Question-and-Answer Session
Tim Thompson - Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Colleen. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, we are asking those participating in the question-and-answer portion to ask one question at a time. Certainly, feel free to join the queue several times if you have more than one question. So, with that, let’s get started.
First question? Jim?
James Bantis - Credit Suisse First Boston
Ed, you alluded to the change in branch hours just to focus on the topic, 50% increase in certain branches relative to the peers. Already number one in customer service, already had longer branch hours. How do you manage this stuff being overkill versus? in terms of your staffing requirements and just talk about maybe the benefits that you get from this?
W. Edmund - President and Chief Executive Officer
So, we think it’s important to play to your strength. We think that the competitive market around service has increased. And so, as a result we do a lot of research as you can imagine on this, and we know the customer still care about it. So, it doesn’t let us off the hook from our expense growth paradigm of 3%. By any means, it’s another investment, because we are already 25% more hours in the competition, we see this as an incremental add that so far the competition hasn’t matched. And so, we are quite comfortable that it drives our revenue and we keep our expense growth inside that revenue growth.
James Bantis - Credit Suisse First Boston
In the? when you think of some of the key products that benefit most from branch hours that should help revitalize the deposit base, market share that’s been eroding past couple of quarters?
W. Edmund - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes and more particularly the one we care about most which is the core banking, thicker margin checking account, which is generally what’s driven by branch hours as opposed to the tighter margin term and high interest savings account.
Tim Thomson - Vice President, Investor relations
Thanks, Jim. Go ahead, Michael.
Michael Goldberg - Desjardins Securities
Thank you. My question’s on BCE just to follow-up on your comments, Ed. I feel like we don’t know the whole picture and obviously we are not going to know the whole picture. But one thing in particular, $3.8 billion commitment as I understand it overall that represents over 18% of your common equity at the end of the quarter. And I just find it hard to believe that you commit 18.4% of your common on any one transaction or counter party, non-government counter party unless you were awfully certain that your commitment was offset by equally solid take out commitments. So, how can you provide any comfort on this issue?
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