The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE:BK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Emily Portney: Just a few things to add. So as Robin alluded to in his prepared remarks, I mean, we are winning larger and higher value yields, but we’re also very focused on the profitability of the mandate and the relationship overall. And so that also means we’re being more selective even in the RFPs that we participate in. Likewise we’re leaning into higher growth areas like and ETFs. 20% off of the wins that we have seen were — had a data component and data is very critical, especially in the forward trajectory to our clients. And I would say our pipeline is very strong. And the other thing, of course, as Robin mentioned, is we are very, very focused on driving the cost down across the Security Services segment, inclusive of asset servicing for those businesses, which remain pretty manually intensive. So think transfer agency, think fund accounting. So there’s opportunity there for sure.

Operator: Our next question comes from Steven Chubak.

Steven Chubak: So Emily, I’m going to ask the question I had asked you 12 months ago, roughly on the earnings call about Basel IV. We still don’t have a proposal, but we know something is coming in early ’23. And given his speech had hinted at capital requirements moving higher for the G-SIB cohort, recognizing there is still no proposal. But I was hoping you could just speak to how you’re scenario planning for the finalization of Basel III, whether that has any influence on the potential cadence of future buybacks or just capital management more broadly, how you see that potentially evolving?

Emily Portney: So look, we’re obviously very involved with regulators in the industry around the conversations around Basel IV. It’s true. Of course, the introduction of operating or operational risk RWA into the standardized approach would, by itself, drive an increase in our standardized RWAs. When we crunch the numbers, our talks suggest something a bit less than probably what you’ve seen for the G-SIB’s aggregate in the QIS. And there are also — we do also expect there are going to be some offset for us. So lower credit risk RWAs and also we’ll probably benefit modestly from a more risk sensitive market to more risk sensitive market framework. So they’ll be puts and takes. We’ll have to wait really until the regulators release their proposed version.

And we already — we do obviously — for us, we’re always looking at RWA optimization. You can actually see that RWAs came down in the quarter, again, from optimization that we have been ongoing — that’s ongoing and we’ve been doing. And I would just remind you, too, that the industry will have time to leg into whatever the results end up being.

Steven Chubak: And just for my follow up on expenses. I was hoping you can help us reconcile what the expense guidance for ’23 implies for both the margin and dollars of expense as it relates to the Security Services segment specifically, it feels like that’s the area where there’s still some of the most low hanging fruit, if you will, to drive efficiency gains. And just given the planned efficiency actions, how should we think about that second derivative for expense growth? Should we expect that to steadily improve over the course of the year, where you implement the plan, you start to realize some of the benefits and the exit rate on expenses, therefore, in ’23 should reflect a lower level of expense growth relative to the other quarters.

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