries that are in progress that are described in there. I just think it's important that we're completely transparent. It's nothing different than what we've been saying. When you talk about speed bump versus landmines, hopefully we all work to make sure that we minimize the likelihood of a landmine. As I said before, there's the interconnectedness and just the pure amount of things that we have to do are complex. We're judged on practices that were in place years ago, as well as practices that are in place today, and we're judged based upon the overall progress based upon the initial due dates of some of these things. Nothing changes my perspective about net are we moving forward. I absolutely believe we are. We're able to see all the internal metrics, every interim date, and things like that which the outsiders can't see. We choose our words very carefully on things like that. I just want to make sure that people understand that we have these things that are out there and don't want you to be surprised if something happens. It doesn't change our point of view of what the opportunity is and how confident we are about being able to close these things. As a follow-up, I know you can't tell us what the conversation kind of content is with the regulators, but can you at least tell us, do you have the point of conversation on the asset cap? We submitted a plan. You accepted it. How long is this going to take? We all just on the outside try to understand what the level of communication is because I think on some fronts there's a lot of communication. Like the OCC, I think, sits in all the banks' offices, so there's a lot of regular communication there. With the Fed and the asset cap, it's kind of like is there any conversation about it, even if you can't tell us specifically? A couple things. First of all, we have, and I think this is not just us, I think this is true of all banks. We have regular conversations with all of our regulators. Absolutely with the OCC, as you say, there are many examiners in our offices on a regular basis. We have an extremely open and interactive relationship with the CFPB, with the Fed, with the FDIC, and all other appropriate regulators, including the SEC, FINRA, overseas regulators, and that is the way we treat the relationships. I have found the Fed to be clear, consistent in their approach to issues that relate to supervision. I think that's just a general comment that I would say. I haven't seen things deviate from that. As I've said, when you look at the consent order, it doesn't say submit a plan and then we'll talk about lifting the asset cap. It describes in there what we have to do. You should just assume that we have a constant level of engagement, that we're really clear on what we have to do, and we're doing the work to get there. Okay. That's helpful color. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Gerard Cassidy of RBC. Your line is open. Thank you. Mike, can you share with us, your credit quality is very strong, similar to many in the industry. Your net charge-off ratio, of course, was an incredibly low 12 basis points. Do you have an idea how long you could sustain such a strong level of net charge-offs, and when it may reach a more normalized level sometime, looking out? Second, your reserves relative to loans, I think were about 170 basis points. When we go back to that day one CECL number that you guys put out in January of 2020, it was about 93 basis points. That difference, you're about the widest of all your peers. Any thoughts on just where the reserve could go as well? Thank you. Thanks, Gerard. A couple things. I think so far, we've all, I think in the industry, been wrong about when credit or how credit will normalize. At some point, I think we all expect that we're going to get back to more normal charge-off rates. Now, having said that, the new normal might be different if people sustain higher liquidity balances throughout time. I think that's something to still play out. I think at this point, as Charlie highlighted in his script, people still have high liquidity balances. We're seeing high payoff rates in credit cards and other loans. There's no reason to think that we shouldn't continue to have strong credit performance in the near term. It may not be 12 basis points, but it should still be historically quite strong, at least in the near term, and we'll see how it starts to normalize. Let me add one thing on that. I just think when we think about long-term earnings power of the company, and we talk about our ability to get to sustainable return numbers, we assume that the charge-off number will go up from there. We agree it's extremely low, that it won't stay here. Just as you think about when we think about our returns, we make adjustments for that. If they do start to rise next year, it'll be hopefully in our assumptions. If not, we'll get there sooner maybe, but we'll explain why. Yeah. As it relates to the coverage ratio today, as we've said for the last couple of quarters, we continue to be reserved for a whole number of different scenarios. It hopefully will prove out to be very conservative relative to what plays out over the coming quarters. If we continue to see trends continue, we'll have more releases as we go. I think whether you get back to day one CECL levels or not, I think is a really almost impossible question to answer. Given it's going to be a function of all the variables you now have to consider, and what your outlook is, what the different risks are at that time. If you go back to first quarter of 2020, I think we had, what, 3.5% unemployment at that point. I think pre-COVID, it was a very kind of utopian environment, I think, from an economic perspective. Will we get back to exactly that outlook? Hard to say, but I think we continue to think if things play out, we'll have more releases, and that number will go down. Very good. As a follow-up, can you give us an update in the middle market investment banking initiatives? How successful have you guys been in penetrating your existing customer base? We've highlighted, Gerard, we think that's a really big opportunity over a long period of time. It doesn't happen in a quarter or two. It takes some time to really make sure that we've got those relationships built out in the way we want. We really started to put some extra focus on it in a very disciplined way late last year. I'd say we're still early. I think we're seeing some encouraging green shoots, where we've had some opportunities that we've won over the last few months or couple quarters that we might not have been in a position to have before that. It'll take some time to play out, but we do think the opportunity's pretty big. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question comes from Betsy Graseck of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Hi, how are you doing? Hey, Betsy. Two questions. One on the branch network. Just wanted to get your updated thoughts on how you see your footprint today, and is there more of an opportunity to expand or to optimize? That's a good question, Betsy. I think we're actually doing a bunch of work on exactly what that looks like because we have been very focused on. net reductions given the fact that we were behind some others. The team has done great work in terms of identifying, we will describe them as we had a significant number of very obvious consolidation opportunities. They are really not closures. They are really consolidation where we have the appropriate local coverage. I think the work that we are doing is to really think through, at this point, where we have significant share, where we have less share, but we have enough concentration, what our footprint looks like in some of those places to figure out how we can actually reorient the existing number of branches that we have over a period of time. I think the reality is we will continue to optimize because as time goes on, we will continue to need less. We are focused on not leaving communities that need our help without solutions. We're going to certainly wind up with smaller footprints in a lot of the places because branch usage is changing. We will use that as an opportunity to figure out how to redeploy some of those resources as well. Okay. I have the same question on your wealth platform. I know you recently brought in Barry to run that, and just want to understand the strategy there if you don't mind. Sure. I think we've got the strategy. It falls into kind of four distinct buckets. Number 1 is we have our, think of it as our independent broker channel, where it's the old A.G. Edwards and businesses like that, Wheat First, that came together to form that network. Financial advisors that work extremely closely with our bank branches and believe that's still a relatively untapped opportunity for us. We also have a platform where brokers can actually go in. When I say independent, that was a wrong phrase in the beginning. Those are people who are employees. We have a platform where people can actually go independent and continue to do the business through us. We have our online business, WellsTrade. We've got those distinct different points of distribution, and we're focused equally on maximizing the value that existed in all of those. Historically, I think we ran it much more as just one big opportunity. I think we feel like we have under-invested in the online piece and the independent piece for sure. The bank branch piece is something which we think is just, as I said, just a very meaningful opportunity given the amount of affluent customers that we have in our branch footprint. Thanks. Thanks, Betsy Graseck. Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one and record your name. Our next question comes from Vivek Juneja of JP Morgan. Your line is open. Hi, Charlie. Go back to the regulatory consent orders. I want to get a sense from you. Given the setback we had this quarter with the additional consent order, you've obviously spent a lot on these. You've hired, you've brought in a lot of folks already since you've been there over the last two years, a lot of consultants, a lot of in-house people. What do you need to do differently, especially you as a management team, to not have more of those setbacks and to have it go in the direction you were hoping it would go? Yeah. I would say, Vivek, there's nothing new that we have to do as far as reaching an endpoint. If you said pre-consent order or post-consent order, does it change what we have to do to build out the right capabilities with the right controls? In this case, in mortgage, the answer is absolutely not. Again, whether or not it's being done fast enough in the regulators' minds relative to how long some of these things have been going on which predate many of us, that's the context which they need to look at this in because that's who they regulate and how they have regulated. Again, I think for us, and I'm not minimizing a consent order. A consent order is a very big deal, but the work that's embedded in there, the end state is the same end state that we would have contemplated building ourselves. There's a lot more formality that's part of the process now. The OCC will be more deeply involved in the series of the checkpoints and things like that. There certainly is some more work that comes out of an exercise like that, but the end state is the same. When you say several years, Charlie, should we be thinking of that in terms of, is it a three-year time frame? Is it a five-year time frame? Just because you're right, we've all been dealing with this before you got there, so it has already been five plus years. Any sense of direction there? I think, listen, in the perfect world, we'd lay out all of our plans for everyone, but we're obviously not in a position to do that. I think what I would just encourage you to do is look at the things that we've closed. Hopefully you'll continue to see progress as we look forward, and you'll be able to draw judgments based upon that. Relative to what it means for our business, as I said, we still have a fair amount of flexibility in order for us to grow fee-based businesses and grow businesses that require balance sheet usage on the asset side. I think I can't give you any more specificity other than we don't want to mislead people. It's not as if we're not thinking about the future. Again, Gerard Cassidy, try and be very careful not to weigh too much on one side or the other. We've got a lot of people here that serve customers every day. Every single person isn't working on a consent order. Many are. We've got a huge amount of resources that are dedicated to it. As you see, we're building products in the card business. We're building products in our retail services business. We're doing the same across the digital platforms across the company. As we execute on these items, you build the confidence of the regulators. It's not as if you have to wait until everything is completely done to be able to continue to move forward, not just with your confidence, but with their confidence as well. Hopefully, in terms of the progress that we believe we're making, that's what we're seeing. You'll see us put all the resources towards these things to minimize the time frame, but get them done properly at the same time that we're moving the business forward. Thanks, uncertain. At this time, we have no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to management. Great. Well, listen, thank you all for the time today. We appreciate it, and we're all here to answer any follow-up questions you have. Take care. Thank you for your participation on today's conference call. At this time, all parties may disconnect.