Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc. ($PNFP)

All right. Let's get started. So we are delighted to have with us today, Kevin Blair, President and CEO of Pinnacle; and Rob McCabe, Founder, Vice Chairman and Chief Banking Officer. So Kevin and Rob, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having us.

So let's start with strategy. It's been almost a year since you announced the merger. What surprised you most about this journey that you weren't expecting?

I'll start. Rob, you bring it up. I talked about it a lot, culture eat strategy for breakfast every day and twice on Sunday. And the hard part about bringing 2 companies together is not about aligning your strategic intent. It's aligning the cultures of the company. And maybe that is a surprise just because it shows you how deeply embedded these cultures are. Now I think our results to date have shown how we've spent a disproportionate amount of our time working on culture, where we brought 2 firms together with both strong heritages and legacy, and we've been able to maintain the momentum. That's there. Number two, I think the Pinnacle model. The Pinnacle model is something that People want to work in and they're attracted to. So it's no secret what Rob and Terry built was a platform that takes bureaucracy out of the process, which is what attracts bankers to the platform. So you can imagine when we're talking to our legacy Synovus team members and saying, you're now going to be working under this Pinnacle model many would think that there would be a challenge in getting people to move there. Quite frankly, they've enjoyed the movement. It does remove bureaucracy. It provides empowerment back to the front line, so they can better serve their clients. The one negative is maybe how the market continues to perceive the deal. And I think it's predicated on other OEs and trying to consistently deliver something that everyone is looking for the next misstep. And each time, I think we've been able to deliver on our promises, and I recognize we still have a conversion in front of us, and that's what keeps me up at night because we've got to convert half our client base on the new platforms and originate new processes inside the 4 walls of our firm. But I think we're making great progress, and it's just going to take a little time and continued execution to prove out the story.

And as you think about integration to date, there are a lot of steps to this. What are the 1 or 2 steps that you think you've really gotten right and where is there more room to do work?

Well, look, I think where we got it right is we took a little extra time. Most integrations aren't taking months to the very beginning and said, let's look at what both firms do, both technologically as well as from a process orientation and let's select what is the best outcome from both firms. A lot of firms that are doing these things just slam in 1 process, 1 technology, and they can do it in 4 to 5 months because they're not evaluating the best of both. Number two, when we looked at our platforms, even though we chose the provider we recognize where there was a functionality or capability that the other provider had previously with the other side of the client docket, and we're building those capabilities into the future state. So if we're using our consumer digital portal, and legacy Pinnacle had a functionality that we didn't want the client to lose. We went to our provider and said, here are 1 or 2 or 3 functionalities you've got to build in. So we like that. The third is change management. It takes a tremendous amount of work to get your team members ready and your clients ready. And we've talked to Greenwich and J.D. Power about the best practices on mergers. And what they would say there's no secret, it's over communication. And so we spent a lot of time and energy with our team. We still have 9 months in front of us to be able to get all the change management in place. If you train your team members too early, then they're going to forget it, by the time we get to conversion. If you do it too late, you're going to be up against the wall in terms of getting it done. So I think it's just all the steps that we've taken, the planning process, the change management that we're executing on. and the fact that we are going to be in a great position by March, and people are going to not be surprised by what's coming.

I think what I was most pleased with was the like mindedness since day 1, back in July. So we were able to spend really from August through December planning for legal day 1, which was January 1. And the good surprise for me was we really had no retention issues with employees on both sides. We had little frictional issues in overlapping markets, primarily in Atlanta, maybe secondarily in Birmingham, but they were minor didn't involve any essential talent. And then if your bankers are happy and feel engaged to feel positive about the transaction, then your clients will feel the same. So those 2 things were the most important to me on the people side and the client side. Then the receptivity of the Synovus partners for the Pinnacle Geographic model. Synovus ran a combination of geography and lines of business. So we had to convert the lines of business more to a geographic ownership by market leaders. So picking qualified market leaders, both in our major urban hubs that control a lot of specialty businesses and then rural markets where that person has to be the king and the most influential person in the market. we're able to really retain and win the hearts and minds, I think, of both of those teams.

Now it's come up that culture eats strategy for lunch. And we've heard from a lot of bank CEOs over time, that culture is 1 of the most important drivers of what makes a good deal. So how would each of you describe what your vision for the combined cultures?

Well, one of our goals is 95% retention. So most of our programs, I think we have 28 or 30 different programs that bolster our work environment. And we generally have run historically 70% to 75% top scores on a no-names basis from clients -- 4,000 employees at Pinnacle. We need to maintain that because if the employees are loyal, they're happy in their job. If it's not worked to them, they don't turn over, they don't turn over, we have continuity with our clients, and they reward us over time with more of their business. So most of the cultural tools that we have are primarily to drive retention and enthusiasm. And the Synovus side of the business is thirsty there. They already had good programs, but I think ours in combination have been very well received.

And Rob said it well, but the tagline that I've used is scale with the soul. So you can't bring 2 companies together and not get some advantage out of scale. We're going to leverage our size to build a bigger balance sheet greater capabilities, leverage for more innovation. But we're not going to change who we are. We're not going to change the empowerment that exists throughout our footprint to serve our clients with a level of trust that has created the top Net Promoter Score in the United States. And so scale with the soul means that you're going to get the benefits of size without changing who we are. And to Rob's point, who we are is a very family-oriented company that has low turnover, high engagement. And how do you do that? You empower your team members, you remove bureaucracy. We're built around 7 values. And those 7 values we talk about every Monday when I onboard all of our new team members at 2:00 Eastern time, every new team member that joins Pinnacle comes to Nashville and is onboarded in our -- welcome aboard process. And I think that's so important to set the tone from day 1 on who we are, what our culture is, what's our purpose, what's our mission, what's our vision? And so we don't have to talk about culture because you're going to feel it. But if it starts to change and you lose your soul, we're going to lose our competitive advantage.

In our company, it really starts with the market leader. -- that person, he or she has a tremendous amount of authority and they have to have the knowledge, skills and attributes to be effective at it. And so far, I think we picked the right team, as I mentioned earlier, and the associates team members below them of response. We've worked well with the line of business disassembly and putting it into the geography. And our incentive plans really reward team and team performance. So there's been no real resistance to that because people like psychological credit, but nobody benefits from disproportionate financial benefit. So that's been a leveling factor here in this integration.

All right. So on time line, it seems like March 2027 is still the target for full operational and brand conversion. What are the milestones between now and then that you're tracking most closely.

Yes. It's what I said earlier, we have really until now in September to put fingers on keyboards and to make sure that all of the technological changes are made, whether that's translation tables, whether that's training curriculum the work is between now and end of September. And then beginning in October, we'll start testing. And so if we're testing in the fourth quarter, that gives us a great deal of flexibility if we find things that aren't going according to plan. So before we get to March of next year, we're able to make some modifications to the things we're doing. So a lot of work between now and the end of September just to get fingers off keyboards and then a lot of testing for the next 90 days, and then we'll have the last 90 days for the conversion activities as well as change management activities.

On the banking side, we're more completing the implementation of the model. So we have a great belief that we picked the best system options for the company combination and that they'll be implemented properly. What we're trying to do is be prepared to receive them. We want to make sure our contact people know they have a job, that they'll be well informed and well trained on the systems, and they'll be able to handle their client day 1. Those are the things that are on their mind. Just in terms of what's going on with the model, we have several delicate things that could -- that have cultural impact and people impact. One, the branches in Alabama and Georgia have been managed centrally. The management of the branches will be dispersed to the geography. So that's a delicate issue in those 2 states. We will distribute treasury advisers that do all the consultation to the geographies in advance, too, even though we're working on 2 systems. We want the deposit gatherer, the treasury people closer to the line of scrimmage. And then we have a significant number, I guess, 8 or 9 deposit specialties that we will develop subject matter experts and market champions especially in Georgia and Alabama that will help us get ahead on the deposit gathering side prior to conversion. So those are the things I'm working on to sort of put the bow on the operating model.

Now a lot of the regional banks, you can call them regional if you want, at our conference, have discussed going more national over the last few years. And it seems like Pinnacle is more focused on winning deep in your flex markets. Why is that the right strategy for Pinnacle?

Well, we operate, I guess, in United States and District of Colombia. We have to mine the business of the geography first. We want density in our geographies, whether it's urban or rural. That's where all our fixed costs are, that's where our leveraging opportunities are. So all of our geographic bankers and our 18 lending specialties and or deposit specialists, that's their first obligation to mine the business of the geography. On the other hand of this national comment, we do a lot of business outside of these 9 states. We have equipment based in Dallas. We have aircraft in Austin aircraft people in Boston. We have franchise lenders in Phoenix, Arizona. We have our credit officer for our specialty businesses in Minnesota. We have our asset managers for the asset-intensive lending specialties in Chicago. So we will probably -- in our equipment business, 25% of our equipment business is outside of the geography. And as a contrast in our franchise businesses, probably 75% is outside of the geography. So priority 1 create density and share in the markets, but to get the growth that we need and take full advantage of the capabilities we have with national stature. We operate in probably other states.

And to Rob's point, you can listen to our words or you can listen to the feedback from the clients. As I mentioned earlier, legacy Pinnacle ranked #1 in the country out of 4,500 banks and satisfaction in Net Promoter where legacy Synovus ranked 6 in the country. So I think it's so important to listen to what the clients are saying. They value trusted relationships. And you have to be local. You have to be in that market with your resources so that you're not doing a fly in once a year and trying to build a relationship. You build a relationship every day. And that's with proactive effective advice so that our bankers aren't in the fulfillment business. They're out there working with our clients, seeing them in the community and helping them with their financial objectives versus flying in once a year even with the expertise. As Rob mentioned, we have those capabilities. So we'll fly in the specialist, but that's not in replacement of having your local banker. You've got to build that local expertise. You got to, as Rob said earlier, have a presence that builds a trusted relationship, and then you can introduce some of these national specialties, like Rob said.

You could expect specialists for most of our specialties in Atlanta and Nashville and Charlotte, for sure and probably down the road in Jacksonville. Wherever we have a sufficient share of market or size of a bank, we will add a specialist. And they are at the guests of the geography and provide that expertise beyond what an end turners can give them. They're more like a pulmonologist, neurologist, or cardiologists, whatever it is. They will help improve our advisory positioning with the client, help us compete against larger, more sophisticated companies that report expertise and help the banker and book that business with the local banker.

All right. Let's dig into some of the merger specific, 47% efficiency ratio target appreciate that your business mix is part of that. But what are the other puts and takes to getting there?

Well, I mean, you nailed it. I mean the biggest thing is business mix. Jamie talked about this today. By the end of this year, we'll have a tangible efficiency ratio in the 40s. So you won't have to listen to rhetoric, you'll get to see it in our financials. And that's a function of a top line revenue number that's moving very quickly. We are a growth-oriented bank, and we're able to grow with positive operating leverage because we're able to get some cost synergies from the merger itself. So we're largely a commercial bank. Commercial banking segments generally have efficiency ratios in the 30% range. We're not as large on the retail side. we're getting larger on the wealth side. That's a higher efficiency business, great return on capital. But when you look at our business mix, that's the large driver. And bringing the companies together, we talk about cost synergies. We'll get cost synergies, but I remind everyone that what we talked about when we announced this deal was a no-regrets cost synergy equation, which is largely a very small percentage of cost synergies driving the economics of this deal. We said that we would only reduce our staffing by roughly 4% to 5% across the combined company. We've seen other MOEs, other mergers that have had far greater. It's hard to build a bank built around culture and growth if you're building the value proposition from cost synergies. So it's business mix and we'll get the necessary cost synergies that we have to have.

It's always good to have a low efficiency ratio because it's great to talk about. But again, it depends on the business mix. So we ought to operate with a very favorable mix efficiency ratio as we grow. But if you're a banker in our company, about 95% of our employees, including all of our bankers -- they're paid on revenue growth. Their incentive is based on revenue growth and EPS growth. So those are the 2 things. Once they meet a credit quality threshold of criticized and classified assets, they're focused on those 2 things. we're not talking to them about efficiency ratio, which is a derivative number but also, again, a function of what businesses you're in, but that's the mindset of the company to grow revenue and EPS.

So growth and culture brings us to hiring and attracting talent. So how would you characterize the competitive landscape today and hiring bankers?

Well, I'd say it's intense. -- 1 of the things we worried about the most when this deal was announced as every bank that we compete against, thought we were a happy hunting ground to hire our people, okay? And they were unsuccessful. We -- because we have great share, great work environment, great net promoter scores. People like their job and like their company. But there was always this feeling of what's going to happen. And nothing's really happened. So the first thing was to keep who you have, correct? I think we've done that very effectively, except -- so I mentioned earlier, some frictional losses in a couple of markets. Now if you're going to grow faster than the market, you're going to have to add capacity. So we have a very robust hiring plan. Pinnacle had one. I think we hired 120, 125 people last year. Our aspiration this year is to produce -- is to hire an additional 250 revenue producers across all business lines, core banking, specialty and wealth sides of the business. We're well on track to do that here through the 5.5 months. So -- but we -- it's a purposeful and systematic effort for us. It's not just an HR-driven process. Our market leaders have the responsibility for hiring. And we collaborate with our bankers in the market to determine who would be the best fit for us, who has a lot of experience, a large book of business has sticky business that can migrate with that versus staying with the bank. And we have these list by market, and they're required to cultivate these individuals at least once a quarter, right? So they call on these people once a quarter. And over time, you'd be surprised at the yield, even people that are very satisfied and whose name is even ingrained with another brand over a period of time, there will be some risk point there for that bank where we'll have a conversation and generally prevail. But it has to be, as I say, purposeful and systematic. It can't be episodic or just I want to go call on this person and harm, we know who we want to hire.

And as we think about the competitive landscape for talent, is there any difference in national bigger players coming into your markets versus some of the more local players?

Well, we've got 80 banks in Nashville. I know that. So we've got something for everybody. But we've never really had a problem with compensation for people -- it's more about brand, the power of that brand, work environment, who they're going to work for, reputation in the market and where they're comfortable. So sure, JPMorgan announced they're going to put their name on a building here in town. So we're watching them. But we don't -- what has happened is the cost of good talent is just dramatically gone up in the last several years. Base pay, incentive target percentages and special bonuses have really gone up. But we don't new entrants to the market don't bother us. It's really the same problem with a different code.

And if I could add on to that, Rob, you nailed it. the people that have joined this institution have joined because they see a world of lower bureaucracy. They see a world where they're empowered. They see a world where they have peers that have they worked with in the past who are saying this is a work environment that they wish they would have joined 10 years prior, as Rob has mentioned. So when a large bank comes in and tries to recruit our talent -- the last thing they want to do is go back to one of these bulge bracket firms or large firms that rec a bureaucracy and lack of empowerment and LOB-driven silos that require them to have hand-to-hand combat with their partners on who gets credit on a deal, right? That's what they've left.

And bankers talk among themselves. They have a good idea and a pipeline of their own about what's a good place to work. and who you're going to be working for? What's life-like. There's a certain amount of comfort in our great work environment. There's a certain amount of comfort in our market leaders who are strong. And to go to another bank that has some of the characteristics that Kevin mentioned is a personal risk in terms of moving their book or what's life really going to be like. So our overall formula of work environment geographic decision-making, very flat organization, specialists that help you book business and competitive pay is a pretty good formula.

All right. Let's talk about loan growth. So when you look across your footprint and the specialty lending that you do as well, where are you seeing the most activity? Is there a specific geography or industry where you're seeing any inflection? How much is AI CapEx related?

Well, our best markets for loan growth have been Tennessee. They probably north and Central Florida and Georgia Atlanta. I think Charlotte is not far behind, but I would expect that those trends will continue. I think in terms of our specialties, to give you an idea, if we do $10 billion of loan growth this year, $1 billion of it will come from equipment. You went from our equipment specialist, 75% of that will be from the geography, 25% outside. So we have all these weapons that I've referenced that will produce probably 40% to 55% of the loan growth in or out of the geography. These specialties will do that. But our best markets, we have big share in Tennessee, makes a big difference. I'd say Jacksonville will come on. As we said, Atlanta will do well. We need Charlotte to be a little stronger. That would be our aspiration.

And Rob, I'd add, this is not coming from line utilization. It's not coming from rising tides lift all boats. This is coming from the hiring that's occurred over the last several years the new talent that we have in all the markets, Rob has referenced. It comes from the new talent we have in these specialty areas. And it's so broad-based that we're not having to be overly reliant on any particular area. And again, that's the great thing about this model. We're not just trying to garner our share of the market that's growing, we're taking more than our fair share because we're adding resources that are consolidating their books business to Pinnacle.

Yes. We're in renewable energy, small ticket leasing, large equipment. We've introduced dealer finance, primarily floor plans to the Synovus geographies, which is really growing. In music, sports and entertainment, we're the #1 catalog lender in the world at least we've been told, so we'll take credit for it. And so we do a lot of financing in that business. It's probably more of a credit-driven business than I had originally understood. But we're in quick service restaurants, other franchise types of activities like Planet Fitness. And we're -- we do a lot of solar within renewable. So we have lots of different capabilities that create loan growth that probably wouldn't have surfaced or we wouldn't have been in an advisory expert position to pull out of the geographies. And that's just helped magnify our loan growth Again, for example, equipment alone has done $2 billion in 3 years that our existing geographies felt they've done all the equipment loans that they could do. But by bringing in an expert, they've uncovered another $2 billion worth of loan growth. And loan growth is 1 of our strengths.

A trivial exposure to AI infrastructure. We have a couple of data centers, but it's not what's driving the growth. So when you talk to clients, and having investors in the room are trying to figure out what's driving so much of the C&I loan growth that we're seeing across the industry.

So when you talk to clients, if it's not coming from AI infrastructure build-out, what's really driving the demand at its corporate?

In our marketplace, it's the demographics. I mean we continue to have population inflow in these markets that Rob just referenced. And so it's driving economic growth. It's the hiring that we've talked about before. We talk about our survey that we do every quarter. And what's interesting is, like most news, you focus on the negativity. But when you look at the surveys that our clients provide back, 80% of our clients say that their business is going to produce the same amount or a higher amount of business in the next 12 months. That's 80%. So that means only 20% expects their business to decline. So the marketplace is very constructive. The problem that they're seeing today when you talk to clients, and it's what we all see is inflation is driving up input cost. And what they're telling us is that the concern is that the end user, the consumer or the business is no longer going to accept a price increase. So what we should expect is you could continue to see loan demand and growth, but it's going to come at compressed margins because they can't pass on the full input price increase on to their end user. That doesn't slow growth that much. It just changes margins. And so we feel like we're in a constructive economic environment. Obviously, there's a lot of geopolitical risk. There's a lot of inflation risk that exists today. But being in the markets that Rob oversees, there's still a constructive overall sentiment on growth.

And I guess both of the banks in our peer group, 35% of their loan portfolio being commercial real estate. What does it right -- that's right probably 4,400 out of the top 4,500 have about an average of 35% rough numbers. I do I can't totally recite that. But our growth has not been coming for CRE in the last year or so. It's an important part of our portfolio. Market conditions and exits and a lot of completed projects have held up additional lending. But I would expect that to increase, but our business has been driven by a very diversified portfolio of C&I capabilities with industry expertise and geographic connectivity.

I definitely want to dig in on the margin side. So is that coming more from loan spreads being tighter or deposit cost being more competitive.

Yes, when I'm talking about margin, I'm talking about the business's operating margin, but let's talk about our margin. Our margin is right around 350. Jamie talked about it, that's really stable versus the first quarter, what we're expecting to see in the second quarter because we had day count, and we had a bond transaction that gave us an extra basis point. So we're stable. We're seeing deposit cost on new production, largely stable with first quarter. We said that number in the first quarter was 262. Loan yields are holding up. The reason that you're seeing any sort of margin compression here at Pinnacle is not to do with the everyday business, it's having to do with the fact that we're having to issue debt. We're increasing our securities and cash as a percentage of total assets. And that's what's condensing the margin a little bit. But we feel like the environment today, the new loans and deposits that we're able to generate are still in a very favorable position as it relates to margin.

I think our are really right on plan.

Yes. All right. Thank you for clarifying that. And then on deposits, are you seeing any change in competitive pressure right now? I mean I don't -- I can't remember in my 30-plus years, Rob, you tell me where it's ever not been competitive. So it's always competitive. I try to look at the actual data to answer that question. And what we look at is the pricing service that we subscribe to the median prices of promo rates have not changed, whether that's a promo money market or a promo CD, the median rates are about the same. Are there banks that have increase their rate by 25 basis points, Sure. There are banks that increased about 10. There are other banks that have reduced it. So the competitive landscape has not changed. I believe what many are saying with loans growing faster, they're feeling a level of competition. And I think most going into this year, expected rate cuts. So we expect the deposit cost to come down. And as we've all seen, that hasn't occurred. So I don't know that it's a hypercompetitive pricing market for deposits. I think it has to do with the overall rate environment, the fact that loans are growing faster -- but when you look at the median rates, they're not changing that much. But we all know that if every bank out there this year, when I go read their expectations, they want to be growth banks, right? They recognize that. And it's easier in their mind to go out and grow loans than it is deposits. So it just puts that narrative on deposit growth is so important. And I think if you saw our deck that we put out 2 nights ago, you would see that year-to-date, we've -- if you just take the midpoint of our deposit guidance, we would be up almost 6%. That's nothing to sneeze at. This quarter is a seasonal decline because of public funds, municipal deposits, tax season. So we provided a seasonal chart that shows that what's occurring in the second quarter is not anything out of the ordinary. It does mean that the back half of the year we'll have to see substantial growth to get to that high single-digit deposit growth that we've talked about in our expectations.

And the single most frequent conversation that I would have in a market is about a deposit competition for deposit, what's an appropriate rate, what's our relationship advantage? What's our relationship disadvantage. And the legacy Pinnacle was really a bank started from scratch, so it never had a large consumer, small business funding base. So we were used to that being job one, growing deposits. Job 2, we could get the loans. The question is we wanted to we need to fund our loan growth with 80% of core deposits. So that's all we worked about. That's at the top of conversation list, along with lending growth in our sales and service meetings but it is the single most frequently discussed topic about how to respond for a deposit.

And on the subject of the slides that went out overnight and second quarter trends. Anything else that you want to comment on the second quarter, help investors unpack the changes in the....?

Yes, I mean, look, the big headline for me is core momentum continues, right? Loan growth is coming in higher than expected. -- hiring is coming in faster than expected. The deposit growth update was largely as expected given seasonality. If you could pick on anything that we talked about, it was that our revenue guidance for the year would come in slightly below median. And that was largely due to a strategic decision that we made in partnership with to change some of their production model into being more forward flow and securitization versus going into the Community Bank model. Short run, that reduces fees, long run, it makes the, I think, the franchise way more valuable. And so it's something we are willing to do. So we were able to bring our fences down slightly below minimum as well below median, excuse me. So I would tell you, I think the outlook is still very strong. And I think where people have questioned us is our ability to continue this momentum and not to have turnover. We've said publicly that our target this year is and we're on top of that. So we're not seeing elevated turnover. And when you look at that expectation or our projections for the year and you do the math, it shows that we're going to have a 20% plus EPS growth in 2026. That's a pretty strong year to have when you're going through an MOE. And again, I go through all the questions that everyone's had around our ability to maintain and actually accelerate and embellish this pinnacle model, it's working. And I want to publicly thank Rob McCabe, because he has been the architect of bringing the Synovus team members under the Pinnacle model. He's done a sensational job of getting us to a place where we're acting as 1 company, and he's the person that's ensuring every Monday when we have a sales and service call that everyone is laser-focused on delivering on these expectations that we talk about, which I think we're doing.

I'd have to ask about AI topic of the day -- so since AI is moving so fast, what are your priorities on the AI topic? And what are your thoughts on the conversation of AI maybe driving competitive speed and deposit sorting?

Look, we're a big believer in AI and how it can affect our operating model and how it can make us better. We our 3 focus areas are banker enablement. -- conversion support and overall efficiency. So we have 16 internal AI engineers that are employed today at Pinnacle who are working on those 3 elements. We have many use cases that we've already deployed, things like AML, BSA, things like appraisal review and it's going to make us more efficient. We have 1,800 individuals today who have license that are using AI tools to make them more efficient. And so that's important to us. As we look forward, I think we'll be a more scalable, efficient organization, and we're going to have better tools to offer our clients. In the short run, I think the greatest concern is a Agenetic AI and how it's going to put every consumer out there with an agent that's going to move their money every night. Maybe that's going to happen. I've heard some of our peers today talk about the fact that the median balance per account is so low that it's not worth their while to go out and move the deposits just know for Pinnacle, we already pay an above market rate on our deposits. You guys go look, if you compare it to our peers. This is 1 time I can brag about having a higher cost of deposits. because we're paying a fair market rate. Two, we skew more towards commercial. And I would tell you today that commercial clients are already sophisticated. They don't need AI to sweep those excess deposits every night out of their operating accounts into a repo product or a money market product. They're already doing it. So if people are concerned that this is going to disintermediate Pinnacle, it's actually going to make us stronger because I can tell you that clients value relationships, not just the price on the deposit. And if you're in the transaction business, I'd be worried. But if you're in the relationship business, this is going to give us competitive advantage. right?

So to wrap up, as you look out over the next 12 to 24 months, are you personally most focused on delivering? And what's the key message to investors in the room? Do you take about that, Rob?

Well, we've got this conversion coming up next spring. I think we'll be well prepared for that. We've talked about that. I don't want that to be a distraction from any of my bankers again, we want them to accept the systems we've got, use them with confidence, not labor over where they don't have their favorite toy. And then we want to protect our bankers preparing them to have the information they need to handle the client feel good about our job and the client be satisfied with that result. That is a very simple equation, but it's complex in people's minds. What I've got to do is continue to perfect this geographic model. I mentioned that we need to distribute branch management in Georgia and Alabama. That will be a big deal. We need to distribute treasury advisers, as I mentioned. That is a different deal than Synovus is accustomed to, but it will help us with deposit gathering. And then we've got to get these deposit specialties available in the new geographies to generate these incremental deposits in the specialty programs. Then we've got to continue our hiring momentum so that we can grow faster than the market. We've got to retain our people. and we've got to maintain good credit quality, which I think we're in good shape. We have a lot of granularity in our loan portfolio. So when we first started January 1, we had most of the elements of the model in place and our tagline was we needed business-as-usual momentum. There's some evidence that we had business as usual momentum first quarter looking at the volumes and lack of turnover in the hiring. So we want to continue that. We want to build an impression that we've had a seamless transition and the computer conversion is just a little yellow line that we're crossing and we'll pull back over.

Right. And I'll just -- I'll maybe put a bow on it. I want us to be the top Net Promoter Score in the country in both J.D. Power and Greenwich. And I think we have the opportunity to do that. And that goes against the grain because they would tell you that when you go through a merger, it's hard to maintain your Net Promoter Scores. I want to be -- I want to get the 11th consecutive year being -- great Place to Work and Fortune magazine. And as we've talked about in the merger math, and Jamie knows this, we're going to deliver on that merger math because nobody said we could do it, which makes us the fastest-growing regional bank the highest client satisfaction regional bank and the most profitable and efficient regional bank. When we pull all that off, then I think the doubting Thomases won't have much doubt.

Excellent. Well, Kevin and Rob, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.