Investors, Analysts Focus on Balance-Sheet Drivers, Not Emerging Risks
This research offers a practical market lens on what investors are really watching, and where banks’ risk agendas may be out of sync with the investor market. Using neural topic modelling (BERTopic), the authors identify recurring topics and group them into banking-relevant categories. The research assesses the level of analyst attention on a given topic, based on the share of all investor and analyst questions on bank earnings calls in a given period. The findings reveal how priorities differ across Canada, the UK and the U.S. Using 21,881 questions from 21 major banks, it finds that market attention is concentrated on earnings and balance-sheet drivers such as net interest income, costs, credit quality, and liquidity, while emerging risks like cyber, AI, and climate receive far less attention.