“Overall, the pipeline and the expectation is still to see a pretty active rest of the year.”

In context

“he question. Starting on the capital markets outlook and the pipeline, can you frame the outlook following a strong first quarter here? Michael Santomassimo: We still expect that the financing markets are wide open, so we expect to see a lot of activity on the debt side—both investment grade and leveraged finance. There is plenty of money on the sidelines to be put to work there, and that has been the case for a while. On the equity capital markets side, you have seen some delay in IPO activity in the latter part of the first quarter. Assuming some of the volatility subsides or stabilizes, you may see some of that start to come back. There is certainly a pipeline of companies waiting to go. In the meantime, you have seen a lot of activity on convertibles and other parts of the ECM wallet. Overall, the pipeline and the expectation is still to see a pretty active rest of the year. David Chiaverini: Great, thanks for that. Shifting over to your credit card account growth, which is very strong. What are the drivers behind that? Is it more rewards, more marketing, better rate? What are some of the drivers there? Michael Santomassimo: It starts with really good, compelling, simple products. Over the last five years, the team has replatformed every product we had in the market, starting with our Active Cash card, which is a very simple 2% cash-back value proposition, and then adding a series of products since then. We have had really good reception from both existing and new clients to the bank for products that are very easy to understand and compelling. Over the last three quarters, we have seen an uptick in originations as our branches become more productive in helpi”