Associated Banc-Corp (NYSE:ASB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 10

We had an extraordinary one customer take $300 million. That was a higher-yielding customer. But when you put those two things together, those we believe are extraordinary events that frankly, we aren’t in a position to incur, and that’s why we’ve seen that stability happen in May and June. We see it halfway through the month of July as well. And so, when you pair customer satisfaction, when you pair that with customer growth, you do expect to get operating accounts with that. We are getting better and better deepening – relationships on the commercial side. That will be important for us for the rest of this year, next year and the following year. If we want to add to those categories, which we may, we know how to deepen relationships now, and that will give us confidence on the go forward.

So, the answer is no, it won’t be all CDs. We are subject to the mix shift that’s occurring in the marketplace, but we can see very clearly that, that mix shift has slowed in the last two months. And so, we expect that to temper a bit each of the subsequent months as the year goes along.

Jared Shaw: Okay. Okay. So then when we look at DDA as a percentage of the total here at 20.5%. Is this a floor or do you think we could still see that go lower from here?

Andrew Harmening: I couldn’t call that a floor, but I absolutely do not believe, you’ll see the pace that you saw in the previous two quarters.

Jared Shaw: Okay. And then as we look out a little further into ’24 and when some of these brokered deposits come due, do you feel that the momentum that you just described earlier will be enough to be able to replace those with homegrown deposits? Or we should be thinking that brokered CD levels stay at these levels for more of an indefinite period of time?

Derek Meyer: Yes. I think it’s going to depend both on how much we want to grow the balance sheet, and what the business mix is of the assets that we’re putting on, because we think we still have continued opportunity to optimize our yields that way. I would not expect that as a percent of our balance sheet to grow disproportionately. So, we do expect that the consumer side of the business will provide significant funding. And so, the mix would be the same or decrease from where it is now.

Jared Shaw: Okay. And then just finally for me, in the past, you’ve talked about the optionality of the auto program being able to sort of ramp that up and ramp it down, you had growth this quarter. Would that be a lever you would use to offset either better than expected deposit flows or weaker than expected deposit flows? Or is that sort of the place you should be looking at making up slack or giving some opportunity?

Andrew Harmening: We’re not going to double down on auto and increase that rate to the point, that it becomes too heavily concentrated. However, the idea all along is that we could decrease our reliance on third-party originated mortgages, which are – have a less significant yield and are a non-relationship play. We’re seeing very good yields on the auto book as we’re going along right now. They’re also not one that’s likely to refinance if you see rates go down in 12 months. So that puts us in a pretty decent position as well. What you will see from us, so I see those two as a bit of a trade-off, the third-party originated mortgages and auto. Over time then, we’ve got to – we will dissect the balance sheet and look at expanding businesses, that we’ve had some success in. We will look at that right now, and come up with a plan heading into year-end on that.

Jared Shaw: Great, thank you.

Andrew Harmening: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Scott Siefers with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Page 3 of 10