Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) credits digital investments and a cloud-first strategy with its 2021 growth, which saw adjusted revenue increase 7% year over year.

The $653.6 billion bank reported $15.6 billion in adjusted revenue for 2021 on Thursday’s earnings call. Adjusted net income was $1.3 billion, up from the $1 billion reported in 2020, but down slightly from Q3’s reported net income of $1.4 billion.

“Against the backdrop of the ongoing global pandemic, our bank continued to invest for the future, including expanding our platform and capabilities in the U.S., accelerating the growth of our Canadian consumer franchise, and making foundational investments in cloud technology and other capabilities that will enable us to do more for clients in 2022 and beyond,” President and CEO Victor Dodig said during the call.

Accelerating the Toronto-based bank’s cloud-first approach meant connecting technology across all lines of business with a focus on scaling client platforms and driving differentiation in advice channels, according to the presentation materials.

Along with its cloud strategy, CIBC credits its success to the expansion of its digital product offerings and capabilities — including retail banking service CIBC GoalPlanner — and new products in its direct financial services business, such as offering U.S. dollar accounts, and new and expanded services in remittances.

The bank does not break out technology spend, as it uses a decentralized spending model with spend allocated to the lines of business. However, CIBC did include a lump sum for “Corporate and Other,” which combines technology, infrastructure, innovation, risk management, people, culture and brand, finance and enterprise strategy groups. Its cost was $181.8 million in Q4 and $386.9 for the year, down from $684.9 million in 2020.

Continued focus on digital growth

Overall, CIBC reported that 92.9% of financial transactions were from digital channels compared with 7.1% of non-digital channels during Q4.

Digital adoption was at 76.8%, up 2.4% YoY. Digital channel usage and active digital users grew 9.9% and 7% YoY, respectively.

CIBC saw digital financial transactions grow by 11.9%, with e-transactions climbing to 55 million and “other” activities such as transfers and e-deposits increasing from 46 million to 51 million YoY.

The bank will continue to invest in technology that aligns with its strategic priorities, said Laura Dottori-Attanasio, head of personal and business banking in Canada.

“That includes where we want to increase our Salesforce effectiveness, our productivity, we want to continue with our digitization and end to end straight-through processing,” Dottori-Attanasio said. “We’re going to continue to build out our digital self-serve capabilities, and all of our digital experiences.

“So I think you saw we released this year, our digital identity verification tool. We had virtual card issuance for debit and credit cards, we released CIBC Insights, just to name a few, and we’re going to continue to build upon that.”

Shares of CIBC stock [NYSE: CM] were trading at $108.80 as of 1:49 p.m., up 1.5% from market open today.