Tayfun Tuzun: It’s in line with what we see overall in U.S. banking and obviously, we now have the opportunity to work more closely with our new colleagues at Bank of the West and maybe Ernie can comment on what she sees in terms of the deposit outlook for the company.
Erminia Johannson: Yes. On the U.S. side, that was specific to your question, what we’re seeing, obviously, is now the start of some of the surge deposits leaving the everyday banking kind of check against savings. So that is a norm, and you’re seeing migration to higher rates. But if I step back and say what we’re thinking about for the U.S. in terms of our entire deposit taking, you have that core stability that we’ve always had in our existing BMO franchise. That deposit plus digital, very steady, sticky deposits, long-term relationships with mass affluent customers. Now we’re adding, as we numerous times today are Bank of the West, and that really doubles our footprint. Now we’re 1,000 branches across 32 states, where we’re going to be consistently driving stable growth with the primary customer relationships, and that’s key to us.
Then on top of that, if you know and I referenced this before, we have a digital deposit taking capability that’s third part of our strategy. And that runs across the entire 50 states. And that is something that drives us growth in terms of out of footprint acceleration and really something that provides us as an overall bank with a very sustainable model, great capacity to ebb and flow in terms of our deposit growth and I think a competitive advantage for us. So that’s what we’re going to be leveraging going forward. And as we look across the next few months, you’re going to see us grow further in our deposit taking from our digital channels.
Operator: The next question is from Gabriel Dechaine from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Gabriel Dechaine: Good morning. I want to follow up on that one, actually, both on loans and deposits of the Bank of the West, the lower numbers versus what you had there at announcement, is that decline factored at all in the reduced accretion expectation? Because it doesn’t sound like it sounds like that’s mostly related to the timing of expense synergy.
Tayfun Tuzun: Yes. The current balance sheet and their current business outlook is included in our update.
Gabriel Dechaine: So, if deposit balances, declines accelerate, we could potentially revisit this issue.
Tayfun Tuzun: Well, you always revisit when things change in terms of how you update your financial outlook. But at this point, with what we know, this is our current expectation.
Gabriel Dechaine: Okay. I asked you about credit risk answers on the Q4 call. I want to ask you about that again, 35 basis point benefit. Thanks for quantifying that, by the way. That equates to about over $1 billion of equity or core Tier 1 capital. These things boost your capital ratios, obviously, but what’s the cost? I mean, if I put your ROE against $2 billion of capital, we’re looking at around $150 million of earnings. You said it’s compares favourably to that. So, it’s probably a lower figure, but maybe you can help clarify.
Tayfun Tuzun: These are very efficient transactions. And as you know, we’ve been executing these for the past four, five years. So, we have quite an experience. We estimate the per annum cost of these transactions over lifetime, somewhere between 8% and 9%. So, these are very good transactions to optimize our returns for our shareholders and continue to support growth on our balance sheet. This is part of how we manage ourselves. They have always been part of that. Piyush, I don’t know if you want to make comments on your end.
