The Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Phil Thomas: Yes, I’ll start. I’m happy to take that. It’s Phil here. Thanks for the question. I go back to some of the comments I made in my prepared remarks and my comments from a few minutes ago. While TDSRs have been increasing just because of the cost of the mortgage, we’re not seeing any sort of reciprocal stress. And as I said, most of our customers still are maintaining high levels of liquidity in their portfolio, in their deposit accounts. So for example, our average customer is up 13% versus pre-pandemic in terms of the level of liquidity. FICO scores continue to improve up to 799 basis points, 800 plus, 840 with customers with HELOC. And so what we’ve seen actually is positive credit migration over the last quarter or so.

And so as we’re looking at performing loans and we look at our forward-looking indicators, there’s some built in pessimistic scenarios for macroeconomic. But what we’re seeing more importantly is the credit change in quality is actually a tailwind for us from a performing loan perspective. And I think that’s important to note as you’re looking forward. So I would be less focused on TDSRs, and I’d be more focused on health of the consumer, quality of the portfolio, sort of the shift in the dynamic within the macroeconomic that we’re seeing today, which is positive.

Mario Mendonca : Okay. Final question then. Did the bank talk about how you managed to get securities gains in the quarter in a rising rate environment? I was a little surprised because over the last few quarters, we haven’t seen any. And then this quarter, a nice meaty number. Could you help me think through that?

Raj Viswanathan: Sure, Mario. As you know, investment gains will be lumpy, right, in any quarter and in any year. The first three quarters of this year, I think we had $1 million, if I remember my numbers right. We didn’t have any opportunities, but we continued to roll those because these are high-quality liquid assets. We rolled it for liquidity purposes. And depending on when we invest and when we think it has reached its economic value to the maximum, and we don’t think that it’s going to raise in value, so to speak, because of interest rate changes, we monetize it. We just had the opportunity to do it in some of the securities — debt securities. This quarter, that’s what you’re seeing. Like I said, it will be lumpy. It all depends on the time at which we put on these securities and how much value it does gain based on rising rates, falling rates, all these are factors. It’s a large portfolio.

Operator: Our following question is from Scott Chan from Canaccord Genuity.

Scott Chan : I’ll kind of switch to capital for Global Banking. More specifically on the Business Banking side, revenues been up a lot year-over-year, driven by corporate loans, both on a quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year basis. So my question is like what’s driving that robust growth in this segment, if you could provide perhaps a little bit of an outlook? And if that did contribute to the higher personnel costs in the quarter?

Brian Porter : Great. Thanks for the question, Scott. So there’s a few things in that question. First thing I’d say is, we’re very focused on our existing clients and adding in new clients. And that’s been core to that loan growth that you’re seeing in the business. A big part of that loan growth is happening in the U.S. where we’re focused on the Americas strategy. And I think that’s important to note because we’ve talked about that several times. Q3 was a very quiet DCM quarter. Not a lot of activity happening. So we saw a lot of clients come into banks for its facilities. We’re going to see that monetize as we move into 2023. Excuse me, I’ve got a bit of a hoarse throat. So we’re quite confident we’re being there for our clients.