Derek Neldner: Yes. Thank you. Good question. I mean I’ll tackle that a few ways. I think I would be careful a little bit looking at the last few years because as we’ve discussed on a few of the prior calls, given the volatility we saw coming through the pandemic and post, we saw more intra-year movement in our compensation accrual, where in 2021, we had a sort of larger accruals through the first part of the year, and we were able to scale that back in the second half. And then last year, with a number of the environmental surprises and challenges we saw in the second half, it was the opposite. So, we ended up having to increase our accruals through the second half. So the last two years, I would say the compensation was less linear throughout the year as we would normally like, and we are very focused on being more consistent or linear, if you will, on how we’re accruing throughout the year.
So, I would just maybe caution away from looking at that too much over the last few years. I think in terms of our expense profile overall, I think, first, we’re actually there’s more to do, but we’re reasonably pleased with our expenses in the second quarter where you saw revenue was up 5%. Our expenses were up 6%. So, we did have negative operating leverage but a number of initiatives that we’ve been implementing have kept NIE to a reasonable level, taking into account some of the strategic technology investments, cash management investments, other things we’re doing. When you look at the second half of the year, given the revenue environment was quite weak for capital markets in H2 last year, we do expect very strong positive operating leverage in the second half.
So I think we will continue to execute on some of our cost programs. But in a stronger revenue environment than last year, which we expect, that should contribute to a very positive operating leverage in the second half.
Dave McKay: I think we have time for one more question.
Operator: Thank you. And the last question will be from Mike Rizvanovic from RBW (sic) Research. Please go ahead.
Mike Rizvanovic: This one is probably best for Neil. I just wanted to go into the deposit growth since pre-pandemic in Canada in a bit more detail. So one thing that I think is a bit surprising is Royal underperformed the peer group a little bit on the demand and notice side? And then on the fixed term side, you’ve had a lot better growth than anyone else. So what’s driven that underperformance in the demand and notice category, in your view?
Neil McLaughlin: We’ve actually been growing our checking market share. So our core checking business in the Canadian retail bank is actually up over the last year. And I would say, in the last while, if we look on a combined demand and term basis, the market share is also up. So I think we do have a lot of confidence just about the momentum we see in consumer deposits. So that would be the take there. And I think part of that is also related to the new client acquisition we spoke of. I had mentioned earlier, we’ve had very aggressive targets in terms of new clients. And after the pause we put in place during the pandemic. We’re back out playing offense, investing with that biz dev expense to drive that new client acquisition, and it’s pulling well. So, we feel quite bullish on consumer deposits.
