“And lastly, we continue to expect to return 100% or more of 2024 earnings to our shareholders through dividends and buybacks.”

In context

“nts on our outlook for the full year 2024. Starting with NII, I'm pleased to report that the first half of the year came in slightly better than we had expected, as we saw the decline in non-interest-bearing deposits decelerate, and we continue to grow interest-bearing deposits. While we are cautiously optimistic, we remain humble as we head into the seasonally low summer months, and for now we will therefore keep our NII outlook for the full year 2024 unchanged, down 10% year-over-year. Regarding expenses, our goal remains to keep expenses excluding notable items for the full year 2024 roughly flat. As Robin put it earlier, BNY is in execution mode and we're embracing the hard work ahead of us. We continue to expect our effective tax rate for the full year 2024 to be between 23% and 24%. And lastly, we continue to expect to return 100% or more of 2024 earnings to our shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Our Board of Directors declared a 12% increased common dividend for the third quarter, and we plan to continue repurchasing common shares under our existing share repurchase program. As always, we are calibrating the pace of our buybacks, considering various factors such as our capital management targets, the macroeconomic and interest rate environment, as well as the size of our balance sheet. To wrap up, we enter the second half of the year on the back of solid fee growth, a better than expected NII performance to date, and continued expense discipline, which gives us incremental confidence in our ability to drive positive operating leverage in 2024. With that, Operator, can you please open the line for Q&A? Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Ken Usdin w”