BNY

Good morning, welcome to the 2026 second quarter earnings conference call hosted by BNY. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference call and webcast will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material. You may not record or rebroadcast these materials without BNY's consent. I will now turn the call over to Marius Merz, BNY Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter earnings call. I'm here with Robin Vince, our CEO, and Dermot McDonogh, our CFO. As always, we will reference the quarterly update presentation, which can be found on the investor relations page of our website at bny.com. I will note that our remarks will contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Information about these statements and non-GAAP measures is available in the earnings press release, financial supplement, and quarterly update presentation, all of which can be found on the investor relations page of our website. Forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today, July 15, 2026, and will not be updated. With that, I will turn it over to Robin.

Thanks, Marius. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us. I'll begin with a few comments on our performance in the second quarter and our progress over the first half of the year before Dermot takes you through our financials in greater detail and provides you with our updated financial outlook. Referring to page two of the quarterly update presentation, BNY delivered another strong performance in the second quarter. Earnings per share of $2.45 increased by 27% year-over-year. We grew total revenue by 13% year-over-year to a record $5.7 billion, reflecting broad-based growth across our businesses. We generated approximately 600 basis points of positive operating leverage. Taken together, we expanded pre-tax margin to 40% and return on tangible common equity to 31%. Reflecting on the operating environment, the second quarter presented a dynamic backdrop for global markets.

Amid geopolitical tensions, elevated energy prices, and continued uncertainty around inflation, interest rates, and fiscal policy, the fundamental drivers of capital markets remained broadly constructive. Corporate earnings were resilient. Investment in AI infrastructure continued at a significant pace, and labor markets held up despite some signs of moderation. BNY is built for this type of environment. Our diversified set of businesses operate across the breadth of capital markets, benefiting from the higher levels of market activity and strong client engagement. Taking a step back, our work over the past several years was about laying the foundation for the multi-year reimagination of our company to create a more diverse, durable, and growthier set of businesses that serve our clients in more innovative ways. At the beginning of our transformation, we set out to do three things, which I'll briefly recap, starting with the most important, culture.

Revitalizing our leadership team, breaking down silos, and encouraging our people to act as owners has resulted in our teams working more effectively together with the common purpose of making BNY better every day. Second, we fundamentally reimagined how we operate inside the company. No more silos and islands of isolation, but a re-architecting that realigns BNY across client and enterprise platforms. This led to our new operating model, which is now fully activated. Lastly, we said we had to go to market in a new way to make it easier for our clients to do more with us. A powerful value proposition for them and a meaningful revenue opportunity for us. This led to our new commercial model, now in place for two years and driving good momentum. As we get properly underway in phase 2 of our work, we have clear signals that our strategy is working.

Now, we need to capitalize on this foundational work, increasing our focus on innovation, both in new technologies like artificial intelligence and digital assets, and in continued product innovation across our businesses. In short, we have a lot to do, but as I visit our teams around the world and hear from our clients, I'm energized by the feedback and the opportunity. With this in mind, we wanted to share some more specifics on our progress in our mid-year business update on page three. First, on the commercial side, momentum matters. Deepening relationships and partnering more closely with our clients remains one of our greatest opportunities. With our commercial model in place, we now have a clearer view of the white space opportunity ahead of us.

As we sharpen our go-to-market strategy, we are starting to see the benefits, broader relationships, larger mandates, and more integrated solutions built on capabilities that BNY is uniquely positioned to deliver as a seamless package. The second quarter was our 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales growth. So far this year, we've had two consecutive record sales quarters. The average deal size is up by more than 20% year-over-year, and approximately 10% of deals are with clients that are entirely new to BNY. Our wins in the second quarter demonstrate, for example, how BNY is helping market participants prepare for expanded clearing for US Treasuries, supporting growth of ETFs in Europe, delivering integrated solutions for asset owners, and enabling digital asset capabilities for asset managers. The common thread is not any one product or solution.

It is that by bringing together BNY's platforms, we can more effectively solve challenges for our clients and drive higher and more durable growth for our company. Next, on our platform operating model. This was more than a reorganization. It is a better way of working, one that allows us to move faster, collaborate better, innovate more consistently, and ultimately deliver more for our clients. In the second quarter, we completed the transition and have now shifted our focus from implementation to realizing the benefits of this new operating model over the next several years. We are already seeing some early progress. We're now able to move more nimbly, bringing product, technology, operations, and commercial teams together to build more integrated solutions and respond more quickly and comprehensively as client needs evolve.

Given the breadth of our businesses and supported by our operating and commercial models, BNY has an incredible advantage in innovating new ways to solve emerging client needs from across our platforms. A good example of this from the second quarter is our work with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as the financial agent for Trump Accounts, which we are supporting with capabilities from across BNY. We can also see that several innovative products launched over the past few years, for example, buy-side trading solutions, CollateralOne, Borrow+, have become compelling contributors to revenue today. Another component of innovation is linked to the shift toward an always-on financial ecosystem. Payments, liquidity, collateral, digital assets, and securities markets are becoming more interconnected, creating demand for infrastructure that operates with greater speed, certainty, and resilience.

We believe this represents one of the defining opportunities for financial services over the next decade. It is an area where BNY is well-positioned to lead. In the second quarter, we announced our expanded relationship with Circle, bringing together institutional digital asset custody with mint and burn capabilities for USDC within a single operating model. This builds on our role as custodian of USDC reserves and enables clients to move more seamlessly between traditional cash and blockchain-based networks through infrastructure that combines institutional-grade governance, operational resilience, and scale. We expect this will be a recurring theme as we continue to invest in the infrastructure that we believe will support the future of financial markets.

Whether through real-time payments, tokenized assets, collateral mobility, or digital cash, our objective is the same, to help clients connect traditional and digital financial ecosystems in ways that improve efficiency, expand optionality, and support growth through trust and resiliency. Which brings me to AI. Over the past six months, the conversation around AI has reflected a wide range of sentiment. Excitement about what the technology can unlock, urgency as companies move to deploy it, and skepticism about whether the level of investment will translate into real outcomes. Business leaders are looking at how to measure returns, manage risk, and turn AI from experimentation into durable value. At BNY, we continue to view AI as one of the most important long-term opportunities for our company and for society more broadly.

Over the past few years, we've invested in the enterprise capabilities, governance, and talent to allow us to embed AI across the company in ways that strengthen how we innovate, how we operate, and ultimately, how we deliver for clients. We are now starting to see AI create value across three dimensions. First, AI is helping us to run the company better by embedding new capabilities into our end-to-end workflows and enabling our people to work more productively. This creates capacity. It would be a mistake to think about this capacity as just an efficiency creator. We also see it as an enabler for growth and for our broader strategy. Second, AI is helping us build better products and deliver better experiences for our clients.

Third, we believe AI can expand the perimeter for BNY by allowing us to bring new capabilities to market through our platforms, our data, and our expertise. It is early days across all three dimensions, but we are starting to see AI create a tangible and measurable impact across the entire client life cycle. Some examples of which we shared with you in our presentation last quarter. As these capabilities continue to evolve, we believe AI can become an increasingly important source of differentiation and long-term value creation for our clients, our people, and our shareholders. Looking back on the first half of the year, we are encouraged by our progress. Across the company, we are seeing the capabilities we are building translate into better outcomes for our clients and stronger performance for our shareholders, with our people at the heart of this progress.

The way BNY works today is fundamentally different than it was just a few years ago, and our stronger culture of collaboration, ownership, and innovation is helping us to deliver faster and more consistently for our clients and more effectively as one company. To conclude, we're entering the second half of the year with strong momentum. The trends that are reshaping financial markets, greater activity, increasing complexity, new technologies, and demand for trusted partners play to BNY's strengths and give us confidence that our strategy is the right one. With that, over to you, Dermot.

Thank you, Robin, and good morning, everyone. I'm starting with our consolidated financials for the second quarter on page four of the presentation. Total revenue of $5.7 billion was up 13% year-over-year. Fee revenue was up 11%. That included 13% growth in investment services fees, reflecting net new business, higher client activity, and higher market values. Investment management and performance fees were up 5%, primarily driven by higher market values, partially offset by the mix of AUM flows. Firm-wide AUC/A of $62.6 trillion were up 12% year-over-year. This increase was primarily driven by higher market values and net client inflows, partially offset by the unfavorable impact of a stronger US dollar. Assets under management of $2.2 trillion were up 6% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher market values, partially offset by the impact of the stronger dollar and cumulative net outflows.

Foreign exchange revenue was up 8% year-over-year on the back of higher client volumes, partially offset by the impact of corporate treasury activity. Investment in other revenue was $216 million in the quarter. Net interest income was up 20% year-over-year, primarily driven by reinvestment of investment securities at higher yields and balance sheet growth, partially offset by deposit margin compression. Provision for credit losses was a benefit of $8 million in the quarter, reflecting improvements in commercial real estate exposure, where we now have zero non-performing assets. Expenses of $3.4 billion were up 7% year-over-year, both on a reported basis and excluding notable items. Three quarters of the increase represents revenue related expenses. The remaining one quarter reflects higher investments and employee salary increases, partially offset by efficiency savings. Taken together, we reported earnings per share of $2.45, up 27% year-over-year.

Excluding the impact of notable items, earnings per share were essentially the same at $2.46, also up 27%. On the back of approximately 600 basis points of positive operating leverage, we reported a pre-tax margin of 40% and a return on tangible common equity of 31%. Turning to capital and liquidity on page five. We continue to operate from a position of strong capital and liquidity, supporting our clients with a resilient balance sheet. Our Tier 1 leverage ratio is 5.9%, down 7 basis points sequentially. Tier 1 capital decreased by $133 million, primarily driven by a redemption of preferred stock, partially offset by capital generated through earnings net of capital returned to our common shareholders. Average assets increased by 1% sequentially. Our CET1 ratio at the end of the quarter was 11%, essentially unchanged from the prior quarter.

CET1 capital increased by $447 million, primarily driven by capital generated through earnings, partially offset by capital returned through common stock repurchases and dividends. Risk-weighted assets increased by 2% sequentially. Over the course of the second quarter, we returned approximately $1.5 billion of capital to our common shareholders, which brings us to $2.8 billion of capital return for the first half of the year, representing an 87% total payout ratio year-to-date. As previously announced, we increased our quarterly common stock dividend by 19% to $0.63 per share effective this quarter. Our balance sheet remains high quality and highly liquid. The consolidated liquidity coverage ratio was 111%, and the net stable funding ratio was 130%. Next, net interest income and balance sheet trends on page six. Net interest income of $1.4 billion was up 20% year-over-year and up 6% quarter-over-quarter.

I talked about the drivers for the year-over-year increase earlier. Sequentially, growth primarily reflects the reinvestment of investment securities at higher yields and changes in balance sheet size and mix. Average deposit balances moderated by 1% sequentially. Non-interest-bearing deposits remained flat and interest-bearing deposits decreased by 2%. Average interest earning assets were flat sequentially. Underneath cash and reverse repo balances decreased by 3%. Investment securities balances increased by 2% and loans increased by 6%, primarily driven by growth in securities finance. Turning to our business segments, starting on page seven. Securities Services reported total revenue of $2.8 billion, up 15% year-over-year. Total investment services fees were also up 15%. In asset servicing, investment services fees grew by 12%, reflecting higher client activity and market values. ETF AUC/A reached $4.4 trillion, up 35% year-over-year. In alternatives, AUC/A grew by 17% year-over-year.

The number of fund launches accelerated in the quarter. We saw an uptick in new business wins. In asset servicing overall, once again, more than half of the clients that awarded asset servicing new business in the quarter also awarded new business to at least one of our other lines of business, demonstrating the efficacy of our commercial model in action. In issuer services, investment services fees were up 23%, primarily driven by higher corporate trust fees. This reflects the public sector mandate Robin mentioned earlier, as well as broad-based growth. Amid active CLO markets, we maintained our number 2 position while growing our market share by 200 basis points year-over-year. In conventional debt servicing, we maintained our number 1 position, growing our market share by 400 basis points year-over-year.

It is worth noting that the sequential increase in issuer services investment services fees reflects seasonal depository receipts client activity, as well as net new business across corporate trust and depository receipts. For the segment overall, foreign exchange revenue was up 16% year-over-year, reflecting higher client volumes, and net interest income was up 16% year-over-year. Segment expenses of $1.7 billion were up 7% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher revenue-related expenses and investments, as well as salary increases, partially offset by efficiency savings. Securities Services reported pre-tax income of $1.1 billion, up 28% year-over-year, and a pre-tax margin of 39%. On to Market and Wealth Services on page eight. In our Market and Wealth Services segment, we reported total revenue of $2 billion, up 12% year-over-year. Total investment services fees were up 10%.

In Wealth Solutions, investment services fees were up 5%, reflecting higher market values and client activity. Net new assets were $25 billion in the quarter, representing an annualized growth rate of 4%. In the second quarter, Wealth Solutions signed a multi-year contract renewal with Cetera, one of the largest wealth management firms in the U.S. and a long-standing partner. We are pleased to continue supporting them as they innovate, grow, and capitalize on evolving market opportunities. In clearance and collateral management, investment services fees were up 18%, reflecting broad-based growth in collateral balances and clearance volumes. In this business, we continue to see very strong momentum with average collateral balances of $8.2 trillion, up 16% year-over-year, and double-digit year-over-year growth in average daily clearing volumes.

Amid a supportive market backdrop, including strong money market fund flows, growing dealer balance sheets, and higher equity market values, we've been successful in developing innovative solutions that bring together capabilities from across BNY to support our clients' growth. In payments and trade, investment services fees were up 7%, reflecting net new business. We are seeing solid growth in international payments and continue innovating new capabilities for our clients. For example, last month we introduced 24/7 US dollar book transfers, which allow clients to access US dollar payments on weekends and US holidays. Over the last three months, we tripled the number of currencies available for same-day FX wire settlement coverage. In Market and Wealth Services overall, net interest income was up 21% year-over-year.

Segment expenses of $948 million were up 4% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher investments in revenue-related expenses as well as salary increases, partially offset by efficiency savings and the absence of prior year litigation reserves. Taken together, our Market and Wealth Services segment reported pre-tax income of $1 billion, up 21% year-over-year, and a pre-tax margin of 52%. Turning to Investment and Wealth Management on page nine. Our Investment and Wealth Management segment reported total revenue of $863 million, up 8% year-over-year. Investment management fees were up 6%, primarily driven by higher market values, partially offset by the mix of AUM flows. Segment expenses of $686 million were up 5% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher revenue-related expenses and investments, as well as salary increases, partially offset by efficiency savings.

Investment and Wealth Management reported pre-tax income of $182 million, up 23% year-over-year, and a pre-tax margin of 21%. As I described earlier, assets under management of $2.2 trillion were up 6% year-over-year. In the second quarter, we saw $3 billion of net inflows primarily driven by cash and fixed income strategies, partially offset by net outflows in LDI index and equity strategies. Wealth Management client assets of $348 billion increased by 3% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher market values, partially offset by cumulative net outflows. Page 10 shows the results of the other segment. Turning to page 11, I will close with a mid-year update of the financial outlook for 2026 that we first provided on our earnings call in January.

Our strong performance over the past six months and the underlying momentum with which we entered the second half of the year gives us confidence to significantly increase our outlook for growth and operating leverage in 2026. While we remain mindful of the environment and constantly prepare for a wide range of scenarios, our central case for the balance of the year assumes current market-implied forward interest rates, and that the operating environment remains broadly constructive while we anticipate historically observed seasonal patterns in client activity. With that, we are increasing our outlook for total revenue, excluding notable items in 2026 to up 10%-11% year-over-year. Of course, market dependent. That includes our current expectation for full year 2026 net interest income to be up 12%-13% year-over-year.

Accordingly, we now expect expenses excluding notable items for the year to be up 6%-7% year-over-year, primarily reflecting higher revenue-related expenses. Taken together, that means we now expect to deliver approximately 400 basis points of positive operating leverage in 2026. For the sake of completeness, we continue to expect a quarterly tax rate of approximately 23% for the remaining two quarters this year. To wrap up, BNY delivered strong financial results in the second quarter, but more importantly, our underlying business flywheel is gathering momentum. Our investments and execution are yielding increasingly scalable platforms, better client experiences, and more innovative solutions that are allowing us to deepen existing relationships and attract more new clients to BNY. With that, operator, can you please open the line for questions?

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one related follow-up question. Our first question comes from Ken Usdin with Autonomous Research.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Thanks. Just a question about the outlook. You mentioned continuing to expect a constructive backdrop, some of the first half results are already decently above growth rates that you're even giving us in our updated second half. I just wanted to ask, are there any pieces that you think have tougher comps as we look forward from the second quarter sequentially, whether it's deposit levels or issuer services that wouldn't just continue an ongoing growth path from here? Thanks.

Hi. Good morning, Ken. Thanks for the question. I'll make a few points. First thing is, typically the second quarter is our strongest quarter, this particular quarter had a unique set of circumstances around it in terms of the constructed backdrop, the flows in the markets, et cetera. Q3 is seasonally the slowest quarter. You've got the best followed by the seasonally adjusted slowest. We feel like going into the quarter within the firm, the momentum is strong. The words I use internally is the firm is humming, we feel very good about the client dialogue, the engagement, the backlog. In my comments and how I talked about it, we assume the rate curve stays where it is as of June 30th. We know that will change for whatever reason. We assume market levels stay where they were at June 30th.

We know that will change. In our updated guides, we've given a range, we've kind of taken a conservative bias to it because that's how we set up and run the company for through the year, through the cycle, durable revenues. I think Q3 specifically as it relates to NII and deposits year-over-year will be a tough comp because we expect a seasonally slow quarter due to the seasonal slowdown. Last year, that didn't happen due to several idiosyncratic events. I think that the setup for the quarter three, will be pretty good in terms of NII, last year's quarter is tough to beat.

Right. Okay. Got it. Just a quick one on issuer as a follow-up. You did mention that that was strong, especially in corporate trust. Was that just due to the super amount of issuance that we saw? Is that business just collectively that and ADR is just on a better trajectory than you would have thought given the strength of the environment? Thanks.

I would say there are three things at play there, Ken. One is corporate trust. You see in my prepared remarks that we've expanded market share, which is basically the result of multi-year investments that are beginning to bear fruit, which also have helped contribute to the margin going through 50%. We're very, very pleased about that. Deposit receipts, second quarter is seasonally the strongest quarter, and we saw new client activity come into the platform. Outperformance there in what is a strong quarter. Last but not least, the public mandate that we secured and went live on July 4th, otherwise known as the Trump Accounts, also shows up in that segment as it relates to top-line revenue and expenses.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

We'll move next to Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Hey, Robin, Dermot. Good morning, guys. Lots to like on multiple fronts here. I wanted to talk about operating leverage for a minute. I think not too long ago, you guys provided updated targets, I think calling for about 38% pre-tax margin. You're already above that, not just for the first half, but even just kind of taking your full year guide. As you think about what the destination for profitability could be in the business as a whole over the next couple of years, what could that look like, especially considering that AI initiatives are still probably on the kind of earlier day side.

I appreciate you now want to put the exact number on that, but as we sort of think about the jumping off point and the trajectory for operating leverage across the business, I guess acknowledging that you are already at your target would be helpful to understand. Thanks.

Okay. There is lots to unpick in that question, Alex. When I go back to January, when we initially laid out the targets, we believe we improved them meaningfully, pre-tax margin and ROTCE, by 500 basis points from where they were. It was a big step change for us as a management team to put that guidance out there. Also, we kind of view these medium-term targets as three to five years through the cycle and as milestones and not endpoints, and it is not really the limit of our ambition. Internally, as a management team, we are always looking to outperform, and we believe the way as Robin said in his prepared remarks, we build a company for a wide range of scenarios and to be durable through that, and Q2 was a point in time in that.

You want to be through them sustainably for a period of time to feel like before you would revisit them again. Just remember, it is not the limit of our ambition, and the level of client engagement and all the things around client activity in Q2 give us optimism that through the cycle, we will get to those medium-term targets.

Okay. That is helpful. You are at them, you guys are there. A bit of a nuanced question on the rates trajectory, I understand that you guys are assuming rates will stay at current levels across central banks. As you think about the probability of rate hikes, whether it is in the U.S. or outside the U.S., how do you think deposit betas will perform both in the U.S. and outside the U.S., given this is kind of a bit of a delayed potential kind of rate hiking cycle? I just want to get a better understanding of the kind of NII and NIM sensitivity in case we get some rate hikes here. Thanks.

Look, at the start of the year, the environment was calling for rate cuts. Now it's calling for rate hikes, one in the U.S. at the end of 2026, two in Europe and two in the U.K. As we've consistently said, in terms of our risk management philosophy as it relates to rates itself, we're very focused on narrowing the cone of outcomes, we're willing to give up upside so that we limit downside, and we can give you kind of reasonably accurate predictions as it relates to interest rate sensitivity to the overall book. As it relates deposits, like we consistently say, we don't lead with deposit or deposit pricing.

Deposits come as a result of all the client activity, that's why we feel like deposits have held in, particularly non-interest-bearing deposits have held in well, that's as a result of all the franchise activity that's happening around the firm across many of our platform businesses. As it relates to betas, we think it'll be largely in line with the last cycle, that was 80% for dollars and 60%-70% for EUR and GBP. Just remember that we're predominantly a dollar book, it's roughly 75% dollars, the rest split between EUR and GBP, then some JPY in there as well, but small.

I got you. Great. Thank you so much for all the detail. Appreciate it.

We'll go next to Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America.

Hey, good morning. I wanted to first start with something, I guess Robin said in his prepared remarks tied to investments, tied to increasing fees, AI, digital assets. If you don't mind just revisiting both the AI piece and digital assets in terms of how we should think about it with regards to moving the needle on the bottom line, either productivity-wise or what you're doing in terms of new opportunities, maybe tied to digital assets. Also, maybe it often comes up in terms of the risks to the custody business model because of on-chain migration and tokenization. Maybe address that in terms of how you think about it, and is that truly a risk when we think about some of the revenue streams? Thank you.

Sure, Ebrahim. I'll take that. Look, let's start with digital assets, which is the second part of your question. First of all, I would just say the evolution is actually a click above digital assets. It's really the transformation of financial market infrastructure gradually towards an always-on operating model. Digital assets are certainly one tool, a very good one, for being able to enable that, real-time payments and various other innovations are also true. I would take the macro view around the always-on operating model, then within that, where are digital assets the best way of actually achieving that?

Then within the context of all of that, it's about a transition, the transition will take a while. It will not be complete. For a long period of time, we expect to be in this coexistence world of having these new capabilities with traditional capabilities. For us, as a bridge between the old and the new and collectively, globally, and across these different types of activity, like payments, moving, storing, managing, all of that, we view ourselves as incredibly well-positioned to help our clients manage through all of those types of transitions.

For us, it's about being right around the hoop on all of these types of things, helping clients, whether they be the new, quote, "new economy participants" who want a bunch of services that we are the leaders in, some of our traditional clients who want us to frankly help them hold their hands in some cases around some of that evolution. I would say it's all of that. The way one gets disintermediated is when you don't invest, when you don't participate in the new thing. We're leaning into the new thing and participating in that fully. We think that that's kind of how we think about the whole thing. In terms of AI, I talked about this in terms of being a capacity creator for us.

There's no question that it can create additional positive operating leverage over time, but that can come in different forms. It can come from doing new things with clients, from improving the way that we serve our clients, and then winning more business, from making our products even better as a result of having AI inside them. Also just in terms of freeing up capacity in some parts of the firm in order to be able to deploy into other parts. I'd like to think there will be less of some things that we have to do, using manual tooling and traditional tooling, where AI can take the place of that. That will allow us to be able to have the capacity to frankly be able to spend more bandwidth on serving clients in new and innovative ways. That's how we view it.

We see the world, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, with a ton of white space. Having more capacity is super valuable for us because it actually allows us to put more people and more investment against that white space without having to grow expenses significantly to do it.

Just tied to that as a follow-up, is it fair to then assume and what you talked about the commercial models in place, the operating model is fully implemented, that we should expect a pickup in organic growth as you capture more of that white space beyond any market-driven growth? Should we have an expectation of just pretty decent acceleration from where we've already been on the top-line growth?

Hey, Ebrahim. It's Dermot. Well, I guess the first thing is we don't expect it to be a lull on day three of the cricket match. If you look at the slide where we talk about our mid-year business update and where organic fee growth has come relative to 2022, we've gone from flat to the first half of 2026 at 4.5%. We're just about to celebrate two years of our commercial model, and as Robin said in his prepared remarks, that we're now fully active as a whole company in the platform operating model. You've seen 14 consecutive quarters of sales growth and 10% of new logos, which is consistent with last year. More people like what they're seeing at BNY and want to come to our firm and do more with us.

I would say the momentum is strong within the firm, the momentum is strong with new logos coming to hear how we can serve them in a differentiated way. I think as a consequence of that, our ambition is for higher organic growth. When it happens, we don't know, but we believe ultimately it will come.

Got it. No lull, expecting a post-fifth day win. Thank you for that.

We'll go next to Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities.

Hi. I guess you talk about AI for everyone, everywhere, and everything, I know that's a thematic approach for the five-year horizon or so. We do hear a lot of companies putting an AI wrapper around things that have nothing to do with AI. With that as a big wind-up, your head count is down 7% year-over-year while your revenues are up. I'm just wondering how much AI has played a role in your increase in revenues per employee. Maybe it's more process-oriented or other technology. If you can give any financial benefits to what you're seeing from AI, whether it's the capacity or product or new capabilities. Thank you.

Hi, Mike. It's Dermot here. The first thing I would start with saying is that BNY is operating in a fundamentally different way than it was just a few short years ago. That's just X AI. That's just the commercial model, the platform operating model. Everybody being a shareholder and everybody feeling like owners in the enterprise and wanting the firm to do better for its clients and for shareholders. A fundamental shift under Robin's leadership over the last few years. Specifically, as it relates to AI, in the context of our overall engineering budget, which is approximately $4 billion. Just remember, we have been on this AI journey and AI strategy since three and a half years ago when ChatGPT was first launched. Culturally, AI as an individual productivity level is becoming more embedded in our firm. We're all using Eliza Planner.

We're all becoming more productive. There are lots of things that we're doing day in, day out that makes us more productive and able to do higher value work. Within the context of $4 billion, our AI spend is quite de minimis and quite modest and appropriate for the strategy that we have in place. If you go back and reflect on our disclosure in Q1, you'll see the captions of innovating, prospecting, onboarding, transacting, streamlining, and the fact that our engineers at BNY, roughly 40% of the software written is now written using AI. You can see it's going broad, and it's also going deep into the enterprise. The last point is really reflecting on your question, Ray, headcount. The headcount is just an output. It's down 7% over the year, but that's as a result of everything.

It's not necessarily a headcount target that we deploy. It's more like what's our business plan? What's our operating leverage? How do we want to reach that, and what are the investments that we need to make in order to do it? A headcount is more the output as opposed to the input. The last thing is really we continue to invest heavily in talent. As Robin has said many times, our early careers class is three times bigger today than it was three years ago. We're fundamentally investing in the future of BNY through early careers, and we're AI optimists, and we believe we can use AI to power that growth.

Mike, the fundamental premise of your question around are we getting a return on the investment? The answer to the question is yes, and we feel quite comfortable with that. We don't break out the very specific economic numbers. I recognize folks would like it if we do, the rigor that we are applying to this is consistent with the rigor that you see elsewhere from us in terms of how we're operating the company. For us, we've had a point of view, and you can go back and listen to our transcripts and press interviews, et cetera, for several years, that ultimately adoption and embedding in a company is going to be the differentiator for many firms on whether or not they're successful with AI. The technology is already at a level where it can do just incredible things.

The reason why folks, I think, have some angst about traditional companies as opposed to brand-new startups is because there is this lingering question around whether or not you can adapt a large enterprise by truly embedding AI throughout. That's a cultural question. It's also an operational and organizational question. We are quite fortunate, and some of this is pure coincidence, but we'll take it, that the investment that we've made in our platform operating model, the investment that we've made in our commercial model, and critically, the investment that we've made in our culture, means that we believe we actually have an advantage in terms of embedding and integration of AI into and throughout the firm. That's what we would expect you to be able to see the outcomes from over the coming years.

Look, it's like you say, the results are what you're managing toward, not the specific AI use case in isolation. Can you put any numbers on the expense savings or revenue gains? I think only two of the largest banks globally have done so far. Is there a point when you might be able to, or is this kind of like one big stew where the AI is part of the stew and you can't really completely isolate the benefits?

I think we think about it as a package. It's not that we can't identify benefits. We certainly can. It's that we recognize that all of these things coming together are ultimately the success. I'll use capacity as an example because I talked about capacity. When we use AI to create capacity, so we take some function, some process, which previously was heavily people-intensive, and we make it significantly more automated. That's creating capacity. The question is that capacity going towards serving an individual client? Is it going to making a product specifically better? Is it going to improving the client experience? Is it going to doing something else, or is it creating an efficiency on the expense line? That we deliberately want to be very flexible about that because it's consistent with our strategy for positive operating leverage.

You regularly, collectively ask us about, well, is it focused more on revenue, or is it focused more on expense? Our answer to the question is always, it's focused on increasing positive operating leverage. That's our North Star. We're agile in any one quarter or year around whether we are leaning more on one lever or the other. Our strategy for AI is kind of similar to that. Having said that, we gave a bunch of specific numbers in our first quarter earnings when we talked about those in April, and you can see some of these stats, which we view as the inputs to ultimately the fundamental bottom-line impact of AI. We will from time to time talk more about those.

Actually across all of them, they're actually increasing up and to the right versus what we showed you in the first quarter.

All right. Thank you.

We will go next to Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital.

Hi, Robin, Dermot. Thank you for taking my questions. I'd actually love to follow up on Mike's question right there. I was looking at similar trend with headcount, as he said, down 7% year-over-year. Interestingly, when you calculate comp expense as a % of headcount, or sorry, comp expense per head, that's up eight over that same period. If you go back to the point in time when headcount peaked, down 13, but comp expense per employee up 17. Right? There's a really interesting dynamic happening here. Obviously, there's inflation, which is a factor, but can you talk about incentives and how you've changed compensation structures and incentives within the organization? It kind of gets, Robin, to what you spoke to with culture and how you're changing the commercial biases of the organization.

If you have any stats on incentive and how that breaks down as a % of comp across the organization for people now versus previous.

Sure. Well, I might skip that last little bit, given that we have tens of thousands of our employees listening on the call. I'm going to break out comp by levels in that way. Let me address the heart of your question because it's an important one, Brennan. Actually, we showed some of this again in the first quarter earnings release, when we talked about revenue per employee and pre-tax income per employee. If you remember back to those charts, which showed our progression on those two metrics, essentially tracking the growth in pre-tax margin and the growth in return on tangible common equity, you can see that we are getting more out of our platform, and we are generating more revenue. Our clients are coming to us, and all of that is showing up in those outcomes per employee.

Now, we have been very deliberate about workforce management. We've been repositioning the company, repositioning the talent, and everything, and I talked about this in my prepared remarks with our leadership team, as we've refreshed the leadership team over the past few years. The same thing's been true through the ranks of the company. We've got more dynamic leaders. We've got more dynamic folks who are investing in innovation, who are really covering our clients in a fundamentally different way. We're invested in career growth. We're invested in skills. We're leaning into AI for everybody in terms of how our people can actually use it, and the skills that they have to be able to operate, whether it's here or elsewhere.

All of that is actually allowing us to drive up compensation per employee, and we're very happy to do it because our people are such an important part of the contribution. We can afford to do it because collectively, we're managing the workforce better. That's sort of the recipe of the whole thing for us.

Great. Thanks for that, Robin. I appreciate it. One other question I have a little bit on a high level. The results have been really impressive. It's been very thematic throughout the call today. One thing that a lot of investors come back to, which is more about really the history of this sub-industry within the custody banks is around pricing pressure, which has been pretty consistent. Historically, when there's been efficiencies generated, they've been sort of shared with customers via pricing and then shareholders via profit margin. What are you seeing in the market today as these tools increase the efficiency and allow for firms to deliver more effective results? Are you seeing still pricing pressure, or is there wider divergences in between the different offerings that can allow for you to hold onto that pricing better than historically?

Dermot's just going to make a couple of comments, I want to just come back with a broader comment about the white space and the value that we're actually offering to clients, because I think these two things should really be seen in concert.

When I joined the firm first, I think that was more a common theme than it is today. Pricing pressure is going to exist all the time because all our businesses are in competitive markets. They've got big competitors. You would expect, and we welcome competition, and we welcome that pressure. I think clients are willing to pay for differentiated service. From relative to two, three years ago, we don't see the same pricing pressure. As we've reduced our cost to serve, we can be more competitive in our pricing model because of all the things that Robin said in his last comment. When there is pricing pressure, it shows up in the organic fee growth. Because as you know, organic fee growth is new business minus lost or repriced business plus flows.

That growth over the last three years from flat to 4.5% in some ways reflects what your question has just asked. We've dealt with it by more clients, more sales, more client engagement, more products, more innovation. We believe our strategy is working in our ability to deal with that in a competitive environment.

If we step back from the question, this sounds a bit self-serving to say it, and I recognize when I say it, what our clients are recognizing from us is our ability to add real value to their businesses and their operating models. Price is always important. We have to be competitive on price. Our clients are starting to come to us because they're actually seeing our ability to bring different things together across the firm and actually deliver solutions for them that are actually different and unique. If we were just a widget manufacturer with one line or two lines of business, and we were just making very commoditized widgets, then price is always the grounds on which one competes.

Our ability to be able to take the product innovation that we've talked about, the features, the fact that we have this dozen different business platforms, which actually clients want to see in unique and novel combinations operating together. Our ability to combine those different ingredients together, that is actually allowing us to add more value to clients. It's allowing us to have a different type of conversation with them than we might have had in the past. Of course, that's also contributing to our growth. Collectively, it does feel inside the firm that the conversation with clients has changed in that respect.

Clients buying from three or more lines of business over the last three years is up greater than 60%. That is the stat to support that.

By the way, that same fact is true with clients. That is to say, more versus the past for clients who buy two or more things from us, three or more things from us, four or more things from us, five or more things from us. It's kind of a remarkable thing to see inside the commercial organization how there's growth across the board, I think that goes to that value point.

Great. Thanks for all that color.

We'll go next to David Smith with Truist Securities.

Hey, good morning.

Morning, David.

Can you give us an update on your capital philosophy? You've got a pretty capital-light business model, but BNY's payout ratio is at 87% year to date, that's just been a bit lower than we've been accustomed to thinking about for you. That was consistent for both one Q and two Q. Is this a function of needing to retain more capital for growth, given the opportunities that you see today, organic or inorganic? Is it a reflection of price sensitivity or discipline on buybacks? Is it just a timing thing as there was a pref redemption this quarter, and maybe earnings came in stronger than you expected later in the quarter? Just big picture, is 100% or so still the right payout ratio for BNY today and over the medium term?

Thanks for the question. Look, as you will have noticed, we stopped guiding on the buyback last year because it's not something that we wake up every day and saying, "Is 100% the guide for this year or not?" It's an output, not an input. Again, you'll have noticed we've had strong ROTCE. Our balance sheet grew in the quarter, 6% growth in loans. We're using our balance sheet to support clients, which contributed to the net interest income growth as well. We raised our dividend 19%. In total, we returned $1.5 billion of capital this quarter. As you rightly point out, 87 for the half year. Look, at the beginning of the year, we were kind of in the 90, 95 range for the full year. It's dynamic. We look at it, we see it, we evaluate the opportunities, as you say, capital light business model.

No fundamental change in the strategy. Where we see opportunities to support clients with our balance sheet, we will do it. We want to maintain healthy capital ratios and liquidity ratios given the geopolitical environment, et cetera. All in all, we feel like we're in a very good place on capital, and our outlook kind of remains the same.

Then a small one. On the issuer services corporate trust contribution from your new public sector mandate, is this something you expect to be fairly consistent on a quarterly basis, or were there any one-timers ahead of the launch or any seasonality that we should be thinking about for this?

Look, there's both revenues and expenses in there as a result of the launch. We expect not to grow with the program, but to kind of go sideways and tail off. The revenue and expenses are durable and will be there for the foreseeable future, albeit at a slightly lower level.

All right. Thank you.

We'll go next to Glenn Schorr with Evercore ISI.

Thanks. A quick follow-up on that whole capital conversation. Your average loans were up 20% year-on-year. I think if you look at the last three quarters, it's been solid double digits. I think that's a good thing. I'm curious what you're seeing in clients, man, like with what types of loans are you putting on and how that fits into capital consumption, RWA growth, things like that. Thanks.

Look, I guess one important point that I said in my prepared remarks is that we don't have any non-performing assets on the balance sheet, and we feel very good about the liquidity and the strength of the balance sheet and et cetera. Loans is mainly in the secured financing space. Short-term in nature, collateralized, low risk. We're seeing demand for clients in that space for that product. That's really where we've been leaning in.

Okay, that's cool. Good answer. If we go back to slide three, we don't have to re-go through it. I think you spelled out a lot of what you've done on the sales front and the clients that are using multiple products. I wouldn't mind if you could go back to the beginning, and for organic fee growth, what maybe the two or three biggest drivers of this acceleration have been, and how you define what goes into the category of organic fee growth? Appreciate it.

Well, let me just talk about organic fee growth, overall. Dermot can give you the exact formula on how we define them. It's pretty standard. When we think about the opportunity, and this goes to the whole white space conversation, we've been laser-focused on driving our organic growth higher. Dermot went through the numbers, you can see them on the page. We're pleased with the success. One of the questions that we get asked, and you sort of implied in your question, as have others, is, okay, well, how much higher can it go? What other opportunities are there? Let me just briefly just tick through the way we think about white space, because it's critical to this essence of where can this whole thing go. New clients, Dermot mentioned it, 10% of clients generating sales are new to the company.

That's obviously a vector. Deepening the relationships with existing clients. We just talked about that in terms of the metrics that are going generally up and to the right with clients who are finding more products and services from us than they have traditionally consumed. There's clearly white space on both of those fronts. New product innovation. We talked about it and in the prepared remarks. Enhancing features and capabilities. We've got the scale, as Dermot mentioned, on $4 billion of technology each year. We've got the scale to be able to make those types of investments. New solutions, which are also important. Again, the Trump Accounts is an example of a business that we probably couldn't have done two years ago, not because we didn't have the parts, but we hadn't operationalized the ability to pull those parts together.

As we get better and better at that, we've got the ability to provide more novel solutions to clients from across the various different capabilities that we have. Culture, commercial model, platform model, all big enablers of all of those things. We're positioned to be able to benefit from market trends. We've talked about those trends before, scaling with trusted providers, wealth markets growing, private markets, capital market transformation. We're well-positioned in global markets, across fixed income, equity, trading, settlement, collateral liquidity, to be able to do that. We have digital ecosystems, the always-on thing that we've already just talked about. When you look at the actual elements of what we can attach to, at its very heart, we attach to the size of the economy and the size of capital markets.

We are, to some extent, a bet on whether we think those things over time are going to grow. We certainly see that growth, we're excited about it. Within it's values, equity and fixed income, cash balances, again, the ecosystem of cash that we've talked about before. The shape of the curve and interest rates, yes. Issuance volume, capital markets activity, transaction volumes, volatility. While our business model is certainly built for the type of environment we have in the second quarter and that Dermot and I have both talked about, we deliberately have tried to diversify ourselves to position the firm to be able to be good in more types of environments and attach to these underlying growth vectors, which we believe over time, will allow us to capture more of the opportunity.

That's ultimately what we think will feed organic growth.

Thanks, Ron.

We'll go next to Manan Gosalia with Morgan Stanley.

Hey, good afternoon. Maybe there's one from me. As we've got the results from the money center banks over the past couple of days, it's become clear that it's a very strong market for issuance, both equity and debt capital market issuance. We've just had a record quarter for M&A announcements. As you think about the impact to your businesses, how do you size the opportunity for, say, the issuer services business overall, and if that also translates to some of the other businesses as well?

Yeah. Good activity levels in capital markets. There's no question that those are good for us. As we think about this inside the company, there's a little bit of a parallel with the way that we think about NII, where we are deliberately wanting to be able to benefit from what's going on in the market. Our businesses are not positioned to be the maximalist play for when the market is at peak frothiness or peak activity. As a result of that, with this sort of durability, even when, because of the diversification of the different businesses, even when activity levels come off. Did we benefit? Absolutely. It's true across our clearing platform, our issuer services platforms, both depository receipts and across corporate trust. It's true in capital markets. It's up and down. The income statement, you can see some benefit from all of that.

The thing that we think is a little bit different is that we're not getting the amplitude on the wave, and that's kind of by design because we don't want, and don't expect, the amplitude on the downside either.

I think the

Stat that I would give you, Manan, for that is like 75% of our fees are recurring. It's durable. The durable recurring revenue stream of our platform operating model can weather many storms.

Got it. Thank you.

Next to Gerard Cassidy with RBC.

Hi, Robin. Hi, Dermot. Robin, in your prepared remarks, you talked about the 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales with this quarter's numbers. You also touched on that, approximately 10% of the deals are with clients that are entirely new to Bank of New York. Can you share with us what products did they buy? Where are you having success in winning new clients? Are they self-custody type clients, or you're actually taking them away from competitors?

Well, it's really across the breadth of the franchise, Gerard. This is one of the things that's been very pleasing for us to see. There are certain products which can be a little bit more, if you want to call them that, starter products. I think if you'd gone back and asked us three years ago, did we think that there was a more common pathway into the company through one business graduating into others, we probably would've said yes to that. I think today we wouldn't say the same thing because actually we're attracting different types of clients, in different ways. So it is quite broad-based.

One of the other statistics we have is the more that clients do with us, and this is what our client satisfaction surveys very clearly point out, the more clients do with us, the better they know us. The better they know us, the more they like us. The more they like us, the more they do with us. That flywheel is not lost on us.

When it comes to winning these clients, is it more you have the product capability or is it a cost decision for the client or a combination of the both?

It's not cost. It's a capability, it does depend on the client, right? When you're winning, we talked quite a bit, in our prior earnings call around AGI, which was a landmark win for us in the German market. A very important opportunity. Why did they choose us? We'd have to ask them, but they've said publicly that they chose us for the breadth of our capabilities and for the modernity of our solutions and the fact that we could create integration. They were choosing a partner for their own re-imagination of their operating model. They took a very deep dive into what we have done with our operating model, with our AI and other things. They were like, they picked us because they thought we were the best partner for them to be able to help them through that innovation.

That was a capability. It was a connectivity. It was a technology. All of those features were there. In many other cases, again, it goes back to the scale of technology, which is we can invest in these features, these new products. Borrow+, great example. We called it out. CollateralOne, same thing. Buy-side trading, same thing. It's new products, new solutions, which are these combinations from amongst the breadth of the capabilities that we have, then leaning in incredible client service, covering clients, remembering that we don't win business. Clients give us business because of what we're doing and the fact that we're earning it.

Very good. Then as a follow-up, you guys mentioned, obviously the Trump Accounts. You had the public announcement on the Fourth of July as well. Is there a second derivative here? Meaning, are there other businesses or other opportunities to grow revenues because you won this business?

I would frame it in the following way. I think there are two vectors on this. One of the questions that we get asked by our people and by other public sectors around the world is, that's actually a very cool piece of public policy. As you know, the U.S. had looked to Australia as one of the models for this. It's a bipartisan piece of public policy that's really been championed by the current administration. Australia has incredibly successful, sort of parallel. It's been going for a long time and it's built incredible wealth for individuals in Australia. We're getting asked that question by other governments across the world who are interested in what's going on.

We're happy to share with them, because creating more attachment to capital markets, more prosperity for more people, more engagement, with the stock market, more ownership, in a capitalist society, we view those things as good for society and frankly good for BNY as well. The other vector is just this concept of solutions. We have all of these capabilities inside the company in each one of our platforms.

What we learned to do over the past couple of years, but it was a proof point with the Trump Accounts, was our ability to bring these pieces together and deliver a solution that one couldn't previously have ever found on the product shelf of BNY and say, we can do that because of the fact that we've got the culture, the platform model, and the commercial model to knit them together and deliver a great outcome and actually have it go live short period of time, great outcome, happy client. That is a very, very powerful vector for us for the future.

Very good. Appreciate the insights. Thank you.

Thank you.

That was our final question, and we'll conclude our question-and-answer session for today. I would now like to hand the call back over to Robin for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks everyone for your time today. We appreciate your interest in BNY. Please reach out to Marius and the IR team if you have any follow-up questions. Be well.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference and webcast. A replay of this conference call and webcast will be available on the BNY investor relations website at 3:00 P.M. Eastern Time today. Have a great day.