So the emphasis will be on the Truist client base and then also with partnerships that are Truist clients rather than sort of this national brands.So I’m pleased with what we did. I think we did all the right things. We created this really cool capability. But to the comment I made earlier, we are also supporting a separate brand, and that has a lot of expense associated with it. There’s a lot of marketing and other things with that. And we’re having incredible success with the Truist brand. So we want to bring it under that umbrella, create some more efficiencies from an expense standpoint and then I think accelerate from a revenue standpoint and penetrating and further cementing these incredible deposit relationships we have.Mike Mayo All right.
Thank you.Bill Rogers Thanks.Operator Our next question will come from Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please go ahead. And your line is now…Bill Rogers Ebrahim, are you on mute.Ankur Vyas Allay, maybe we just shift to the next person.Operator And our next question will come from Erika Najarian with UBS. Please go ahead.Erika Najarian Hi. Good morning.Bill Rogers Good morning.Erika Najarian You mentioned that you – good morning. You’re anticipating tighter capital and liquidity standards. And Bill, as you think about growing your capital from here, your starting point is 9.1. Do you feel like the build is now closer to 9.5 and 10 as you anticipate higher capital and liquidity standards. And if so, how should we think about your plans for dividend growth?
I suspect that buybacks would be lowest priority? And also, is there some RWA mitigation that you could do in order to perhaps speed up that 20 basis points of organic capital generation.Bill Rogers Yeah, Erika. Thanks. Remember, we’re actually at 9.4 today, as we’ve completed the interest and Truist Insurance Holdings. So if we start with there, I mean the mode we’re in right now, I mean, we’re comfortable where our capital level is. But we’re in a capital build mode right now until we’re not. So we want to really understand the landscape, understand the regulatory landscape, be prepared. We’ve got 20 basis points or so of sort of organic capital accretion that comes into play. That’s post our dividend. Our dividend will continue to be important to us, and we’ll continue to support our dividend.So I think we’ve got — we’re at a good place right now with capital.
We’ll continue to be in a little bit of the capital build mode. So we’ll sort of blow through that 9.5 number you mentioned here in several quarters. And then we’ll see. We’ll just sort of see where the regulatory things line up and the opportunities that we have. And I think we’ve got the most organic combined with financial and strategic flexibility on capital to respond to sort of anything that might come our way. You did mention though, our focus is going to continue to be on supporting organic growth.We’re going to maximize RWA, but we don’t need to reduce RWA. So that we don’t need to change RWA from a capital standpoint. But we do want to optimize it. We do want to create more velocity around RWA, which I talked about. Dividend being important and then M&A on particularly things like insurance and then capabilities to create sustainable advantages.
And then as you mentioned, share repurchase is just not in our short-term window. I mean that’s just not our focus right now.Erika Najarian Got it. And my second question is, sorry to make this another car (ph) analogy, a 24% ROTCE is more like an F1 car rather than a Corvette right. But the conversation on your AFS portfolio that was brewing over the quarter aside, it feels like some of what’s holding now in your valuation is the puts and takes the specials that keep coming up. And I wonder, Bill, where are you in terms of the optimization of this franchise because it’s pretty clear that the steps that you have been taking and it seems like based on Mike’s laundry list that you are accelerating has everything to do with the optimization of this franchise.And I wonder how you’re weighing sort of pulling forward that optimization.
And I mean, look, there’s always a continuous improvement process for every company, right? But is it better to just clean everything up this year and perhaps for the sake of positive operating leverage to think about cleaner ’24 and ’25 numbers when it comes to the expenses. Because I do think that it’s very clear what the potential of this franchise is, but there’s always adjustments here and there. And so I feel like your investors are less likely to see that visibility on that expense curve bend that you guys are aiming for?Bill Rogers Yeah. Let me try to break that up into two components, if I understood the question. So the question is around the strategic parts of our business and optimizing those, you are seeing a little bit of an acceleration around there.
That’s not sort of a dramatic shift, but you’re all seeing a speed up in that, and it’s things around the edges. And I talked a little bit about those today. There are some more of those that we’re thinking through. Because as you know, I mean, our core franchise is so powerful.And what we want to do is make sure that the resources that we have at this company are devoted towards growing, expanding that incredible franchise. So the things that we talked about, about capital markets and LightStream, I think, are really good examples of those. And you could argue they were probably a little accelerated maybe with a small A of accelerating.If you’re going to the balance sheet side, are we going to do anything on the securities portfolio, the answer to that is not at this time.
I mean there’s just not a really good economic benefit for that, and we want to be long-term protectors of shareholder value. And so I think we’ll stay the course there unless something were to change dramatically that would cause us to change our posture. Did that [indiscernible], Erika?Erika Najarian Yeah. I was just wondering if — just a follow-up, it seems as if you have optimized and accelerated some of the initiatives and I’m wondering, if you can tell your investors that your goal for ’24 is really sort of cleaner quarters on expenses so that they could really see that expense curve in terms of your GAAP EPS power?Bill Rogers Yeah. I think relative to the first part of that, yes, that would be the goal. And I think they’re getting cleaner every quarter, and they’re going to continue to stay on that flight path.
But when we have opportunities that we think are long-term beneficial, we’re not going to miss those. But I think your basic statement of we’ll be – will we have a cleaner quarter process in ‘24, yes. And I think they get cleaner every quarter along that path.Erika Najarian Perfect. Thank you.Operator Our next question will come from Gerard Cassidy with RBC. Please go ahead.Gerard Cassidy Good morning, Bill. Good morning, Mike.Bill Rogers Good morning.Gerard Cassidy Mike, and maybe this is more directed to Clarke on credit. You guys had very strong credit quality, obviously. But you perked my interest with something that you said in the prepared remarks that charge-offs, again, they’re low, went up by 3 basis points. But you cited C&I, which was interesting to me.
So the question is, and then you also pointed out that the allowance, of course, was built up for CRE, but you talked about you’re reducing your risk appetite in selected areas. So where are those areas, number one?And then in C&I, if you guys could elaborate what — maybe what happened there in comments also about your leverage loan portfolio that I assume is included in the C&I as well.Clarke Starnes Great. Hey, Gerard.Bill Rogers Hey, Clarke. Why don’t you start with [indiscernible] there.Clarke Starnes So as far as what areas are we focused on, first and foremost, what I’d say is that we want to maintain our through-the-cycle lending approach as we always have for our clients. So we’re not going to make dramatic shifts in our appetite or how we lend.
We just want to be more cautious and prudent where it makes sense.So things like less exceptions, more due diligence and some of the areas we’re focused on right now would be the ones you would expect, higher leverage. So leverage finance would be one, things like senior care given the market aspects of CRE, lower-end consumer, things like that, Gerard. So I think it’s more around being cautious, but being consistent there for our clients.And to your other question, our leverage book is performing very well right now. So I would just remind you all the portion that you would be focused on is about 3.6% of our total loans. Portfolio is 50% investment grade. We have very modest hold levels. Our leverage multiples have come down over the last couple of years in that book.
