Associated Banc-Corp (NYSE:ASB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Terence McEvoy: Okay. And then maybe last question. I don’t want to overlook Slide 6, Andy, when you talk about the net growth and some of the deposit products. Maybe can you talk about on the consumer side? Are you getting – are you the primary bank in this relationship? Are average – how are average deposits looking and maybe expand a little bit on these new businesses and households that are partnering with Associated?

Andrew Harmening: Sure. So, I’ll give the example of the mass affluent. The mass affluent is a segment where a large percentage of the deposits reside. And so, I mean that is a primary deepening play within those – within your existing customer base. But then it’s also with new accounts that come in. So when you look at that category for us, what I had seen coming into the bank was that we had an opportunity to deepen on the mass affluent side. We had an opportunity to deepen on the commercial side. I would say that those efforts are just happening right now. Now it was almost impossible to see that in the second quarter of this year, because of the extraordinary events that we had, which is exactly why I created Page 6, because we see the trends behind the trends as the dust settles, as the noise goes away.

So the idea on these is absolutely get activity coming into your bank. But with that activity, put products and services in there and give your people an opportunity to talk about that on the consumer side, that’s what segmentation does on the consumer side. On the commercial side, it is simple things like tracking of your pipeline and incenting for your pipeline. And our people have gotten better and better at that conversation. In fact, we – I see the early indicator. I saw the early indicator 90 days ago in our treasury management sales. Not where you’ll make or break the bank from a revenue standpoint, but it’s an indication that you’re having conversations on things that matter to the customer with regards to the liquidity. And when you have those conversations, you’re typically able to deepen.

We’ve seen that deepening – followed from that. Yes, the question comes up, do you want customer growth or do you want deposit growth? And the answer, we have here is yes.

Terence McEvoy: Thank you, Andy.

Andrew Harmening: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jon Arfstrom with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Jon Arfstrom: Good afternoon, guys.

Andrew Harmening: Hi, Jon.

Jon Arfstrom: Hi, a couple of follow-ups and another, I guess, a separate question. But why is attrition down just following up on Terry’s comments about that Slide 6. Why is attrition down? And why are people not leaving?

Andrew Harmening: Yes. That’s a great question. People stay for a lot of different reasons. It’s great when you’re nice. It’s also great when you’re nice, it’s really nice when you actually have a digital experience, which is the most used channel. And then it’s really good when you have products and services they want to need, and they start to deepen. And so, when we launched our new digital platform, you always take a step back in satisfaction. It’s just annoying to change, but we rebounded from that really quickly. In my experience, it usually takes six months, we started to see rebounding in 90 days. That was awesome. So once we did that, we were starting to get back to our previous levels, but then people actually use it and they liked it.

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