So near term customer help, near term employee effectiveness, near term coding enhancements, et cetera, et cetera. But one thing we mentioned is we have invested heavily to have the data in a tech stack ready to go and 3-point-whatever billion dollars and 1 billion interactions this quarter in digital show that the people are ready to use the services we provide them.
Mike Mayo: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Steven Chubak: Hey, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Alastair.
Brian Moynihan: Good morning.
Steven Chubak: So I wanted to start off with a question on expense. You cited headcount actions, it should provide relief in 4Q and positive flowthrough into next year. I was hoping you could either help size the benefit from expense actions or just frame how we should be thinking about expense growth as we look out to next year.
Alastair Borthwick: Well, I think what we’ve tried to do this year, Steve, is communicate pretty clearly what our plan was. As Brian said, we overachieved last year on hiring. So we started the year with 218,000 and expense of $16.2 billion. And we’ve really been working on the trajectory over the course of this year. So this point of getting the headcount and to a place where we’re comfortable, $16.2 billion turns into $16 billion, turns into $15.8 billion, we’re now determined to deliver on the $15.6 billion, and I think that’s going to set up really well. So our plan is to finalize our strategic planning over the course of the next few weeks, and I think we’ll give you more guidance next quarter.
Steven Chubak: Great. And just two clarifying questions or cleanup questions on my end. On the NII remarks, you talked about deposits. I was hoping you could help frame, Alastair, what are the assumptions you’re making in terms of reinvestment yields and loan growth that are underpinning that higher NII exit rate for next year?
Alastair Borthwick: Yeah. So I’d say reinvestment, just assume the forward curve. And with respect to loan growth, I’d use low single digits, consistent with a slow growth economy.
Steven Chubak: Okay. And just one quick one here on the tax advantage investments. I just wanted to confirm, given the long duration, the 4x increase in capital, are you still planning to fund tax advantage investments on the platform before the rules are finalized? Or are you going to take a wait-and-see approach?
Alastair Borthwick: Well, I mean this remains something that’s important for our clients. We’ve yet to see a final rule. So we’ll be supporting transactions. But obviously, as Brian said, it is informing us with respect to pricing, and it’s informing us with respect to appetite. But until there’s a change, we’ll continue to support the clients in that regard.
Steven Chubak: Understood. Thanks so much for taking my questions.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Matt O’Connor with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Matt O’Connor: Hi, good morning. First, just to clarify, what’s driving the drop in net interest income from 3Q to 4Q? Is that core net interest income? Or is that on the market side?
Alastair Borthwick: Well, you’re talking about the fact that we think that we’re going to be around $14-or-so billion in Q4. I’d say, first one is you’ve got a little bit of deposit pricing lag there. So we got to keep thinking about that. Second is we’re sort of baking into it some continued normalization of Consumer balances. So that’s just continuing to drift slowly lower. I think third, if we had hoped for loan growth in Q3, we just didn’t see that. So that’s going to flow through with lower loan growth balances in Q4. And then the only final thing I’d just say is the Global Markets NII may not repeat in quite the same way. Some of that depends on client behavior. And they benefited this particular quarter by just long-term rates going up so significantly and not helping the carry side.
So it’s all those things and probably a little bit of rate hike probability or timing delayed, but it’s all those sorts of things. It hasn’t — what importantly hasn’t changed is it hasn’t changed from our expectation a quarter ago in any way.
Matt O’Connor: Yeah. Okay. That’s helpful. And then just conceptually, as we think about your interest income guidance for next year, what if we get higher for longer rates, there’s no cuts. Is that good or bad versus the guidance that you gave earlier? Obviously, you’ve got puts and takes to some reinvestment on the asset side. But again, coming back to the deposit pricing issue, I think there’s a view that higher for longer eventually drives up the Consumer rates. So what would be the net of those two in the higher for longer? Thank you.
Alastair Borthwick: Well, higher for longer is going to be better. So you’re right, we’ve got the forward curve and our expectations, if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, we’d expect NII would be higher.
Matt O’Connor: And that’s simply the assets repricing more of the deposits or are you still thinking there’s minimal consumer deposit or pricing even in the higher for longer?
Alastair Borthwick: It will be both. I mean there’ll be the repricing for sure. And in addition, we’d expect to capture a little bit of margin from any short-term rate hike.
Matt O’Connor: Okay. I understand. Thank you.
