Operator: The next question is from Lemar Persaud from Cormark Securities.
Lemar Persaud: And for my question here, maybe I’ll turn to Raj on all bank expenses. Would it be fair to suggest that this quarter would be in the high watermark for expense growth? And what I’m referring to is expense growth on a year-over-year basis. And then if that’s true, where you see expense growth ending for the full year?
Raj Viswanathan: Thanks, Lamar, for the question. I think expenses is going to be one of the most important topics this year. And we all know inflation, we all know some of the personnel costs that has gone up when we think about year-over-year, all the base salary increases and so on, which has been widely publicized. So it’s definitely going to have an impact. Our bank’s philosophy, as many of you know, is always based on 2 principles of how we manage expenses. One, we prioritize. We want to be sure we’re continuing to invest in the business. It doesn’t matter what the environment is. And second comment also relates and is probably indifferent to the environment is we’ll always look to manage our expenses in line with how we see our revenue evolving, not quarter-by-quarter, but as we think about it over a certain period.
So that doesn’t change and that will not change. But you’re right, I think the year-over-year comps get a little better as we go through the rest of the year compared to what it has been in the beginning of last year because the inflation started really kicking in and the started growing only in the second half of last year. But as I said in my prepared remarks to Lamar, we’ll be even more focused on expenses as we think through the rest of 2023, lots of moving parts, inflation. We’ve invested a lot in our businesses, and we want to be sure we’re in a position to invest as we start formalizing our strategy for growth going forward and expense cannot be a constraint over there. We want to have the right resources. We want to have the right technology, and we want to be positioned right so we can continue to grow these businesses.
But it should get better when you think about year-over-year for the rest of the year.
Lemar Persaud: Okay. And just to leave it with the comment, if you guys could provide some guidance on that front, given the amount of changes we’re kind of thinking about here, that would be very helpful.
Raj Viswanathan: Sure, Lamar. I think as we’ve said in the November call relating to ’23, we thought expenses will not be the 2% that we saw ’22 versus 2021. We knew it will be elevated. I think achieving an expense growth of 4%, excluding FX, even for this quarter, I would say it’s quite a good achievement for this bank. FX is not something that we can forecast. But if we can settle down around the mid-single-digit range, call it 4%, 5%, we’d be quite pleased for the whole year.
Operator: The next question is from Scott Chan, Canaccord Genuity.
Scott Chan: More follow-up on your comment on managing RWA growth and maybe pertaining to mortgages and auto. Clearly, mortgages are struggling looking at originations in front of Vancouver quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis. So just kind of curious on what you’re kind of seeing.
