Alastair Borthwick: Thank you, Brian. And I'm going to start on Slide 4 of the earnings presentation to provide just a little more context on the summary income statement and the highlights. For the fourth quarter, as Brian noted, we reported $3.1 billion in net income or $0.35 per diluted share. That GAAP net income number included two notable items. First, we recorded $2.1 billion of pretax expense, that's $0.20 after-tax earnings per share for the special assessment by the FDIC to recover losses from the failures of Silicon Valley and Signature Bank. Second, on November 15th 2023, Bloomberg announced that they would discontinue publishing the Bloomberg Short-Term Bank Yield Index rate after November 15th 2024 and many commercial loans in the industry had BSBY as a reference rate prior to SOFR becoming industry-standard. As noted in an 8-K we filed earlier this week, we came to conclusion in early January that BSBY cessation would not get the same accounting treatment allowed under LIBOR cessation. And therefore cash-flow hedges of BSBY indexed products related to BSBY cash flows, forecast to occur after November 15th 2024, we need to be moved out of OCI into earnings in the fourth quarter of '23 financials. So as a result of the accounting interpretation, we recorded a negative pretax impact to our market making revenue of approximately $1.6 billion. I just want to reinforce that's an accounting impact. It's not an economic change to the contracts and we'll see an offset to this over time through higher NII mostly occurring in 2025 and 2026 after BSBY ceases in November 2024. The accounting lowered CET1 by 8 basis points during the quarter and we will recapture that in the next two or three years. Adjusted for the FDIC assessment and the BSBY cessation related impact, Q4 net income was $5.9 billion, or $0.70 per share. On Slide 5, we show the highlights of the quarter and we reported revenue of $22.1 billion on an FTE basis. And excluding the BSBY cessation impact, adjusted revenue was $23.7 billion and declined 4%, driven by net interest income. Fourth quarter revenue is a tough year-over-year comparison as NII peaked in the fourth quarter of '22 at $14.8 billion, before slowly moving lower over 2023. Outside of NII, we saw good growth in treasury service fees and wealth management fees and those were offset by higher tax-advantaged investment deal activity, creating higher operating losses and the more tax credits associated with them and recognized across periods. Expense for the quarter of $17.7 billion included the $2.1 billion FDIC charge. So excluding that charge, adjusted expense was $15.6 billion and consistent with our prior guidance. That allowed us to invest for growth, as well as use good expense discipline to eliminate work and reduce headcount. And on an adjusted basis, this then is the third quarter of sequential expense decline this year. Provision expense for the quarter was $1.1 billion, that consisted of $1.2 billion in net charge-offs and a modest reserve release, reflecting the improved macroeconomic outlook. Net charge-offs reflect the continued trend in consumer and commercial charge-offs towards more normalized levels as well as higher commercial real-estate office losses. Lastly, our income tax expense this quarter was a modest benefit as credits from tax-advantaged investment deals offset the tax expense on the lower earnings in Q4 driven by the notable charges. So let's review the balance sheet on Slide 6, and you'll see we ended the quarter at $3.2 trillion of total assets, up $27 billion from the third quarter. I'd highlight here, both the $39 billion growth in deposits and a decline in cash on balance sheet of $19 billion. Overall, you'll note the debt securities increased $92 billion. And that included a $9 billion decline in hold-to-maturity securities, and $100 billion increase in available-for-sale securities reflecting short term investment of liquidity from all of these activities. We continue to put money into very short-term T-bills and hedged treasury notes this quarter and those are essentially earning the same rate as cash. And you can see our absolute cash levels remain quite high. As Brian noted, liquidity remained strong with $897 billion of global excess liquidity sources. That was up $38 billion from the third quarter of '23 and it remained $321 billion above our pre-pandemic level in the fourth quarter of '19. Shareholders' equity increased $5 billion from the third quarter as earnings and AOCI improvement were only partially offset by capital distributed to shareholders. The AOCI improved $4 billion, reflecting both the previously mentioned BSBY-related reclassification into fourth quarter earnings and other AOCI improvements. This included some improvements in other cash-flow hedges, which don't impact regulatory capital, driven by a decline in long-end rates. During the quarter, we paid out $1.9 billion in common dividends and we bought back $800 million in shares, which more than offset our employee awards. Tangible book value per share is up 3% linked-quarter and 12% year-over-year. Turning to the regulatory capital, our CET1 level improved to $195 billion from September 30th, while the CET1 ratio declined 9 basis points to 11.8% and remains well above our current 10% requirement as of January 1st '24. We also remained well-positioned against the proposed capital rules, as our current CET1 level matches our 10% minimum against anticipated RWA inflation from the proposed rules. Risk-weighted assets increased $19 billion on loan growth and growth in global markets, RWA, and our supplemental leverage ratio was 6.1% versus the minimum requirement of 5%, which leaves plenty of capacity for balance sheet growth and our TLAC ratio remains comfortably above requirements. So let's focus on loans by looking at the average balances on Slide 7. And you can see loan growth improved this quarter as we saw improvement in both credit card and commercial borrowing, offset by declines in commercial real estate and securities-based lending. The commercial growth reflects good demand overall and was muted only at quarter-end by companies paying down commercial balances as they finalized their year-end financial positions. Lastly, on a positive note, we've seen loan spreads continue to widen, given some of the capital pressures from proposed rules on the banking industry, and this combined with investments in relationship managers we've added over the past few years, has positioned us to take market-share and improved spreads. Moving to deposits, I'll stay focused on averages on Slide 8, and the trends of ending balances saw growth in Global Banking and wealth management and declines in consumer. Relative to the pre-pandemic fourth quarter '19 period, average deposits are still up 35%. Every line of business remains well above their pre-pandemic levels. Consumer is up 33%, with checking up 40% driven by the net-new checking accounts added that Brian noted earlier. On a more recent performance basis, deposits grew $29 billion or 6% from Q3 on an annualized basis. The only business that saw a decline in deposits linked-quarter was consumer. And here we saw a decline of $21 billion. This linked-quarter decline slowed from the third quarter change. And in total, we have $959 billion in high-quality consumer deposits, which remains $239 billion above pre-pandemic levels. The total rate paid on consumer deposits in the quarter was 47 basis points and this remains very low, driven by the high mix of quality transactional accounts. Most of this quarter's rate increase remains concentrated in CDs and consumer investment deposits, which together only represent 15% of the consumer deposits. Turning to wealth management, balances on an end-of-period basis improved modestly, and we continued to experience a slowing in the trend of clients moving money from lower-yielding sweep accounts into higher-yielding preferred deposits and off-balance sheet. Our sweep balances were down $4 billion and were replaced by new account generation and deepening. Global Banking deposits grew $23 billion, moving nicely above the $500 billion level that we've experienced over the course of the past six quarters. These deposits are generally transactional deposits of our commercial customers. They are the ones that used to manage their cash flows. And noninterest-bearing deposits were about 33% of deposits at the end of that quarter. So when we turn to excess deposit levels on Slide 9, you can see deposit growth exceeded loan growth this quarter. And that expanded our excess of deposits above loans, from Q3 to about $0.9 trillion, which is well above the $0.5 trillion we had pre-pandemic. You can see that in the upper-left of Slide 9, which is where we've used and shown you how we think about managing excess liquidity. We continue to have a balanced mix of cash available-for-sale securities and held-to-maturity securities. And this quarter, the combination of the cash and the AFS securities now represent 51% of the total $1.2 trillion noted on this page. You'll also notice the change in mix of the shorter-term portfolio as we began to lower cash and increase available-for-sale securities buying mostly short-dated T-Bills with similar yields. You can note also the hold-to-maturity book continued to decline from paydowns and maturities pulling to PAR. In total, the hold-to-maturity book moved below $600 billion this quarter. It's now down $89 billion from its peak and it consists of about $122 billion in treasuries and about $465 billion in mortgage-backed securities along with a few billion others. Also note that the blended cash and securities yield continued to rise and remained about 170 basis points above the rate we pay for deposits. The replacement of these lower earning assets into higher yielding assets continues to provide an ongoing benefit and support to NII. From a valuation perspective, given the reduced balance and the longer-term interest-rate reductions we've seen in the fourth quarter, we experienced an improvement of more than $30 billion in the valuation of the hold-to-maturity securities. So, let's turn our focus to NII performance using Slide 10. And a strong finish to the year helped us report $57.5 billion in NII on a fully tax-equivalent basis for the full year of 2023. That's up 9% compared to 2022. On an FTE basis, we reported $14.1 billion in NII, which was modestly better than we told you to expect last quarter driven by modestly better deposit growth. The $14.1 billion was a decline of $400 million from the third quarter, driven by the unfavorable impacts of deposits and related pricing and lower global markets NII, partially offset by higher rates benefiting asset yields. And as we look forward, given that we've got one less day of interest in the first quarter and that's worth about $125 million to $150 million, and given the rate curve shift, we believe the first quarter will be somewhere between $100 million and $200 million lower than the fourth quarter. It could move a touch lower in Q2 and then we believe it should begin to grow sequentially in the second half of 2024. So very consistent with our prior guidance. With regard to the forward view I just provided, let me note a few other caveats. It would include an assumption that interest rates in the forward curve materialize. And the forward curve today has six cuts compared to last quarter when we had three cuts in the 2024 curve. So it's bouncing around a little and shifted in the past quarter. Forward view also includes our expectation of low to mid-single-digit loan growth and some moderate growth in deposits as we move into the back half of 2024. Given our recent deposit and loan performance, we continue to feel good about these assumptions. Before moving away, it's worth noting our net interest yield declined 14 basis points to 197 basis points. And that's driven by the decline in NII, as well as higher average earning assets, reflecting prior period builds of cash and cash-like securities. Turning to asset sensitivity and focusing on a forward yield curve basis, the plus 100 basis point parallel shift at December 31st was $3.5 billion of expected NII over the next 12 months, coming from our banking book. And that assumes no expected change in balance sheet levels or mix relative to our baseline forecast, and 93% of that sensitivity is driven by short rates. The 100 basis point down scenario is $3.1 billion. Let's turn to expense and we'll use Slide 11 for the discussion. And we reported $15.6 billion in adjusted expense this quarter, which excludes the FDIC assessment. This was in line with our projection from last quarter and down $199 million from the third quarter, driven by reductions in headcount earlier in the year and seasonally lower revenue-related expense. These reductions outpace the continued investments that we're making to drive growth. Our average headcount was down from the third quarter to 213,000 people, and that's good work after peaking at 218,000 last January. We lowered our headcount through the year by 5,000 and did so without taking an outsized severance charge as we used attrition to lower our headcount along the way. One more point to acknowledge the good work of our teams on expense, Q4 '23 adjusted expense of $15.6 billion is only $94 million higher than the fourth quarter of '22. And just remember, we began 2023 with a $125 million lift in quarterly FDIC expense. So through some good operational excellence work and otherwise, we've managed through all of the additional costs of investments in new tech initiatives and merit and financial center openings, as well as some stronger revenue and higher marketing costs. As we look forward to next quarter, we expect to see the more typical Q1 seasonal elevation in expense of $700 million to $800 million compared to Q4. So we believe expense will be around $16.4 billion in the first quarter. That includes elevated payroll tax expense and the expected costs of higher revenue in both sales and trading and wealth management, as well as merit cost increases. And as we move through 2024, we expect the quarterly expense to decline from Q1, reflecting a drop in the elevated payroll tax expense and revenue changes, as well as some additional operational excellence initiative work. Continued digital transformation and adoption is also going to help us as we go through the year. Now turn to credit, and I'll use Slide 12 for that. Provision expense was $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter and it included an $88 million reserve release due to a modestly improved macroeconomic environment. On a weighted basis, we're reserved for an unemployment rate of nearly 5% by the end of 2024 compared to the most recent 3.7% rate reported. Net charge-offs of $1.2 billion increased $261 million from the third quarter, and the net charge-off ratio was 45 basis points, a 10 basis point increase from the third quarter. On Slide 13, we highlight the credit quality metrics for both our consumer and commercial portfolios, and the overall increase in net charge-offs was driven by three things. First, $104 million of the increase was driven by credit card losses, which continued to normalize as higher late-stage delinquencies flowed through to charge-offs. Second, $65 million of the increase was driven by a broad range of smaller commercial and industrial losses, which were mostly previously reserved and monitored for the past couple of quarters. And lastly, $76 million of the increase was driven by commercial real estate losses, primarily due to office, also mostly reserved. In the appendix, we've included a current view of our commercial real estate and office portfolio stats provided last quarter, and we've also included the historical perspective of our loan book de-risking and long term trend of our consumer and commercial net charge-offs, and you can see those on slides 30 to 33. Let's move on to the various lines of business and their results and I'll start on Slide 14 with Consumer Banking. For the quarter, consumer earned $2.8 billion on continued good organic growth and despite their good client activity, it's difficult to outrun the earnings impact of higher rates on deposit costs while the credit is also normalizing. The reported earnings declined 23% year-over-year as top line revenue declined 4% while expense rose 3% and the credit costs rose. Customer activity showed another strong quarter of net new checking growth, another strong period of card opening and investment balances for consumer clients which climbed $105 billion over the past year to a record $424 billion. Our full year flows were $49 billion as accounts grew 10% in the past 12 months. Loan growth was led by credit card and that broke above $100 billion this quarter. Deposit decline slowed in the quarter with continued strong discipline around pricing. And our expense reflects continued business investments for growth. And as you can also see on the appendix page 21, digital engagement continued to improve and showed good year-over-year improvement as customers enjoy the continuation of enhanced capabilities. Moving to Wealth Management on Slide 15. We produced good results, earning a little more than $1 billion after adding 40,000 net new relationships in Merrill and the private bank this year. These results were down from last year as a decline in NII from higher deposit costs still catching up from the interest rate hikes, more than offset higher fees from asset management, driven by higher market levels and assets under management flows. As Brian noted earlier, both Merrill and the private bank continued to see strong organic growth and produced solid assets under management flows of $52 billion since the fourth quarter of '22, which reflects a good mix of new client money as well as existing clients putting their money to the work. Expenses reflect continued investments in the business and revenue related costs. On Slide 16, you see the global banking results. The business produced strong results with earnings of $2.5 billion as a decline from peak levels of NII was offset by lower provision expense, leaving earnings down 3% year-over-year. Revenue declined 8%, driven by the NII. Our global treasury services business remained robust with strong business from existing clients as well as good new client generation. In addition, we continued to see a steady volume of solar and wind investment projects this quarter and our investment banking business continued to perform well in a sluggish environment. Year-over-year revenue growth also benefited from lower marks on leveraged loan positions. The company's overall investment banking fees were $1.1 billion in Q4. That grew 7% over the prior year despite a fee pool that was down 8%. And for the year we held on to the number three position overall, given that performance. In the component parts, we ended the year number one in investment grade, number two in leverage finance, number four in equity capital markets, and number four in mergers and acquisition. The diversification of the revenue across products and regions reflects the growing strength of our platform, and a good example of that is our focus on the equity capital markets blocks business, where we finished number one in the United States for the first time since 1998. And in EMEA, we were also number one for blocks. Provision expense reflected a reserve release of $399 million and that comes from an improved macroeconomic outlook as well as realized charge-offs better, as noted before. Expense decreased 2% year-over-year as continued investments in the business were more than offset by reductions in other operating costs. Switching to Global Markets on Slide 17, the team had another strong quarter, with earnings growing 13% year-over-year to $736 million, driven by revenue growth of 4% and we refer to results excluding DVA as we normally do. Good results in sales and trading and comparatively low remarks on leverage loan positions drove the year-over-year performance and focusing on the sales and trading ex-DVA, revenue improved 1% year-over-year to $3.8 billion, which is a new fourth quarter record for the firm. FICC was down 6% from a record quarter, while equities increased 12% compared to the fourth quarter of '22. And the FICC revenues were down versus that record fourth quarter level with higher revenues in mortgages and municipal trading. Equities was driven by improved trading performance in derivatives. And our expense was up 3% on continued investment in the business. Finally, on Slide 18, all other shows a loss of $3.8 billion, as the two notable items highlighted earlier negatively impacted net income by $2.8 billion in that segment. Revenue adjusted for the $1.6 billion BSBY cessation was flat year-over-year, and expense adjusted for the $2.1 billion FDIC assessment was down a couple hundred million, driven by lower litigation and lower unemployment processing costs. I noted earlier we reported a modest tax benefit this quarter. The tax credits from tax advantaged investment deals throughout the year, including their benefits in the fourth quarter, exceeded taxes on reported earnings because we had the two notable items that lowered results this quarter. For the full year, our tax rate was a little more than 6%. And excluding the impacts of BSBY cessation and FDIC and the other discrete tax benefits, that rate was 10%. And further excluding our investment tax credits, our tax rate would have been 25%. So thank you. And with that, we'll launch into the Q&A, please.

provision expense $88 million reserve release modestly improved macroeconomic environment


Brian Moynihan: Thank you, Lee, and good morning, and thank all of you for joining us for our discussion of our third quarter results. Bank of America continued to demonstrate strength this quarter in an economy that continued to be stable, albeit with slower growth and falling inflation. So many of you asked me from time-to-time what do we see in our own customer -- consumer customer base. As we talked about many times, our consumer payments is an indicator of activity. Those payments were up 4% to 5% year-over-year for the quarter in the total money those consumers moved in the economy. The pace of year-to-year money movement has been steady since late summer this year. After having fallen in the spring and early summer. This growth in consumer payments continues into October. This activity is consistent with how customers are spending money in the 2016 to 2019 timeframe. When the economy was growing, inflation was under control. This report is not meant to gainsay that consumers are worried of the cost of living, worried about higher rates and other matters. But overall activity is fine, unemployment is low and wage growth is steady, both of which bode well for the consumer overall and for consumer asset quality. With respect to what we see in our commercial businesses, it is consistent with a lower growth economy. Line of credit usage rates remain lower than pre-pandemic levels. This does not surprise us what with the dramatic increase in the cost of borrowing for small and medium-sized businesses. They aren't being indolent, they want to grow. They are simply being more careful and worry a final demand will hold. Therefore, they are being cost conscious across the board. So how did Bank of America do against this backdrop? At Bank of America, our commitment to responsible growth remains unwavering, and this quarter is another illustration of that. We grew, we did it the right way. In the third quarter, Bank of America generated $25.5 billion in revenue and earned $6.9 billion in net income after tax. Year-to-date, we've generated net income of just over $20 billion. Four quarters ago, we called that a bottom would occur in our net interest income in the second quarter of 2024. Even with a rate environment that has bounced around quite a bit since we said that we got it right. As we expected then, NII indeed troughed in the quarter two. NII grew 2% this quarter and Alastair will note later, we expect NII to grow again in quarter four, even as the market expects two more rate cuts in quarter four. This quarter, we saw a healthy revenue growth in our wealth and investment management business and in our global markets businesses. We returned 5.6 billion of capital to shareholders while also supporting the needs of our clients. So with that brief overview, let's dive into Slide 2. Earnings per share came in at $0.81 this quarter at $25.5 billion in revenue we grew modestly from the third quarter, '23 as improvement in noninterest income more than offset a year-over-year decline in net interest income. Fees grew 5% year-over-year and represented 45% of total revenue. The strong year-over-year fee performance was led by a 15% improvement in investment in brokerage services, mostly in our global wealth management business. We also grew investment banking fees 18% year-over-year sales and trading revenue increased 12% year-over-year and aggregate, these market related revenue streams rose an impressive 13% year-over-year. Our total expense in the company increased 4%. You can attribute most of the year-over-year expense growth to these market related areas. Overall, a good job by the team. On asset quality a few quarters ago we told you that consumer credit losses would go down this quarter, given delinquency trends we had seen at the time. We also told you that office losses would be lower. Both of these proved true again this quarter. Good asset quality resulted in net charge-off in provision expense for this quarter at $1.5 billion, which was unchanged from last quarter. Our performance is partly attributable to the diversity and balance of the company. A little more than half our earnings come from our consumer and GWIM businesses serving people and the other half come through from our Global Banking and Markets businesses serving companies and institutional investors. So let's turn to see how we grew organically this quarter. We are now on Slide 3. Our organic growth has been driven by a continued focus on customers and client experience throughout all our businesses. Consumer leads the way delivering solid organic growth with high quality accounts engaged clients. For the 23rd consecutive quarter, we added significant net new consumer checking accounts and expanded our customer base and market share. We added 360,000 net new checking accounts this quarter, which brings our first nine months of '24 to more than 880,000 net new checking accounts. In wealth management, we added another 5,500 net new relationships this quarter. In our commercial businesses, we added hundreds of small business and commercial banking relationships. Also note that we saw a strong organic growth of investment balances with banking customers and growth in banking products for our investment clients in our GWIM business. This has led us to now manage $5.9 trillion in client balances of loans, deposits and investments across the consumer and wealth management clients. We saw flows of $62 billion into those businesses in the past four quarters. In our Global Banking business, we saw loan demand start to pick up late in the quarter. We again ranked third in the logic IB fees we received and have a solid pipeline. Our global transaction services platform continues to grow around the world and showed strong deposit growth for our commercial businesses over the last year and a quarter. This quarter, global markets saw continued momentum. Global markets recorded the 10th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in sales and trading. Investments we've made in this business and the intensity of the teams has enabled a 35% improvement in sales and trading revenue in the past three years. Good work by Jimmy DeMare and the team. Our customers and clients continue to want more from us, especially when it comes to our digital capabilities. So let's discuss this on Slide 4. Slide 4 highlights this continued success across our digital platforms. As usual, we include our disclosures on digital stats across the business, which we believe lead the industry. I commend you the pages in the appendix, which give you more granular disclosure for each of the businesses' digital activities. Our fully integrated consumer banking investment application drives the utility for our customers across GWIM and consumer. The usage stats you see are strong proof points. Our second language capabilities also enhance the customer's experience. We have grown to more than 48 million active digital users and those digital users logged in more than 3.6 billion times this quarter. We also continue to see more sales through their digital properties. Digital sales represented 54% of our total consumer sales this quarter. Note that it simply takes both high-touch and high-tech to drive continued growth with individual clients across the wealth spectrum in America. Erica, our AI enabled virtual assistant reached 2.4 billion client interactions since its launch and Zelle showed continued user and usage increases. In our wealth management business, we continue to see full relationships increase with both investing and banking relationships being open. 75% of new accounts in Merrill were opened digitally whether they were banking accounts or investment accounts. This enables more efficient customer coverage for our advisory teams. Finally, 87% of our Global Banking relationship clients are digitally active. We have innovated and significantly streamlined service requests by enabling clients to directly initiate and track inquiries within our award winning cash flow platform. As a result, app sign-ins for these clients increased nearly 80% in just the last 24-months. In summary, the economic environment remains solid. Issues remain out there to external factors that could affect our business and the economy generally. We still see great opportunities for continued growth across all our businesses. We are focused on driving market share in all our businesses, investing in technology to further enhance the customer experience and continue to increase our efficiency. With NII now growing and complementing our fee growth along with our continued solid expense discipline, we expect to return to operating leverage as we move through the quarters in 2025. With that, I'll turn to Alastair for additional details.


Alastair Borthwick: Thank you, Brian. And I'm going to start on Slide 5 of the earnings presentation, because it will provide just a little more context on the quarter. For the fourth quarter, as Brian noted, we reported $6.7 billion in net income or $0.82 per share. And before we talk about comparisons between periods, I just need to remind you that our fourth quarter 2023 GAAP net income number included two notable items. In the fourth quarter of ‘23, first, we recorded $2.1 billion of pre-tax expense for the special assessment by the FDIC to the industry to recover losses from the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and that reduced EPS last year by $0.20. Second, we recorded a negative pre-tax impact to our market-making revenue of approximately $1.6 billion related to the cessation of BSBY as an alternative rate, and that reduced earnings per share last year by $0.15. So when you adjust for the large FDIC assessment and the BSBY cessation charge, fourth quarter ‘23 net income was $5.9 billion or $0.70 per share. On Slide 6, we note some of the highlights of the quarter and we reported revenue of $25.5 billion on a fully taxable equivalent basis, up 15% from the fourth quarter of ‘23. And if you exclude the fourth quarter ‘23 BSBY cessation charge, our revenues grew 8% year-over-year. As Brian said, all the revenue items are showing improvement year-over-year. NII grew 3%. Investment banking grew 44%. This quarter, our $4 billion of sales and trading revenue marked a fourth quarter record, and it grew 10% from the year ago period. And investment brokerage fees rose 21%, with both assets under management flows and market levels contributing nicely to the growth. Our card income and service charges grew 7%. Non-interest expense was $16.8 billion and was up when adjusted for the FDIC special assessment driven by incentives paid for the strong revenue growth as Brian noted and the related activity costs that comes with that. Expense also included additional investments in people, technology, and brand with some major partnerships announced recently. And it included what we expect to be the peak in quarterly costs associated with enhancing our compliance costs and controls. The good news is we created operating leverage in the quarter. Provision expense for the quarter was $1.5 billion and was consistent with the previous two quarters. And lastly, returns in the fourth quarter were 80 basis points of ROA and 13% return on tangible common equity. Back to the balance sheet on Slide 7. We ended the quarter at $3.26 trillion of total assets, down $63 billion from the third quarter, driven by seasonally lower levels of client activity in global markets, while loans across the businesses grew $20 billion in the quarter. Otherwise in the quarter, the investments of our excess liquidity saw a $9 billion reduction in hold to maturity securities. And at the same time, the combination of shorter-term liquidity investments of cash and available for sale securities increased $28 billion. On the funding side, total deposits grew $35 billion on an ending basis as both interest bearing and non-interest bearing grew. Long-term debt fell $14 billion driven by net redemptions and valuations, and global markets funding declined in line with assets. Liquidity remains strong with $953 billion of global liquidity sources. That is up modestly compared to the third quarter, even as we paid down some debt and retired some preferreds. Shareholders' equity was flat at around $295 billion. And within all of that, we returned $5.5 billion of capital back to shareholders with $2 billion in common dividends paid and the repurchase of $3.5 billion in shares this quarter. Tangible book value per share of $26.58 rose 9% from the fourth quarter last year. Turning to regulatory capital, our CET1 level improved to $201 billion and the CET1 ratio rose to 11.9%, remaining well above our new 10.7% requirement. Risk-weighted assets increased modestly as increases in loans were mostly offset by lower RWA supporting our global markets client activity. Our supplementary leverage ratio was 5.9% versus a minimum requirement of 5%, which leaves some capacity for balance sheet growth, and our $460 billion of total loss absorbing capital means our TLAC ratio remains comfortably above our requirements. Let's turn to Slide 8. We can go a little deeper on loans by looking at average balances. And loans in the fourth quarter of $1.08 trillion improved 3% year-over-year, driven by solid commercial loan growth. Overall, commercial loans grew 5% year-over-year. And importantly, this included an 8% drop in commercial real estate loans. Commercial loans excluding commercial real estate grew 7% year-over-year, and the consumer loans grew modestly both linked quarter and year-over-year. As Brian said, on a linked quarter basis, every category of consumer lending grew, and you can see that at the bottom of Slide 8. If we turn our focus to NII performance and use Slide 9, regarding NII on a GAAP, non-fully taxable equivalent basis, NII in Q4 was $14.4 billion. And on a fully taxable equivalent basis, NII was $14.5 billion. Several quarters ago, we signaled our expectation that NII would trough in the second quarter of 2024 and begin to grow from there. And this represents now our second quarter of NII growth. And we expect that growth to continue in 2025. In fact, if you look at the two quarters after the inflection point, NII is already growing at a 5% rate. Fourth quarter NII on a fully taxable equivalent basis increased by $399 million from the third quarter, driven by a number of factors. First, it was led by improvement in deposits across the businesses. And even as deposit balances increased linked quarter, our interest expense on those deposits declined by $600 million. Loan growth and fixed rate asset repricing also benefited us again this quarter. With regard to a forward view, interest rate expectations continue to drive volatility and predictability, but we'll provide some thoughts for future NII. We expect to start the year in the first quarter with NII modestly higher than the fourth. Remember that the first quarter has two fewer days of interest and that's roughly the equivalent of about $250 million of NII equivalent. So even with that, we expect to grow modestly. Then we expect that growth to increase through the year to the point where it could be 6% to 7% higher in 2025 than 2024. We expect to exit the year at least $1 billion higher in the fourth quarter and that would put us in a range of $15.5 billion to $15.7 billion on a fully taxable equivalent basis, and that's obviously significantly higher than the Q2 '24 trough of $13.9 billion. I have to note the following assumptions. First, we assume that the current forward curve materializes. And while the interest rate curve has changed significantly over a fairly short period of time, as of the 10 of January, the curve was expecting only one rate cut in 2025 that may come in May or June. Based on our more recent growth experienced, we're assuming loan and deposit growth in 2025 that's higher than 2024, and more consistent with growth in a 2% to 3% GDP environment. The other elements of anticipated growth in NII expected are the benefits of asset repricing as fixed rate securities and loans and swaps roll off and those get repriced at higher rates. And those themes all remain consistent with our prior conversations with you in the last several earnings calls. With regard to interest rate sensitivity, on a dynamic deposit basis, we provide a 12-month change in NII for an instantaneous shift in the curve, above or below the forward curve. And on that basis, a 100 basis point increase would benefit NII by roughly $1 billion, while a decrease of 100 basis points would decrease NII over the next 12 months by $2.3 billion. Lastly, note that our slide showing the trended investment of excess deposits is in our appendix. It's on page 21. Deposit levels grew to $870 billion over loans at the end of Q4, and that's an incredible source of value for shareholders. And $649 billion, or 54% of our excess liquidity, is now in short-dated cash and available for sale securities. The longer-dated lower-yielding hold-to-maturity book continues to roll off, and we continue to reinvest in higher-yielding assets. Okay. Let's now turn to expense, and we'll use Slide 10 for the discussion. We reported $16.8 billion in expense this quarter. And the fourth quarter of '23 included the large FDIC special assessment charge and excluding that, expense increased. The increased expense from prior periods was driven by a number of factors and was partially offset by a roughly $300 million release of prior period accruals for the FDIC special assessment. Let's talk about the drivers of the expense. First, in regard to revenue, our markets-related businesses of investment banking, investment in Brokerage and Sales & Trading, those were up 20% year-over-year. Incentives for the firm were up 15% versus the fourth quarter of '23 and were in large part related to these market-related revenue streams. On investments that we made, we added bankers and advisers across most of our businesses in 2024, and we also increased investments in our brand with significant sponsorships like the Masters in FIFA to name a few. And we increased our investments around technology as well as financial centers. This quarter alone, we added 17 financial centers with nine of those in our new expansion markets. We're a growth company, and we continue to invest in our future. As far as head count goes, we've managed our head count carefully, and we've held it fairly flat through the 4 quarters of 2024 at around 213,000 people. Lastly, we incurred additional costs to accelerate work on compliance and controls. As you likely saw in late December, the OCC issued a compliance consent order to Bank of America, and that's a result of exams done more than a year ago. This orders about correcting or enhancing certain deficiencies in some aspects of our processes that existed at the time. The order doesn't limit any of our growth plans and the order acknowledges we began taking corrective actions before the order was announced. And as a result of the work in process, we increased our resources substantially in the second-half of 2024 and those costs are already embedded in our quarterly run rate. Okay. Let's go back to expense and how to think about a forward view. First, most importantly, we remain focused on growing the company and driving operating leverage. Second, we expect the first quarter to include some normal seasonal elevation and we believe this amount will be roughly $600 million to $700 million, primarily for payroll tax expense. So we think $17.6 billion is a good number to expect for Q1 and before seasonally declining in Q2. And that's all part of our expectation that expense should be roughly 2% to 3% higher in 2025, compared to 2024. Let's now move to credit and turn to Slide 11, where you can see net charge-offs of a little less than $1.5 billion, improving modestly compared to Q3. That's the fourth quarter now that net charge-offs are around $1.5 billion. We've seen consumer losses in a pretty stable range of $1 billion to $1.1 billion over those past few quarters. And on the commercial side, we saw losses of $359 million, which is down from the third quarter, driven by the continued decline in commercial real estate office losses. Net charge-off ratio this quarter was 54 basis points, down 4 basis points from the third quarter. We don't see overall net charge-offs or the related ratio changing much in 2025, without much change in current GDP or the employment environment, we expect the net charge-off ratio to be in the range of 50 to 60 basis points of loans for 2025. Q4 provision expense was $90 million lower than Q3 at $1.5 billion as reserve levels remain constant. And as it relates to reserve levels on a weighted basis, where reserved for an unemployment rate a little below 5% by the end of 2025, and that compares to the most recent 4.1% rate reported. On Slide 12, we highlight the credit quality metrics for both consumer and commercial portfolios. And there's nothing really noteworthy here that I want to highlight on this page. So let's move to the various lines of business starting on Slide 13 with Consumer Banking. That business made nearly $11 billion or 40% of the company's earnings in 2024. In the fourth quarter, Consumer Banking generated $10.6 billion in revenue and $2.8 billion in net income. Both grew modestly from the fourth quarter of '23 as fee improvement for card and service charges is now being complemented by the growth in NII. Consumer Banking continued to deliver strong organic growth with high-quality accounts and engage clients and they achieved a new record of client experience scores in December. The organic growth activity noted on Slide 3 includes more than 200,000 net new checking accounts, which now takes us to six years' worth of quarter-after-quarter growth. And we show another strong period of card openings and investment account growth. Investment balances grew 22% to $518 billion with full year flows of $25 billion and market improvement throughout the year. Expense rose 8% as we continued investments in our business. The biggest story in consumer this quarter is deposits because these are the most valuable deposits in the franchise. And in the last six months, we believe we've seen the floor begin to form after several periods of slowing decline. Consumer Banking deposits appear to have bottomed in mid-August at around $928 billion and ended the year at $952 billion on an ending basis. Looking at averages, you can see then the deposits grew $4 billion from the third quarter to $942 billion, all while our rate paid declined to 64 basis points. Finally, as you can see in the appendix, page 26, digital adoption and engagement continue to improve and customer satisfaction scores rose to record levels, illustrating our client appreciation of enhanced capabilities from these investments. On Slide 14, we move to Wealth Management, where the business had a very profitable year, generating $4.2 billion in earnings from nearly $23 billion in revenue. In 2024, our Merrill Lynch and Private Bank advisers added another 24,000 net new relationships. And the professionalism of these teams earned them numerous best-in-class industry rankings as you can see on Slide 27 in the appendix. With a continued increase in banking product usage from our investing clients, the diversity of revenue in the wealth business continues to improve. The number of GWIM clients that now have banking products with us continues to grow. And at this point, it represents more than 60% of our clients. Importantly, about 30% of our revenue remains in net interest income, which complements the fees earned in our advice model and those have also grown. Net income rose 15% from the fourth quarter of '23 to nearly $1.2 billion. In the fourth quarter, we reported revenue of $6 billion, growing 15% over the prior year and led by 23% growth in asset management fees. While expenses were up year-over-year, they grew slower than revenue creating the operating leverage in the business. Business had a 26% pretax margin and generated a strong return on capital of 25%. Average loans were up 4%, driven by growth in custom lending, securities-based lending and a pickup in mortgage lending. Deposits grew 2% from the third quarter, and the teams were quite disciplined on pricing of those deposits. Both Merrill and the Private Bank continued to see strong organic growth. And that helped to produce excellent asset under management flows of $79 billion this year, reflecting a good mix of new client money, as well as existing clients putting money to work. We also want to draw your attention to the continued digital momentum that you'll find on Slide 28. Because, for example, three quarters of Merrill bank and brokerage accounts were opened digitally this quarter. Slide 15 shows the Global Banking results and this business generating $8.1 billion or 30% of the company's earnings in 2024, and it continues to be the most efficient business in the company at less than 50% efficiency ratio. The business saw a nice rebound in investment banking fees in 2024, which we expect to continue in 2025. In Q4, Global Banking produced earnings of $2.1 billion. Pretax pre-provision results were flat year-over-year as improved investment banking fees offset lower NII and higher expense. The total earnings were down 13% year-over-year, driven by higher provision expense that came as a result of prior period reserve release. Investment banking fees were $1.7 billion in Q4, growing 44% year-over-year. This was led by mergers and acquisitions. We also saw strength across debt capital markets fees mostly in leverage finance and in equity capital markets fees and we finished the year strong, maintaining our number three investment banking fee position. The fourth quarter saw a strong momentum as the election results provided a lift to sentiment for a more pro-business climate and expectations for more deals to be completed. Expense in this business increased 6% year-over-year, driven by the 13% growth in non-interest income and continued investments in people and technology. The balance sheet saw good client activity, and it was muted somewhat by the strength of the U.S. dollar. Year-over-year flatness in Global Banking loans includes this foreign exchange impact and a $6 billion decline in commercial real estate from paydowns. Otherwise, loans in Global Banking were up 2%. Deposits have been growing for many quarters now with our commercial and corporate clients. And total global banking deposits are now up 10% year-over-year, reaching a new record. So we're seeing strong growth across all the categories from our corporate and commercial clients all the way from the larger end the business banking on the lower end. And we also saw a 10% growth in our international deposits. Turning to Global Markets on Slide 16, I want to focus my comments on results excluding DVA as we normally do. Our team continued their impressive streak of strong revenue and earnings performance. They achieved operating leverage, and they continue to deliver a good return on capital. For the year, record sales and trading results of nearly $19 billion grew 7% from 2023 and they've been growing consistently now on a year-over-year basis for almost three years. This led to $5.7 billion in full-year profits and represents more than 20% of the company's full-year results. In the fourth quarter, earnings of $955 million grew 30% year-over-year. Revenue and again, this is ex DVA, improved 15% from the fourth quarter of '23, as both Sales & Trading and Investment Banking fees improved nicely year-over-year. Focusing on sales and trading ex DVA, revenue improved 10% year-over-year to $4.1 billion. This is the first time we've recorded more than $4 billion in our Q4 results and it included Q4 records for both FICC and Equities. FICC grew 13%, while equities improved 6%, compared to the fourth quarter '23. FICC benefited from tighter credit spreads as well as increased volatility in interest rates, while equities benefited from increased activity around the U.S. election. Year-over-year expenses were up 7% on revenue improvement and our continued investment in the business. And then on Slide 17, you can see all other with a loss of $407 million in the fourth quarter. We spoke earlier about the fourth quarter ‘23 charges for BSBY and the FDIC special assessment charge. Their reversal impacts the comparisons on revenue, expense and net income in this segment. Otherwise, there really isn't anything significant to report here. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 6%, and excluding discrete items and the tax credits related to investments in renewable energy and affordable housing, the effective tax rate would have been approximately 26%. Looking forward, we expect the tax rate for 2025 to be in a range of 11% to 13%. And this just includes our expectation for higher expected earnings in 2025 and relatively stable tax credits. Finally, this quarter, on page 18, we thought it was important to summarize some of the guidance points we talked through this morning, and we hope you'll find this page helpful. So in summary, we're looking for a strong growth in NII, and we'll look to both continue important investments in the franchise and drive operating leverage as we grow throughout the year. We aren't expecting much movement around credit based on a pretty solid economic outlook. And we remain with a very strong balance sheet with excess capital that we can deploy to grow the business and deliver back to shareholders as appropriate. So with that, I'll stop there. I thank everybody, and we'll open it up for Q&A.

provision expense consistent with the previous two quarters


Gerard Cassidy: Very good. And then as a follow-up, Alastair, you talked about the balance sheet. I think you said 100 basis point increase, it wouldn't lead to over $3 billion in net interest revenue growth over the next 12 months. And 100 basis point decrease would lead to a decline of just over $3 billion in revenue. Can you share with us, when do you think you might change or what would make you change that position to be liability sensitive, would you rely on the forward curve. What's the outlook for the balance sheet management, that you're looking at now.

revenue decline 100 basis point decrease


Brian Moynihan: Yeah. I'm not sure of the media report, but in the end of the day, Jim DeMare and team have done a great job to deploying capital and growing market share in the sales and trading business. So they're up 7% year-over-year in revenue. FICC was up 11% for the year. Equity was down a little bit, down 1% or so. And they've done a great job. $17.6 billion of revenue, highest by a lot -- over the last few years. And think about it, in the '19 time frame, we were $13 billion in revenues. They fundamentally moved up. That was deploying more balance sheet, you got a little bit more capital but inherently, but not a lot. They're not taking a lot of risk. They made money every trading day in '23, again, I think. And so they do a great job of serving the clients. So don't think there's a big capital, a massive amount of capital. They get the capital they need. They have the balance sheet and the risk appetite they need. But we're continuing to put money towards that business because they've proven to be successful. We gave them the balance sheet a few years ago and they were able to deploy. More broadly, we pay out the dividend. We then have a bunch of capital. Today we meet the standards as best. As Alastair said, we could divine from the rule, and we'll see what the final rule looks like when it comes out. But right now, the $194 billion of CET1 is the level of notional CET1. We have to meet the RWA inflation. I'm not saying it's a good rule. I'm just saying we make the math work. And so from now on, we can basically deploy capital to the dividend payment, a couple of billion dollars a quarter, and then everything above that will go to support business growth if we have it, build a little bit of cushion, we need to build over some period of time to meet these new rules if they come through, and then share buybacks, which we bought $800 million or so last quarter, and you'd expect that to keep ticking up. Matt O’Connor: Okay, that's helpful. And then you did mention that trading or markets is off to a good start so far this year. Obviously, just a handful of days, but any color around that? And then kind of more broadly speaking, as we think about the overall wallet, like, obviously banking is the press, but how would you frame the market trading wallet? Do we use 2020 as a jumping off point and grow it by some kind of long term trend or any way to kind of frame that in terms of a base case? Thank you.


Alastair Borthwick: [Technical Difficulty] will materialize. And this now includes three interest rate cuts, starting in September, another in November, and one more in December. And the waterfall shows an estimated impact of those rate cuts to our quarterly NII. The next couple of categories are a result of natural management of interest rate risk in a balance sheet mixed with fixed-rate assets and variable-rate assets. And our balance sheet is split roughly half and half. So we take in liquidity from customers that we use to fund our assets, and then we store excess liquidity in cash and securities. We have fixed assets that mature and pay down, and those supply cash that then gets put back to work on the balance sheet and reprices over time. And we have two basic categories of fixed assets that mature and pay off, and those are securities and loans. On securities, you can see we've got about $10 billion a quarter of cash coming off of our securities portfolio, and we gain roughly 300 basis points of improvement on those assets when we put that money back on the balance sheet. On loans, between resi, mortgage, and auto, we've got another roughly $10 billion, which reprices with a little less yield improvement than securities. And between the securities and loans, we expect a fixed-rate asset repricing adds about $300 million to our quarterly rate of NII as we get to the fourth quarter. On the variable rate asset side, and to protect from down moves in rates, we hedge some of that with cash flow swaps. And those typically roll off in any given quarter and get replaced over time. So included in the cash flow hedges is an impact of cessation of BSBY as an alternative rate. If you recall, we took a charge in the fourth quarter of ‘23. It was $1.6 billion, and we said that would come back to us through time. And beginning in November, we start to see the benefit coming back into NII. And in Q4, that's about $200 million. That Q4 partial quarter benefit will grow by a slightly smaller sequential NII benefit in Q1 ‘25. And then it begins to taper off heading into 2026. In addition, we've got about $150 billion of received fixed cash flow hedges, protecting us from short rate moves moving over. Most are hedging floating rate commercial loans. And the cost of those hedges is reported as contra revenue in commercial loan interest income. These hedges have a weighted average life of just over two years. And they've got an average fixed rate of approximately 250 basis points. So starting in the second-half of 2025, we begin to get some additional NII tailwind, because the cash flow hedges with lower fixed rate likes where we receive, those will begin to roll off, and will likely replace those at higher current market rates at the time. The actual size of the tailwind we'll get from the expiration of those swaps will obviously be highly dependent on the level and the shape of the yield curve at the time of those maturities. And that stretches out over the course of the next four years. Okay, a couple other points to make. You'll note we don't expect much movement around our modestly, liability sensitive global markets NII activity. And lastly, our forward view has an expectation of low-single-digit growth in loans, low-single-digit growth in deposits, with continued slowing of rate paid movement through the back half of 2024. And you can see our expectation of the combined impact here as well. This last element is the one that has the most potential variability. And obviously, it will depend upon actual deposit and loan growth, and pricing and rotation. Okay, let's turn to expense and we'll use slide 11 for the discussion. We reported $16.3 billion of expense this quarter. And that's more than $900 million lower than Q1, which included $700 million for the FDIC special assessment. Not including the FDIC assessment, expenses were lower than Q1 by $229 million, driven by seasonally lower payroll tax expense. Compared to Q2 ‘23, we're up less than 2%. And that increase is equal to the incentives paid for improved fee revenue. Incentives for our GWIN business alone are up $200 million year-over-year. And that's obviously an expense we're happy to pay when we have a 14% improvement in fees for assets under management. Our second quarter headcount number included welcoming a diverse class of nearly 2,000 summer interns we hope will join us over the course of the next year or two upon their graduation. And absent those interns, our headcount fell by nearly 2,000. In the third quarter, we expect to add approximately 2,500 college graduates for full time. More than -- and that's from more than 120,000 applications received, showing that we remain an employer of choice for talented young people. Expense levels for the rest of 2024 are expected to bounce around this second quarter level, given the higher fee revenue and investments made for growth. So let's now move to credit and we'll turn to slide 12. There was little change in our asset quality metrics this quarter. Provision expense was $1.5 billion. That was $189 million higher than Q1, driven by a smaller reserve release in Q2. Net charge offs of $1.5 billion were little changed, with a small increase in credit card, mostly offset by lower commercial real estate office charge offs. On a weighted basis, we remain reserved for an employment rate of nearly 5% by the end of 2025, compared to the most recent 4.1% rate reported. The net charge off ratio was 59 basis points, largely unchanged for Q1. On slide 13, we highlight more credit quality metrics for both our consumer and commercial portfolios. Consumer net charge-offs increased by a modest $31 million versus the first quarter from the flow-through of higher late-stage credit card delinquencies from Q1. Highlighting the change in direction of delinquencies, consumer 90-day-plus delinquencies declined in 2Q by $57 million. Commercial net charge-offs were relatively flat as lower commercial real estate losses were mostly offset by a small increase in other commercial loans. Our office losses went from $304 million in Q1 to $226 million in Q2. Other commercial real estate loan losses were simply one hotel. Okay, let's move to the various lines of business and some brief comments on their results, and I'll start on slide 14 with consumer banking. For the quarter, consumer earned $2.6 billion on continued strong organic growth, and reported earnings declined 9% year-over-year as revenue declined from lower deposit balances, compared to the second quarter of last year. Customer activity showed another strong quarter, net new checking growth, another strong period of card openings, and investment balances for consumer clients, which climbed 23% year-over-year to a new record $476 billion. That included 12 months of strong flows at $38 billion in addition to market appreciation over the time. As noted earlier, loans grew nicely year-over-year from credit card, as well as small business where we remained the industry leader. The team held expense flat year-over-year, reflecting good work with continued business investments for growth, offset by the operational excellence work to improve processes and move more of our transactions to digital. And as you can see on the appendix page 26, digital adoption and engagement continue to improve, and customer satisfaction scores remain near record levels, illustrating customer appreciation of our enhanced capabilities due to our continuous investment. Moving to wealth management on slide 15, we produced good results, and those included good organic client activity, market favorability, and strong AUM flows, and this quarter also saw good lending results. Our comprehensive suite of investment and advisory services, coupled with our commitment to personalized wealth management planning and solutions, has enabled us to meet the diverse needs and aspirations of our clients. Net income rose 5% from the second quarter of last year to a little more than $1 billion. In Q2, we reported revenue of $5.6 billion, growing 6% over the prior year. As Brian noted, a strong 14% growth in fee revenue from investment and brokerage services overcame the NII headwind. Expense growth reflects the fee growth and other investments for future. The business had a 25% margin, and it generated a strong return on capital of more than 22%. Average loans were up 2% year-over-year, driven by strong growth we're seeing in custom lending and a pickup in mortgage lending. Both Merrill and the Private Bank continue to see good organic growth, and they produced strong assets under management flows of $58 billion since last year's second quarter, which reflects a mix of new client money, as well as existing clients putting more of their money to work. I also want to highlight the continued digital momentum in this business, and you can find that on slide 28. On slide 16, we turn to Global Banking results. And here, the business produced earnings of $2.1 billion, down 20% year-over-year, as improved investment banking fees and treasury services revenue were overcome by lower net interest income and higher provision expense. Revenue declined 6%, driven by the impact of interest rates and deposit rotation. The diversified revenue across products and regions reflects the strength of our Global Banking franchise. In our GTS business, fees for managing the cash of clients offsets a lot of the NII pressure from higher rates, and clients are accessing the capital markets for their capital needs instead of borrowing. Investment banking had a strong quarter, growing fees 29% year-over-year to nearly $1.6 billion, led by debt capital markets fees, mostly in leveraged finance and investment grade. And we finished the quarter strong, maintaining our number three investment banking fee position globally. A solid start to 2024 has left us in a good position, with top three rankings now in North America, Latin America, and EMEA, and number six in APAC. And we're seeing strong performance in important industry groups as well. An increase in provision expense from last year was driven by the commercial real estate net charge-offs I discussed earlier, and expense increased 3% year-over-year, including continued investment in the business. Switching to Global Markets on Slide 17, I'll focus my comments on results, excluding DVA as I normally do. The team had another terrific quarter as we generated good revenue growth and achieved operating leverage and continued to deliver a solid return on capital. Earnings of $1.4 billion grew 19% year-over-year, and return on average allocated capital was 13%. Revenue, and again, this is ex-DVA, improved 10% from the second quarter of 2023. Focusing on sales and trading, ex-DVA, revenue improved 7% year-over-year to $4.7 billion, and that's the highest second quarter in over a decade. FICC was down 1%, while equities increased 20% compared to Q2 '23. FICC revenues remained strong, and versus Q2 '23, they were modestly lower, driven by a weaker macro trading quarter in FX and rates, and that was largely offset by better commodities and mortgage trading. Equities was driven by strong trading results in derivatives and cash equities. Year-over-year expenses were up 4% on revenue improvement and continued investment in the business. Finally, on Slide 18, all other shows a loss of $0.3 billion, and that was little changed year-over-year, as lower expense was offset by lower provision costs as a result of reserve changes. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 9%, and excluding discrete items and the tax credits related to investments in renewable energy and affordable housing, the effective tax rate would have been 25%. And with that, I think we'll stop there, and we'll jump into questions.


Brian Moynihan: So good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we begin today, I just want to express our deep concern for our communities, clients, and teammates impacted by the California wildfires. Our top priority, of course, is ensuring the safety and welfare of our team and helping our clients and customers. Our imperturbable Market President Raul Anaya is leading our team out there. We have teams on the ground assisting in any way we can and are monitoring of the situation to extend support and resources. So far, we have activated our Client Assistance Program, donated $1 million in disaster relief to the American Red Cross, additional contributions to the L.A. Food Bank and the L.A. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Efforts. With that, let's turn to earnings starting on page two of the presentation. This morning, we reported $6.7 billion in net income, that is $0.82 in EPS for the fourth quarter. That was a solid finish to another good year at Bank of America. We grew revenue on a year-over-year basis in every category in quarter four. We saw good loan and deposit growth, and Alastair is going to walk you through some of the details of the quarter in a moment, but I want to thank our team for another great year. For the full-year of 2024, we generated $102 billion of revenue and reported net income of $27.1 billion of EPS of $3.21. We produced 83 basis points return on assets and 13% return on tangible common equity. We generated these results working from a strong balance sheet that allowed us to support clients and economies continue to grow. The economy appears to be now settled into a 2% to 3% GDP-type growth environment. It has healthy employment levels in the resilient consumer. The immensity of the American consumer can be seen in our data. So far in the first two weeks in January, they're spending money at 4% to 5% clip over last year, similar to what they did in the fourth quarter. In our business side, the clients are profitable, they're liquid, and seeing good productivity. We ended the year with $953 billion in liquidity. We also ended with $201 billion of regulatory CET1 capital and a CET1 ratio of 11.9%, leaving us nearly 115 basis points of excess capital as we begin 2025. For Bank of America, the year was characterized by a few important highlights that played out as expected and were consistent with our communications to you throughout the year. First, we saw net interest income bottom out at $13.9 billion on an FTE basis in the second quarter of 2024. We ended the year with a fourth quarter on the same FTE basis at $14.5 billion, then that was a bit better than we expected. This obviously provides a great starting point for 2025, and based on the assumptions Alastair is going to discuss a little later, we should report record NII in 2025. So how did we do that? We drove organic growth in all the businesses, and that we have highlighted on Slide 3. We saw continued growth in net new checking, new households, new companies, and commercial banking growth in our institutional markets business. This organic activity enabled us to grow loans and deposits at a pace we believe is to be ahead of our industry average and our peers. A key for us, obviously, is a growth in our deposit franchise. If you look at Slide 4, you can see we've now grown deposits for six consecutive quarters. In the most recent quarter, we saw growth in consumer balances and stability around non-interest-bearing balances across all the businesses. We continued to price in a disciplined manner, and rates paid moved lower this quarter across the board. Overall, rate paid on deposits moved from 210 basis points in the third quarter to 194 basis points this quarter. And we're lower in the fourth quarter, we're lower in every business segment. On the loan side, consumer loans grew in every category-linked quarter. Commercial loan demand continued to build off the strengths we saw in the third quarter of 2024, and commercial loans grew 5% year-over-year for the fourth quarter, and a much faster annualized pace when comparing the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2024. So back to Slide 3. In our wealth management business, we added 24,000 new households in 2024. We ended the year with $6 trillion in total client balances that we manage for people in America across our global wealth and consumer businesses. Our consumer investments team, what we call Merrill Edge, crossed a new milestone this quarter and now sits in excess of $518 billion in balances. Investment banking gained share of industry revenue in 2024. Our sales and trading team put up the 11th straight quarter of year-over-year revenue growth and achieved a new full-year record of nearly $19 billion in revenue. As the quality stabilized and remained strong, with net charge-offs declining modestly from third quarter. Early in the year, we highlighted that our expectation on consumer credit is that they would stabilize to normal level. And on commercial office losses, they would trend down during the year. We saw both those trends continue into quarter four. On the expense side, we continue to invest in our franchise. And even though spending increases in brand, people, and technology, and strong fee growth, which drove incentive and transaction processing costs higher, we managed to create operating leverage in the fourth quarter. Our digitalization and engagement expanded across all our businesses. We saw more than 14 billion logins to our digital platforms in 2024. Our Erica capability surpassed 2.5 billion interactions from its inception. And our CashPro app surpassed $1 trillion in payments made through the app in 2024. It's also worth noting that digital sales in our consumer product areas crossed 60% in the fourth quarter again. You can see all these trends in our industry-leading digital disclosure on Slides 26, 28, and 30 in the appendix. All the success in balance sheet straights allowed us to deliver more capital back to our shareholders. We returned $21 billion of capital to the shareholders in 2024, which was 75% more than 2023 and included an 8% increase in the common dividend. So in summary, for both the fourth quarter and for the year, we enjoyed good profitability, we drove healthy returns, we saw good organic client activity across all the businesses, we continue to manage the risk well and increase the capital delivered back to our shareholders. And we positioned ourselves well for growth in 2025. I want to again thank my team for continuing to drive another year of responsible growth. And with that, I'll turn it over to Alastair.


sales and trading team 11th straight quarter year-over-year revenue growth full-year


Brian Moynihan: Good morning, and thank you all of you for joining us. I'm starting on Slide 2 of the materials. Your company produced one of its highest core EPS, earnings numbers in a challenged operating environment in the first quarter. Simply put, we navigated that environment well. The preparedness and strength of Bank of America and the trust of our clients reflects a decade-long responsible growth model and relationship nature of our franchise. During quarter one, importantly, organic growth engine continued to perform. Let me first summarize some points, and I'll turn it over to Alastair to take you through the details of the quarter. If you go to Slide 2 of the materials, Bank of America delivered strong earnings, growing EPS 18% over first quarter '22. Every business segment performed well. We grew clients and accounts organically and at a strong pace. We delivered our seventh straight quarter of operating leverage, led by a 13% year-over-year revenue growth. We further strengthened our balance sheet, with our CET1 ratio increasing to 11.4%. Regulatory capital ended at the highest nominal level in our history at $184 billion. We maintained strong liquidity. We ended the quarter with more than $900 billion in Global Liquidity Sources. We are in good returns for you as our shareholders, with a return on tangible common equity of 17%, a 107 basis points return on average assets. Tangible book value per share grew 9% year-over-year. We did this as the economy slowed. And, remember, our research team continues to predict a shallow recession that will occur beginning in the quarter three of 2023. It's interesting, when we look at our consumer behavior, payments by consumer continued to drive the U.S. economy. We've seen debit and credit card spending at about 6% year-over-year growth pace, a little slower but still healthy. But, remember, card spending represents less than a quarter of how consumers pay for things out of their accounts at Bank of America. Overall payments from our customers' accounts across all sources were up 9% year-over-year for March as a month. Year-to-date, they were up about 8% for the quarter. After slowing in the back half of 2022 a bit, we saw the payments -- pace of payments picked back up in quarter one, especially in the latter parts of the quarter. Consumers' financial positions remains generally healthy. They're employed with generally higher wages, continue to have strong account balances, and have good access to credit. As you think through all the tightening actions of the Fed, the flows to alternative yielding assets, investments and the disruption the past quarter, our deposits continued to perform well, ending the quarter at $1.91 trillion. If you think about it, that's about the same balance that we had in mid-October of 2022. So, we've seen these balances stabilize and remain 34% above they were in prior to the pandemic. The team has managed well during these periods by remaining focused on the things we can control to drive value through our franchise. I thank them for a very strong quarter, near-record earnings with strong returns. Let me turn the call over to Alastair to walk through the details of the quarter.

Tangible book value per share year-over-year

Bank of America Tangible book value per share first quarter


Alastair Borthwick: Thank you Brian. I’m going to start on Slide 4 of the earnings presentation. Brian covered much of the income statement highlights and he noted the difference in our reported results and the results adjusted for the FDIC assessment, so I’m not going to repeat that; I’d just add that we delivered strong returns. On a reported basis, our return on average assets was 83 basis points, and return on tangible common equity was 12.7%. When adjusted for the FDIC assessment, our efficiency ratio was 64%, ROA at 89 basis points, and ROTCE at 14%. Let’s move to the balance sheet on Slide 5, where we ended the quarter at $3.27 trillion of total assets, up $94 billion from the fourth quarter, and the bulk of that increase was in global markets to support seasonally elevated levels of client activity. Outside of the global markets activity, we’d highlight both the $23 billion growth in deposits and the $20 billion decline in cash levels. With that increase in liquidity, you’ll also note that debt securities increased $39 billion, which included an $8 billion decline in hold-to-maturity securities and a $47 billion increase in AFS securities. Those are mostly hedged U.S. treasuries added with yields effectively at cash rates. At $313 billion, our absolute cash levels remain higher than required. Liquidity remains strong with $909 billion of global liquidity sources, and that’s up $12 billion from the fourth quarter and remains $333 billion above our pre-pandemic fourth quarter ’19 level. Shareholder equity increased $1.9 billion [indiscernible] earnings, as they were only partially offset by capital distributed to shareholders, and AOCI was little changed in the quarter. During the quarter, we paid out $1.9 billion in common dividends and we bought back $2.5 billion in shares, which more than offset our employee awards. As part of those share awards in the first quarter, we announced our seventh consecutive year of share and success compensation awards, covering more than 95% of our associates and further aligning their interests with shareholders. Tangible book value per share of $24.79 is up 9% year-over-year. Looking at regulatory capital, our CET-1 level improved to $197 billion from December 31, and the CET-1 ratio was stable at 11.8% and remained well above our current 10% requirement. We also remain quite well positioned against the current proposed capital rules as our CET-1 level is also above the 10% requirement even when we include estimated RWA inflation from those new proposed rules. Risk-weighted assets increased modestly, driven by client activity in global markets, and our supplemental leverage ratio was 6% compared to a minimum requirement of 5%, which leaves capacity for balance sheet growth. At $475 billion of total loss absorbing capital, our TLAC ratio remains comfortably above our requirements. Let’s turn our balance sheet focus to loans by looking at the average balances in Slide 6. Average loans in the first quarter of $1.048 trillion were flat compared to the fourth quarter, and they improved 1% year-over-year as solid credit card growth was partially offset by declines in securities-based lending. Commercial loans grew modestly year-over-year. We experienced modest improvement in revolver utilization in commercial lending in the first quarter, and that’s being offset for the most part by pay downs as larger client financing solutions are being met through capital markets access. Lastly on a positive note, loan spreads continued to widen. Moving to deposits, we’ll stay focused on averages on Slide 7, and relative to pre-pandemic Q4 2019, average deposits are still up 35%. Every line of business remains well above their pre-pandemic levels and consumer is up 32%, with checking up 38% driven by net new checking accounts added, as Brian noted earlier. Linked quarter total average deposits remained steady at more than $1.9 trillion. The total rate paid on consumer deposits in the quarter was 55 basis points, and while the rate increased nine basis points from the fourth quarter, the pace of increases continues to slow. The mix of low rate and high quality transactional accounts keeps the rate paid low. Wealth management and global banking also saw a slowdown in the increases in their rate paid and slowdown in the rotation out of non-interest bearing accounts in the first quarter. Focusing for a moment on ending deposits and movement from the fourth quarter, this quarter we delivered good deposit growth. Total deposits grew $23 billion and are now $100 billion above their trough in mid-May of 2023. Consumer banking deposits saw growth in both consumer interest-bearing and non-interest bearing. Global banking continued their more normal pattern of deposits seen for the past five quarters and up more than $30 billion over the last year. Deposit growth exceeded loan growth for the third straight quarter and our excess of deposits over loans expanded to $897 billion, and that’s nearly two times the $450 billion we had pre-pandemic. You can see that on the upper left-hand side of Slide 8. We continue to have a mix of cash, available-for-sale securities and held-to-maturity securities, and this quarter our combination of cash and AFS is now 52% of the total $1.2 trillion noted on this page. You’ll also notice the continued change in mix of the shorter term portfolio as we again lower cash and increase AFS securities that are mostly hedged and at similar yields to the cash. Note also the hold-to-maturity book continues to decline from pay downs. In total, the hold-to-maturity book is now down $96 billion from its peak and consists of about $122 billion in treasuries and about $458 billion in mortgage-backed securities, along with $7 billion of other securities. Lastly, a blended cash and securities yield of 360 basis points continued to rise and remained about 168 basis points above the rate we paid for deposits. The replacement of lower earning assets into higher yielding assets continues to provide an ongoing benefit to NII. Let’s turn our focus to NII performance using Slide 9, where you can see on a fully tax-equivalent basis NII was $14.2 billion. Good deposit growth provided a strong start to the year for NII, and as Brian noted, NII of $14.2 billion increased by $100 million from the fourth quarter. That compares to our expectation and guidance of a decline of $100 million to $200 million, and that would have resulted in NII this quarter of $13.9 billion to $14 billion, so we did quite a bit better than we had originally expected. The improvement in quarterly NII in Q1 compared to Q4 included the benefits of higher yielding assets and improvement in global markets NII, partially offset by higher deposit cots and one less day in Q1 than 4Q23. Deposit balance activity more generally also aided in the beat versus our expectations. As we look forward for Q2, we expect some modest impact of lower deposits in wealth management as client make their seasonal income tax payments, and we expect global markets NII to decline mostly seasonally a little bit as well, so we expect second quarter NII could approach $14 billion on an FTE basis. Further, we continue to expect that Q2 will be the low point for NII and we expect the back half of 2024 to grow. Compared to our guidance last quarter, we’re obviously growing off a larger base of NII after having outperformed in the first quarter. With regard to that forward view, let me just note a few other caveats. It includes our assumption that interest rates in the forward curve at the end of the quarter materialize, and at the end of first quarter there were still three cuts expected this year, starting in June. Our forward view also includes an expectation of low single-digit loan growth and some moderate growth in deposits as we move into the back half of 2024. Given our recent deposit and loan performance, we continue to feel good about these assumptions. Turning to asset sensitivity and focused on a forward yield curve basis, our sensitivity to the plus and minus-100 basis points parallel shift in the forward curve at March 31 remains well balance. Let’s turn to expense, and we’ll use Slide 10 for that discussion, where we reported $17.2 billion expense this quarter including the FDIC assessment. Adjusted for the assessment, expenses were $16.5 billion and the increase over the fourth quarter included a little more than $400 million in seasonal payroll tax expense, as well as higher revenue-related costs and, to a lesser extent, annual merit increases and other annual awards, like sharing success awards provided this quarter. $16.5 billion was just a little above our forecast for Q1 which we made last quarter, and the increase is driven by better than expected fee revenue across wealth management, investment banking, and sales and trading, and as Brian said, that’s a trade-off we’re more than happy to make, bringing more earnings to the bottom line. While expense is up almost 2% from last year, we simply remind you inflation is up by more than 4% and we’ve increased our investment, and we’re paying for the revenue growth, so we think it represents good work by our teams. As we look forward in Q2, we expect a decline from the Q1 level as we typically see about two-thirds of the Q1 elevate payroll tax expense come back out, and the remainder of the year expense is expected to trend down. Continued digital engagement savings and operational excellent initiatives should help us offset other cost increases for people and technology through the back half of the year. Turning to credit on Slide 11, provision expense was $1.3 billion in the first quarter, and that included $179 million of reserve release due to a modestly improved macro environment outlook as the baseline consensus expectations improved from the fourth quarter. On a weighted basis, we remain reserved for an unemployment rate of nearly 5% by the end of 2025 compared to the most recent actual 3.8% rate. Net charge-offs of $1.5 billion increased $306 million from the fourth quarter, driven by continued credit card seasoning and commercial real estate office exposures as swift revaluations from current appraisals and resolutions drove higher charge-offs. The net charge-off ratio was 58 basis points, a 13 basis point increase from the fourth quarter. On Slide 12, we show you the credit quality metrics for both our consumer and commercial portfolios. Consumer net charge-offs increased $150 million versus the fourth quarter from the flow-through of higher late stage credit card delinquencies. We included a credit card delinquency slide, No. 28 in our appendix, and we’re encouraged by the trend of delinquencies because the late stage increases slowed and early stage delinquencies improved as well, and that leads us to believe we should begin to see consumer net charge-offs start to level out over the next quarter or so. All of this is still well within our risk appetite and our expectations, and it’s consistent with the normalization of credit we discussed with you in prior calls. Commercial net charge-offs increased $191 million versus the fourth quarter, driven by commercial real estate losses and office exposures. On office losses this quarter, we recorded charge-offs on 16 office loans. Four were a result of sales activity, i.e. final resolution, seven were from losses that we expect on exposures that are in the process of expected resolution in the course of the next 90 days, and the rest we took as a result of refreshed valuations. We use a continuous and thorough loan-by-loan analysis and we’re quick to recognize impacts in the commercial real estate office space through our risk ratings, and that’s resulted in several downgrades in the last few quarters. As a result of these quick actions and our downgrades in categorization, we’ve also refreshed the valuation of our reservable criticized properties, and we’ve taken appropriate reserves and charge-offs in the process. Roughly one-third of our office exposure is now categorized as reservable criticized, and importantly the pace of the increase in reservable criticized exposures has slowed each quarter since the second quarter of last year, so we believe the losses on these office properties have been front-loaded and largely reserved. We expect the losses to move lower in the second quarter and we expect a notable decline in the second half of the year when compared to the first half of this year, absent any material change in expected real estate prices. In the appendix on Slide 29, we’ve included a current view of our commercial real estate and office portfolio metrics, as we usually do. Let’s turn to the various lines of business and offer some brief comments on their results, starting on Slide 13 with consumer banking. For the quarter, consumer banking earned $2.7 billion on continued strong organic growth. The reported earnings declined 15% year-over-year as revenue declined from lower deposit balances compared to the first quarter of ’23. Credit card loss normalization also caused year-over-year provision expense to increase. As Brian noted, customer activity showed another strong quarter of net new checking growth, another strong period of card openings, and investment balances for consumer clients which climbed 29% year-over-year to a record $456 billion. That included market appreciation and also very strong full-year flows of $44 billion. As noted earlier, loans grew nicely year-over-year from credit card as well as small business, where we remain the industry leader. Expenses were flat year-over-year, fighting off inflation, merit increases, higher minimum wages, and new and renovated financial centers and technology investments, so holding expense flat reflected very good work by the consumer team. As you can see on the appendix, Page 20, digital adoption and engagement continued to improve, reaching a record of $3.4 billion digital log-ins in the quarter, and it showed good year-over-year improvement. Customer satisfaction scores at near record levels illustrate the continued appreciation of the enhanced capabilities we provide. Moving to wealth management on Slide 14, we produced good results, and that included good organic client activity, market favorability and strong flows. Our comprehensive suite of investment and advisory services coupled with a commitment to personalized wealth management planning and solutions has enabled us to meet the diverse needs and aspirations of our clients. In first quarter, we reported record revenue of $5.6 billion and a little more than $1 billion in net income. That net income was 10% from the first quarter of ’23. The business generated positive operating leverage and grew revenue faster than expense, while improving the pre-tax margin year-over-year. While overall average loans were down year-over-year, driven by the securities-based lending, it’s worth noting the strong growth we’re seeing in custom lending, and ending loans in the wealth management custom loan book are up 6% year-over-year. As Brian noted earlier, both Merrill and the private bank continued to see strong organic growth and produce good assets under management flows of more than $60 billion since the first quarter of ’23, which reflects a good mix of new client money, as well as existing clients putting money to work. Expense growth here matched the revenue growth, otherwise fighting off higher investment costs and inflation. Let me also highlight the continued digital momentum here. As an example, Merrill has 86% of its clients now engaging with us digitally and 80% utilizing e-delivery. 76% of their eligible accounts are now opened digitally, so the cost for us to open is half and the customer cycle times are improved greatly. On Slide 15, you’ll see our global banking results, and the business produced earnings of just less than $2 billion, down 22% year-over-year as improved investment banking fees and treasury services revenue were overcome by lower net interest income and higher provision expense. Revenue declined 4% driven by the impact of interest rates and deposit rotation to interest-bearing, and that impacted NII. The diversification of our revenue across products and regions continues to reflect the strength in this platform, and GTS and investment banking fees are good examples. In our global treasury services business, some of the NII pressure from higher rates on deposits is offset by the fees paid for moving and managing the cash of clients, and that continues to grow with existing clients as well as with new client generation. As Brian noted, investment banking had a strong quarter, and at $1.6 billion in investment banking fees, this quarter was the strongest quarter in seven years, absent the pandemic 2020 and 2021 periods. An increase in provision expense included the commercial real estate net charge-offs I discussed earlier, as well as a larger reserve release in the prior year period. Expense increased 2% year-over-year, including the 35% lift in investment banking fees from the first quarter of ’23. Switching to global markets on Slide 16, we’ll focus our comments on results excluding DVA, as we normally do. The team had another terrific quarter with $1.8 billion in earnings, growing 7% year-over-year. Revenue improved 6% from the first quarter of ’23 and return on average allocated capital was 16%. Focusing on sales and trading ex-DVA, revenue improved 2% year-over-year to $5.2 billion, which is the highest first quarter result in over a decade. FICC was down 4% while equities increased 15% compared to the first quarter of ’23. The decline in the FICC revenues versus the first quarter was driven by a weaker macro trading quarter that was partially offset by better mortgage trading results. Equities was driven by strong trading results in derivatives, and year-over-year expenses were up 4% from continued investment in the business. Finally on Slide 17, all other shows a loss of $700 million driven by the FDIC assessment. Revenue declined year-over-year, reflecting higher investment tax credit yields, and expense adjusted for the FDIC assessment was down $133 million, driven by lower unemployment processing costs. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 8%, and excluding the FDIC assessment and other discrete items, it would have been 9%. Further excluding tax credits related to investments in renewable energy and affordable housing, our effective tax rate would have been 26%. Thank you, and with that, we’ll jump into Q&A.


Alastair Borthwick: Thank you, Brian, and I'm going to start on slide six of the earnings presentation. I'll touch on more highlights noted on slide six as we work through the material. I just want to say upfront that we delivered strong returns with return on average assets of 85 basis points and a return on tangible common equity of nearly 14%. So let's move to the balance sheet on slide seven, where you can see we ended the quarter at $3.26 trillion of total assets, relatively unchanged from the first quarter. And not much to note here apart from a mixed shift of lower securities balances, mostly offset by an increase in reverse repo and modest loan growth, as well as global markets client activity. On the funding side, deposits declined $36 billion on an ending basis, reflecting typical seasonal customer payments of income taxes. And as Brian noted, average deposits were still modestly higher. Liquidity remained strong with $909 billion of global liquidity sources that was flat compared to the first quarter. Shareholders' equity was also flat compared to Q1, as earnings were offset by $5.4 billion in capital distributed to shareholders and a $1.9 billion redemption of preferred stock in the quarter. The $5.4 billion of capital contributions included $1.9 billion in common dividends and the repurchase of $3.5 billion in shares. AOCI improved modestly in the quarter and tangible book value per share of $25.37 rose 9% from the second quarter of last year. In terms of regulatory capital, our CET1 level improved to $198 billion and the CET1 ratio was stable at 11.9%. This 11.9% ratio remained well above our current 10% requirement, as well as our new 10.7% requirement as of October 1, 2024. Risk-weighted assets increased modestly and that was driven by lending activity. Our supplemental leverage ratio was 6% versus our minimum requirement of 5% and that leaves plenty of capacity for balance sheet growth. And our $468 billion of TLAC means our total loss-absorbing capital ratio remains comfortably above our requirements. Brian already covered deposit trends, so let's turn the balance sheet focus to loans and we'll look at average balances on slide eight. You can see average loans in Q2 of $1.051 trillion. They improved 1% year-over-year, driven by 5% credit card growth and modest commercial growth. The modest improvement in overall commercial loans included a 2% increase in our domestic commercial loans and leases, partially offset by a 4% decline in commercial real estate. Middle market lending saw an uptick in the quarter, and we saw good demand in our wealth businesses from custom lending. These areas of growth were largely offset by continued paydowns from our larger corporate clients on interest rate sentiment. Consumer growth was driven by credit card borrowing, and while home lending balances were flattish, originations picked up a bit this quarter. Lastly, and on a positive note, loan spreads continued to widen. As we turn our focus then to NII performance and slide nine, note that we moved the slide we typically use to talk about excess deposits to the appendix on slide 22, so you can see that there. Our excess deposit levels above loans remained high at $850 billion and continue to be a good source of value for shareholders. 52% of our excess liquidity is now in short-dated cash and available for sale securities. The longer-dated, lower-yielding hold-to-maturity book continues to roll off, and we reinvested again this quarter in higher-yielding assets. The blended yield of cash and securities continued to improve in the quarter and is now 160 basis points above our deposit rate paid. Regarding NII, on a GAAP [Technical Difficulty]