“With less than three months left in the year, we are confident that we will outperform our 4% expense growth target for 2023, all while self-funding over $0.5 billion of incremental investments this year.”

In context

“ation, and a lack of joined-up thinking. We have many opportunities to run our company better and more efficiently, to reduce bureaucracy, and we need to be smart and disciplined with how we spend so our investments in the business go further. I've talked to you before about our efficiency initiative comprising about 1,500 ideas developed by those who often see items ripe for improvement most clearly and closely, our people. This program, internally we call it project catalyst, is well underway, and we started to see some early benefits in our financial results. As you may recall, in January, we set out to essentially half our expense growth rate this year to roughly 4% growth excluding notable items compared to roughly 8% ex-currency in 2022. We have made good progress against this goal. With less than three months left in the year, we are confident that we will outperform our 4% expense growth target for 2023, all while self-funding over $0.5 billion of incremental investments this year. As we've started the budgeting process for 2024, we are determined to bend the cost curve further. We're now working to adopt a platform's operating model, which will help us to do things in one place, do them well, and elevate overall execution. And we're embracing new technologies so we can be more productive, more efficient, and focus on growth. Automation of processes and investment in operations digitization and AI across the firm will make it easier for our employees to do their jobs and subsequently channel their energies toward new innovations. Which brings me to our work toward being more for our clients. Our financial results in the quarter tell a tale of two cities. Against the backdrop of seasonally slower summer months, we once again saw outperformance in some of our differen”