“We've made good initial progress on our plan to return more than 100% of earnings to shareholders in 2023, and we currently expect to continue buying back stock, albeit at a slower pace given the uncertain environment.”

In context

“atory requirements and our own management buffers. Stepping back for a moment, I'm encouraged by the early progress that we are seeing around the Company to deliver on the commitment that we made to you back in January. First, we are bending the cost curve. Our first quarter expense growth came in marginally better than our initial internal plan and we remain firmly committed to cutting our core expense growth by roughly half this year compared to 2022 on a constant currency basis. Second, in line with our outlook for the year, we continued to derive healthy growth in net interest revenue. Third, we delivered positive operating leverage on a year-over-year basis. And fourth, we returned a meaningful amount of capital to our shareholders, including $1.3 billion of common share repurchases. We've made good initial progress on our plan to return more than 100% of earnings to shareholders in 2023, and we currently expect to continue buying back stock, albeit at a slower pace given the uncertain environment. At the same time, I've made a promise to you to call it as it is when we fall short of our expectations. And so to be candid, our fees being flat year-over-year was somewhat lackluster. Having said that, there were a number of business highlights this quarter that are designed to help us change this trajectory and drive underlying fee growth over time. And so I'll call out a few. In Asset Servicing, the pipeline remains strong, and the margin on new deals is improving as we're increasingly holding the line on price to drive more profitable growth in the business. ETF activity is up across all measures with healthy increases in AUC/A, orders and flows and wins with [Vault] (ph) and in our data platform service business were pleasing to see this quarter. In January, we announced the launch”