The Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Paul Holden: Understand. That’s helpful. Thank you. A question on deposits, then we saw a drawdown in average deposit balances in the U.S., both Retail and Business. I was wondering if you can give us sort of any characterization on how you view current deposits between, let’s say, excess savings and core deposits? And I guess what I am really trying to get at is, where do we think the deposits stabilize maybe in terms of when and what level, any insight you could provide there would be, I think, helpful?

Leo Salom: Well, I will take that one. Thanks for the question. The — I think what we are seeing as a result of the increase in rates is just building rate sensitivity. I think earlier, over the past two quarters, we were seeing a little bit of the excess savings from the pandemic relief efforts being drawn down or consumed. I think what you are seeing now is just the natural rate sensitivity in terms of where rates are and you are more rate-sensitive clients. So think in the consumer side, your mass affluent high net worth clients, and on the commercial side, you are more institutional clients looking for either more attractive higher priced deposit solutions, or in some cases, off-balance sheet investment alternatives and so you are seeing that play out.

And I would expect as long as rates continue to be where they are and/or continue to increase, I think, you will see some degree of rate sensitivity. I will point you though to just the composition of the U.S. that we are a very liquid institution. Our excess deposit position is quite strong and then the composition having a very strong core checking account base in our Retail and Commercial businesses should make us more resilient over the cycle. So from my standpoint, I think we have got a very strong franchise and we continue to acquire clients at a very healthy clip. Just to give you one final stat this quarter, just on a year-on-year basis, core checking account volumes were up 13%. So we are continuing to see strong momentum there and I would expect us to be able to continue to grow the franchise.

Paul Holden: Okay. That’s helpful. And then a follow-up to that, Leo, and this will be my last question. Just in terms of that movement out of deposits and into Wealth products or as you call the off-balance sheet. Is this an opportunity to grow that wealth franchise in the U.S., I think, was one of your strategic priorities when you moved down there, are you seeing increasing opportunity?

Leo Salom: Well, I will start and I will certainly ask Ray to chime in. But growing the Wealth franchise in the U.S. is absolutely one of the key priorities. And I would describe that on a number of different fronts. We have got the mass affluent opportunity in the stores themselves. And Ray can talk a little bit more about the fact that we are growing our financial advisers in the stores. There’s the continued growth of the high net worth franchise aligned with our Retail business and increasingly we are seeing some really nice success in terms of the collaboration that’s taking place between our Wealth and our Commercial Banking teams. In fact, we did see some outflows in the commercial banking deposit front. What I didn’t mention to you is that, $1.3 billion over the last two quarters of that outflow ended up in our Wealth franchise.

So we are systematically trying to retain that client wallet inside the franchise and that will be a big area of focus for us going forward. Ray, I don’t know if there’s anything you would like to add.

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