“I think as you look at the Company, we still feel like there's a significant amount of opportunity to drive efficiency, and that's what you see in 2025.”

In context

“hrough the expense investment priorities. As we think about the severance charge in the fourth quarter, and run way to extract additional efficiencies relative to $54.2 billion expense guide. How should we think about like are we getting to a point where some of the low-hanging fruit is done and expenses generally move higher given the investments and we should at least anticipate positive operating leverage on the way forward? Or do you still see opportunities to meaningfully cut costs, make things more efficient, especially in the consumer bank. Mike Santomassimo: Yes. I think, Ebrahim, as we sort of look at what you see there and what we're doing in 2025, it's no different than -- the thinking is no different than it's been now for the last four or five years that we've both been here. I think as you look at the Company, we still feel like there's a significant amount of opportunity to drive efficiency, and that's what you see in 2025. And I know we've used this analogy a lot, but it is just like peeling an onion. And as you sort of look at the next layer down, you find more efficiency, you bring better technology, you bring better automation, which, by the way, saves us money, but also in a lot of cases, improves the client experience for our customers. And so, we -- as we come in every day, we still think about it the same way that we've been thinking about for a while, and that's what you see in the expectations for this year. Operator: The next question comes from John Pancari of Evercore. Your line is open. John Pancari: Good morning. On the NII outlook, I know you said it includes modest loan growth expectation for 2025. I just want to see if you can elaborate a little bit on how we could think about that in terms”