Bank of New York Mellon Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 12, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • BNY reported Q2 EPS of $1.52, up 16% year-over-year (9% ex-notables), with revenue of $4.6 billion (+2%), a pretax margin of 33% and ROTCE of 25% (24% ex-notables).
  • Expenses fell 1% year-over-year while revenue rose 2%, delivering positive operating leverage driven by efficiency savings and targeted technology and talent investments.
  • Net interest income declined 6% year-over-year, and management reiterated its full-year outlook of NII down ~10%, citing seasonal deposit mix shifts and a cautious rate outlook.
  • The bank secured major mandates, including a global asset manager mandate spanning custody to digital fund services and a strategic collaboration with AIA and BlackRock on an integrated investment platform.
  • BNY’s Wove wealth platform was named a top-3 global financial innovation, signed 12 new clients this quarter, and is on track for $30–$40 million of realized revenue in 2024.
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Earnings Conference Call
Bank of New York Mellon Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the 2024 second quarter earnings conference call hosted by BNY. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference call and webcast will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material. You may not record or rebroadcast these materials without BNY's consent. I will now turn the call over to Marius Merz, BNY Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Marius Merz
Head of Investor Relations at BNY

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm here with Robin Vince, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dermot McDonogh, our Chief Financial Officer. As always, we will reference our financial highlights presentation, which can be found on the investor relations page of our website at bny.com. I'll note that our remarks will contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Information about these statements and non-GAAP measures are available in the earnings press release, financial supplement, and financial highlights presentation, all available on the investor relations page of our website. Forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today, July 12, 2024, and will not be updated. With that, I will turn it over to Robin.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thanks, Marius. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before Dermot reviews the financials in greater detail, I'd like to start with a few remarks about our progress in the quarter. In short, we delivered another quarter of improved financial performance, with positive operating leverage on the back of solid fee growth and continued expense discipline. We continued to make tangible progress on our path to be more for our clients, to run our company better, and to power our culture. Last month, we celebrated our company's 204th anniversary with our people and many of our clients. Even with this rich history of operating across four centuries, I believe that our best days remain ahead of us.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

That bank, with around $500,000 of capital in 1784, today oversees roughly $50 trillion in assets and powers platforms across payments, securities, settlement, wealth, investments, collateral, trading, and more for clients in over 100 markets around the world. As the world changes and global financial markets evolve, so do we. Earlier this year, in January, you heard us lay out our strategy, which maps out what we need to get done and how we need to do it. Last month, we introduced changes to our logo and simplified and modernized our company brand to BNY to improve the market's familiarity with who we are and what we do. This rebranding better aligns the perception of our company to the substance of what we're doing to unlock our full potential as one BNY. Now, referring to page two of the financial highlights presentation.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

BNY delivered solid EPS growth, as well as pre-tax margin and ROTCE expansion, once again, on the back of positive operating leverage in the second quarter. Reported earnings per share of $1.52 were up 16% year-over-year, and excluding notable items, earnings per share of $1.51 were up 9%. Total revenue of $4.6 billion was up 2% year-over-year. This included 5% growth in investment services fees, led by continued strength in clearance and collateral management, asset servicing, and treasury services, as well as 16% growth in foreign exchange revenue. Net interest income decreased by 6%. Expenses of $3.1 billion, down 1% year-over-year.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Including notable items, expenses were up 1%, reflecting further investments in our people and technology, while we also continued to realize greater efficiencies. Margin was 33%. In what is seasonally our strongest quarter, we reported a return on tangible common equity of 25%, 24% excluding notable items. These financial results were against the backdrop of a relatively constructive operating environment, the market calling for a gradual and shallow easing of policy rates, inflation pressures easing, and investor confidence growing. On average, equity market values increased, while fixed-income markets finished slightly lower compared to the first quarter.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Reserve released the results of its annual bank stress test, which once again showcased our resilient business model and our strength to support clients through extreme stress scenarios. The test confirmed that our preliminary stress capital buffer requirement remains at the regulatory floor of 2.5%, and we increased our quarterly common dividend by 12% to $0.47 per share, starting this quarter. In May, the transition to T+1 settlement in the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican markets represented one of the more significant market structure changes that our industry has seen in a couple of decades. BNY's critical role in the financial system gives us the opportunity to help clients through major shifts like this, further strengthening their trust in us and deepening our relationships with them.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

By running the company better, we are starting to capitalize on BNY's truly powerful combination of Securities Services, Market and Wealth services, and our Investments and Wealth businesses to serve our clients more effectively across the entire financial life cycle. As an example, this past quarter, BNY was awarded a significant mandate by a premier global asset manager with over $100 billion in assets under management. We were selected based on our ability to deliver custody, fund servicing, ETF, and digital fund services, treasury services, and Pershing. Our holistic offering will power their future growth strategy. In another example, AIA, the Pan-Asian Life Insurance Group, announced a new collaboration with BNY and BlackRock as AIA transforms its investment platform.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

AIA has announced that they will implement BNY's specialized investment operations, data management services, and technology with BlackRock's Aladdin to create a connected and scalable ecosystem to support the company's evolving investment activities. We also continue to be pleased with the growing interest in our wealth advisory platform, Wove. Global Finance recently named Wove as one of the top three global financial innovations as part of its annual Innovators Awards for 2024. At Insight, Pershing's annual flagship wealth services conference in June, we announced a suite of new solutions on the platform. Wove Investor, a one-stop client portal, Wove Data, a cloud data platform designed for financial professionals at wealth management firms, and portfolio solutions, a set of enhancements to the platform that will help advisors move more efficiently from researching investment products, aligning them to a client's risk objectives, and adding them to a portfolio.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

We also introduced a new One BNY offering that enables clients to easily access multiple BNY capabilities, including our managed accounts platform, asset allocation and manager selection, investment management products, customized tax solutions, the interoperable Wove platform for advisors, and custody and clearing services from Pershing, for a comprehensive, unified package, leveraging the breadth of BNY to make clients' wealth advisors' lives easy. We have proof points. Example, a fast-growing, full-service regional bank recently selected Pershing to provide custody and clearing services, private wealth business. They are also adopting advisory, Dreyfus Cash Management, direct indexing, and private banking. As we've said many times, our culture and people are a critical part of being more for our clients and running our company better. We are pleased to see that our actions are enabling us to be a top talent destination for recent graduates and experienced leaders alike.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

This summer, we're welcoming our largest ever intern and analyst classes, a total of over 3,500 individuals, chosen from over 150,000 applications. We recently announced several new appointments to our leadership team. Shannon Hobbs, our new Chief People Officer, joined us in June. Leigh-Ann Russell will join us in September as Chief Information Officer and Global Head of Engineering. Jose Minaya will also join us in September, lead BNY's Investments and Wealth. To wrap up, halfway through the year, we're pleased with the progress that we have made and how it is reflected in both improved financial performance to date as well as our building momentum. One of my favorite quotes comes from Alexander Hamilton, our founder, who famously said that he attributed his success not to genius, but to hard work.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

We have been hard at work, and we've laid a solid foundation. Our team is in full execution mode, and we're starting to demonstrate the power of our franchise and of operating as One BNY for our clients and our shareholders. With that, over to you, Dermot.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Thank you, Robin, and good morning, everyone. Picking up on page 3 of the presentation, I'll start with our consolidated financial results for the quarter. Total revenue of $4.6 billion was up 2% year-over-year. Fee revenue was up 4%. This includes 5% growth in investment services fees on the back of higher market values, net new business, and higher client activity. Investment management and performance fees were flat. Firm-wide AUCA of $49.5 trillion were up 6% year-over-year, and assets under management of $2 trillion were up 7% year-over-year, primarily reflecting higher market values. Foreign exchange revenue increased by 16%, driven by higher volumes.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Investment in other revenue was $169 million in the quarter on the back of strong client activity in our fixed income and equity trading business, and net interest income decreased by 6% year-over-year, primarily reflecting changes in balance sheet mix, partially offset by higher interest rates. Expenses were down 1% year-over-year on a reported basis, and up 1% excluding notable items, primarily in the prior year. The increase from higher investments, employee merit increases, and higher revenue-related expenses was partially offset by efficiency savings from running our company better. Notable items in the second quarter of this year primarily included an expense benefit from a reduction in the FDIC's special assessment, which was largely offset by severance expense. There was no provision for credit losses in the quarter.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

As Robin highlighted earlier, we reported earnings per share of $1.52, up 16% year-over-year, a pre-tax margin of 33%, and a return on tangible common equity of 25%. Excluding notable items, earnings per share were $1.51, up 9% year-over-year, pre-tax margin was 33%, and our return on tangible common equity was 24%. Turning to capital and liquidity on page 4. Our tier 1 leverage ratio for the quarter was 5.8%. Average assets increased by 2% sequentially on the back of deposit growth, and tier 1 caps increased by 1% sequentially, primarily reflecting capital generated through earnings, partially offset by capital returns to common shareholders. Our CET1 ratio at the end of the quarter was 11.4%.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

The quarter-over-quarter improvement reflects lower risk-weighted assets coming off the temporary increase in risk-weighted assets at the end of the previous quarter, and CET1 caps increased by 2% sequentially. Over the course of the second quarter, we returned over $900 million of caps to our common shareholders, representing a total payout ratio of 81%. Year-to-date, we returned 107% of earnings to our common shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Turning to liquidity. The consolidated liquidity coverage ratio was 115%, and our consolidated net stable funding ratio was 132%. Next, net interest income and the underlying balance sheet trends on page five. Net interest income of over $1 billion was down 6% year-over-year and down 1% quarter-over-quarter.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

The sequential decrease was primarily driven by changes in balance sheet mix, partially offset by the benefit of reinvesting maturing fixed-rate securities in higher-yielding alternatives. Average deposit balances increased by 2% sequentially. Interest-bearing deposits grew by 3%, and non-interest-bearing deposits declined by 2% in the quarter. Average interest-earning assets were up 2% quarter-over-quarter. Our average investment securities portfolio balances increased by 3%, and our cash and reverse repo balances increased by 1%. Average loan balances were up 4%. Turning to our business segments, starting on page 6. Securities Services reported total revenue of $2.2 billion, flat year-over-year. Total investment services fees were up 3% year-over-year. In asset servicing, investment services fees grew by 4%, primarily reflecting higher market values and net new business.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

We continue to see strong momentum in ETF servicing, with AUCA up over $2 trillion, up more than 50% year-on-year, and the number of funds serviced up over 20% year-on-year. This growth reflects both higher market values as well as client inflows, which included a large ETF mandate in Ireland from a leading global asset manager. In alternatives, fund launches for the quarter continued the recent activity in private markets. Investment services fees for alternatives were up mid-single digits, reflecting growth from both new and existing clients. In Issuer Services, investment services fees were up 1%, reflecting net new business across both corporate trust and depository receipts, partially offset by the normalization of elevated fees associated with corporate actions in depository receipts in the second quarter of last year.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

We're particularly pleased to see the investments and new leaders in our corporate trust platform beginning to bear fruit. Against the backdrop of a significant pickup in CLO issuance in recent months, we've been moving up the ranks and improved our market share as trustee for CLOs by about 4 percentage points over the past 12 months to 20% in the second quarter. In the segment, foreign exchange revenue was up 16% year-over-year, and net interest income was down 11%. Expenses of $1.6 billion were down 1% year-over-year, reflecting efficiency savings, partially offset by higher investments, employee merit increases, and higher revenue-related expenses. Pre-tax income was $688 million, a 7% increase year-over-year, and pre-tax margin expanded to 31%. Next, market and wealth services on page seven.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Market and wealth services reported total revenue of $1.5 billion, up 6% year-over-year. Total investment services fees were up 7% year-over-year. In Pershing, investment services fees were up 2%, reflecting higher market values and client activity, partially offset by the impact of business lost in the prior year. Net new assets were -$23 billion for the quarter, reflecting the ongoing deconversion of the before mentioned lost business. Excluding the deconversion, we saw approximately 2% annualized net new asset growth in the second quarter, and we renewed a multi-year agreement with Osaic, one of the nation's largest providers of wealth management solutions. Pershing has supported Osaic since its founding in 1988, and we are proud to help the company drive its growth strategy for years to come. Client demand for Wove continues to be strong.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

In the quarter, we signed 12 additional client agreements. The pipeline continues to grow, and we are on track to meet our goal of $30 million-$40 million realized revenue in 2024. In clearance and collateral management, investment services fees were up 15%, primarily reflecting higher collateral management fees and higher clearance volumes. U.S. securities clearance and settlement volumes have remained strong throughout the quarter, supported by a growing market and active trading, and we are excited about the opportunity to do even more for clients. Having realigned Pershing's institutional solutions business to clearance and collateral management, we can offer clients a choice across a continuum of clearance, settlement, and financing solutions for those that self-clear, as well as those seeking capital and operational efficiency through outsourcing. This allows us to not only deepen our relationships with clients, but also drive continued revenue growth.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

In treasury services, investment services fees increased by 10%, primarily reflecting net new business and higher client activity. Net interest income for the segment overall was down 1% year-over-year. Expenses of $833 million were up 5% year-over-year, reflecting higher investments, employee merit increases, and higher revenue-related expenses, partially offset by efficiency savings. Pre-tax income was up 8% year-over-year at $704 million, representing a 46% pre-tax margin. Moving on to Investment and Wealth management on page 8. Investment and Wealth Management reported total revenue of $821 million, up 1% year-over-year. In our investment management business, revenue was down 1%, reflecting the mix of AUM flows and lower equity investment income and seed capital gains, partially offset by higher market values.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

In wealth management, revenue increased by 3%, reflecting higher market values, partially offset by changes in product mix. Expenses of $668 million were down 2% year-over-year, primarily reflecting our work to drive efficiency savings and lower revenue-related expenses, partially offset by employee merit increases and higher investments. Pre-tax income was $149 million, up 15% year-over-year, representing a pre-tax margin of 18%. As I mentioned earlier, assets under management of $2 trillion increased by 7% year-over-year. In the quarter, while we saw $2 billion of net inflows into long-term active strategies with continued strength in fixed income and LDI, partially offset by net outflows in active equity and multi-asset strategies, we saw $4 billion of net outflows from index strategies and $7 billion of net outflows from short-term strategies.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Wealth management client assets of $308 billion increased by 8% year-over-year, reflecting higher market values and cumulative net inflows. Page 9 shows the results of the other segment. I'll close with a couple of comments on our outlook for the full year 2024. Starting with NII, I'm pleased to report that the first half of the year came in slightly better than we had expected, as we saw the decline in non-interest-bearing deposits decelerate, and we continued to grow interest-bearing deposits. While we are cautiously optimistic, we remain humble as we head into the seasonally low summer months, and for now, we will therefore keep our NII outlook for the full year 2024 unchanged, down 10% year-over-year. Regarding expenses, our goal remains to keep expenses, excluding notable items for the full year 2024, roughly flat.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

As Robin put it earlier, BNY is in execution mode, and we're embracing the hard work ahead of us. We continue to expect our effective tax rate for the full year 2024 to be between 23% and 24%. And lastly, we continue to expect to return 100% or more of 2024 earnings to our shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Our board of directors declared our 12% increased common dividend for the third quarter, and we plan to continue repurchasing common shares under our existing share repurchase program. As always, we are calibrating the pace of our buybacks, considering various factors such as our capital management targets, the macroeconomic and interest rate environment, as well as the size of our balance sheet.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

To wrap up, we enter the second half of the year on the back of solid fee growth, a better-than-expected NII performance to date, and continued expense discipline, which gives us incremental confidence in our ability to drive positive operating leverage in 2024. With that, operator, can you please open the line for Q&A?

Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is coming from Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Ken Usdin
Ken Usdin
Managing Director, Equity Research at Jefferies

Thank you. Good morning.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Good morning, Ken.

Ken Usdin
Ken Usdin
Managing Director, Equity Research at Jefferies

Good morning. Just like to ask Dermot about that NII guidance for the second half. Can you just walk us through what the moving pieces would be, including the seasonality that you mentioned, and any other things that might have been over-earning in the NII in the first quarter so that you would seemingly in your maintained guide still expect a meaningful ramp down in NII, which I don't think is what seems to be the base case, given how well the balance sheet has held up so far, as you pointed out, relative to your expectations. Thanks.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Thanks for the question, Ken. I guess the best way to answer the question is a little bit to, in some ways, look back at last year, where, you know, Q1, Q2, typically strong quarters for us. Q3, typically a seasonally lower quarter, summer months, clients, you know, taking their foot off the gas in terms of activity, and then we pick back up again in Q4. Now, as you've seen from this quarter's numbers and the first half overall, we're very pleased with the performance. We've outperformed our expectations for the first half, and that's in large part due to underlying activity within our core businesses. And in my remarks, I particularly called out corporate trust, where we saw, like, elevated activity in the CLO space, which in turn drives deposits.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So when our core businesses are doing well, which they've all performed well, that has a knock-on impact in the number of deposits that we have, and so we outperformed our expectations in the first half. Notwithstanding that, when I look out at the rest of the year, and when we gave the guidance of down 10% in January, the market at that time was roughly calling for six rate cuts. Now we're in the middle of the summer. We had a slowdown in inflation print yesterday. Let's see how Jay speaks on Monday and how he guides out of Jackson Hole and into a September potential rate cut.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

But we kind of take all of those levers, and we just kind of say, "For now, there's no point in me changing guidance to change guidance again in September or October at the next call." So we're cautiously optimistic. I think I used the word last year in March, "askew." So we're playing for the best outcome, but we do expect Q3 to be somewhat seasonally quieter, and that's why we didn't change our guidance.

Ken Usdin
Ken Usdin
Managing Director, Equity Research at Jefferies

Okay. And then just can you, that's that follow-up just on the size of the deposit. So just, you're just expecting the size of the deposit base to decline, or is it the mix? Or just trying to understand, like, what pieces of it do, you know, would revert given that seasonality.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So when I think about deposits, I kind of think there are three components to it. One is interest-bearing deposits, where we outperformed plan. NIBs, where we outperformed plan, and so pleased with that, but that really reflects clients showing up in a different way with us and we showing up in a different way with clients. So, good. And then the third thing, and I've talked about this a number of times on previous calls, really the strength of the collaboration and teamwork between our treasurer, our CIO, and our Global Liquidity Solutions platform, where we think about liquidity as a $1.4 trillion ecosystem.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

And we've been very much in offense mode this quarter, and our GLS team has really shown up in a positive way, and we've really managed to gather good liquidity-friendly deposits, which is kind of fueling the growth of our balance sheet, and that's allowed us to do more loans. So I think in terms of specifically to your question, it's both, I think the overall balance will come down, and as a consequence, I would expect NIBs from here to grind a little bit lower, which is the main driver of the NII change.

Ken Usdin
Ken Usdin
Managing Director, Equity Research at Jefferies

Right. Okay, thank you.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Glenn Schorr with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Glenn Schorr
Glenn Schorr
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Hi. Hi, thanks very much. You alluded to the

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Hi

Glenn Schorr
Glenn Schorr
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Hello? You alluded to the higher clearance and collateral management and higher clearance volumes. I'm just curious if you can parse out how much of that is just clients being more active during a more active second quarter versus winning new business and organic growth? It just might help for the thoughts on the go forward and head them all. Thanks.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Thanks, Glenn. I think it's a combination of both. So clients are for sure doing more. Rate volatility in Q2 was there for all to see. So as a consequence, more activity in the treasury market, more treasury issuance, which feeds volumes. So overall, very healthy volumes, and we have a high margin scaled business, which the platform was able to benefit from that increased level of activity. Also, I think as we did last year, we continue to innovate for clients in the domestic market. As we said on our January call, the international business is also a key growth opportunity for us, and our teams are innovating and developing new products and solutions for our clients internationally.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

And so I think it's a combination of all the factors that we've talked about on previous calls, kind of showed up as a nice tailwind for us this quarter. And for clearance and collateral management, I think I do expect that trend to continue in the near-term.

Glenn Schorr
Glenn Schorr
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Thanks, Dermot. You piqued my interest on the opening remarks you all talked about, T+1 coming in into the market and that helping you help clients. I'm curious, now that it's built, now that it's in the run rate, just a couple of quickies: Is there a cost runoff now, or is that not big enough? Does T+1 come with lower spread for you, but does it free up capital with more frequent settlement? I'm just curious what the net impact of it all is.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Hey, Glenn. I would describe it in terms of like the raw P&L impact, which is sort of the second part of your question, is really pretty de minimis. We spent a bunch of time preparing for this over the course of the past couple of years, so it wasn't like there was some big, you know, hump in the cost curve in order to really do it. We sort of worked the process over time. But for us, I think the biggest opportunity associated with T+1 is whenever there's a market inflection like this, and this was one of the more significant ones, but we're looking ahead to treasury clearing as another good example of something like that, it gives us the opportunity to get closer to our clients. It creates uncertainty for our clients. You know, how is it gonna work?

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

They need help navigating it. So on the combination of uncertainty and a need for assistance is really the macro opportunity for us, and we've leaned into that. We'll continue leaning into those types of market changes, again, with treasury clearing being another good example. And I would say overall, these types of changes, you know, create things that create more efficiency in the market, things that can reduce risk in the market, things that improve efficiency. Sure, they do sometimes call on more of our products and solutions, which of course is great, but it's also just a good thing for the market to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of market operation. And I think over time, we're also a beneficiary of that.

Glenn Schorr
Glenn Schorr
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Ebrahim Poonawala
Ebrahim Poonawala
Managing Director at Bank of America

I guess maybe just one

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Good morning, Ebrahim.

Ebrahim Poonawala
Ebrahim Poonawala
Managing Director at Bank of America

Follow up, Dermot, for you on NII. I guess in the scope to Ken's question, you talked about, Fed policy and that having an impact. Remind us, the positioning of the balance sheet if the Fed does decide to cut rates come September, and we get 100, 150 basis points of cuts. Remind us how the balance sheet will behave, how we should think about NII in that backdrop.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So, thanks for the question. So, I would kind of, I'd give a couple of different perspectives on that. One, cumulative betas are roughly unchanged quarter-over-quarter, which feels like I really believe our book to be fairly priced. As you will remember, you know, our book is largely institutional. We pass on the rates, and so cumulative betas are in good shape. So for the dollar portfolio, roughly low 80s%-80% range. And then for euros and dollar, euros and sterling, we're in the high 50s%, low 60s%. And so we kind of do a range of scenarios, and at the beginning of the year, we're positioned roughly. We're roughly flat.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So if Chairman Powell cuts in September and then cuts again, I guess, which is the general view of the market, we're kind of basically NII okay. It doesn't really impact the book that much. So for small moves, we're well positioned in terms of expectation.

Ebrahim Poonawala
Ebrahim Poonawala
Managing Director at Bank of America

Understood. And separately, I guess maybe, Robin, for you, just in terms of the fee revenue momentum that you talked about at Insight and elsewhere, just give us a sense around what the drivers we should be thinking are as we think about sort of the medium-term outlook on fee revenue outside of just pure markets activity that could drive fees in a world where NII might be stable to lower, as we think about sort of momentum on the positive outlook?

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Sure. Look, revenue growth in any given year is somewhat market dependent because, of course, you know, interest rates, equity, fixed income markets, you know, volumes, volatility, that, that stuff all moves around. But our strategy has been, of course, to fuel the organic growth of the company, but also to try to position our businesses to be able to respond as well as they can to growth tailwinds that exist just in markets. And so, you know, in, in answer to, to Ken, to, to the question earlier on around, the treasury market. We've positioned that business to be able to benefit from what we think is a secular growth in activity in the U.S. Treasury market. So that's a place where we're benefiting, yes, from the market, we're also benefiting from the investments that Dermot detailed.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

As we go through what's next for our fee growth, we talked a lot about our One BNY campaign quarters ago, and we talked last quarter and in January about the fact that we're sort of operationalizing more and more what started off as a movement of One BNY into referrals, into new targets, into our commercial model, and our chief commercial officer joining, and really then getting into the client coverage, the practices, the integrated solutions, which we talked about in our prepared remarks. The fact that we can now bundle individual products into true solutions for clients. So there are a lot of levers on the fee growth, and we've been working very methodically through our plan to build momentum in that space, but also to position the business to be able to take advantage of macro things going on in the market.

Ebrahim Poonawala
Ebrahim Poonawala
Managing Director at Bank of America

Got it. Thank you.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Steven Chubak
Steven Chubak
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Good morning, Robin. Good morning, Dermot.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Morning, Steven.

Steven Chubak
Steven Chubak
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

I guess I wanted to build on that earlier line of questioning, but really focusing more on repo activity. It's been a big area of investor focus. You've certainly benefited from recent strength on the repo side, and I was hoping you could potentially quantify the benefit year on year from elevated repo activity. Just a longer term, like how you're thinking about the durability of the recent repo strength, and what are some of the factors supporting that view?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Thanks for the question, Steven. So I would say, in terms of year-on-year activity, it's not a kind of a cleared repo, is not a game changer for us in terms of the overall year-on-year NII story. It's about, overall, in its totality, it makes up about 5% of our NII today. I think I would just echo or follow on from Robin's, you know, answer to the last question in terms of it, it's a product, clients want it, we are meeting them where they want to be. We're innovating. This comes under the $1.4 trillion liquidity ecosystem. Laide runs that business, does a terrific job for us.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

In the cleared repo business specifically, we're a top three provider, and so, you know, we have a large installed client base who are looking for products, and we can meet them with our cleared repo product. And so it's just another tool in our toolbox. And I would say again, we're positioned, we're investing, we're a scaled player, and we can provide automated solutions for our clients. So I do expect that business to continue to grow. But in terms of the year-over-year, to your specific question, it's not a material driver of the year-over-year change.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Steven, I would add one thing to it, which is just remember that in the context of our business, we're really the only global solution provider in the space, because we're scaled in Asia, we're scaled in Europe, we're scaled in the United States. In a world where folks are looking at repo as a collateral tool and an investment tool, the opportunity to be able to help clients navigate the whole world in this product, provide the seamless connectivity between repo and margin and collateral management, the connectivity to other things that we do. There's a real appeal to Dermot's phrase again, about meeting clients where they are.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

There's a real appeal here for clients in terms of the breadth of what we can offer, but also the innovation that he referred to earlier on in the call, where we're creating these new solutions. And so this is another example, along with the U.S. Treasury market, but there are so many others in our business, of saying there's a macro evolution going on, and we have the opportunity to participate in that as long as we're front-footed with clients and as long as we're innovating.

Steven Chubak
Steven Chubak
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Thanks for all that color. And just for my follow-up on the Pershing business, I know that the core underlying strength has been obscured to some degree by, some large client departures. I was hoping you can give some perspective on what some of the core organic growth trends look like in that business? What the pipeline looks like in that business, given some of the, you know, recent excitement around the Wove platform and the offering. And, have we lapped those headwinds at this point, or is there still some remaining pressure on the come?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Okay. So I would say, nobody is happier to see, the ongoing deconversion of the client, you know, to come to an end. So we expect that to be fully out of the portfolio by Q3. As I've said on previous calls, we believe in our ability to earn our way through that deconversion. It happens in life, and so, I think the team has been very resilient in terms of earning their way through it and growing. In my prepared remarks, I talked about, the re-sign of, Osaic on a several-year contract, so we're very pleased about that. You take a step back, and you look at where we were 12 months ago, we just came off the Insight Conference in Florida, where we announced Wove.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Twelve months later, we've announced a new suite of products to support the Wove. We have signed 21 clients so far this year for Wove. The momentum is building, the clients like it. I kind of reiterated my guidance on prepared remarks about the $30 million-$40 million of revenue for this year. And then just I'll remind you that we're a $3-trillion player in the wealth tech space. Number one with broker-dealers, top three with RIAs. And, you know, in previous quarters, I've kind of guided, you know, mid-single digits of underlying core growth.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Through the cycle, we continue to believe that, notwithstanding on any given quarter, it may be slower or better, but we believe we're in good shape and that there's good momentum in what is a very, very large market and in which we're a very big player.

Steven Chubak
Steven Chubak
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Very helpful color. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thanks, Steve.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Brennan Hawken with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Good morning, Robin and Dermot. Thanks for taking my questions. So we saw the ECB cut rates this quarter, and while I know euro isn't a huge exposure for you in terms of your deposit base, curious about what impact you saw that on your deposit costs in that currency, and maybe how does that experience and the market reaction inform your expectations for beta and customer behavior around rate cuts in other currencies? Thanks.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So I would say, overall, euros is roughly 10% of the total, the total portfolio. In answer to the earlier question, I think we feel very well positioned for, you know, the range of outcomes that the forward curve is implying in euros, sterling, and dollars. We prepare for it, we talk about it a lot, and so I kind of feel like the way the CIO book is currently set up, where we still have a reasonable amount of securities rolling off into higher-yielding assets. So I just feel like the combination of where our deposit book is in terms of our betas, to reiterate, again, for dollars, low 80s%, sterling and euros, high 60s%, and the CIO book kind of still room to grow.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

And so on rate cuts, in terms of how we kind of position the book, we're broadly symmetric in terms of on, on the rate cut side. So I think, you know, Chairman Powell has done a good job of telegraphing to the market how he wants to, to do it, so I don't think it's going to be a volatile move in rates when it happens. So he's allowed us time to position and manage and get into the right place. So I think overall, I feel very good about where we're at.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Yeah, but what I was asking... I appreciate that, but what I was trying to understand was the actual experience within the actual marketplace, beyond, like, the expectation. You know, did the 50%-60% beta, I think you said, in euros, did that hold when the cut went through, and did you actually experience that?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So, specifically, yes, we did experience that, and it held up. It behaved as expected.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for that, Dermot. I appreciate that. Issuer services, very solid. You flagged, you know, some CLO trustee gains, on the back of a market that's seen solid volume. Could you help us understand maybe how much of the strength and the growth that you saw in that line, was attributed to, that, which I assume would be in the, in the corporate trust business? You know, and then maybe, how to think about the depository receipts fees, just so we're thinking about the right way to baseline and, move forward with our models.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So sure. Look, corporate trust, I think, is, for us, a good opportunity, a very good opportunity. I actually talked about it at some length at the RBC conference in March, when I was chatting with Gerard Cassidy, and I think over the last number of years, corporate trust for BNY is a business that's been underinvested in, in both technology and leadership. And in both Robin and I's prepared remarks, we did emphasize leadership as being a continuous change for us. And we've made a couple of very important hires over the last 12 months in corporate trust, and we have new leadership overseeing the business. And it's that investment in technology, products, leadership, that is showing up.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Specifically, you know, we've doubled our activity in CLOs over the last 12 months. We've improved our market share, and as Robin said in an answer to another question, we really want to position corporate trust as a business that really can take the advantage of scale. A lot of manual processes, a lot of room for AI, a lot of room for digitization, and we can improve the operating leverage of that business. We can improve how we show up for clients, client service. So we feel like in corporate trust, specifically, we have a lot to play for. Depository receipts, we have good market share, we punch above our weight, and we expect that to continue.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Thank you for taking my questions.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Betsy Graseck
Betsy Graseck
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Hi, good morning.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Morning, Betsy.

Betsy Graseck
Betsy Graseck
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Two quick questions. One, just to wrap up a little bit on the T+1 discussion earlier. Could you give us a sense of how much did T+1 drive sequential revenue growth this quarter? And can you give us a sense as to if there's enough revenue growth you're expecting from this to impact the expense ratio since you've already made the investment? And then I have a follow-up on Wove. Thanks.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Hi, Betsy, it's Dermot. So the point I would make about T+1 is not so much a revenue or expense topic. It really is, it speaks to resilience as a commercial attribute kind of point that we make on behalf of BNY, in terms of it's been a large-scale infrastructure change that's been coming to the market over the last couple of years. And as we are a key player in the financial market infrastructure, it's very important that we execute that to an A+ standard. And what I would say is, BNY has shown up for clients in delivering an A+ execution of a very big project. It's not, it's not really about revenue or expenses, it's really about delivering a complicated change project for our clients and the ecosystem at large.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

That's really, I think, the point we're trying to make on T+1.

Betsy Graseck
Betsy Graseck
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Okay. Yeah, I just think if you're in a better spot than others, you could pick up some incremental share on the back of that, but, that's maybe a couple conference calls from here. All right. Then separately, on Wove. I know you mentioned that you added new clients to Wove. I just wanted to understand, is this new clients of the firm or this is clients who had been, yours for a while and they moved to Wove?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So I would say it's both. And so I guess the questions that we've had on previous calls, Betsy, are we cannibalizing existing clients? And the answer to that is most definitely no. And I think it speaks to the point of us innovating. You know, Wove is a very big investment for us in terms of technology over multiple years. Existing clients like the fact that we're willing to put money to work for them and give them better solutions, and as a consequence of that, you know, we had over 1,500 people show up to Wove in Florida last year and Nashville this year. And for those that are there, there's real excitement, and as Robin said in his prepared remarks, it's winning awards.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So there's a flywheel effect of, "Oh, wow, BNY is showing up in the wealth tech space and delivering new solutions for us. We want to see what they have to do." So the network effect of that shouldn't be underestimated.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Betsy, let me double-click on it for, for one second as well, because when we started on the Wove journey and we announced it, as Dermot said last year, it was initially really focused on what that singular KPI of making advisors' lives easier. And so it was a technology front end that went from wealth planning and helped clients with wealth planning all the way through to portfolio construction and then getting into market. Now, what's evolved since then, and what we talked a lot about this year, one year later in the Wove journey, was the fact that now we have the opportunity to link all of these other BNY capabilities to be able to deliver to our Pershing and Wove clients. So you can be a clearing and custody client of Pershing.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

You can be an advisor taking advantage of that initial set of tooling from Wove. But what you can now also do is you can have that ability to manage and aggregate data, including across multiple custodians. We can connect you to models in the investment management space. By the way, we can fulfill those models because we've got active equity and indexing, and all these capabilities that come from BNY Investments. And so Wove is becoming a bit more of a delivery vehicle for the various capabilities of the firm. And it's also opening up the aperture of how clients of Pershing think about us in terms of our ability to solve other problems for them. Banking-as-a-service, which is a treasury services business, but we stimulate the conversation for that because people see us as being more than what we used to be in Pershing.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

We also, to your question, are attracting people who just don't necessarily need the clearing and custody service, but who want to take advantage of these other components, which is why Dermot said both, because it's both and delivering the breadth of One BNY.

Betsy Graseck
Betsy Graseck
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Thanks, Robin.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thank you, Betsy.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Mike Mayo
Mike Mayo
Managing Director at Wells Fargo

Hi, could you put a little more meat on the bones for the One BNY initiative in terms of products for customers, where you're talking about more bundled solutions? You know, thematically, you know, I understand it, and I guess you're having higher core servicing fees, but connecting from the higher core servicing fees from the high level, let's bundle, let's have everyone work together. I'm just trying to connect the dots a little more.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

No, understood, Mike. And, you know, you'd asked me a question, it's probably about more than a year ago now, where you had essentially challenged the fact that in order for something like One BNY to be successful, it can't just be hearts and minds. It's got to be deeply operationalized. And we talked at that time about some of our future ambitions for how to really bring it home. So the way that I would now answer your question is, we are rallying around the three strategic pillars that Dermot and I both have talked about a bunch, and this is about being more for our clients. And that's just not just words anymore. It's not just a movement, it's not just appealing to our people to be able to to be client-obsessed.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

It's about elevating the effectiveness of our sales organization and the process, driving client service differently than we used to. It's about the innovative new products, as we were just talking about Wove, that's a good example. We are being more for clients in that example, and we are also delivering the whole of the company. So it is a great One BNY example. Pershing, which used to be somewhat off to the side in the company, a few years back, now very much at the heart and benefiting from that integration with all of the other capabilities that we have.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

And then you hit on a critical word, which is solutions, because that next journey, to use the term that Dermot used earlier on, of meeting our clients where they are, it's not just about us selling a bunch of great products and client platforms to our clients. It's about the fact that when we look at the challenges that our clients have, they actually need things that cut across multiple parts of our company. And rather than going in disconnected and showing them individually and trying to have them piece it all together, we can now show up, and we can actually show them these solutions, which bring all the componentry together to solve their needs. And both Dermot and I talked a bit about that in our prepared remarks, and that's the next level of the maturity of that One BNY work that we're really doing.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

That's evolving from an initiative and a hearts and minds to making everything that we're doing in our commercial organization, the sales practices, the sales targets, the way that we're bringing people together, the account management process, the client service, the digital delivery of tooling, and the way that we're thinking about everything that equips our salespeople to be effective, the cross-training. We're bringing all of those things together and maturing our commercial model. Over time, we think there's a lot of value, both in the process and in what we're actually delivering to clients.

Mike Mayo
Mike Mayo
Managing Director at Wells Fargo

When you wrap it all up, I mean, what wallet share do you have per customer today? Where was it a few years ago? Where do you hope that to go, just in terms of a zip code of expectations?

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

I think some of those metrics, as we think about ways in which to show you that story more over time, some of those metrics will be in our future. Right now, I'm going to point you to two things. There are a whole bunch of inputs. I described a bunch of them, and I think over the course of the past couple of years, we've been trying to really show the key inputs, which we think are the leading indicators for performance. And then you have to actually look at the fee growth result, and you saw that in the first quarter, you've seen that in the second quarter, and that's some of the output. But the story that Dermot and I are both trying to describe is a story of a maturing of a process, but with still a distance to go and opportunity ahead.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Mike, just to put a metric on this, because it's just to give an indication, because we need to mature the metrics as we proceduralize all the strategic commons that Robin has just outlined. Year-over-year, the amount of business that we've won, that touches more than one line of business, you know, has increased by 1/3 off, albeit a very low base. So I wouldn't draw too much into the metric, but just the fact that we're showing up in a different way, and clients are buying products and services from more than one line of business because we can deliver integrated solutions. And that's the key, that over time, we'll be able to track that and communicate that in a more objective way as that strategy takes root.

Mike Mayo
Mike Mayo
Managing Director at Wells Fargo

Understood. So when all said and done, core servicing fees over time, whether it's aspirational or a specific target, where should core servicing fee growth be?

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

My answer to that, which I recognize is a little bit unsatisfying, is we're gonna keep pointing you back to the positive operating leverage, which is really how we're focusing for our own growth. We think that each quarter, each year, has a different composition to it, but higher fee growth over time is a very important part of that, of that combination of solutions. But, but any individual quarter or year is gonna have a different composition. We're controlling the things that we can control, albeit we're stoking the engine for growth of organic fees over time.

Mike Mayo
Mike Mayo
Managing Director at Wells Fargo

Got it. Thank you.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Alex Blostein
Alex Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Hey, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in on this. I wanted to touch on expenses and operating leverage. So expenses up a little bit year to date, year over year. Sounds like you guys are still targeting flat expenses for the year, despite the fact that revenues are obviously shaking out a little bit better than you hoped. So maybe kind of walk us through where you see the flex in the expense base to keep it kind of at that flattish run rate. But I guess more importantly, you know, you guys hit a target for pre-tax margin to be at 33%+ recently. You're doing 33% this quarter, and obviously, don't want to get too carried away with a single quarter, but feels like you, you know, have an ability to reset the bar.

Alex Blostein
Alex Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

So maybe talk a little bit about what that plus within the 33% could look like, a couple of years out.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Thanks, Alex. So I guess I would start with the margin part of it. We need to, we need to consistently do it, and so one quarter doesn't a medium-term target make. So I'm very pleased that we've done it, but now I want to see it next quarter, the following quarter, the following quarter. So, you know, execution is key, and just showing up in a very disciplined way every day is really important to delivering out that. We don't want to be known as a one-hit wonder. So, while I'm pleased that we've managed to do it, I want to see it repeated on a consistent basis. So that's what I would say on margin.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

On expenses, you and I talked in Madrid a few weeks back at your conference, and I kind of said a little bit like we're in the ZIP code of flat for the year. It's all about running the company better. It's very important that we have 53,000 people wrapped around the same aspiration that, we as a leadership team have, and everybody's focused on doing it. So there is a real momentum on running the company better, which is the input to how we show up with expenses, where being where they are, as opposed to a top-down approach. So very different cultural experience within the firm in terms of how we're doing it.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

And the reason why we're a little bit above trend in the first couple of quarters this year is what I said to you at the conference, is revenue-related expenses. And so I kind of anchor that in the overall where we are for positive operating leverage in the year. And in my remarks, I kind of said, I feel optimistic about delivering positive operating leverage for the year, which in a, in a down 10% NII environment, BNY hasn't really executed to that level before. And so and also, you know, Q2 is a seasonally strong quarter for us, which would feed the margin of 33%. So I feel good about expenses. I feel good about flat, notwithstanding, there's pressure to that from a revenue-related expense part, but we're very determined to deliver positive operating leverage to our shareholders this year.

Alex Blostein
Alex Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Excellent. Great. Well, my second quick question around the balance sheet. There's a lot of discussion around deposits, but I wanted to zone in on the asset side of the balance sheet for a second. We've seen pretty nice growth from you guys in both the securities portfolio and loans sequentially. So could you spend a minute on sort of the sources where you're investing, and then your outlook and maybe deploying some of the liquidity that seems to be perhaps a bit more sticky into both loan growth and securities?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So yeah, look, feel very proud of the CIO book team, what they've accomplished over the last couple of years, which is really from Q3 of 2022. It really has been just a terrific collaboration within the firm. And, we're deploying where we think we can see opportunity. Our CIO likes to use the word nibbling, and so we're kind of seeing where the next leg is, and we're deploying where we think we can see opportunity to continue to grow NII. So it's opportunistic at the moment, but we feel overall very good about that aspect of it. We're still rolling off the book into higher-yielding securities. We're picking up to 200 basis points. And so that's feeding NII.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

And then on loan growth, I think the GLS team is doing a really good job of getting very liquidity-friendly deposits, which allows us to extend credit to our clients. And I think we're showing up in a different way to our clients who are important to us, and extending our balance sheet to them as they look to buy products in more than one line of business. So where we need the balance sheet to support business activities, that's what we're doing, and it's kind of a strategic tool in our kit for doing that.

Alex Blostein
Alex Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Awesome. Thanks very much.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Gerard Cassidy with RBC. Please go ahead.

Gerard Cassidy
Gerard Cassidy
Managing Director at RBC

Good morning, Dermot. Good morning, Robin.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Morning, Gerard.

Gerard Cassidy
Gerard Cassidy
Managing Director at RBC

Dermot, can you share with us, now that we're entering into a phase with monetary policy of quantitative tightening, easing up a bit, you guys obviously have been through QE, you've seen the initial stages of QT. Do you have any thoughts on how this could affect your balance sheet over the next 12 to 18 months? Have you guys done any type of modeling to see what kind of effect, you know, the QT, as it shrinks, could have on your balance sheet?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So we do a lot of work on that, Gerard. And look, you know, CCAR forces us, or, you know, to do that work as well. And so rates up, rates down, quantitative tightening, quantitative easing. We look at it every which way to Sunday. But the thing that I would kind of remind you and everybody who's listening in is, you know, our balance sheet is one of our strengths. In, you know, this time last year, in Q1 of last year, we kind of, you know, we called our balance sheet the port in the storm for our clients, and you see that flight to quality. So we're kind of very proud of our balance sheet. It's vanilla, it's liquid, it stands stress tests, and it allows us to be there for our clients.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So it's kind of, it's short in duration. We repositioned it going into the higher for longer rate environment. As you will remember, in Q4 of 2022, we repositioned it, and so we've taken a lot of proactive steps to make our balance sheets durable and liquid and to withstand a wide range of scenarios.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

And, Gerard, I'm just gonna add that, you know, it's easy to think that just because at this very moment in time, you know, we're looking out, and there seems to be some greater consensus than we've had for a little while around what might happen with the Fed in the fall, across September, and the balance of the year. It's easy to think somehow that the range of risks has somehow narrowed as a result of that. But there's still a lot of uncertainty in the world. We've got a whole bunch of other types of geopolitical risks out in the world. We're sort of continuing to grind through elections that we've talked about through the course of the year. There are all sorts of other things happening. We've still got wars going on.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Our approach to all of these questions, and Dermot really made the point, is to be prepared for all the different types of outcomes that are possible. You can see us, we run conservative on liquidity, we run conservative on capital. You can see it in our ratios that we talked about, and that Dermot outlined in his prepared remarks. That's a very important anchor point for us, so that we can be agile according to however things play out, because the one thing we can be absolutely sure of is they won't play out exactly the way anybody expects.

Gerard Cassidy
Gerard Cassidy
Managing Director at RBC

Very good. And then just as a follow-up, Robin, you know, you talked about the new business wins in the quarter, and you talked about one being One BNY as well. It appears that you're having success in chipping down or breaking down some of the silos that many organizations always, you know, struggle with. Can you share with us some of the tools you're using to break those silos, and how you know, I, I would assume you're not 100% complete, breaking them all down, but how far along are you in actually breaking them down?

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Well, the company's been around for 240 years, and we've acquired a lot of different businesses and companies over time. And so these things do build up over a period of time. But the short answer to your question is, we passionately believe, as a whole leadership team, that the answer to the question is culture. And so I've said before, you know, in a slightly pithy way, but and quoting other people, or sort of paraphrasing them, if you will, that, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," as it was once famously said by Peter Drucker.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

We add to that, "Execution eats strategy for lunch." That's just a long way of saying that the power our culture pillar, which is one of our three pillars, is the thing that's enabling us to run our company better, and that, in turn, is allowing us to be more for our clients. So the trick to this for us has been investing in our people. It's been creating the benefits, the experiences, the employee experience, the pride, association with the company, the feedback loop that shows that when we do these things, we get better outcomes for our clients, and that translates into better outcomes in the bottom line. So there's a flywheel effect here that actually builds on itself. And the spring in the step of our employees is now

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

powering that forward, and that's what gives us confidence that we've really turned the corner on it. People want to throw in with the whole, because they see that it's not only better for the company, it's actually better for their business, because joining their products with other products around the company is allowing us to be more for clients. And it actually feels good to see the benefits in the ultimate results. So that's, for us, the North Star of how we're doing it. And while we've certainly got a distance to go, the early results have been pretty encouraging.

Gerard Cassidy
Gerard Cassidy
Managing Director at RBC

Very good. Thank you.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Oh, great, thanks. Thanks, good morning, guys. Maybe if I could just come back to the sticking with the NII guide of down 10%, I'm having trouble getting there. Just to confirm, it sounds, Dermot, like what you're saying is it's really almost totally a deposit-driven guide on a seasonal basis. And I just wanted to sort of confirm that, given how you've outlined the balance sheet sensitivity to different rate scenarios is pretty strong. And of course, you have the benefit of securities portfolio reinvestment. So is it really simply just the seasonal deposit dynamic?

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Then if you can just talk about how NIBs factor into that seasonal deposit dynamic, and then, of course, as we move into next year, in 1Q, you know, seasonally, of course, that should, we should be, you know, back positive again, and I just want to confirm that.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So I, I guess, Brian, in the way you've asked the question, in some ways you've answered the question to yourself. So I would kind of confirm, A, how you're thinking about it in terms of the seasonal decline, and it is a, it's a deposit story. And I would just kind of reference last year as the guide in terms of, in January of last year, we guided 20% for the year, and then, you know, we started out the gates well, and you, as a collective, put pressure on me to change the guidance, which I didn't do. And we ended the year at 24%. And so, you know, last year we used the word skewed to the upside, but humble about the fact of what lies in front of us.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

I would say the percentages are different this year. The environment is different, but the sentiment is the same. I'm humble about what the outcome could be, and uncertainty is. Can be, is there, because, as Robin said, for sure, what we think is going to happen is not going to happen. But I would say, you know, we're cautiously optimistic, and your point, it is a deposit story, and within the deposit story, it really is the mix between NIBs and IBs.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Right. Okay. Yep, fair enough there. And then maybe just back to the operating leverage dynamic, and this can be for both, Dermot and Robin. Obviously, you're starting off really well with, you know, like 100 basis points plus of positive operating leverage, as we move into the second half, just not, notwithstanding market movements, that would obviously influence the fee revenue dynamic. But, given the traction that you're showing sequentially in your core business growth and core business sales, and I guess the fact that you've made these investments already. So, I just wanted to get a sense of whether you feel like you're able to scale those investments in the second half.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

You know, obviously, with your flat operating expense guidance, it would seem that's the case. If the revenue does turn out to be better than expected from an organic growth perspective, would we see the expense base creep up a little bit? You know, notwithstanding, of course, you'd still generate positive leverage.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

Okay. Lot of questions in that second question.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Mm-hmm.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So, so I would say, like, when I talk to the teams, right? And this is quite... You're, you're kind of hitting on a very important point, in that I really, I really focus on running the company better, and then we kind of focus on the operating leverage, not expense as a means to an end. And if revenue-related expenses creep up, that we starve businesses of investment to solve for a flat number, because that's what we said we were going to do. I think that's quite important, and it's important to get the balance right, that investment and running the company better, it kind of is the same thing. And so that's a cultural transformation that's underway with all of our people. And so we really are focused on getting value for money. You know, we spend a lot of money.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

We spend over $12.5 billion every year, and so we want to get the best value we can for that, and we do that in a number of different ways. So some of the investments that we've made over the last couple of years, we're beginning to see the scale impact in that, and you can see that in our most profitable segments, market and wealth services. It's a mid-40s margin. We continue to invest at the margin, which is what you want us to see - which is what you want to see from us. And we continue to digitize, we continue to automate, we continue to reduce manual process, which ultimately will feed into headcount and better quality jobs for our folks, and better careers. So I think over time, if organic growth plays out,

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

It will feed into a better outcome in operating leverage, not us just growing expenses because revenues are better.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

And I just want to draw out one additional thing that that Dermot said as well, Brian, which is we have a lot of work to do. There's no question about it. And, you know, he used the term skew and slightly optimistic, but staying humble when it related to NII. This one is just about a lot of hard work and really focusing on this point about running the company better.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

But as a double click into the way that we're thinking about it, if you look at the second quarter, and we've talked a lot about the fact that it's, it's been a seasonally strong quarter, but if you double-click into it and the market and wealth services point that Dermot just mentioned, that's an investment story, because as we've said, we're in a good spot on the pre-tax margin of that segment, so we just want more. That's growth. We don't want to dilute the margin, but we're not trying to save expense dollars there.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

But in Securities Services and in investments and wealth, where we said there is, in fact, a margin journey that we have ahead of us, that's where you can actually see negative expenses in both of those segments for the quarter, which is a sign of the fact that we're both investing, but we're doing even more discipline in those businesses. And so that's how the whole thing comes together for the company.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Great. That, that's great color. Thank you so much.

Operator

Our final question is coming from Rajiv Bhatia with Morningstar. Please go ahead.

Rajiv Bhatia
Rajiv Bhatia
Equity Analyst at Morningstar

Yeah, there was some progress on the investment and wealth management margin in the quarter. I guess my quick question is, are your margins different on the asset management side of the business versus the wealth management side? And do you have a timeline for getting back to that 25%+ margin?

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

So I don't think we kind of get into the detail of the split between the two. And so, you know, the whole segment overall, I guess we've said over the last several quarters, we believe we can go back to the 25% margin over a period of, you know, a few years. Like, just to follow on from Robin's answer to the last question, you know, we've shown, I think, good expense discipline over the last 12 months in terms of, okay, revenues have been a little bit challenged in the segment due to a variety of reasons, and we've taken tough decisions, and so that's allowed us to grow the margin by 200 basis points over the last year, which really is kind of the financial discipline about it.

Dermot McDonogh
CFO at BNY

And we do believe where we are now with distribution as a platform, you know, very, very strong performance in fixed income and LDI and Insight, that the momentum is there within the segment to grow. And as Robin said, the addition of Jose to the leadership team joining in September, giving his fresh perspective, gives us confidence about what we can do in the future.

Rajiv Bhatia
Rajiv Bhatia
Equity Analyst at Morningstar

Got it. Thanks.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thanks, Rajiv.

Operator

This concludes today's question and answer session. At this time, I will turn the conference back to Robin for additional or closing remarks.

Robin Vince
CEO at BNY

Thank you, Operator, and thanks everyone for your time today. We certainly appreciate your interest in BNY. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to Marius and the IR team. Be well and enjoy the balance of the summer.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call and webcast. A replay of this conference call and webcast will be available on the BNY investor relations website at 2:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time today. Have a great day.

Analysts
    • Alex Blostein
      Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
    • Betsy Graseck
      Managing Director at Morgan Stanley
    • Brennan Hawken
      Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS
    • Brian Bedell
      Director at Deutsche Bank
    • Dermot McDonogh
      CFO at BNY
    • Ebrahim Poonawala
      Managing Director at Bank of America
    • Gerard Cassidy
      Managing Director at RBC
    • Glenn Schorr
      Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI
    • Ken Usdin
      Managing Director, Equity Research at Jefferies
    • Marius Merz
      Head of Investor Relations at BNY
    • Mike Mayo
      Managing Director at Wells Fargo
    • Rajiv Bhatia
      Equity Analyst at Morningstar
    • Robin Vince
      CEO at BNY
    • Steven Chubak
      Managing Director at Wolfe Research
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