Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Glenn MacInnes: Yes Mark, you expect it to wrap up in the fourth quarter. But you’ve seen it trending down. So yes.

Operator: Your next question comes from Manan Gosalia with Morgan Stanley.

Manan Gosalia: I get this question a lot, and I wanted to see how you answer it. What do you make of the argument that if rates stay higher for even longer, the difference in peak deposit betas between banks should narrow and banks that have lower betas like yourselves, we’ll see a larger increase in deposit rates than some of your peers that already have higher betas?

Glenn MacInnes: I think it will depend on by bank. It depends on the composition. And for us, as you know, we have HSA, which basically has a through-the-cycle beta of 2% and so that’s a differentiator for us. If you look at our other lines of businesses between the commercial and the consumer business, those both have different betas as well. So I think a lot of that our commercial betas, I think 34%, our consumer betas 22%. So I think a lot of that will be driven by the mixed shift and the funding profile from each of the institution.

John Ciulla: Yes. Manan, my view would be similar. It’s kind of an interesting question you asked because you could think about that as kind of everybody kind of a reversion to the mean. But I do think, as Glenn said, it really ultimately is about your deposit mix and your ability. You saw us drive growth in higher cost deposits in the quarter for a number of strategic reasons, we have expected growth in the second half of the year in our core commercial franchise in our consumer book in our business banking book in our government operating deposit book. So those will be things that should help us mitigate some of the impact of overall higher deposit costs around. So I think you can’t make the assumption that everybody ends up in the same place if we’re in this situation for a long period of time.

Manan Gosalia: Very helpful. And did you say 2% through-the-cycle deposit beta on HSA deposits?

Glenn MacInnes: Yes, I did. And so if you looked at our — I think for the quarter, we said cycle-to-date beta was 34% of our deposits. But if you peel that back, HSA cycle-to-date has been 2%. Consumer has been 22%, commercial to 34% and the difference being the higher beta products that we had into the second quarter interLINK, broker CDs. So that’s how you ladder up to that number. But there’s differences within the portfolios, and there’s differences in the product sets.

Manan Gosalia: And is there any environment in which competitive factors push up the beta on those HSA deposits?

Glenn MacInnes: It’s interesting because the customers that are really searching for yield in that product become investors, and they move their balances into investment options. So when you think about that, when you think about our 3 million HSA account, 75% of those are spenders. So they have relatively small balances like $450 in the account. So it’s not as meaningful for them. And the savers have a larger balance like $6,000 or $7,000. And as soon as they get a little more scale then they become investors. And so investors have a lower demand — lower DDA savings balance and a higher investment balance. But those that are in that savings category and decide to move to investors. Still, generally, if you look at their balance, it’s at to $5,000 are multiples of what the spenders are. And like I said, 75% of our customers are spenders to that.

Operator: Your next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos with JPMorgan.

Steven Alexopoulos: I wanted to start. So first, a follow-up on the comments around the positive trajectory for NII for the rest of this year. What are you guys assuming in terms of additional noninterest-bearing outflows in that assumption?

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