Casey Haire: Okay, very good. And just lastly, on the capital return, you guys obviously warming up to the buyback is what it sounds like to me. Just wondering what is — you guys have been fairly consistent on this front and saying like it’s just not the time macro wise to skip in all the uncertainty. It’s not as if that uncertainty is going to improve in the 2024. Just wondering what is driving that decision to more increased appetite for share buyback?
Bryan Jordan: Yes, I think it’s fair to sort of break it into two pieces. One, we said longer term and prepared comments. It would probably be in that 9.5% to 10.5% range. And I think that’s probably a fair way to think about our business through varying economic cycles as we sit here today. We’re a little north of 11. And I think as we look at 2024, we may not bring it down much below 11 or into that range. But we don’t believe that we need to let that capital continue to accumulate. So depending on what happens with the balance sheet in terms of any growth, we think there’s still excess capital to repatriate the shareholders and hold those ratios in this current 11, 11 to 1 area that they’re in today. So we think we can do both, maintain strong capital levels, which are important in an economic situation that is probably less certain than any of us might like. And at the same time, we don’t need to let that capital base continue to grow from here in our view.
Casey Haire: Great, thank you.
Bryan Jordan: Thank you, Casey.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rose of Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Michael Rose: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just following up on the last two on Ebrahim’s and Casey’s questions. I guess what I’m struggling with here is the ability to actually drive positive operating leverage, especially if countercyclical businesses, specifically in mortgage and fixed income, are going to be under pressure. And it does look like fixed income will be under continued pressure under a higher for longer scenario. So maybe if you can just help us kind of understand the drivers of how you actually drive positive operating leverages. I think that’s something that we’re all struggling with. I’m certainly getting some emails. Thanks.
Hope Dmuchowski: Michael, good to hear from you and I appreciate the third question and I’ll try to answer it as well as I can in a little bit more detail. I think, Casey said it best. It’s going to be hard for us to hit the 6 to 8% expenses. Bryan, followed up with we are looking for ways to drive down expenses. We’re only four and a half months post the deal termination and we’re re-looking at our franchise and trying to figure out how we make investments and how we’ve offset that. This quarter we’ve reorganized two of our regions. We’ve downsized our mortgage business. We are continuing to look at how can we bring back deposit costs. So we’re going to, this will be, we’re going to be able to increase margin in future quarters.
We believe that this is our high watermark for the cost side of margin. We’re going to see, we do expect that our on business will have a better year in 2024 and 2023 as we see stabilization in rates next year. And we are going to continue to keep a disciplined focus on expenses. We’re just in the cycle now as looking at what 2024 will be from a budget perspective. And we’re looking at every opportunity to bring down expenses and drive revenue. I would love to give you 2024 guidance. We just need a little bit more time to finalize everything. But I think you should see the regional bank restructure that we did as well as the mortgage of us getting out pretty quickly, the first full quarter after a deal was terminated and looking at how we can run our businesses more efficiently and redeploy that to investments to improve the client experience.
Michael Rose: Okay, and then just stepping back…
Hope Dmuchowski: And Michael, one other note I’ll mention. Sorry, go ahead, Michael.
Michael Rose: You go. No, go ahead.
Hope Dmuchowski: When we look at the retention expenses coming back to core, I know we mentioned this on a prior quarter and it came up with Barclays as well. The year-over-year increase in that is only 5 million. So even though we only have a half year this year core and a full year next year, because the first portion pays out in May, it is not as big of a year-over-year increase. I think some of you have in your model. I think you guys are taking the 11 million and assuming that was almost double next year. And so you look at the expense that I see in your models. I think you guys were over weighting that piece.
Michael Rose: Okay, helpful. And then again, I know it’s too hard for 2024 at this point, but I mean, is there an expectation just broadly that you can actually grow NII I certainly understand all the tailwinds as it relates to the margin. But is that is that actually baked into at least preliminary expectations?
Hope Dmuchowski: In the current rate scenario yes, we believe [Indiscernible] is strong for us. We do have a rate curve that has continuing increases for the 2024 year and no decreases and being asset sensitive. That is positive to NII.
Michael Rose: All right, thanks for taking my questions.
Operator: The next question comes from Brody Preston of UBS. Your line is open.
Brody Preston: Hey, good morning everyone.
Bryan Jordan: Morning, Brody.
Brody Preston: Hope. Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I just wanted to put a finer point on the expenses. To get to the low end of your guidance range. I need to step expenses up to $520 million for the fourth quarter. It’s a $55 million linked quarter increase, which seems steep. If not kind of like numerically impossible to kind of flex the model that high. So can you can you tell me why? Like, specifically what is going to drive the $55 million increase to get to the low end of the guidance?
Hope Dmuchowski: Yes, I think the low end of the guidance, 5.6 also rounds up to 6, right? Or 5.51. And so, as we look at it, we’re sitting here at about 4% and we’re still haven’t seen a lot of our technology project start. And again, we have a variable compensation model at FHN. We’re sitting at a quarter that was a kind of a low watermark for them and we are expecting increased revenue there, which comes with increased compensation. We also have additional marketing campaigns tied to our new checking account program that we just launched as well as acquiring new deposits.
Brody Preston: And is there anything left from the deferred compensation from the TD deal that still needs to work its way into the run rate? And if so, can you tell me what the dollar amount is there?
