Northern Trust Corp (NTRS) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Northern Trust Corp (NASDAQ: NTRS) Q3 2022 earnings call dated Oct. 19, 2022

Corporate Participants:

Jennifer Childe — Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Mark Bette — Senior Vice President & Director of Investor Relations

Analysts:

Betsy Graseck — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Alexander Blostein — Goldman Sachs. — Analyst

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

Ken Usdin — Jefferies & Company — Analyst

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Brian Bedell — Deutsche Bank Securities. — Analyst

Glenn Schorr — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Gerard Cassidy — RBC Capital Markets. — Analyst

Vivek Juneja — JP Morgan — Analyst

Michael Brown — KWB — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing-by. Welcome to the Northern Trust Corporation 3rd Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions]. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jennifer Childe, Director-Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Childe — Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Victor. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Northern Trust Corporation’s 3rd Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on our call this morning are Mike O’Grady, our Chairman and CEO; Jason, Tyler, our Chief Financial Officer. Lauren Allnutt, our Controller, and Mark Bette and Briar Rose from our Investor Relations team.

Our 3rd quarter earnings press release and financial trends report are both available on our website at northerntrust.com. Also on our website, you will find our quarterly earnings review presentation, which we will use to guide today’s conference call. This October 19th call is being webcast live on northerntrust.com. The only authorized rebroadcast of this call is the replay that will be made available on our website through November 18th.

Northern Trust disclaims any continuing accuracy of the information provided in this call after today. Please refer to our Safe-Harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements on Page 11 of the accompanying presentation, which will apply to our commentary on this call.

During today’s question-and-answer session, please limit your initial query to one question and one related follow-up. This will allow us to move through the queue and enable as many people as possible the opportunity to ask questions as time permits. Thank you again for joining us today, let me turn the call over to Mike O’Grady.

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

Thank you, Jennifer. Let me join in welcoming everyone to our 3rd quarter 2022 earnings call. In the 3rd quarter, we continued to execute well through a challenging operating environment. Compared to the prior year, revenue grew 7% as the elimination of fee waivers and the favorable impact from higher interest rates more than offset the significant headwinds from weaker equity and fixed-income markets, asset outflows and unfavorable currency movements. Expense growth of 9% reflected inflationary impacts across our cost base, particularly within our Compensation and Equipment and Software lines. EPS was flat and we generated a return on average common equity of 14.9%. New business activity in Wealth Management was encouraging and we continue to engage actively with new and existing clients.

In Asset Management, weak markets and institutional cash outflows reduced assets under management, yet we saw continued growth in our alternatives, tax-advantaged equity and ETF complex. And within asset servicing, we continue to win new mandates and our backlog of new clients that haven’t yet been onboarded has expanded meaningfully and is expected to transition over the coming quarters. In closing, we remain well-positioned to navigate the current macroeconomic and market uncertainty from a position of strength. Our new business pipeline remains robust and our capital position continues to be strong.

In a slowing growth environment, we’ve also begun prudently tightening our expense controls and focusing on realizing productivity benefits from the investments we’ve made over the past several years. I’ll now turn the call over to Jason.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Mike and let me join Jennifer and Mike in welcoming you to our 3rd quarter 2022 earnings call.

Let’s dive into the financial results for the quarter, starting on page two. This morning, we reported 3rd quarter net income of $394.8 million. Earnings per share were $1.80 and our return on average common equity was 14.9%. Results for the quarter included a $17 million pension settlement charge within the employee benefits expense category. Also recall that in the first-quarter of this year, we implemented an accounting reclassification of certain fees, which will continue to impact the year-over-year comparisons, as noted on this page.

Let’s move to page three and review the financial highlights of the quarter. Year-over-year, revenue was up 7% and expenses increased 9%. Net income was flat. In the sequential comparison, revenue was down 1% and expenses were up 1%, while net income was also flat. Return on average common equity was 14.9% for the quarter, up from 13.7% a year-ago, and down from 15.7% in the prior quarter.

Let’s look at the results in greater detail, starting with revenue on page four. Year-over-year, unfavorable currency translation impacted revenue growth by approximately 200 basis points. Trust investment and other servicing fees, representing the largest component of our revenue, totaled $1.1 billion, were down 3% from last year and down 6% sequentially. All other remaining non-interest income declined 8% from the prior year and 2% from the prior quarter. Net interest income, which I’ll discuss in more detail later, was $525 million and was up 47% from a year ago and 12% sequentially.

Let’s look at the components of our trust and investment fees on page five. For our Asset Servicing business, fees totaled $603 million and were down 4% year-over-year and down 6% sequentially. Within asset servicing, custody and fund administration fees were $407 million, down 12% year-over-year and down 6% sequentially. Custody and fund administration fees decreased sequentially, primarily due to unfavorable markets, unfavorable currency translation and lower transaction volumes. Custody and fund administration fees decreased from the prior year quarter, primarily due to unfavorable currency translation and unfavorable markets, partially offset by new business. Assets under custody and administration for asset servicing clients were $12 trillion at quarter-end, down 19% year-over-year and down 7% sequentially. Both the year-over-year and sequential declines were primarily driven by unfavorable markets and currency translation.

Investment management fees within asset servicing were $136 million, up 20% year-over-year and down 8% sequentially. Investment management fees decreased sequentially, primarily due to unfavorable markets and asset outflows. Investment management fees increased from the prior year quarter, primarily due to lower money market fund fee waivers and the accounting reclassification previously discussed, partially offset by asset outflows and unfavorable markets. Assets under management for asset servicing clients were $873.7 billion, down 25% year-over-year and down 8% sequentially, both declines were driven by asset outflows, weaker equity and fixed-income markets and unfavorable currency translation.

Moving to our Wealth Management business, trust investment and other servicing fees were $475.5 million, down 1% compared to the prior year and down 5% from the prior quarter. Within the regions, the year-over-year declines were primarily driven by unfavorable market impacts, partially offset by the elimination of money market fund fee waivers. Sequentially, the decline within the regions was primarily driven by unfavorable markets.

Within Global Family Office, the year-over-year growth was driven by lower-fee waivers and new business, partially offset by unfavorable markets. The sequential decrease was mainly related to unfavorable markets. Assets under management for our wealth management clients were $336 billion at quarter-end, it’s down 10% year-over-year and down 5% on a sequential basis. Both the year-over-year and sequential declines were driven primarily by unfavorable markets.

Moving to page six, net interest income was $525.3 million in the quarter and was up 47% from the prior year. Earning assets averaged $132 billion in the quarter, down 8% versus the prior year. Average deposits were $118 billion and were down 9% versus the prior year, while loan balances averaged $41 billion and were up 8% compared to the prior year. On a sequential-quarter basis, net interest income grew 12%. Average earning assets declined 6%. Average deposits declined 8%, while average loan balances were up 2%. The net interest margin was 1.58% in the quarter, up 60 basis points from a year-ago and up 23 basis points from the prior quarter. The prior year quarter increase was primarily due to higher average interest rates and favorable balance sheet mix shift. The sequential increase was primarily due to higher average interest rates.

Turning to page seven, expenses were $1.2 billion in the quarter. 9% higher than the prior year and 1% higher than the prior quarter. On a year-over-year basis, expense growth benefited by approximately 300 basis-points due to currency translation. The current quarter’s expenses included a $17 million pension settlement charge within the employee benefits category, this compares to similar charges in the prior year quarter of $6.9 million and $20.3 million in the prior-period quarter. Also included in the current quarter is the impact of the previously mentioned accounting reclassification which increased other operating expense by $9.4 million compared to the prior year. Compensation expense was up 12% compared to the prior year and up 1% sequentially. The year-over-year growth was primarily driven by higher salary expense, in part due to inflationary pressures, partially offset by favorable currency translation. The sequential increase was primarily due to higher salary expense, partially offset by lower incentives and favorable currency translation.

Outside services expense was $221 million and was up 5% from a year-ago and up 4% sequentially. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by higher consulting and technical service costs, partially offset by lower third-party advisory fees. The sequential increase was primarily due to higher technical services and consulting costs. Equipment and software expense of $212 million was up 15% from one year-ago and up 4% sequentially. The year-over-year growth was primarily driven by higher software costs due to continued investments in technology as well as inflationary pressures and higher amortization. The sequential increase was primarily due to higher software amortization expense.

Occupancy expense of $51 million was down 5% from a year-ago and up 1% sequentially. The other operating expense of $82 million was up 1% from one year-ago and down 9% sequentially. The sequential decline was primarily due to lower miscellaneous expenses in the current period.

Turning to page eight, our capital ratios remain strong, with our common equity tier-one ratio of 10.1% under the standardized approach, down from the prior quarter’s 10.5%. Our tier-one leverage ratio was 7%, up from 6.7% in the prior quarter. An increase in net unrealized losses on the available-for-sale securities portfolio was a primary factor in this quarter’s change in capital ratios. Accumulated other comprehensive income at the end of the current quarter was a loss of $1.8 billion, with the loss from the 3rd quarter totaling approximately $300 million.

As previously announced, in the 3rd quarter, we increased the quarterly common stock dividend by 7% or $0.05 a share, to $0.75 per share. During the quarter, we returned $159.5 million to common shareholders through cash dividends of $158.4 million and share repurchases of $1.1 million. The current environment continues to demonstrate the importance of a strong capital base and liquid balance sheet to both weather the uncertain economic conditions and to support our clients’ needs. We approach the end-of-the year on solid footing and remain well positioned to serve our clients and communities, while generating long-term value to our shareholders.

And with that, Victor, please open the line for questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Betsy Graseck from Morgan Stanley, your line is open.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Morning, Betsy.

Betsy Graseck — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Hi, how are you doing?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Really well.

Betsy Graseck — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

I did want to just dig in a little bit on the expense side, and when I listen and look at the results, there’s some areas where it feels like maybe the inflation is impacting a little bit? I know you’re being very disciplined in how you’re investing, but I just wanted to, make sure I understand how you’re thinking about managing the expense base as we go through this inflationary environment? And is there an opportunity to pull-back on some of the consulting side, professional services side or should we anticipate that the kind of rate of change we’re seeing in this quarter should persist? Thanks.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Well, let me start with a direct answer to the question, and yes, there are things we can do and we’ve been focused on to address expense growth, and — so let me — predominantly, even within this period, in mid-September, we announced internally, some additional expense controls, we always have those in place, but we meaningfully ramped-up expense controls, particularly around hiring, that’s obviously the largest component of where we see expense increases, that’s our largest line, and so that’ll have — that will lead us to have just a higher bar on where we have increases in expenses and particularly from a hiring perspective. That’s not to say that we are going to stop investing in this — that we’re not going to continue investing in the things around technology and other areas, where we know we’ve had important investments to take place, but at the same time, we do see an opportunity for us to raise that bar, to try and tamp down the growth that we’ve seen in expenses.

Betsy Graseck — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Okay, and then just separately, as I’m thinking through the growth profile here, you’ve got some nice exposure to international, at the same time, we’ve gotten the strong dollar weighing on the results to a certain extent, maybe you could help us think through the impact of the dollar and if we excluded that, how results would’ve looked this quarter? Thanks.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. At a super-high level, the Company has a very natural hedge in that — from a currency perspective, and so this quarter it was, very roughly, call it 200, 300 basis points, and an impact on both the revenue side and the expense side and so the dollar does play in but it plays on both the revenue and the expense side.

The other impact that’s not as symmetrical is how the dollar plays — is how currency plays in more from an asset-level perspective, that played into asset-level movements over the — in both assets under custody as well as assets under management, and something people won’t typically think about, it even played in on the deposit decline. And think about the movement we’ve had and we can talk about that in more detail, but even the deposits had a downward move in value of about $1.5 billion in aggregate, across all currencies.

Betsy Graseck — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Okay. Got it. Thanks.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure.

Operator

Thank you and one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Alexander Blostein from Goldman Sachs.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Good morning, Alex.

Alexander Blostein — Goldman Sachs. — Analyst

Hey, guys, good morning. Sorry, I didn’t catch my name there. So couple of questions. I guess, one, obviously deposit outflows, sounds like it picked-up in September relative to sort of the last update that we heard from you guys at the Barclays Conference, I think you said around 120, came in a little bit lower but the mix in particular, I think was a little bit more pronounced due with noninterest-bearing declining substantially, so, maybe just an update on sort of how the quarter’s progressed but also more importantly, where the deposits stand today and the mix, noninterest-bearing and interest-bearing, as well as any of your sort of updated thoughts on where the deposit levels could ultimately trough out? It looks like the noninterest-bearing piece is getting pretty close to the kind of pre-COVID levels, but curious to get your thoughts there.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So first of all, on the deposit levels and where they were relative to our expectation, they actually came in really close, particularly given what I — what we mentioned earlier and that the currency effect of the non USD and so where they landed at the quarter. where they averaged actually was pretty close. And I mentioned that because, as we get to the next quarter, I think it’s very difficult to predict in general, and so — but let me hit mix first. So, you’re right, noninterest-bearing dropped significantly during the quarter and that’s something we expect to happen, a lot of our financial services clients that use our balance sheet are often in noninterest-bearing accounts but if the rates — as rates rise off of 0, they have the opportunity to move into interest-bearing — interest-bearing accounts and they did that. A lot of the — a very high percentage of the of the accounts that are eligible to do that have done so at this point, which gets exactly to your point, Alex, that we’re kind of, in some ways, at those pre-COVID levels. That’s not to say we won’t see additional movement there but we think certainly, a lot of it has already taken place.

And then, the third part of your question of where do we see things today? Just looking at the first few weeks of the quarter, deposits behaved about what we would anticipate, they tend to come down a little bit at this point into the quarter and so we’re in that kind of $110 billion to $115 billion. What we expect to happen between now and the end-of-the quarter, is an interesting dynamic. There’s two forces working against each other, one is with quantitative tightening and the yield curve being higher and clients across-the-board continuing to look at how they can allocate non-operational but more investment cash, that continues to put a downward pressure but in the short-run, there is an offset to that, there is an upward pressure in the seasonality that we’ve seen in 4th quarter, which tends to have more of an upward pressure, and so it’s difficult to see which one of those is going to have stronger influences, but best guess is, you might call it flat from here, and so, that $110 billion and $115 billion level, but appreciating that there is big forces moving against each other.

Alexander Blostein — Goldman Sachs. — Analyst

Got it, thanks for that. Appreciate the color. And I guess, speaking of institutions looking to earn a little bit extra yield on their cash, when I look at Northern’s securities portfolio, you guys are yielding, I think, about 1.8% and the market rates there are probably closer to 4%, maybe a little higher, now, geographically, it could be different with the mix but obviously an attractive opportunity to reprice there. I guess with AOCI losses already running through your capital, any appetite to sell-down, I guess, some of the lower-yielding securities without necessarily changing the profile of fixed versus floating, and kind of keeping the overall duration of the portfolio in a similar place, but I guess, crystallizing some of the losses but picking-up incremental NII in the current environment?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, so we talk about it a lot. And I think an important dynamic for everyone to know, and I know you appreciate this a 100% is that the economics of taking the loss, or reinvesting that lower amount at the higher yield, the efficiency of markets are just telling you that over time, the impact of that should be relatively equal. Now, there — the second component though, is that there may be other reasons to do that, you might be looking to, you might have a view that the yield curve is going to change significantly, you might want to handle other ratios by doing that and so it’s not to say that we wouldn’t do it but it’s just to say that the quick trade of — take the — realize the loss invested at a higher-rate, it’s not as easy and it’s not as beneficial. We care about just the long-term value of what the securities portfolio is yielding, not just the NII or NIM in the short-run.

Alexander Blostein — Goldman Sachs. — Analyst

Right. Fair enough. Thanks, guys.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

You bet. Thanks, Alex.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Mayo from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

Morning, guys. [Technical issues]

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Mike?

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

Yeah.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Let me answer — we’re getting a lot of static in the background and I want to make sure that — I want to make sure we answer your question, right. You want to — any way you can find –?

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

Is that any better than any better?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Dramatically. Good, go for it, Mike.

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

So much from my iPad. So — kook, are the tailwinds done? Jason, you correctly predicted the NIM going back to our levels of 2019. The elimination of fee waivers are good. On the other hand, I guess you, still have some tailwinds from the uninstalled business, which really isn’t clear why that’s so much higher, are there delays our you’re just winning business? On the other hand, you have the headwinds from the lower stock market, is that going to continue or is that mostly in the numbers now? So if you can help me with the tailwinds and the headwinds question? And the reason I asked that is, because you got those tailwinds and you still have negative operating leverage, so it’s — are you just a hostage to your business model or can you have revenues grow faster than expenses?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, yeah, so, couple of things in there. Let me try to hit them but certainly, ask me to clarify, if I don’t get all of them. One on rates, is it done? The answer is no. We still have upward movement and in fact, and I’ve — we looked just within the quarter at the month and September was at just a tiny bit above 160, and so we got into that level and so we — and even at this point, betas will be much higher but won’t be a 100% and so we’ll get incremental lift. And then, the third dynamic of that is that, as the securities portfolio is repricing, which was Alex’s question earlier, it takes time but we have opportunity to reinvest at these higher rates, so not done yet.

Second, on the pipeline a business, that has taken longer to come in, there some of the opportunities we have in asset servicing in particular, in the one not onboarded category, are very big and they are chunky, and those just take longer and the volatility in the markets, we think it’s just made clients just want to make sure that everything is lined-up properly and so that one not onboarded category is significantly higher than it is on average but it’s, we’re confident about it coming through.

And then, the the stock market dynamic you’re right, this is — usually, we talk about operating leverage and it’s the numbers are just much smaller, it’s can we get the expense growth plus a little bit of market lift to match? And — but in this environment, the macro environment is just dominating what’s happening to both, expense growth and revenue growth. And so, I’ve been saying all year, we cannot — there are false-positives in the operating leverage, there are false negatives in the fee operating leverage. And this is a year where we have to just understand that those numbers are dominated by the macro factor, it’s not typical, it doesn’t change our long-term financial model.

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

And on the one not on-boarded category, can you size that to some degree and give us some sense of timing?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I can give a sense of timing, which is actually it’s more back-half of ’23 that we’re scheduling some of this stuff coming in play, and that seems a long way away but it’s just — that’s us making sure and working very closely with clients to make sure everything is lined-up properly. And from a sizing perspective, we don’t tend to give a number on that, but what I can tell you is that it is meaningfully higher than — that aggregate is meaningfully higher than what it has been historically.

And pipeline — and then the — outside of the one not funded, the Asset Servicing business will tell you that the pipeline activity is also very-high.

Mike Mayo — Wells Fargo. — Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

You bet. Thank you, Mike.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Usdin from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Morning, Ken.

Ken Usdin — Jefferies & Company — Analyst

Hey, morning, Jason. Hey can we follow-up on that organic growth side, can you just talk about the wealth business and if you could also trying to separate the markets from just where organic growth is there and any updates in terms of, there’s same type of pullback at all, in terms of customers, moving, coming over, bringing assets over, given the environment?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, actually I’m really glad you asked that because the wealth businesses is — the journey is very different. The wealth business — the organic — the growth there was higher first-half of the year and they — the business is still doing well but, they don’t feel — but the one not funded is not as strong relative to history as the asset servicing business. Now, both of those client channels will tell you importantly, their win rates in the market are very attractive and they are very consistent with what they have been historically, and so it’s just about, for wealth, they are in — their view is, equity markets are lower, less capital markets activity and it’s put just less money in motion. And so year-to-date organic growth in wealth has been in-line with historical levels. First-half strong, frankly, higher-than-normal. Second-half looks lighter, but money in motion is down. Fewer IPOs, fewer liquidity events but importantly, their sense is, their win rate in the market is consistent with what it has been historically.

Ken Usdin — Jefferies & Company — Analyst

Okay and then if I could just ask one follow-up to Alex’s question, so if there is more room to go on the NIM, the challenge is overcoming the magnitude of that size decline in the balance sheet, so how far-out is your line of sight? I know you’re not going to give specific guidance but in terms of your NII growth being able to continue post the 3rd-quarter result?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Now, I mean, you’re — the way you’re framing the algorithm is right, it’s just we — rates are, it’s going to start to flatten out and our betas this coming quarter, we’re anticipating that there, they — we’re anticipating betas of 80% in this coming quarter. And so the benefits are just flattening out but as rates go higher, we’re still getting a benefit and the repricing of the securities portfolio is a positive lag effect to that, effectively.

Now, all that said, the volume levels matter a lot as well, and just as rates were increasing, we talked about the importance of loans, that’s where the real yield is but we can’t ignore the fact that when volumes are coming down it puts pressure on the securities portfolio and on money market assets, which has an impact less on NIM but more on NII.

Ken Usdin — Jefferies & Company — Analyst

Right. I got it. Okay. Thank you.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken from UBS. Your line is open.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Morning, Brennan.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Hey, Jason, I’m glad you said good morning because my line cut out when he said my name. Okay, I’d love to ask a question about what you’re seeing here so far? Number one, just to clarify, the $110 billion to $115 billion, that’s kind of like the range you’ve been seeing in deposits quarter-to-date, right? And assuming that’s the case, and as you said, hard to predict, but if we do end-up seeing some continued pressure on the deposit side, is — should we expect that wholesale funding line to plug the gap, to the extent that AFS securities cannot come down quick enough? Should we think that that line is going to continue to grow if the deposits remain under pressure?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, you’re right t hat’s where we think — that’s the last fulfillment mechanism on the balance sheet and we don’t use that — there’s no strategic initiative there to use it but it does, in the short-run, in the short-run act is the fulfillment mechanism, depending on what’s happening. And the good news is there is a positive carry — there is a positive carry on that and rates are decent, so it helps NII but we don’t use it as a way to to push and lever the balance sheet more than we need to, we use it as effectively just a fulfillment mechanism.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Okay. Right, so that’s sort of the output to the extent that, you don’t have — that you need to [Indecipherable]. That makes sense. And then when we think about non-operating deposits, where do we stand in total for non-operating versus where we were at the peak of the last rate hiking cycle, have we retraced that decline? And you spoke to the shifting of non-operating from noninterest-bearing and interest-bearing, I’m guessing that’s what’s driving up the betas. What kind of magnitude impact does that — as I’m guessing the non-op is a more demanding customer-base on the beta side. Is that fair?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, it is. it is, for sure. And in — there is actually another layer within there which we’ve talked about a little bit so it’s good for us to refinery to continue asking more detail on it but even within the non-operational there is financial and non-financial and the financial non-operational are the areas where there is the highest rate sensitivity and frankly, it’s also the the area we have to have the highest amount of run-off anticipation, and therefore, it’s the area where we do the shortest and least yielding investing on the other side of it. And so that — and you’re right, that component is — It continues to be the higher run-off in terms of volume level so-far.

So, if I look at the numbers, it is across all the categories we look at, it’s the single — it’s the single highest decline on a percentage basis, even this quarter. And that said, there’s declines in other areas as well and so even within the operational base was down, I’ll say -ITv 5% to 10% and but that’s more that client base looking at different investment options and saying. I might have with the yield curve back and flat at 0 might not have been looking to ladder and treasury securities or look at and active fixed-income portfolio but now they are very much looking to do that as they talk to their advisers, and so, very different dynamics at play.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Okay. Al right. Thanks for the color.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

You bet. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for next question. And our next question will come from the line of Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Morning, Brian.

Brian Bedell — Deutsche Bank Securities. — Analyst

Good morning, good morning, how are you doing?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Well.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Great. Just first one clarification on the deposit beta of 80% that you just mentioned, Jason, that’s an incremental beta as opposed to say an absolute level that you’d be at in the 4th quarter, is that, correct?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

I want to make sure I understand, so, yes that’s the — as we think about incremental rate changes, that’s the beta that we’re experiencing on those incremental changes.

Brian Bedell — Deutsche Bank Securities. — Analyst

On incremental, yep. yep, that’s I wanted to clarify, yes. And then maybe just on expenses. I guess one question just around the seasonality expectations because you do have some of the cost controls in-place that you mentioned that you initiated in September. So how should we think about the typical seasonal lift in outside services and equipment and software for example that we usually see. And then also short-term, just the pension charges, is that — should we think of that as more recurring or really sort of you’re kind of done with that? Sure I’ll hit the — I’ll hit the first one, just on expenses and then Lauren is here and can also talk on the pension settlement accounting issues. So on the — on expenses, we’ve mentioned that depreciation is higher and so in equipment and software in particular, we’re anticipating another lift in 4th quarter, similar to what we had in 3rd quarter. And despite the expense actions we’re taking, part of that is baked into the — into our base right now, particularly from a depreciation and amortization perspective. That said, we’ll be looking hard at expenses even within that line-item but we’ve also talked about the importance of us investing in technology, but we’ll see that similar lift going into fourth quarter. And then from a — and then consulting is without a doubt one of the key areas we’re looking very hard to make sure that anything that comes on at this point is it is critical and that we’re we’re handling that with a very-high bar of what we’re doing but it’s very correlated to M&A instances as well to what we’re doing from equipment and software perspective. With that, Lauren, you want to talk onpensions and stuff? Sure, so if we think about pension, we definitely would expect to see that recur in the 4th quarter. The fact that we have triggered this accounting mechanisms, settlement accounting doesn’t mean that our run-rate of pension expense in the current year is lower. But we will expect to see that in the 4th-quarter, it is difficult to predict whether that’s something that we would the going-forward into 2023. Okay, okay, great. And, if fact, if I could just squeeze one expenses. In terms of the onboarding of the clients, do you you also — typically. we see expenses in advance of that, particularly if they’re more larger complex assignments in asset servicing, is that a similar dynamic that we may see either now or in the first-half of next year in advance of the boarding of those clients?

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

This is, Mike. I would say we’ve already experienced some of that, so as Jason has mentioned, some of these transitions just are taking longer for a number of reasons. I would say part of it too is that if you look at the pipeline right now on the asset servicing side, it’s a high proportion of asset managers and those mandates just tend to take longer to transition and then for asset owners and so we’ve been already have been at-work in doing that and incurring some of the expenses that go with it and then as you point out, as those start to transition in, it kind of normalizes into the rate.

Brian Bedell — Deutsche Bank Securities. — Analyst

Yes, perfect. Thanks so much for the color.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Glenn Schorr from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Morning, Glenn.

Glenn Schorr — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Hello there. So, I guess in some way, you’re a bit of a microcosm of the inflation issue we have in the market, so my question on the expense side is, is head count up 11%? Comp up like 12%? And that’s half the the expense dollars, so is it — is it fair for me to assume that, we could be more careful going-forward but this higher-level of dollars on employee comp and benefits is probably going to be with us for a while, just like the market fears overall, in other words, you can take comp away that you just gave?

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

Yeah, Glenn. I think that’s true in general. Just to expand on that, I would say that, for us at least, I — we’ve gone through a time period here with inflation but also tremendous competition for the best talent and as you know, that’s where we look or one of the ways we look to differentiate ourselves. So it’s very important that’s to make sure that we were retaining the best talent and also attracting new talent as well. And so, yes, we’ve had that increase in comp that is then a part of the run-rate going-forward. The question is, what happens to the rate of growth going-forward? And we’re looking at that very carefully, I would say, but we need to be competitive on that front and then the other part is, as Jason mentioned, we’ve added a number of additional partners, employees for us, and that’s something which was very appropriate as we invest in taking care of our clients, invest in technology, invest in resiliency, so it all make sense. We just, going-forward, have to be really-really focused on making sure that we’re only adding for very critical roles, so that that growth rate of head count is appropriate.

Glenn Schorr — Evercore ISI — Analyst

I hear you, you’re not alone there. One question on — when when markets are going up a lot, like they used to, you would have plenty of clients that would have either fee ceilings or fee caps such that your fees just don’t scale-up as markets go up. My question is, does it work that way in reverse, market’s fallen like 22% this year, do we have any protection on the way down for — whereas, maybe fees might not drop as much as the markets would imply going-forward?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

So a, couple of thoughts there. One, even within the contracts that are asset-based, a lot of the components of them are flat and so as you see increases and decreases the fee rates don’t move a 100% in the same magnitude. And secondly, outside of that there are certain volume, there are certain transactions that are charged for on a per unit basis and so that in and of itself adds a layer, that doesn’t — that’s uncorrelated in many ways to the level of assets and so, and even this quarter, one of the things we experienced is, we think about organic growth and particularly in the asset servicing business, that was another dynamic, transaction volumes were down. And that — that may have had some correlation with markets being down but we actually think it was more correlated to just the volatility, where a lot of the managers that the asset manager clients we have were doing less because of the — particularly, the currency volatility and so, different dynamics at work but without a doubt, there — trust fees won’t move a 100% in-line with market — with markets.

Glenn Schorr — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Yeah. Maybe one last one, on wealth management. Big, big difference in the AUM change year-on year, down 10% versus down 25% for Asset Servicing, I’m assuming that’s mostly mix and wealth management clients holding 20 something percent in cash, so I wonder if you could, a, confirm that and b, talk about what wealth clients are now doing with all that cash?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So, from a wealth perspective, the clients may take a different approach in saying that, they’re thinking about investing and they might — it’s more of an asset class change for them and asset allocation change by class. In the institutional market, those clients will often think differently and, they might be moving between providers, they might be moving — and they’ve got more options to think about what their existing — what their existing option steps are. I will say in general, our — if you think about deposits, and the money market funds combined — the wealth, just the movements tend to not be as extreme and so deposits might be a better place to look at that, they’ve actually just been flatter, and so the wealth clients just tend to be ironically, I mean we all think about that component of the market maybe being more — moving around more, but I think it’s the nature of our specific clients, that they tend to be — to move less and and just be more patient through cycles.

Glenn Schorr — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Okay, thank you for all that.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure.

Operator

One moment for next question. Next question comes from the line of Gerard Cassidy from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Good morning, Gerard.

Gerard Cassidy — RBC Capital Markets. — Analyst

Good morning, Jason. Digging a little deeper into the decline year-over-year of assets under custody of the administration, you touched on it in your prepared remarks, can you share what this — how it breaks out between just market conditions and fixed-income versus equity? You already discussed a lot about the deposit issues. And then also what the dollar may have contributed to that decline? And lastly, were there any customers that left?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So AUCA a was down, call it 6.5%. Markets were over half of that. Currency, to your point and observation, was about a third, and we’ve got a significant international exposure, higher than what most people realize in AUC. And in fact, only 70% is USD. And then, client outflows were the remainder, and so not heavily significant portion of either AUC or of the decline itself. And importantly, the decline in AUC that was related to outflows, it was related to our largely our asset manager client’s underlying business having outflows. And our asset owners rebalancing, but there is no material change in our client base or in our wallet share. And the business emphasizes that win rate continues to be high and consistent but this was a dynamic of our underlying clients having outflows in over time, that works in our favor. Our clients do well. we grow with them. This period was one where particularly the asset managers had outflows, which impacted AUC.

Gerard Cassidy — RBC Capital Markets. — Analyst

Very good. And then second, asking the revenue question a little differently, can you share with us what percentage of your fee revenues are variable-rate price? Meaning you charged maybe a couple of basis-points to your customer as a percentage of assets under custody, so as assets under custody, they go up-and-down revenues of course follow where does that stand today?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, maybe something, just to give you a quick soundbite that we could come back on, it’s different across asset servicing and let me offer a couple of things that might be helpful to you. In asset servicing, 40% of the fees are not asset value sensitive. They are driven by transaction volumes and account level fees or flat fees. Of the asset-sensitive fees, you know that 60%, about 75% operate on a month lag and about 25% on a quarter lag. And If I transition to wealth management, I’ll split it between the family office and the regions because they are different. In the family office, probably, it’s about a third of the fees are sensitive to equity markets in some ways and about 10% are sensitive to the fixed-income markets, so, close to half overall. And then in the regions, about half, or a little bit more, are sensitive to equity markets but a quarter are sensitive to fixed-income and so that should that should give you a good tool set to work from.

Gerard Cassidy — RBC Capital Markets. — Analyst

Yeah, it does. Thank you.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Vivek Juneja from JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Vivek Juneja — JP Morgan — Analyst

Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of questions here. Capital, your CET1 is down to 10.1%. Mike, you have always wanted to keep a gap versus your peers, that gap has, really, disappear for the moment, what are you thinking especially if rates stay high for a while, what is your plan in terms of trying to bring back that gap?

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

So, Vivek, you’re right as to our objective on capital there, and I would say that hasn’t changed. What has changed as you know with rates, the impact of AOCI on that. And so over time, that will accrete back into capital and that’s our our plan, if you will, is to allow the capital ratio to continue to be in the range that we’ve had for some time period; right now, it’s just in the lower part of that range as a result of AOCI.

Vivek Juneja — JP Morgan — Analyst

Okay. So no plans to shrink the balance sheet or anything in the near-term to try and do anything about it?

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

Yeah, so, I would say there are no specific plans around that, Vivek, but we do look at risk-weighted assets very closely because it is — that’s a proxy then for the amount of capital that’s being deployed in that activity and are we getting the right return. Jason talked about the size of the balance sheet earlier and the fact that we do get positive returns across all of those activities, but some of them more than others and so we’ve never looked to just expand the balance sheet if it was going to be in low returning activities and so that will be the same, and in this environment, every dollar of RWA is precious.

Vivek Juneja — JP Morgan — Analyst

Got it. Different question, a little detailed one. Jason, you mentioned other operating expenses were down due to lower miscellaneous expenses, is it sustainable as a slower run-rate, given the costs of focus that you’ve got, or is that just temporary and comes back?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

There’s a lot of different factors going within that line-item and so it’s just a difficult one to predict. We tend — we try to call-out the big moves but difficult to say that there is any trend within that, there’s nothing we’d call-out at this point.

Vivek Juneja — JP Morgan — Analyst

One last one, if I may? You mentioned investment management team’s outflows. How much and which products are you seeing there?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Across AUM in general, the decline is about 7%. The majority of that is within asset servicing and then from an asset class, to your perspective, it’s a combination of mostly cash but also equity and then also the sec lending cash collateral pools. But at the same time, markets drove about 40% of the decline and currency was the remaining approximately 10%.

Vivek Juneja — JP Morgan — Analyst

Okay. All right. Thank you, thank you.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

You’re welcome.

Operator

One moment our next question. We have a follow-up from the line of Brennan Hawken from UBS. Your line is open.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my follow-up. You touched briefly on this before, Jason, but could you give us an updated currency mix of the deposits and whether or not the FX moves we’ve seen has caused some shift there?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Give me a second. And Mark or Jennifer, if you get it before I do.

Mark Bette — Senior Vice President & Director of Investor Relations

Yeah. This is Mark. The USD deposits, is that what you’re asking, about the currency mix of deposits, Brennan? Yeah exactly, currency mix of deposit, yeah. Yeah, so in the current quarter, it’s a little bit over 70% is U.S., so at 71% U.S. And then as you go down for total deposits, a little bit more than 10% is pound, a little bit more than 5% is Euro, and then you get to Aussie dollar, which is also right around 5% and then the rest of kind of spread-out among the remaining 5% or so 5% to 10%. But still, not a significant change from what we’ve seen before, even though the volumes have come down.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Got it and then, earlier on expenses, you guys spoke to taking some actions on expenses to try to. Diminish some of the inflationary pressure. Is it possible to give some color or help us think about what kind of magnitude we should be expecting as far as those action goes those potential actions go and what the timing would be?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

I’ll hit on timing. And from that perspective, it’s — we started and announced internally, these higher levels of controls in early mid-September and so we were already seeing some beneficial impact from that and certainly, change in heightening of the bar on what we’re bringing in and again, you’ve got to emphasize, there are still things that we think about from an investment perspective, to the extent we have growth, we’re going to follow that growth with appropriate level of investment and if, and but this is also about productivity and making sure that we address inflation very aggressively those are the two components that we’re looking at and we’ve taken more of a five-quarter approach to this year’s planning process, for 2023, to ensure we work hard on 4th quarter, so that we maximize our ability to do well and be where we want to be coming into next year.

And from a magnitude perspective, too early to — we’re not going to give numbers on that at this point, it’s just — it is noteworthy enough that we wanted to make sure to communicate that this is something that it’s been a pivot in a significant increase in the controls around higher-level around spend increases.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Okay but just framing it, is it best to think about because you said that this is about addressing the inflation and whatnot you’re not stopping the investment, of course. But given the challenging environment, should we think about this could help to offset some of the recent inflationary pressure that you saw this year? So it’s about bringing the growth rate down right is that is that about it? right way to think about it or is it more. Containing further pressure and sort of like stopping us from continuing to go higher?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

It’s both. if we use that, we’re if we go back and it’s a good thing for you to encouraged us to frame it and so let’s just come back to the way we usually frame it. We always talk about our expenses, which is around productivity, inflation, growth and investing; and if we use that framework, typically, we want — we’d like to see productivity offset inflation. That’s a lot easier to do when inflation is at 2%. inflation at 8%, 9%, 10%m it’s very difficult but that should tell you, we are going to be looking extremely hard at productivity, at where we can look at our existing base of business and find opportunities to be more efficient.

And then in the concept of investing, those — that’s where you just have to have a high bar and we have to say, our growth rate, historically, has been high but we’ve accomplished a lot of the things we wanted to do. In wealth management, we went through a digital metamorphosis, in our infrastructure, we went through — we’ve gone — we’ve gotten a lot of work done on migrating to the cloud and in our risk and cyber and regulatory bucket, we’ve done a lot of investing to ensure that the brand that we have is protected well and those are those are the three components around technology spending, importantly, that we’re talking about things internally. so that infrastructure foundational piece is one, the second is that middle layer of risk regulatory cyber and the third is around what’s client-driven and there are opportunities in each of those but the risk regulatory cyber is one where you’d say we’re going to ensure that we’re doing everything we need to do there to make sure we are where we should be as a franchise. The other two buckets, we’ve got to think about pacing. we’ve got to think about who are we’re using to help us on those things, their leverage we can pull? And then that last overall bucket of what do we do from a growth perspective? To the extent that there’s good business out there for us to bring on, we’re going to do it and that we care as much about the organic growth of the Company as about wanting to make sure that the expense growth rate is where it should be.

Brennan Hawken — UBS. — Analyst

Okay. Thanks for taking my follow-ups.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

No. Thanks for encouraging the framework and hopefully that’s helpful.

Operator

One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Brown from KBW. Your line is open. Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure.

Michael Brown — KWB — Analyst

I just wanted to ask about the volatility that we saw in the gilt market, we saw some headlines about some challenges related to processing for for your business, can you add some context around the situation there, and will there be any financial impact related to the volatility there and specifically for your business?

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, so, Mike, you’ve given the background there, largely, just that there has been a significant amount of both volumes and volatility in the gilt market, and we have a meaningful client base of UK pensions that are affected by that and a number of those pension clients also utilize liability-driven investment strategies and managers that provide those strategies and likewise, we have some very meaningful clients on that front. So we’ve been in the middle of that volume and volatility, and have been doing everything that’s required to be able to handle that. Needless to say, it has presented challenges for all the players in that marketplace, it’s continued to work its way through and I would say, still uncertain and our expectation is that although some of the volumes may have come down here, more recently, we are prepared that they could pick back up again and the volatility has not gone away. And so, from that perspective, we’ve been very focused on taking care of the clients, making sure that everything is getting done and I would say, as far as any particular financial exposure or anything like that, there’s no change to the business model for us or necessarily exposures or things like that.

Michael Brown — KWB — Analyst

Okay, very good. Thank you. And just on share buybacks, I don’t think we really heard much about that on this call and it’s certainly were very low this quarter and if I heard Jason’s comment correctly before, it sounds like a lot of focus will probably be on rebuilding the CET1 ratio. So is it fair to assume that the buybacks will probably be relatively muted here and maybe just dependent on how the AOCI accretes back into capital? Or just any thoughts on the framework for thinking about buybacks would be helpful.

Jason J. Tyler — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I think you got it largely right, that with — look, AOCI at $1.5 billion to $2 billion and on a cumulative basis, that’s that’s a high amount. We care about our CET1 levels and we’ve got obviously, we’ve got strong very strong capital positions but we think about it so much on a relative basis as well and in an aggregate basis, and so we feel good about the capital levels but also are — have a, I’d say a bias toward making sure we’re — we stay relatively where we want.

Michael Brown — KWB — Analyst

Great, thank you, Jason. You bet.

Operator

One moment for our next question. We have a follow-up from the line of Gerard Cassidy from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Gerard Cassidy — RBC Capital Markets. — Analyst

Thank you, Jason. Jason just a quick follow-up on the beta that you mentioned, incrementally 80% for the upcoming quarter is what you pointed out. Can you — two parts to the question, how does that compare to the last tightening cycle, is 80%, at this point, normal? Or similar, I should say, not normal. And second, if rates continue to go higher, let’s say another 75 to a 100 basis-points, will the incremental beta approach 100%?

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

So, in terms of where it is relative to prior cycles, it has not been linear in this cycle, each rate hikes seems to have its own dynamic to it and another dynamic is that historically, we’ve seen most of the dynamic come from the Fed. But this cycle and the mix of our deposits. There is more impact from non USD currencies and so you’ve got to play that in as well, it’s really important. And then to the second — and those betas also behaved very differently, and then also, our wealth even within USD, the wealth deposits behave differently. They don’t flatten out as much. And even at even at higher levels from here. which gets to the second part of your question, does it does it level-off completely at some point? It doesn’t. Not up another 100 basis points for sure, but each currency behaves differently and depending on where we are, behaves differently too. Betas are very-high in non-USD negative rates. You can imagine clients who are highly demanding of getting 100% of the benefit as they were in negative territory, as they got to 0 and a little bit above, the conversations change.

And then also the dynamics of what do alternatives look like? And so the shape of the yield curve matters and so all those things come into play but the direct answer is, we don’t anticipate a flattening, even at a — even with another 100 basis point lift, but we’ll continue to see higher betas as we get there.

Michael Brown — KWB — Analyst

Very good and then, Mike just to follow-up on the pension answer that you gave over with the London, or U.K. accounts. Is it safe to assume that you guys are permanently acting as agent for those customers rather than any balance sheet risk or you’re not underwriting LDI products?

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

Correct. We are not an LDI product provider, if you will, on the asset management side and you’re right, we’re the asset servicer for either the U.K. pension or for the LDI manager that’s our client. And so, yes, we’re acting as agent for them, now with sales of gilt, with moving collateral around that, there’s a tremendous amount of movement of cash and bonds as a part of that. And so we will act as a go between because of that and so that can create temporary exposures if you will which is what would be the case that’s normal as part of the offering that we have for them.

And I would just add that, with all of the increases in volumes and volatility that I talked about, which have been multiples of what is normally the case, we’ve put additional resources to every — doing everything we can to make sure that we can we can handle those. So, that’s really been our position on it, and again, can’t predict where it’s going to go but we’re trying to be prepared for this to continue for some time.

Michael Brown — KWB — Analyst

No, very helpful, thank you.

Mike O’Grady — Chairman and CEO

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our Q&A for today. I’d like to turn the call-back over to Jennifer Childe for any closing remarks.

Jennifer Childe — Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations

Thanks, Victor. And thanks everyone for joining us today and we look-forward to speaking with you again very soon.

Operator

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.