KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 7 of 10

Clark Khayat: There will be, as Chris said, as you kind of shrink the balance sheet, you do have to shrink the expense space, and our largest cost is personnel. So there will of course be some personnel related to that. But we are starting to understand the trajectory of in-office now. And I think we’re going to be even more aggressive than we have been about real estate positioning. And again getting those third party contracts, so I would view it as meaningful pieces of all three of those, but certainly people will be part of it.

Chris Gorman: John, it’s Chris. We will continue to work across the board of all of these things. We’re down from an FTE perspective in the last year, about 900 people, teammates. And so as we continue to focus on simplifying our business, streamlining our business being a smaller, simpler, more profitable company, a lot more to say on that as we wrap up the fourth quarter.

John Pancari: Got it. All right. Thanks, Chris. I’d just ask one last one on the commercial portfolio, Shared National Credit, sorry if I missed this, but have you sized up the size of that Shared National Credit book, and then what portion of that is your lead agent?

Chris Gorman: So we’ve never given numbers around the SNC book. Everyone obviously just got their SNC results. And I can tell you in all my time in this business, our results were the absolute best we’ve ever had. But we’ve never disclosed the numbers in terms of dollars or amounts.

John Pancari: Okay. You plan to?

Chris Gorman: No, we really — it’s just something that we haven’t disclosed on in the past. But as I said, we just got our results back, John, and just very, very pleased with them.

John Pancari: Got it. Okay. Thanks so much, Chris.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Manan Gosalia from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Manan Gosalia: Hi. Good morning.

Chris Gorman: Good morning, Manan.

Manan Gosalia: On the RWA reduction, it sounds like you’re saying 10 billion down is the right level and you don’t see the need to do any more next year. But does that mean you can grow next year and can you lean into loan growth a little bit in certain areas? And if so, does a level of rates in the [indiscernible] matter, right? So if the [indiscernible] moves higher from here, does that mean you have to do a little bit more on the RWA side or does that not really matter?

Chris Gorman: So it’s a great question. When I was answering Erika’s question — it’s Chris. When I was answering Erika’s question, we’re not going to be leaning into RWA reduction in the manner that we have this year. But make no mistake, we will continue to go through every portfolio we have and rationalize our RWAs because that’s the raw material for us to also be expanding our client base. So we’re not done on the RWA side. The point I was trying to make is, at this point in the cycle, we’re going to be doing both.

Manan Gosalia: Got it. Okay. And then as we think about cash and liquidity levels, I think you noted there might still be some more room to bring down cash a little bit. A lot of your peers seem to be building cash quite meaningfully this quarter. So how are you thinking about the right levels of liquidity? Is it just a function of you might be replacing the maturing treasuries with cash or with other low duration treasuries? And what’s the right level you think you need to hold right now?

Chris Gorman: Yes, good question. So historically, Manan, we would have been kind of 2 billion on any given day. I think we went as high as 11 or 12 this year in the kind of 6, 7, 8 range in the quarter. I think we would migrate that down to 4 to 5 over time. But your view on as treasuries mature, holding those in cash or a shorter duration, treasury portfolio is the right way to think about it.

Page 7 of 10