Bank of New York Mellon Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 16, 2024

There are 14 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the 2024 First Earnings Conference Call hosted by BNY Mellon. Please note that this conference call and webcast will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material. You may not record or broadcast these materials without BNY Mellon's consent. I will now turn the call over to Marius Mertz, BNY Mellon's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I'm here with Robin Vince, President and Chief Executive Officer and Dermot McDonough, our Chief Financial Officer. As always, we will reference our financial highlights presentation, which can be found on the Investor Relations page of our website at bnymellon.com. And I'll note that our remarks will contain forward looking statements and non GAAP measures.

Speaker 1

Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements. Information about these statements and non GAAP measures are available in the earnings press release, financial supplement and financial highlights presentation, all available on the Investor Relations page of our website. Forward looking statements made on this call speak only as of today, April 16, 2024, and will not be updated. With that, I will turn it over to Robin.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Marius, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. Dermot will talk you through the financials in a moment. But in summary, BNY Mellon is off to an encouraging start for the year. The firm delivered solid financial performance, while we continued to take important steps in the deliberate transformation of our company. And we're seeing early signs of progress that give us confidence as we work toward the opportunity ahead.

Speaker 2

Looking beyond BNY Mellon, the 1st 3 months of the year provided a mostly constructive operating environment with global markets signaling expectations for continued growth. Equity and credit markets rallied even as rate cut expectations partially unwound and bond yields rose. Foreign exchange markets, on the other hand, saw a continuation of the relatively low volumes and muted volatility that we've now seen for the past several quarters. And of course, there are many tail risks, including a variety of different market scenarios, the possibility of escalation in one of the ongoing geopolitical conflicts or an unexpected result in the many elections taking place worldwide this year. As I've said many times before, being resilient matters, and this represents a commercial strength for our business.

Speaker 2

We are constantly preparing and positioning for a wide range of potential scenarios to support our clients and deliver compelling outcomes for our shareholders. Now referring to Page 2 of the financial highlights presentation. BNY Mellon delivered double digit EPS growth as well as pretax margin and ROTCE expansion on the back of positive operating leverage in the Q1. We reported earnings per share of $1.25 up 11% year over year. And excluding notable items, earnings per share of $1.29 were up 14%.

Speaker 2

Total revenue of $4,500,000,000 was up 3% year over year. That included 8% growth in Investment Services fees, led by strength in Asset Servicing, Issuer Services and Clearance and Collateral Management, which more than offset revenue headwinds from muted volatility in FX markets and lower net interest income. Expenses of $3,200,000,000 were up 2% year over year and up 1% excluding notable items. Consistent with our goal to generate at least some operating leverage this year, in the Q1, we did deliver positive operating leverage, both on a reported basis and excluding notable items. Our reported pretax margin was 29% or 30%, excluding notable items, and we generated a 21% return on tangible common equity.

Speaker 2

Our balance sheet remains strong with capital and liquidity ratios in line with our management targets, and deposit balances were up both year over year and sequentially. Year to date, we returned close to 140% of earnings to common shareholders through dividends and buybacks, and our Board of Directors has authorized a new $6,000,000,000 share repurchase and presented our plan to improve BNY Mellon's financial performance. We frame this work for our people through 3 strategic pillars: be more for our clients, run our company better and power our culture. Throughout the Q1, we've made progress to be more for our clients, including both product innovation and greater intensity around better delivering our platforms to the market, so we can truly help clients achieve their ambitions. As a global financial services company, our unique portfolio of market leading and complementary businesses presents a tremendous additional value for our clients and shareholders.

Speaker 2

As you know, we are maturing our 1 BNY Mellon initiative by implementing this mentality into the nuts and bolts processes across the company. For example, we recently announced that Ashton Thomas Securities, an independent broker dealer and registered investment advisor, will use clearing and custody services from Pershing and BNY Mellon Precision Direct Indexing capabilities from Investment Management. This is a great example of multiple lines of business working together to provide holistic solutions for clients. As we continue to grow our client roster, we also know that delivering more to our existing clients represents a significant opportunity. As another example, last month, we expanded on a long standing relationship with CIFC, an alternative credit specialist and existing client of ours in Asset Servicing and Corporate Trust to bring their U.

Speaker 2

S. Direct lending strategy onto our global distribution platform. This also speaks to the incremental value that asset servicing can bring to our asset manager clients by allowing them to tap into BNY Mellon's global distribution platform to extend the reach of their capabilities. Consistent with our previously communicated intention to grow the revenue contribution of our Market and Wealth Services segment, we're starting to see our investments to accelerate revenue growth in this high margin segment begin to bear fruit. For example, we continue to be encouraged by the level of interest from both new and existing clients in our Wove Wealth Advisory platform.

Speaker 2

We have several clients live on the platform today. We closed a number of deals in the Q1, and the sales pipeline continues to be strong. Across Market and Wealth Services, we also continue to bring new solutions to the For example, Treasury Services successfully launched virtual account based solutions, a set of cash management solutions to meet our clients' demands for more flexibility and transparency into their payment flows. Next, we are taking important steps to run our company better by simplifying processes, powering our platforms and embracing new technologies. Over the past several months, we've been working to realign several similar products and services across our lines of business.

Speaker 2

The largest of these changes was moving institutional solutions from purging to our Clearance and Collateral Management business. This is also part of making progress toward adopting a platform's operating model. By uniting related capabilities, we can do things in one place, do them well and elevate overall execution to better serve our clients and drive growth. Last month, we went live with the first step on the transition into our new model. While it has taken and will continue to take a lot of hard work as we transform our operating model over time, we are confident this new way of working will create better outcomes for our clients, and it will also create more efficiency and enhanced risk management.

Speaker 2

Around 15% of our people around the world are now working in our new operating model, allowing them to feel more connected to what we're doing and empowered to make change. I'd like to thank our teams who are part of this exciting change for pushing us forward as we mark this important milestone. We also see meaningful opportunity over the coming years from continued digitization and reengineering initiatives as well as from embracing new technologies. To support this effort, we are making deliberate investments, enabling us to scale AI technologies across the organization through our enterprise AI hub. Last month, NVIDIA announced that BNY Mellon became the 1st major bank to deploy a DGX SuperPOD, which will accelerate our processing capacity to innovate, reduce risk and launch AI enabled capabilities.

Speaker 2

Our people have identified hundreds of use cases across BNY Mellon, and we already have several in production today. Across the company, it's our people who continue to power our culture. If you were to walk the halls of BNY Mellon, you'd feel the energy and sense of purpose our leadership team feels when we visit our teams around the world. To that end, we're investing in our people. Over the past several months, we launched new learning and feedback platforms powered by AI, expanded employee benefits, launched a new well-being support program, improved and accelerated our year end feedback and compensation processes and more.

Speaker 2

And we're delighted to welcome Shannon Hobbs, who will join us as our new Chief People Officer in June. As we continue to power our culture forward, we adopted the following 5 core principles to guide how our teams work and collaborate as we drive our success as a company: be client obsessed, spark progress, own it, stay curious and thrive together. To wrap up, our performance in the Q1 provides a glimpse of BNY Mellon's potential. Running our company better, inclusive of our focus on platforms, is enabling us to improve profitability and invest in our future. While we are pleased to see early signs of progress, we remain focused on the significant work ahead of us as we become more for our clients and deliver higher performance for our shareholders.

Speaker 2

As I have said before, the transformation of our company is a multiyear endeavor, but we've started 2024, the year of our 200 and 40th anniversary, with a sense of excitement and determination around what's possible. Now over to you, Dhamid.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Robin, and good morning, everyone. Referring to Page 3 of the presentation, I'll start with our consolidated financial results for the quarter. Total revenue of $4,500,000,000 was up 3% year over year. Fee revenue was up 5%. This reflects 8% growth in investment services fees on the back of higher market values, increased client activity and net new business, partially offset by a 14% decline in foreign exchange revenue as a result of lower market volatility.

Speaker 3

Firmwide's assets under custody and our administration of $48,800,000,000,000 were up 5% year over year and assets under management of $2,000,000,000,000 were up 6% year over year, both largely reflecting higher market values. Investment and other revenue was $182,000,000 in the quarter. Effective January 1, we adopted new accounting guidance for our investments in renewable energy projects, resulting in an approximately $50,000,000 increase to investment and other revenue. We have restated prior periods in our earnings materials to provide you with like for like year over year and sequential comparisons. The adoption of this new accounting guidance is largely neutral to net income and earnings per share as the increase in provision for income taxes roughly equals the increase in investment and other revenue.

Speaker 3

Net interest income decreased by 8% year over year, primarily reflecting changes in the composition of deposits, partially offset by the impact of higher interest rates. Expenses were up 2% year over year on a reported basis and up 1% excluding notable items, primarily severance expense. Growth was from incremental investments and employee merit increases offset by efficiency savings. Provision for credit losses was $27,000,000 in the quarter, primarily driven by reserve increases related to commercial real estate exposure. As Robin mentioned earlier, we reported earnings per share of $1.25 up 11% year over year, a pre tax margin of 29% and a return on tangible common equity of 20.7%.

Speaker 3

Excluding notable items, earnings per share were $1.29 up 14% year over year, pre tax margin was 30% and our return on tangible common equity was 21.3%. Turning to capital and liquidity on Page 4. Our Tier 1 leverage ratio for the quarter was 5.9%. Average assets increased by 1% sequentially as deposit balances grew. And Tier 1 capital decreased by 1% sequentially, primarily reflecting capital return to common shareholders, partially offset by capital generated through earnings.

Speaker 3

Our CET1 ratio at the end of the quarter was 10.8%. The quarter over quarter decline reflects a temporary increase in risk weighted assets at the end of the quarter, which was driven by discrete overdrafts in our custody and securities clearing businesses as well as strong demand for our agency securities lending program. Consistent with Tier 1 capital, CET1 capital decreased by 1% sequentially. Over the course of the quarter, we returned $1,300,000,000 of capital to our shareholders, representing a total payout ratio of 138%. Turning to liquidity.

Speaker 3

Our regulatory ratios remained strong. The consolidated liquidity coverage ratio was The consolidated liquidity coverage ratio was 117%, flat sequentially. And our consolidated net stable funding ratio was 136%, up 1 percentage point sequentially. Moving on to net interest income and the underlying balance sheet trends on Page 5. Net interest income of over $1,000,000,000 was down 8% year over year and down 6% quarter over quarter.

Speaker 3

The sequential decrease was primarily driven by changes in the composition of deposits, partially offset by the benefit of reinvesting maturing fixed rate securities in higher yielding alternatives. Against typical seasonal patterns, average deposit balances increased by 2% sequentially. Solid 4% growth in interest bearing deposits was partially offset by a 5% decline in non interest bearing deposits, which was in line with our expectations. Average interest earning assets were up 1% quarter over quarter. We reduced our cash and reverse repo balances by 2% and increased our investment securities portfolio by 5%.

Speaker 3

Average loan balances remained flat. Turning to our business segments, starting on Page 6. Please remember that in the Q1, we made certain realignments of similar products and services across our lines of business, movement institutional solutions from purging to clearance and collateral management, both in the market and wealth services segment. And we made other smaller changes across our business segments. We have restated prior periods for consistency.

Speaker 3

Please refer to the revised financial supplement that we filed on March 26 for detailed reconciliations to previous disclosures. Now starting with Security Services on Page 6. Security Services reported total revenue of $2,100,000,000 up 1% year over year. Investment Services fees were up 8% year over year. In asset servicing, investment services fees were up 8%, driven by higher market values, net new business and higher client activity.

Speaker 3

We've remained focused on deal margins and as a result, the year over year impact of repricing on fee growth was de minimis. Consistent with past quarters, we continue to see particular success with our ETF offering. ETF assets under custody and or administration surpassed $2,000,000,000,000 this quarter, up over 40% year over year on the back of higher market values, net new business and client flows and the number of funds serviced was up 16% year over year. While the pace of alternative fund launches was slower than in the prior year quarter, investment services fees for alternatives were up over 10% on a year over year basis. Throughout the quarter, we saw broad based strength across client segments, products and regions.

Speaker 3

In Issuer Services, investment services fees were up 11%, reflecting net new business across both depository receipts and corporate trust as well as higher cancellation fees in depository receipts. Foreign exchange revenue was down 11% over year and net interest income was down 12%. Expenses of $1,500,000,000 were flat year over year, reflecting incremental investments as well as the impact of employee merit increases offset by efficiency savings. Pretax income was $591,000,000 a 4% increase year over year and pretax margin expanded to 28%. Next, Marks and Wealth Services on Page 7.

Speaker 3

Marks and Wealth Services reported total revenue of $1,500,000,000 up 3% year over year. Total investment services fees were up 7% year over year. In Pershing, investment services fees were up 3%, reflecting higher market values and client activity, partially offset by the impact of business lost in the prior year. Net new assets were negative $2,000,000,000 for the quarter, reflecting the ongoing deconversion of the before mentioned lost business. Client demand for our Wealth Advisor platform, Wove, continues to be strong.

Speaker 3

In the Q1, we signed 9 additional client agreements, including our 1st direct indexing clients, and we onboarded 4 clients onto the platform. In treasury services, investment services fees increased by 5%, driven by net new business. We continue to invest in our sales and service teams, new products and technology, and so we are pleased with this solid growth and momentum continues to build. Last but not least, strength in clearance and collateral management continued with investment services fees up 13% on the back of broad based growth both in the U. S.

Speaker 3

And internationally. Net interest income for the segment overall was down 7 percent year over year. Expenses of $834,000,000 were up 7% year over year, reflecting incremental investments, revenue related expenses and employee merit increases, partially offset by efficiency savings. Pretax income was down 2% year over year at $678,000,000 representing a 45% pretax margin. Moving on to Investment and Wealth Management on Page 8.

Speaker 3

Investment and Wealth Management reported total revenue of 846,000,000 dollars up 2% year over year. In Investment Management, revenue was up 2%, driven by higher market values, partially offset by the mix of AUM flows and lower performance fees. In our wealth management business, revenue also increased by 2%, driven by higher market values, partially offset by changes in product mix and lower net interest income. Expenses of $740,000,000 were flat year over year, primarily reflecting the impact of incremental investments and employee merit increases, which was offset by efficiency savings. Pretax income was $107,000,000 up 15% year over year, representing a pre tax margin of 13%.

Speaker 3

As I mentioned earlier, assets under management of $2,000,000,000,000 increased by 6% year over year. In the quarter, we saw $16,000,000,000 of net inflows into our long term active strategies with strength in LDI and fixed income. And we saw $15,000,000,000 of net outflows from index strategies. Strength in our short term cash strategies continued with $16,000,000,000 of net inflows on the back of differentiated investment performance in our Dreyfus Money Market Fund complex. Wealth Management client assets of $309,000,000,000 increased by 11% year over year, reflecting higher equity market values and cumulative net inflows.

Speaker 3

Page 9 shows the results of the other segment. I will close by reiterating our existing outlook for the full year 2024. As I've said before, we have positioned our balance sheet for a range of interest rate scenarios and we're managing both sides of it proactively. And so despite the repricing of the curve since the beginning of the year, we continue to expect net interest income for the full year to be down 10% year over year, assuming current market implied interest rates for the remainder of 2024. Similarly, on expenses, our goal continues to be for full year 2024 expenses excluding notable items to be flat year over year.

Speaker 3

We are off to a good start, but we have more work ahead of us to realize further efficiency savings and drive year over year expense growth rates lower over the coming quarters, while we continue to make room for additional investments across our businesses. Overall, we remain determined to deliver some positive operating leverage this year. While we don't manage the firm to operating leverage on a quarterly basis, our performance in the Q1 with positive operating leverage on both a reported and an operating basis gives us confidence that we're on track. In light of the adoption of the new accounting guidance for our investments in renewable energy projects, which as I discussed earlier, increases both our investment and other revenue and the provision for income taxes. I'll note that we expect our effective tax rate for the full year 2024 to be between 23% 24%.

Speaker 3

And finally, we continue to expect returning 100% or more of 2024 earnings to our shareholders through dividends and buybacks over the course of the year. As always, we will manage share repurchases cognizant of the macroeconomic environment, balance sheet size and many other factors. And so for the foreseeable future, we will calibrate the pace of buybacks to maintain our Tier 1 leverage ratio close to the top end of our 5.5% to 6% medium term target range. To wrap up, over the past 3 months, we've made good progress towards achieving our targets for 2024 and we're encouraged by the drive we're seeing in all corners of the firm as our people embrace being more for our clients, running our company better and powering our culture. With that operator, can you please open the line for Q and

Operator

A. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question. So Robin, really nice progress, I guess, on organic growth initiatives across a handful of businesses underneath BNY Mellon as some of the things you talked about are starting to kind of take hold. Can you maybe frame what the firm's organic growth rate aspirations are for the next couple of years? How are you thinking about that for 2024 as well?

Speaker 4

And then, as a side question, I guess, to that, we've seen quite significant amount of activity in sort of clearance and collateral management. Can you maybe help size what is sort of transitory versus more of a recurring baseline to think about from here? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Sure, Alex. So let me start with the growth question. As you point out, we are quite feeling quite good about the early momentum that we have in growth. As you know, we set it out last year to really get our house in order, generate positive operating leverage and really think about the various different investments to drive shorter, medium and longer term growth. And that's really what we've been focused on, and we're pleased that we've got a good start to the year on it.

Speaker 2

Clearly, we're trying to control the things that we can control. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks and as Dermot touched on as well, our focus here has really been wrapped around being more for our clients, our commercial model. We hired our 1st Chief Commercial Officer. We're operationalizing 1 BNY Mellon, as I called it, the nuts and bolts, kind of getting into building that into our client coverage organization, our coverage practice, starting to deliver integrated solutions. I gave a couple of examples of those in my prepared remarks.

Speaker 2

And we've got a whole bunch more things that really cut across all of the different segments that are related to that. So look, it's early in the journey. I would have said maybe last year, we were working the problem. I think now I would say we're working the opportunity. Could you just remind me the second part of your question?

Speaker 4

Yes, sure. Really nice results at a clearance of collateral management for the firm, and it's been a pretty active market in Q1 related to treasury issuance and activity there broadly. I'm just trying to get a sense for a better baseline to think about from here. Was there anything kind of transitory in the Q1 that helped the numbers? Or this is a good baseline to think about going forward?

Speaker 2

Look, I would say in terms of transitory, not really, but let me just go through a few of the drivers. So remember that it's a business that like several of the businesses we have respond to volumes, and it was an active quarter when it comes to trading volumes in the U. S. Treasury market. Now for better or for worse, U.

Speaker 2

S. Treasuries is kind of a growth business, And so that's probably a bit more of a secular tailwind as opposed to something cyclical. And then remember, under the hood Clearance and Collateral Management, we've also been investing in the operating model of that business, as we talked about in our prepared remarks, and took something that was very, very adjacent to our clearing business from Pershing institutional clearing and aligned it with the rest of our clearing, bigger clearing business in Clearance and Collateral Management. And what we're finding now in those conversations with customers, it's a much cleaner conversation because we've got the ability to deliver all the solutions in our clearing business, whether it's U. S.

Speaker 2

Treasuries, whether it's international, whether it's the different models of clearing that we offer, we're able to deliver that in one conversation with a client and clients are responding to that. So I would call that secular as well.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks so much. I'll hop back in the queue.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Alex.

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning, Robin. Good morning, Dermot.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Steven.

Speaker 5

So, wanted to start with a question on capital, a bit of a 2 parter, if you will. I was hoping you could just speak to the drivers of RWA growth in 1Q, which was fairly robust, where you're seeing attractive opportunities to deploy that excess capital? And just how we should be thinking about the cadence of the buyback? You alluded to this somewhat Dermot, but I was hoping we could drill down into you noted the 6% target or that upper bound on Tier 1 leverage is how should we be thinking about the cadence of buyback in light of planned balance sheet actions and

Speaker 6

growth potential?

Speaker 3

Okay. I'll take that one. Stephen, good morning. So some of the capital increase, there are 2 parts to the RWA increase. 1 was a kind of temporary increase around quarterend as it relates to discrete overdrafts in custody and securities clearing businesses.

Speaker 3

So that's kind of come and gone. And then there's also there was strong demand for our agency securities lending program throughout the quarter and particularly leading up to quarter end and that's continued into this quarter. So that's so I would say half of it was that and half of it was temporary. As it relates to the buyback, I guess there's a little bit of a Groundhog Day here in terms of how we thought about Q1 of last year versus how we're thinking about Q1 of this year. We both quarters we got off to a strong start.

Speaker 3

But look at there's a lot of rate volatility out there in the market. You've seen the backup in rates last week with the hot inflation report. Last year, it was the war in Ukraine. This year, it's the geopolitics in the Middle East. And so we kind of gave a guidance in January where we said we were going

Speaker 6

to be

Speaker 3

100% more of earnings throughout the year. We don't give quarter by quarter guidance. I'd reiterate the guidance of 100% or more, notwithstanding the fact Q1 was very good at 138%. I wouldn't expect that pace to continue, but we'll take it quarter by quarter.

Speaker 5

Understood. And for my follow-up, maybe just drilling down into the investment and wealth margins in particular since across the other segments we're seeing continued progress towards the longer term targets. That's admittedly the segment with the biggest shortfall. I know in the prepared remarks, Dermot, you noted that you're making investments in the business and just wanted to better understand, one, where are those dollars getting deployed? And maybe if you could just speak to the primary drivers underpinning that glide path to 25%.

Speaker 5

How much is contingent on revenue growth versus expense optimization?

Speaker 3

Okay. So the first point would be pretax margin for the Q1 there was around 13%. If you normalize that for typical seasonal volatility in terms of retirement eligible stock and such like, if you back that out and adjusted the margin would have been somewhere in the 16% zip code. So we feel pretty good about that. Still a ton of work to do.

Speaker 3

And I would say, it's not one thing over the other. It depends on which part of the business you're talking about. In some of our asset managers, we're investing. We're launching new products. Clients in some places continue to derisk and move from more risk on equity to passive fixed income.

Speaker 3

But in other cases, we see clients coming in and AUM growing. We saw we're very pleased with the performance of our DRIFUS cash management business in Q1 where we saw strong inflows and the performance of the business in terms of returns was 1st quartile. So we feel very good about that. So we are investing the business to give our clients good products to invest in. The flip side is we still believe as it relates to running the company better and de siloing the firm and connecting asset management to the broader enterprise, there is a lot of opportunity there.

Speaker 3

And at the same time as the opportunity, it allows us to take costs out and become a lot more efficient. So I would say we're working both sides of it. We see more opportunity on the revenue side and we're working the problem on the efficiency side.

Speaker 5

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

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi. I had two questions. One was just on the AI commentary that you were leading with in the prepared remarks. And I wanted to understand how you're thinking about the benefits to the expense ratio and the timeframe with which this is going to flow through, because there's clearly revenue enhancing opportunities and expense reducing or flattening? And how much of this AI investment is how important is it to your 2024 expense outlook?

Speaker 7

And yes, if you could give us the medium term outlook, that would be helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Sure. Hi, Betsy. First of all, great to have you on the call. Really glad to have you back and to know that you're doing well. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2

So on the AI, I'll start with the sort of the latter part of your question, which is I really don't think this is a 2024 story. Of course, we're doing things in 2024, but if you ask me to try to put a pin in where the real benefits and sort of tailwinds kick in, I'm actually going to say it's not even necessarily a 25 story, although maybe we'll see a little bit in 2025. I think this is a 26 and on out benefit on the expense line. But let me go back to the sort of the premise of your question and just sort of briefly mention how we're embracing it. So I'll put it actually through the 3 pillars that we've laid out in terms of guiding so much of what we're doing in the company.

Speaker 2

So first, being more for our clients. We think there are solutions out there for clients that are going to help them make better decisions, see risks, be able to be more efficient themselves. We've got software in market today doing that with predictive trade analytics around fails and settlements, allowing clients to be able to look out and to see and take evasive action essentially on potential fails. And by the way, some of those actions involve using other parts of the BNY Mellon platforms in order to be able to improve their businesses. And so that's an interesting example, and there are going to be a lot more of those.

Speaker 2

Under the heading of running our company better, this is going to be about streamlining business processes, productivity, figuring out and seeing anomalies that we can see, code assistant, as so many people talk about for our developers. I was walking around one of our buildings the other day, talking to one

Speaker 3

of our developers. They've been out of

Speaker 2

school for a year and lot of using GitHub Copilot. So that's going to be there's going to be more there, and that ultimately is going to create efficiencies for us. And then under the culture heading, which is very important, we want AI to empower our people to be able to go out and be able to be more efficient in terms of what they're doing. And there are any number of different examples of things over time that we think AI is going to be able to help with us. Now importantly in this is the way in which we're doing it.

Speaker 2

Both Dermot and I talked about platforms, and another concept in our platform strategy is to create these hubs, these centers of excellence. And in AI, that's particularly important. We do not want to repeat the problems that we've had in the past of having everyone go off in their own So you might want to be able to respond to an RFP. You might want to So you might want to be able to respond to an RFP. You might want to generate summaries of documents.

Speaker 2

You might want to be able to get a head start on a research report. But actually, when you look under the heading, those three things sound different. But the AI that's actually powering them, some of the sort of mini platforms that are required are very, very similar. So we're using our AI hub to collect these different use cases and then be able to sort of deliver solutions and mini AI platforms that can then be used in multiple places around the company. So we're excited about this.

Speaker 2

We think it's going to be very significant over time, but it's not a 24 story.

Speaker 7

Okay, got it. That's super helpful with the color. Appreciate that. And then just a follow-up on the tax rate guidance. This

Speaker 8

is part

Speaker 7

of the accounting change, I believe, is that right? And can you tell us where in the PPOP the offsets are? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Sorry, I missed the last part of it, Betty. Where though up?

Speaker 7

Oh, there's offsets, right, to the tax the tax is impacted by the accounting change, is that right?

Speaker 3

Yes. So it's economically, it's net neutral for the firm. It's just a gross up in revenue, which will show up in the interest and other revenue line and then the offset to that is in the tax line. And we filed an 8 ks a couple of weeks ago where we restated all the prior periods for comparison so that people will see it on a consistent basis going forward.

Speaker 7

Sure. I just wanted to highlight that your tax rate guide is has the offsets in the revenue. So appreciate that. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Good morning. I guess, I'm not sure, Dermid, if this was addressed here, Robin. But just in terms of your outlook on deposits, I think the period end saw a pretty big uptick to $309,000,000,000 Just give us a sense of within your NII guidance, 1, what are you assuming in terms of deposit balances? And secondly, we if the forward curve holds, is the next inflection on NII and margin higher or lower?

Speaker 8

Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 3

So as of the quarter end, Ebrahim, I think the spot number was around $310,000,000,000 of deposits and that was largely you may recall that quarter end this year fell on a Good Friday where markets were closed. So we got a lot of clients putting cash in so that they could make certain payments. And so we saw a kind of a surge in deposits over the last few days of the quarter. And they've largely left the system now. And we've returned to more normal levels, which is in the kind of high 2.70 range.

Speaker 3

So that's kind of really the explanation for the spot deposit balance versus the average trend. So sequentially, we're down 6% in the deposits or NII and 8% year over year and 2% we saw a 2% growth in the deposit balance, generally speaking. Our guide at the beginning of the year was down 10%. And given the rate volatility and what's going on with the inflation report last week and the backup in rates, etcetera, etcetera, we don't see there's nothing that's causing us to think that we should change our guidance between now and the balance of the year. We're very neutrally positioned as to whether rates go up a little bit from here or down a little bit from here.

Speaker 3

And we feel very good about the overall guidance that we gave in January, which was approximately down 10%.

Speaker 8

Got it. And I guess, one just follow-up in terms of some of the actions you took in moving businesses in Pershing. As we think about the strategic review, I guess, Robin, maybe it began a year ago or longer than that. Give us a sense of in terms of the franchise positioning, how the businesses are talking to each other and if they are in the right place within the enterprise. Is all of that done?

Speaker 8

How close are you to getting the franchise synced up in terms of where it's humming along in terms with regards to what you want to achieve in terms of client synergies? Thank you.

Speaker 2

So the punch line is we're making good progress, but you're essentially asking a cultural question, and we're not done on that. So when we did to go back to your point, when we did our original strategy reviews, which is 18 months or so ago now and took us a few months to go through, we were really focused on answering the questions of what are we doing, are we doing the right things, how are we doing them, are we doing them in the right way, do we have the right people doing them. And so we looked at that and we certainly found bits of the company that were just in the wrong place. And so we've lifted those bits up and we've put them in what we now think are the right place. So that's what both Dermot and I talked about in our prepared remarks, and that was what some of the restatement of prior periods so that you could make the easier comparisons there was about.

Speaker 2

That was basic blocking and tackling. But the bigger opportunity, for sure, is how the businesses work together, not only to be more for clients by saying, hey, that client over there is a client, but they're not my client in my business. Can we work together to basically make them a client of both businesses? That's very significant. That's where we talk about maturing 1B and Y Mellon into the real heart of a new commercial coverage model, and that's being driven by our Chief Commercial Officer.

Speaker 2

Another part of this is saying, there are things that we used to think of as stand alone capabilities, some might call them products, We think about them as client platforms. And in fact, what the client is asking for, and we really heard this when we did our voice client survey, they don't want these individual products. They want us to take them and weave them together to create solutions for them that are on point to their needs. And so we've also started to do that, and I mentioned some examples of that. And that's a very powerful thing because that takes the breadth of our company.

Speaker 2

And rather than it being siloed, which is getting in the way of solutions, it's now actually ending up being the opportunity for us to deliver from the breadth of our platforms to our clients with solutions that frankly some other people aren't going to be able to do. So that's, we think, very exciting. And in those journeys, we're still relatively early, and that is cultural, And we've been doing a lot of things internally in the firm to make sure that our people are lined up behind that. It's early days, but we're quite excited about the direction of travel.

Speaker 8

Thank you, both.

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken with UBS. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to start, Dermot, even you were walking through Pershing, I believe you talked about the off boarding and the impact and how that was weighing on the net new assets. Could you give us an update on how far we are along in that off boarding process and how much we should continue to expect for the rest of the year? And then also LPL recently announced the acquisition of Atria, which I understand was a Pershing client and they're planning to consolidate those operations in 2025.

Speaker 9

So is that going to extend maybe some of the headwinds that we're seeing from some of these idiosyncratic off portings?

Speaker 3

Okay. Thanks for the question. So the first thing I would say about purging in the context of the overall kind of the segment. With respect to Pershing, we continue to invest in Pershing. Pershing continues to grow.

Speaker 3

And we've as we've said since the deconversion was announced, we're going to earn our way out of this situation and that's what's happening. So we still as a business feel very good about Pershing and our ability. It's a market that's growing in mid single digits on an annual basis, and we're a big player in that market. So we're going to win our shares. So while the deconversion was unfortunate, we continue to march on and we'll earn our way out.

Speaker 3

Specifically, I would say we'll be largely done with the deconversion by Q3 of this year. And as it relates to the second part, I would say, look, we're in a competitive market. People are going to do things, the LPL Atria thing. It's not a particular headwind. It's not been highlighted to me.

Speaker 3

It's not hit my radar in terms of, oh my gosh, we need to worry about that. And so I think we're winning more than we're losing and we're investing and that's really going well. And when you take it in the context of what's going on with Wolve, we're building a strong pipeline there. The backlog is looking good. We've added 9 clients to the platform in Q1 of this year and we made a commitment to the market that we would kind of add to $40,000,000 of revenue this year, and we still feel very good about that guidance and that commitment that we made to you back in January.

Speaker 2

And Brennan, I'd just add on the business front to that, which is remember that when we look at a deconversion, for sure, those happen and the one that you're referring to, the original one was a larger one, but we're also growing with our clients. Our clients are growing with us, and we also are on the receiving end of roll ups as well. Our clients are quite acquisitive, and we have a couple of clients who've been doing acquisitions, and we have some of our largest clients who are growing very significantly and very healthily. So it's always unfortunate when there's a roll up that goes against us, but when there are roll ups that go with our clients, those things balance out to some extent, which is why Dermot makes the point about overall, we still feel quite enthusiastic about the net new assets growth over time.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks for that color. And then when we think about the deposits, I'm trying to think about really Dermot, the fact that here we are 1 quarter end, I get it, you maybe don't want to update expectations, but it seems like based on what we've seen so far, deposit trends seem to be doing better than expected. We saw a pickup in the deposit balances at year end. They sustained, which is a little unusual.

Speaker 9

And even though they've come down from EOP at threethirty one, they're still in a similar ballpark to where you were on the average. Are you guys is there something specific that's driving the expectation for decline? Or is it just a component of conservatism?

Speaker 3

If I'm honest with you, I would say it's a little bit of both. But I would expect like everybody expected deposits to decline this year, and it hasn't necessarily happened yet. And I kind of think I make that statement in the context of QT. And so if you look at the ORP in Q1, the drain largely came from there. And if QT continues and rates stay higher for longer, on balance, I would expect deposits to decline from here.

Speaker 3

And so I don't see anything that tells me that I should update the guidance from down 10% NII year over year. And then underneath the hood, in terms of the composition of the deposits themselves, you have the mix between interest bearing and non interest bearing. And as rates stay higher for longer, I would expect NIBs to grind a little bit lower. So the overall balance may be higher, but you have the mix underneath, which will kind of feed into that overall NII guidance. So it's not just the absolute level, it's also the composition of it.

Speaker 9

Yes. Yes. No, that's great. Thanks for the candor and the embracing the uncertainty.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hi.

Speaker 2

Hi, Mike.

Speaker 10

Can you hear me? Yes. So, I guess, non interest bearing deposits inched down again. And I'm just wondering where that floor is. I guess it's 18% versus 19% last quarter 26% year over year.

Speaker 10

And so, on the other hand, your servicing fees were up 8% year over year. So I'm not sure if I should draw a link or not, maybe what you're not getting in non interest bearing deposits you're getting in servicing fees. So I guess the question is, how are you getting such strong servicing fee growth year over year of 8%? How much of that is due to markets? How much of that is sustainable?

Speaker 10

And is any of that simply a substitution effect from the non interest bearing deposits to servicing fees?

Speaker 3

Thanks for the question, Mike. So let's go with the fee component first. Q1 is kind of one of those quarters where we came into the year, I guess, both in deposits and in pipeline and sales activity in very good shape. As it relates to kind of Asset Servicing in particular, the pipeline was strong. We felt good coming into the year.

Speaker 3

Markets rallied nicely. And so clients were in risk on mode, doing more with us, flows were stronger, balances are higher and we're winning our share of mandates. Little factoids for like of all the deals that we competed for in Q1, we won north of 50%. So we're competitive. We're pricing well.

Speaker 3

We're very focused on client profitability and deal margin. And it goes back to the point that we made in several quarters prior to this where we're very focused on the cost to serve. And so by improving margin, focusing on cost to serve, being more for clients, we can be more competitive in the pricing point. And I made that remark I made the point in my prepared remarks that we saw repricing being de minimis. So it was a good quarter all around and we feel very good about the backlog and the pipeline going forward.

Speaker 3

As it relates to the mix between fees and deposits, we don't lead with deposits as an institution. Clients do multiple things with us across the enterprise. And as a consequence of that, they leave deposits with us. It's an important point, but 2 thirds of our deposits are operational in nature and therefore very sticky. But with a higher for longer rate environment, it's only natural to expect that people with NIBs are going to over time move out of that and look for a higher yield.

Speaker 3

It's inevitable and it's a fact of life and we're ready to deal with that. But I'm very proud of what our Global Liquidity Solutions team is doing in terms of winning their share of the business in terms of the deposits and how we price them. And so sequentially, we've seen the balances go up because of that competitive pricing. So all in all, when you take the ecosystem together, we feel very good about where we're at. And Mike,

Speaker 2

there was nothing idiosyncratic about trade offs to the part of your question. I don't see the quarter built around that at all.

Speaker 10

Okay. And so for separate question, for all the growth in servicing fees, asset management, what can you do to reverse the trends for sustainable growth? I mean, would it ever be an option to consider selling that? The synergies, when you think about 1 BNY Mellon, I kind of get the rest of the firm being all one cohesive unit over time. But how does Asset Management fit into that?

Speaker 2

Sure. So this is a question that we talked a little bit about last year. And I said at the time that we think, and I'll underline the word think, that the business really can complement the strategy of the firm. But we had more work to do and that, that was a thesis, and we needed to put in place the various different steps to really be able to operationalize and make the most of that. And that's what we've been working on over the course of the past few months.

Speaker 2

The basic thesis is we think there's a strong industrial logic to have $2,000,000,000,000 worth of manufacturing platform aligned to BNY Mellon's $3,000,000,000,000 worth of retail distribution capacity if you look across wealth and purging together, purging alone having $2,500,000,000,000 plus of client assets on the platform. And so if you only operated in a silo in Investment Management, where it was manufacturing and only its own distribution, there's a legitimate question there about whether or not it would have the scale and the capacity to be able to truly compete. But when you put it together with of the company, we think there's a pretty compelling thesis there. And so we don't think we've properly capitalized on those benefits in the past. And so our strategy is, let's let Investment Management stretch its legs in that new approach.

Speaker 2

And we see some early signs of progress on that. We've been joining some dots. I mentioned a couple of things in my prepared remarks, both in terms of us having a broader distribution platform that actually can attract other investment managers who maybe don't have the benefit of our distribution, and they want to come join our platform, rounding out our offerings and essentially making our distribution platform more complete, but also being we've given you our targets. We want to be able to expand the pretax margin in the business to over 25%. It's not for nothing that we didn't grow expenses in that segment or in Security Services for that matter because we're really focused on the margin in those businesses, and we have had some growth.

Speaker 2

And so this is about really working that set of opportunities, and we'll see over the coming quarters how we do. But this quarter was one where we felt we took an important step forward.

Speaker 10

All right. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Glenn Schorr with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, thanks very much. Maybe I mentioned it, so maybe it wasn't that big of a deal, but P plus 1 starts at the end of May. I'm curious if it was a big expense lift that we get some relief on going forward. And then related to that, are there any headwinds on NII and any benefits on capital that we have to think about as a result of moving towards a more C+1 world? Thank you.

Speaker 6

So,

Speaker 2

C+1, sure, we had to for sure spend money in different parts of the company in order to be able to ready ourselves for this. We view that as frankly ordinary course of business. There's always some market structure change going on in the world that we have to respond to. So while they may be individually lumpy, there's always something. So we just think about that as part of the expense of running the company and not something that will yield a particular benefit when we happen to have finished the work.

Speaker 2

Now I do think that T+1 overall provides benefits to the financial system, improvements in efficiency, some risk reduction. I would say to the principal player there. It can improve liquidity and capital requirements in the fullness of time. The industry has come a long way. It wasn't that long ago that we're at T+5, T+3 sort of moving down the curve.

Speaker 2

And I will also say from an opportunity point of view, not only do clients look to us to help them navigate these types of things because they're complicated and detailed, and they want us to essentially help them clients look at us and it does sometimes cause the question to be raised of, another big change in the post trade landscape, life's too short, I'm an investment manager or I'm broker dealer, I want to go about the core of my business, I don't want to have to worry about that stuff as much as I currently do. BNY Mellon, can you help us? Can you help us and maybe there's a platform sale opportunity there for a little bit more outsourcing? Because as the world makes these changes, speeds up, gets more complicated, more change management, we, of course, have the benefit of scale. We get to change once, and we get to take some of those problems off their hands.

Speaker 2

And so I'd call that out when it comes to real time payments. I'd call it out in T+1. I'd call it out in clearing. Each time these things happen, we look at it through a lens of opportunity as well as a lens of client service. But overall, also just good for the market.

Speaker 2

Nothing good happens between trading and settlement, as is often said.

Speaker 3

And Glenn, on the specific point about headwinds as it relates to NII, I kind of I look at the last two quarters together in terms of the strength of what we've done on NII. And I feel overall we're in a good place. The balance sheet is very clean. Our CIO book is well positioned and kind of short duration. And the CIO is doing a really good job at optimizing yields.

Speaker 3

And so when you see our securities that are maturing at the moment, they're rolling off at a kind of 2% to 3% rate and then are being deployed at current market yields. So based on what I see today with the backup in rates that happened last week as a result of the hot inflation report, we feel pretty good about where things are for the balance of the year just using that forward curve. As I said earlier, rates up a little, down a little, don't materially impact us. And so we feel like our base case is we feel pretty good about it.

Speaker 6

Thank you,

Operator

Our next question is going to come from Gerard Cassidy with RBC. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Dermot, can you give us some color? I noticed you said in your prepared remarks, the average loan balances were essentially flat in Q1 versus Q4 of it. But I noticed the spot number, the year end or quarter end number for loans was actually quite a bit higher around €73,000,000,000 versus the spot number in the 4th quarter. Was something at the end of the quarter that caused that to increase?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Gerard. Again, it was a little bit of what I call the Good Friday effect where clients use our overdraft facility mechanisms going into that weekend. And so that really caused the spot balances to go up and that's kind of largely cleaned out. So it has reverted more to the average numbers that you're familiar with.

Speaker 11

Okay, good. And I know this is not a big area for you guys. So maybe you could give us better insights since it's not as big as it is for a traditional bank. But can you maybe give us some color on the commercial real estate? I know you've pointed out you've built up the allowances there.

Speaker 11

What are you guys seeing? Is it similar to what we're reading about and hearing from others? Or is it something different?

Speaker 3

So I would say, look, we're prudently marked in the commercial real estate portfolio, Overall, our CRE portfolio in the context of our overall balance sheet is quite small, 3% of total loans, $2,000,000,000 And the reserve build that we took in Q1 was really just kind of being prudent on a couple of specific situations that are coming up for restructuring. But I would let you know that they're all still paying and everything is working and they're Class A office buildings and we feel good about the occupancy. So I would say overall very, very clean and nothing that really has me unduly concerned. Look, there has been a lot of chatter in the market in the press over the last quarter about what's going to happen. I'm sure the backup in rates hasn't really helped that chatter, but like surveying other banks' results so far this quarter, I haven't really noticed any specific CRE bills on the back of what's been going on over the last couple of quarters.

Speaker 3

So it does feel like as a sentiment matter to be quite muted at the moment on the back of others' earnings release. That's at least what I've observed.

Speaker 2

And Gerard, I'd just add to that for the more general view, which is I think the answer to what happens in Corporate Real Estate, clearly, it depends which markets you're involved in. There are some markets around the country that are more distressed than others. It continues to be focused on office, as you know, although there are certainly some questions on multifamily. But the fact that we're sort of still short housing in the U. S.

Speaker 2

As a general matter is probably ultimately going to be helpful to that story. The most single most important driver of it, as we sit here today, is where are longer term rates. And so there's so much chatter about what's going to happen in Fed funds. Is the Fed going to cut? Are they going to stay?

Speaker 2

Are they going to hike a little bit? But what really matters is where is the curve from 5 to 10 years? And as that backs up and to the And if they ended up for some reason, not our base case, but it's possible, you got to plan for it, if they end up at 6%, then for some folks in the market, that's going to be a much more painful outcome. So I think you watch so goes the 10 year, some extent, so goes the commercial real estate market because this is a 2024 a little bit, but really 2025 refinancing story.

Speaker 11

Thank you. Appreciate those insights. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of David Smith with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 12

Good afternoon.

Speaker 11

Could you please help us think a little bit more about how far you are along you are in the efficiency opportunity journey? I know it's really never ending in some ways, but can I just think about when the pace of improvement might start to decline as you get through more of a low hanging fruit?

Speaker 3

So, thanks for the question. I was wondering when it was going to come. It's a multiyear journey. And look, let's go back to last year and kind of go through it. And last year, we kind of ended up at 2.7 versus a guide of 4 versus a previous year of 8.

Speaker 3

And this year, we've guided flat and we started Q1 on an operating basis of 1%. You'll see that our headcount, we've got it we've largely give or take few hundred people, it's largely flat. And so the headcount is flat. We feel like we have our arms wrapped around that. There's a lot going under the hood in terms of bringing in like growing our analyst class, high value location growth, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 3

So we see a lot of opportunity to continue to improve the efficiency story. Also, as we both said in our prepared remarks, the migration to a new way of working, the platform operating model over the next couple of years, we feel will not only help us grow top line, but it will also just help us run the company better. And I think it's quite important culturally that we don't really talk about efficiency internally. We talk about running our company better, which is very important strategically and also culturally. So I think you're going to see quarter by quarter proof points on how we're able to run the company better, which will result in efficiency, which will then in turn result in improved margin.

Speaker 3

So we feel very optimistic about what's coming.

Speaker 11

Thank you. And lastly, just to confirm the $1,000,000,000 or so of buyback in 1Q, Does that come out of the $6,000,000,000 new repurchase authorization or is the $6,000,000,000 incremental to what you did in 1Q?

Speaker 3

So we did an authorization last year, which was $5,000,000,000 We have a little bit left in that. And so it's just more of an administration thing that we decided to get another authorization this year for $6,000,000,000 That's largely open ended. So I wouldn't really dwell on the size of the authorization that much. It's just more of what we commit to you doing on an annual basis. And the key thing for you to take away is we're committing to north of 100% this year.

Speaker 11

Got it. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Jamie. Our next

Operator

question comes from the line of Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Speaker 12

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe most of them have been asked and answered, but maybe just a couple of follow ups. One, a little bit on that prior question, Dermot, I guess, this could be for Robin as well. I think Robin, you mentioned earlier in the call about 15% of staff are in the new operating model.

Speaker 12

Maybe if you could just talk about your migration plan over time and going back to what you just answered Dermot about the efficiency improvement, should we be thinking of this over the long term as maybe roughly even between expenses and revenue or still more geared towards expenses?

Speaker 2

Okay. Let me just start with the Platform's operating model. So ultimately, if you just go back to why are we doing what it is that we're doing, we've been pretty siloed as a company, as we've talked about before. We think that's a bad artifact. At least it's a bad artifact for a company like us, which is inherently a scale platforms provider.

Speaker 2

It's kind of the nature of our business, diversified, many different platforms, but largely at scale. And so to have the separation of all of these pieces that are in support of that and in some cases duplication, it just, in our opinion, wasn't the right way to run the company. So what is Platform's operating model going to do? It's going to simplify how we work, it's going to improve the client experience, and it's going to create more empowerment for our employees. It's an opportunity to do things in one place, do them well and elevate the quality of overall execution.

Speaker 2

And so with that said, it sort of hits on the expense line as a benefit and it hits on the revenue line as well. And we've done remember, we did a bunch of studies for this before we embarked on it because pretty significant change. We also did some pilots. And to some extent, we've even built new businesses using this operating rhythm because we built WOV in that way and that wasn't entirely by accident. So we've had some experience associated with all of that and we feel pretty good, therefore, that we are going to get expense savings and revenue opportunities associated with it.

Speaker 2

We also think that from a cultural point of view, it's just an opportunity for our people because we think our people, and this is certainly what the data so far has shown, they just feel more empowered working in the model. They can see a problem. They can get on it more quickly. They're more empowered to pull the levers to create change, and they no longer feel that maybe that they're part of a long chain of a bureaucracy to make change. On the efficiency opportunity thing, thing I would add in answer to your question from what Dermot said earlier on is just to reinforce that there are short, medium and long term opportunities efficiencies.

Speaker 2

And we've talked about it this way for a while now. As Dermot said, we had to bend the cost curve last year. We thought it was very important. So we took a bunch of slightly tactical, but nonetheless important and decisive changes. We also laid the groundwork for some medium term saves.

Speaker 2

We talked about Project Catalyst, 1500 ideas sourced from our employees, essentially delivering savings in 'twenty two sorry, in 2023, in 2024 and 2025. And then we've got things that are longer term, like the platform's operating model, which are fundamentally changing the ways that people actually work. That's a longer term opportunity, probably get a little bit of benefit from that from 2024, but 2025 and 2026 are places where we'll probably see a bit more of that. And then in answer to Betsy's question from earlier on, we've been investing in AI. Now that's definitely not a 24 story for benefits, maybe not even 25, but a 26 and beyond story.

Speaker 2

So we're layering in these different opportunities, recognizing that we wanted to take swift action, but then we also feel that we're laying the seeds for future efficiencies over time.

Speaker 3

And I would just Brian, just to add on, I would just anchor you in a number. Like last year, when we grew expenses by 2.7%, we invested $500,000,000 in new initiatives within that $2,700,000,000 And we're replicating that again this year. And so as somebody who's very close to the platform operating model strategy, the cultural point is when you walk the corridors of BNY Mellon now, you feel an energy and enthusiasm for our people, as Robin said, from embracing the model that hasn't been seen before. And it is a very, very exciting strategy that's going on at the firm.

Speaker 12

That's fantastic color. And maybe just one last one on the speaking of initiatives, the buy side trading solutions initiative. I know we've had a lot of other initiatives to talk about, so just maybe to get an update on how that's tracking?

Speaker 2

Yes. This was I'll take this one. This was always going to be a medium term thing. As we've told you, we sort of have this capability in house. It's a great example of platforms thinking.

Speaker 2

It was captive in one bit of the company, only looking internally. We essentially made it fit for external use as well. We've we onboarded, as we told you last quarter, a large client onto that platform, and that's been going very well. I have a lot of conversations with clients about how they could consider part of their trading desks to be outsourced. Sometimes it's all of it.

Speaker 2

Sometimes it's a region or a product that somebody wants to essentially say, hey, I'm not at scale, you're at scale, you're executing $1,000,000,000,000 worth of volumes, can I rent that capability from you essentially? We think there's a large addressable market here, but it's going to be this is a longer sell process. The sales cycle of this takes longer. It's definitely a C suite conversation, but we continue to be cautiously optimistic about this over time.

Speaker 12

Great. Thanks for all the color. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Brian.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 13

Thanks. I know we're getting on here. I'll try to ask just a couple of quick cleanups. First of all, just this is the Q1 that the securities book has actually grown in absolute terms. And I'm just wondering, is part of that an increased confidence in just where you do expect deposits to land?

Speaker 13

Or was it more just opportunity cost of what your options were in the market?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Ken. I would say very much the latter. And when you look at the overall portfolio, you think of cash and securities together. And it was really the CIO team just optimizing yield and deploying cash where they see the opportunities.

Speaker 13

Yes. Okay. And then I know you said a little bit of this before, but I was wondering if you could tighten up. Last quarter, you said to Glenn's question, you talked about reinvesting at market rates. So last quarter, you put that together and said that you would expect that this year's reinvestments to be 150 basis points to 200 basis points on your roll on, roll off.

Speaker 13

And with higher rates, I'm just wondering if you kind of put that together for us, like what do you think that net benefit is now versus that 150 to 200?

Speaker 3

I think it's in the 200 zip code.

Speaker 13

Okay. And then last one, just duration of the portfolio, can you just give us an update on where that stands?

Speaker 3

Roughly around 2 years, give or take, yes. But yes, 2 years is the best number give you on that one.

Speaker 13

Okay. So to your point, like still keeping really short and opportunistic?

Speaker 3

Correct. Yes.

Speaker 13

All right, great. Thanks a lot.

Operator

And our final question comes from the line of Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hi. I just when you mentioned your comments about commercial real estate, I was just wondering, I don't think you have much exposure, but you highlighted that commercial real estate, I guess, for the industry or are you talking office? You said it's really a 2025 refinancing story and as goes the 10 year, as goes commercial real estate. It's just if you could provide any color, why did you highlight that and why do you have that sort of conclusion? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Well, the question, Mike, was more general in nature. It wasn't really applying to us. Dermot talked a little bit about us, in particular, on commercial real estate. But I think the question that was being asked was just using our vantage point. I think it was from Gerard, just using our vantage point in the world because we're not particularly invested in the space, what do we see in the world maybe as a slightly less conflicted observer?

Speaker 2

And so I was just giving my perspective on it.

Speaker 10

Yes. So your perspective, what's the yes, I'm just curious, interested, as goes to 10 year, to 2025 refinancing story, any color behind that?

Speaker 2

Sure. So, at the end of the day, the as you look at the various different owners of commercial real estate who have refinancings and they're looking at their own occupancy level, they're looking at their own maturity of their own debt stack, and they need to go out and they need to find refinancing, of course, as you know, better than anybody when their debt stack starts to come due. That isn't a Fed funds type of refinancing because they're not funding on very short dates. And most of them, for understandable reasons, like to lock in funding as well. So they're looking further out the curve.

Speaker 2

It's not precisely at the 10 year point. But my point really is the risk to refinancing in the commercial real estate space is very correlated to the shape of the treasury curve overall. Clearly, credit spreads matter as well, but it's a different proposition when you have the longer, call it 10 years, but it's probably a little inside of that, part of the curve at 4% 5% versus 6%. And that was the purpose of my observation.

Speaker 10

All right. That's helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 3

You're welcome.

Operator

And with that, that does conclude our question and answer session for today. I would now like to hand the call back over to Robin with any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, operator. I'd just like to wrap up by thanking our employees for their hard work to unlock the tremendous opportunity inside of BNY Mellon. We started the year with great momentum, delivered very solid results in the Q1, and the pace of change continues to pick up. And I want to thank our investors for their continued support. We appreciate your interest in BNY Mellon, and thank you for your time today.

Speaker 2

You have any follow-up questions, please reach out to Marius and the IR team. Be well.

Operator

Thank you. And that does conclude today's conference and webcast. A replay of this conference call and webcast will be available on the BNY Mellon Investor Relations website at 2 Eastern Standard Time today. Have a great day.

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Earnings Conference Call
Bank of New York Mellon Q1 2024
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