Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Dave Rochester: Okay. I appreciate the color there. And then, back on the $3 billion to $5 billion deposit runoff outlook you talked about earlier. I was glad to hear you seem to be conservative with assuming all of that runoff was in noninterest-bearing deposits. Was curious regarding the big picture, what you’re seeing in the book that gets you to the $3 billion to $5 billion range? And how sensitive is that just a stronger move up in Fed funds, if we end up seeing that? And then how are you thinking about funding that runoff where that’s going to come from the securities book, which is lower rate or if you’re assuming some of that or most of that comes out of cash at this point in your NII outlook?

David Turner: Yes. We have plenty of cash right now to take care of that runoff. So, that’s not a big deal. That $3 billion to $5 billion, there’s some corporate changes in there that will be seeking rates. There’s some consumer changes that are seeking rates. Historically, movements like this happen late cycle. So, we’re getting there. We all think that we’re getting towards the end of the cycle. And so, people will look to capture that upside so they can lock in the best rate before rates start going the other way. So, how much conservatism we have in there? We’ll see. We had a pretty big run-up in deposits, $40 billion during the pandemic, and we’re holding on to quite a bit of that, more so than we originally thought. But I think it’d be prudent to — we think it’s prudent to put in this runoff of $3 billion to $5 billion and again, conservatively all in NIB.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Bill Carcache with Wolfe Research.

Bill Carcache: Could you speak to concerns that we could see the mix of time deposits and noninterest-bearing deposits return, potentially not just the pre-COVID levels, but back to pre-GFU levels in this environment? You’ve given a lot of great detail on the strength of your deposit franchise, but it would be great to hear your thoughts on sort of that risk, both broadly at the industry level and more specifically for reasons as we look ahead from here.

David Turner: Yes. You’re breaking up a little bit, but I think what your question was, is how do we think about time deposits versus noninterest-bearing deposits and where will we settle out over time? So, we’re sitting here today at 39% noninterest-bearing. There have been some movements out of that to — because we were over 40% into CDs. So, we do believe there’s going to be some remixing. That’s built into our beta assumption of 35% through the end of the year. We still think we’ll have more NIB than most everybody because that’s the nature of our deposit book. Very granular deposits, in particular on the consumer side where we have leading primacy that makes a difference. So, money goes in, money goes out. They’re not seeking rate, they use it as there — that’s their operating account.

And so, we believe that we will continue to see some decline in the NIB. Again, we conservatively put $4 billion out of that. We think there’s probably a chance that there’ll be — it won’t all come out of NIB, but we thought that was the best thing to do from a guidance standpoint.

Bill Carcache: That’s very helpful. Thank you. And then separately, I wanted to follow up on your comments around the NIM protection that you put in place, how would you respond to the view that the downside protection that banks are putting on in this environment doesn’t make a lot of sense because of the negative carry associated with it since the forward curve, discounts, everything that we see in the current environment, you’re effectively just investing at whatever the yield curve is — whatever the yield curve is at the moment.

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