Frank Techar
Analyst · Desjardin Securities
Yes, thanks, Michael. I mean I'll start by saying, if you ask a question about medium term, I might look back a couple of years as well because for the last 2 years, the P&C Canada business, we've had operating leverage in excess of 5%. So we've talked about a 3% medium-term target for P&C Canada, and we've exceeded that for a couple of years. And I think we've been clear about the fact that this is the year we're going to invest and so that we're going to have a result that's going to be materially different from what we've seen over the last couple. And I think that's consistent with where we are relative to our strategy. So I'd say negative operating leverage is not going to be the norm going forward, but for this year, we are committed to continuing to invest in the business, and we're going to stay the course. Relative to the other part of your question about some examples where we are seeing some benefits, I'll just pause on the FTE side of the business. We have added over the course of the last year over 1,000 people in P&C Canada. The vast majority of those are frontline-facing, frontline-facing resources, so mortgage specialists, financial planners, commercial account managers, contact center people, as Bill mentioned earlier, core bankers in our branches. We do have and continue to have the smallest Distribution Network, and so adding these resources clearly is going to pay off for us in the future as we continue to ramp up. I'll just give you one example that's occurred in the quarter relative to a specific initiative that's been pretty visible in the marketplace, SmartSteps for Parents, which we're pretty proud of. In one month, we had 80,000 unique visits to that site, which, as you know, doesn't have a lot of direct top line growth potential in the offer itself, but it's consistent with our customer promise and we think will help us in the future relative to the growth of the business. This is something that our customers have been asking for for a long time, help with teaching their children about money early on, and we're the first one in the marketplace to provide it. And we think it is going to be a huge success going forward, not only with the parents, but with children as they start their banking business, hopefully, with BMO.