Keith Cargill
Analyst · Piper Jaffray
You know, Brett, we've been working for some time, a year and a half at least, on our strategy that, as we grow, that we be much more thoughtful and deliberate about where we grow and the pace at which we grow. We want all our businesses that we're in to be healthy and successful and growing. But the pace at which we grow our different businesses, we want to align well with risk-adjusted returns, so that over time we'll be able to lift ROE and sustain that higher ROE run rate even in a rate environment with no increases. Now it's very challenging. But we ramped up this MCA business, again a pure startup, we've spent a lot of money for two years, you know, investing in the business pre-startup and then a run rate of course in any new business that's a negative run rate that we've been reducing each quarter. And now we'll finally see it emerge as a profitable business next quarter or in the third quarter. So we have other businesses that we believe have similar capabilities on incremental ROE, not just ROE that they may run out today, but our strategy around that business to drive a higher ROE over the longer run and ramp it and leverage some of the operating opportunities in that business with technology and more refined targets of client base. And along with the MCA business, we've also, as you know, been rebuilding our private wealth advisory business. We were successful hiring some of the private bankers earlier and then more recently had been able to hire some really outstanding wealth advisor talent that's just joining us and will be joining us over the next few weeks. And we believe that all of the signs are pointing in the right direction. The private banking side is growing extremely well over the last six months, showing a really nice growth trajectory, very high credit quality, nice deposit growth, fee income. And now with the wealth advisory business, the blend of the high-quality credit on the private side with the wealth advisory fee income, we think again that's going to be a great business over the next few years and lift our ROE too. So, yes, we're definitely facing headwinds. We made these assumptions a year and a half, two years ago when we really refined our strategy, worked hard on our strategy in the company. And the whole purpose is to overcome these headwinds. However long the low-rate environment lasts, we have to find ways to grow risk-adjusted with better returns to offset the erosion of NIM. And we think we're on track to do that the next few years.