In this episode, Bipan Rai, Sohrab Movahedi, and your host, Skye Collyer, unpack Canada's ‘Big Six’ banks' Q1 2026 earnings — cutting through the noise on tariffs, growth drivers, and what resilience looks like in an uncertain macro environment.
Skye Collyer is a Director of ETF Distribution at BMO Global Asset Management (BMO GAM). She is joined by Bipan Rai, Head of ETF Strategy, Exchange Traded Funds at BMO GAM, and Sohrab Movahedi, Managing Director of Financials Research at BMO Capital Markets. This episode was recorded live on Tuesday, March 03, 2026.
ETFs mentioned:
· BMO Equal Weight Banks Index ETF (Ticker: ZEB)
· BMO Covered Call Canadian Banks ETF (Ticker: ZWB)
· BMO Canadian Bank Income Index ETF (Ticker: ZBI)
Source: ETF Flows, according to the National Bank Report, December 2025
Big Six: The six largest banks in Canada: BMO, CIBC, National Bank, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD.
ROE: Return on Equity
NIM Margin: The Net Interest Margin is a measure of the value of a bank’s net interest revenue as a share of its average interest-bearing assets.
CUSMA: Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trade
USMCA: United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement; the American name for the CUSMA
LRCNs: Limited Recourse Capital Notes
Institutional Prefs: Preferred shares issued or primarily held by institutions
Yield Curve: A line that plots the interest rates of bonds having equal credit quality but differing maturity dates. A normal or steep yield curve indicates that long-term interest rates are higher than short-term interest rates. A flat yield curve indicates that short-term rates are in line with long-term rates, whereas an inverted yield curve indicates that short-term rates are higher than long-term rates.
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