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

Page 2 of 10

David Turner: Well, we certainly believe that it represents what we think is the loss content that exists today. Obviously, every quarter, we have to reassess the economy, the quality of the portfolio at those times. So, we think we have it covered. The only bill that you would see from this standpoint that we know of would be related to new loan growth. And we’re going to have some of that. We said we would grow loans about 4% end to end during the year. So, we’ll need to provide for that. But we think at 1.63% is a good coverage ratio for the risk that we have in the portfolio.

John Turner: Based on our current economic assumptions.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Ken Usdin with Jefferies.

Ken Usdin: I just want to follow up on the funding side of the balance sheet. Could you talk a little bit about — you guys have had that ability to just keep your loan-to-deposit ratio in a good spot. And I’m just wondering if you could kind of help us understand what you expect to do over time in terms of your wholesale debt footprint, including long-term debt? And what that would imply then for what you expect to do with the securities book over time as well? Thank you.

David Turner: Yes. So, we continue to have one of the lowest loan deposit ratios. I think, you were leading to that. We’re in great markets. We continue to work on growing accounts, whether it be checking accounts or operating accounts. That’s the hallmark of our whole franchise. This is the strength of that deposit base. So, we will continue to leverage that deposit base in terms of our funding mix. At least for the first half of the year, we don’t see the need to go into any wholesale borrowings. We have plenty of access to that, should we need it. Most of our peers, I think, have all tapped wholesale funding already. So, we’re being able to leverage that and that’s where we give you the pretty strong guide in terms of our NII growth for the year of 13% to 15%.

So, we’ll see what the deposit flows are. As we mentioned to John earlier, the deposit outflows we see that we put in our guide is $3 billion to $5 billion. Now remember, we said 5 to 10, this past year, we were at 7. So, we’ve been estimating it pretty well, and we’re taking to offer our guide all of that out of NIB. So, we’ll see what happens during the year. But you — don’t expect us to be looking for wholesale funding until at least the second half of the year.

Ken Usdin: Okay. And then, just a follow-up. You’re going to do that grace period, and we saw you reiterate the $550 million of service charges. Can you just kind of just give us give an update on the state of the consumer there and behavioral changes and any other learnings and findings that kind of continue to make — continue to make you confident in upholding that 550 zone of service charges.

John Turner: Yes. Well, can we continue to see consumers maintaining good deposit balance levels? Spending is up modestly, but we think being managed very carefully by our consumer — customer base. We feel good about the health of the consumer overall. With respect to overdrafts and the changes that we’ve made to benefit customers, we’ve seen about a 20% decline in the number of customers who are overdrawing their accounts on a month-to-month basis, which we are happy about. That’s — ultimately, the objective is to help customers better manage their finances. And so, I would say, all in all, we feel good about our guide and good about the impact of the changes that we’ve made have had on our consumer customer base.

Page 2 of 10