Synovus Financial Corp. (SYU1.DU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Next up, we have the management team from Synovus. With Synovus, we have President and CEO, Kevin Blair; and CFO, Jamie Gregory. So Kevin, Jamie, thanks again for being here.

Thanks for having us.

Maybe I guess just continuing on the conversation we were having, I think. Let's start with the macro outlook and how you view the world differently today versus a year ago. And there are lots of macro cross-currents, but just give us a sense of optimism that you have for your business and for Synovus and what you're hearing from your clients.

Well, I think let's deal with facts because as we were talking about, there's a lot of question marks and uncertainty that exist with the political environment, with the economic environment, interest rates, go down the list. Facts. When we were exiting 2024, our fourth quarter committed production, so that doesn't mean it was funded, but the line commitments, it was the highest level of C&I and CRE production we've had in 8 quarters. You couple that with the fact that we do a quarterly survey with our clients and the level of optimism was the highest it's been in several years. The #1 concern out of that survey was more around the continued stability of consumer spending. So what's been removed from the table, people have generally been able to overcome the inflationary pressures they were seeing. They worry about the labor markets. They worried about the election. Well, some of those things were behind them. So now they're saying if the consumer stays strong, we think that our prospects over the next 12 months will improve, and that's what we saw in the survey. You correlate that to our pipelines. Our pipelines were also up 20% year-over-year. So what gives us confidence is the facts of our business seeing increased production, increased pipelines, increased consumer and commercial sentiment. That's what drove our belief that 2025 would be a stronger year for loan production. Coupled with that, in '24 and '23, we were optimizing the balance sheet. We sold a medical office building portfolio, $1.2 billion. We ran off syndicated national accounts where we didn't have relationships. We ran off an aviation business. We downsized our third-party consumer. All of those things provided headwinds to growth. In addition, we saw some of the lowest utilization on our lines we've had in some time, below 45%. That number generally works in the 50% range. And then lastly, in the fourth quarter, we saw payoff activities in commercial and CRE at $1.6 billion. We averaged only $1 billion a quarter prior to that. So it felt like a lot of things that were providing headwinds. And as we entered 2025, we felt like some of those would turn into tailwinds. But to our discussion up here, a lot of those things are rooted in fact, but it really comes down to the demand from our clients. And so when you see things like tariffs being introduced causing inflationary pressures on our clients, could that have an impact to demand? Sure. It could actually accelerate demand in the short run where people are trying to build their inventories prior to having to take on the incremental cost. But the things we can control and the things we see give us a great deal of certainty that we'll be able to increase our growth this year and be able to do it in a way that's -- with a similar backdrop on the NIM side. Because going into last year, we felt that NIM was going to be fairly stable. Jamie has talked about seeing NIM accretion from this point because of the fixed rate repricing. So for all those reasons, we feel pretty bullish about being able to grow.

That's helpful. And tied to consumer spending and the job market. Just give us a sense, I mean, you saw jobs data came out last week, some revisions to last year, which were meaningful to the downside. How would you characterize the strength of the job market across your markets? Are your clients generally hiring or firing?

Yes. The majority are -- on this survey we do, we ask whether they're going to keep the same amount of team members or employees, increase or decrease. 80% are keeping the same or increasing. So only 20% of our clients that are answering the survey are going to decrease their headcount. And I think that goes back to one of the questions when they write in, what's their biggest concern. Their biggest concern was consumer spending followed by access to labor. So it's the opposite. In the Southeast, I think people are still having a challenge finding talent to bring on and that's limiting their growth. So will there be layoffs? Potentially. We've seen that across the industry. The job numbers last week was a little light. But in general, I think living in the Southeast, seeing the population inflow that we're getting, our internal team says that each year, we're seeing about $50 billion of annualized gross income moving into our 5-state footprint, $50 billion. And so that helps to stimulate a lot of the service industries and the economy. And I think as a result, it's less about layoffs, it's more about access to labor.

So I guess maybe let's talk about what all of this means for growth, right? So very strong markets, you just talked about it. Pipelines are strong. I mean, I think your loan growth guidance was 3% to 6%, relatively wide. As we think about what gets you to 6% versus 3%, just give us -- remind us the puts and takes.

Yes. For us, it starts with production. We said in the fourth quarter that we anticipated loan production, funded loan production to increase 15% year-over-year. So if it goes up 20%, 25%, push us to the high end of the range. Two, as I mentioned earlier, line utilization being at 44%, 45%, that cost us about $250 million and declines just in the fourth quarter. If we see any sort of line utilization returning to more normalized levels, that will push us to the high end of the range. And the third is really the payoff activity. As I mentioned earlier, $1.6 billion in payoffs in the fourth quarter. 2024, in the first 3 quarters, averaged $1 billion a quarter. If you go back to '23, it was about $900 million a quarter. So if we see payoff activities come back to more normalized levels we've seen over the past couple of years, that also gives you greater tailwinds. We think that it's going to remain elevated for a little time for a couple of quarters and then maybe it starts to subside from there. The last thing I would mention to you is when Jamie and I talked about our investments in new talent, the $10 million we have around market expansion with the 20% to 30% increase in headcount, we only built in about $25 million of new loans out of that team in 2025. About $500 million by year 2, and year 3, it's $1 billion of new loans. So if those individuals come on and produce at a more rapid pace, we would actually see that push to the high end of the range as well. So look, it's not unreasonable to think that. It just is going to require execution and performance.

And just going back to the macro and you mentioned the tariffs earlier, again, early days in terms of 2025, but when you think about those pipelines actually translating into growth, is the macro -- do we have enough policy certainty where your customers are borrowing or are we still in wait-and-watch mode?

I think there's enough certainty. As I said, we've seen it in the production in the last several quarters. I think that will continue. So obviously, there are going to be people sitting on the sidelines saying, there's uncertainty. Maybe I'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait. But I think we're seeing enough animal spirits that people are starting to lean in as well. When I talk to our teams, we're presenting more term sheets than we have in the last several quarters. I do think, and maybe it gets to some of your future questions, I think price competition will pick up. I think the liquidity position of all banks is strong. Capital positions are strong. And as an institution, as an industry, we all lean in on price to try to win business. So we'll start to see some price pressures as competition picks up. But I do feel like what I'm hearing, our bankers are seeing more opportunities. We're issuing more term sheets. And so I don't think it's just in the future. I think some of it is being pulled through today. But to your point, we said this in our forecast, we expected loan growth to continue to build throughout the year. A little bit of growth in first quarter, more in second, more in third, and the most in the fourth quarter.

Got it. And I guess, maybe sticking with loan growth and spread revenue, you talked about net interest margin expanding from here. Remind us the positioning of the balance sheet. It seems that the Fed may be on pause for the rest of the year. What that means in terms of the margin outlook if the Fed doesn't do anything, is that a good or a bad thing? And then I'll follow up with the next 1. Jamie, yes?

Yes. If the Fed stays where it is right now, it's a good thing for us. Now with the efforts we made in 2024 about deposit repricing being very effective at the timing of that, we've reduced that impact per cut of the lead lag impact. We originally had said $4 million to $7 million in 2024. That's about half of that like in practice because we just -- when the Fed eased, we were there ready to price deposits down, and that worked well. So the impact is not as big as what we were saying in 2024 before the easing cycle because of execution but it is a small positive for us. Overall, we are neutral to the front of the curve. And so long term, where the Fed goes, we are relatively neutral. And that's our intent is to maintain neutrality to the front of the curve. You'll see us with our hedging program as we look forward, doing our best to maintain neutrality. Still, we have a little bit of asset sensitivity to the belly of the curve and we will maintain that. It's about 1.5% NII sensitivity to the 5-year part of the curve and we'll maintain that. We don't see any reason to hedge that out. But we do -- when you look at our hedge portfolio, the intent of that is to neutralize that front end.

Got it. And I guess, the 1 side of the equation there is deposit betas. Remind us how that's played out relative to your expectations. And how much more runway do we have in terms of flexing deposit costs lower?

So deposit costs will decline from the fourth quarter just due to one, the full quarter impact of the last ease and then also as you get to CD repricing. And so 2/3 of our CDs are 5 months or less and so that will still come in over time. And so there is a little bit to go. In the fourth quarter, we were at a 42% deposit beta. We had said 40% to 45% so we're right in the middle of the range. But truthfully, that's ahead of expectation. And the reason it's ahead of expectations because we haven't had that CD benefit. And so when we speak to 40% to 45%, that's once everything kind of settles in after all CDs reprice. But we're already right there in the middle of the range early on because the team has been so effective at managing deposit costs through the easing cycle.

Got it. And just maybe talk a little bit about what the market looks like? Are there certain geographies where you have competition like your market where there are a lot of new entrants? And what does that mean for Synovus? Is it impacting and influencing how you're pricing deposits in order to defend stuff?

Well, it's always competitive and it's very -- a lot of our markets are larger MSAs in the Southeast, and I bet every stage conversation this week has talked about growth in the Southeast. And so we're where people want to be and everybody is focused on it so it's going to be competitive. But the beauty of Synovus and our platform is that we have these relationships, we have the brand, we have the awareness that we're not a leader. When you look at league tables or rate sheets of CDs, we're kind of middle of the pack, and that's our strategy right now. We'll iterate as we go through the year, depending on loan growth and core deposit growth. But right now, we're middle of the pack. We don't see a reason to lead the charge on high deposit -- on time deposit rates. We think we can fund this balance sheet relatively neutral. I mean, our intent is to grow core deposits and core loans at a similar pace. And so we feel comfortable we can do that, and we're not having to be that aggressive on time deposits at the moment.

Got it. Maybe just switching gears back to SynovusGO. I think you talked about it. Give us a -- you've done a good job in terms of some of these initiatives over the years under your leadership. Just talk maybe, Kevin, SynovusGO, why now is the right time? And what are we looking to achieve with it?

It's a simple way to talk about our inflection point internally towards more of a growth orientation. As I mentioned in the last couple of years, we've rightsized the balance sheet. We've completed a risk-weighted asset optimization. We've restructured some of our bonds. We've built capital levels to the highest level they've been in over a decade. And as I look at the environment that we're in today, as we entered 2025, it felt way more constructive towards growth. And I also felt like the ongoing disruption that's occurring in our footprint around some of the mergers and just changes in business models, I really wanted our teams to lean in because I think we've done a masterful job of managing expenses. I'll go back to 2024 where our expenses were only up 1%. But if we want to invest in long-term shareholder value creation, we've got to add more talent faster. We've got to take market share. And some of that, Ebrahim, is investment in new talent. But SynovusGO is really kind of simple. It's 3 key execution elements: number one is connect. I think where banks forget is you've got to start within the 4 walls of your company, and you've got to work well within your team member base. You've got to be seamless at how you deliver products. As you become a bigger institution and you become more line of business-centric, you aren't as agile at delivering the solutions that your clients need, whether it's in the commercial space with treasury or in the consumer space with wealth management. We want to connect more with our clients and connect more internally, and we'll have some things internally that will help to promote that. Two, we need to act. I think you can sit back and hope that interest rates get you to where you need to be or hope that the economy grows because as Jamie mentioned, when you look at the markets we serve, it's not a secret that the Southeast is pretty robust. So we have 80 banks in Atlanta, 90 banks in Miami. We're not at a loss for competition. So act is our second part of GO, which means we've got to increase productivity, better sales activity, better acknowledgment and proactive sales behaviors. It takes bold action to generate incremental market share growth. And the third is winning. There's a third element of SynovusGO. We've got to sit back and understand what winning looks like. We have to look at the scoreboard and say, instead of saying, I think we're winning. Let's understand what are those metrics that show we're winning. Now at our level, that's easy. We can look at ROTCE, we can look at EPS growth, loan, balance sheet, all those things. But for every team member, we want them to understand what winning looks like for each of them. So that's the premise of SynovusGO, and I think it helps us to talk about it because we have been in an environment that has been much more built around optimization, less about growth and we're trying to transition that. And look, our team member base is what makes us special, right? We had 11% voluntary turnover last year, the lowest we've had in over 10 years. Our engagement levels are in the top 5% of any company in the United States. And so to me, SynovusGO is less about the external communication. It's more about getting our internal team members focused on what it takes to win this year.

And just sticking with winning, I guess talk to us around the hiring of talent or pitching for business. Like what sets Synovus apart from either the large national banks or another regional bank that's coming into your market? Give us a bit like what that means from a practical standpoint.

It's a really great question because I think we've spent really the last 5 years building out an operating model and organization that is attractive to bankers that come from larger super-regionals and even money center banks. What does that mean? You got to have technology, both on the treasury side for commercial, the digital platform on consumer. You got to have capabilities like capital markets and derivative sales folks because these bankers that are looking for a place to work, the first thing they want is they want to be able to have the same capabilities and functionality that they enjoy today. They don't want to take a step back. So we've spent a lot of time building out the chassis of our company, making sure that we have all the products and solutions that are necessary regardless whether you're a mass-market client or whether you're a large corporate client. Two, they want to be in an environment that is easy to do business. Most people become salesmen and women because they want to serve clients. And if you build an infrastructure internally that makes it administratively burdensome, they don't want to be part of that. So we've maintained kind of a nimble operating model where you'll see that we're not going to go out there and check and make sure you made your 5 calls each day in Salesforce. We trust that people know what their goals are and they're going to perform. Now it doesn't mean that we don't hold them accountable. You've got to deliver on your goals, but you're not going to be encumbered by a lot of administrative burdens that maybe some of the larger institutions have. And I think it just creates a little bit of a Goldilocks principle. We have all the capabilities and functionality of the big guys, but we run a model that is very client-centric and personal as the small banks do. And if we execute on that, that's a very attractive model for people to want to come work at. And the best salesmen and women that we have are the bankers that we've already brought over. So we talk a lot about the 70 FTEs we're going to add this year. But just last year, for example, we added 11 middle-market bankers, which was about a 25% increase in our size. Each one of those bankers had been here for a year and they've seen that what we said would happen has happened. And guess what, they call back to their previous institution and say, "Synovus really is what they said they were and I'm having great success here." That's the #1 opportunity we have because they can believe me or Jamie or the banker that's recruiting them or they can believe somebody they worked with for 10 years who spent a year here.

Got it. And you talked about investments, means you've been on an efficiency drive, I would think, for as long as I can remember now. Just when we think about the expense growth outlook, all the hiring, are there still opportunities at the bank in terms of extracting efficiencies? And like how does that offset organic growth?

Absolutely. I mean, we're actually very optimistic about efficiency opportunities over the next 3 to 5 years. I mean, I think if you look at the technology improvements out there, AI, et cetera, there are going to be significant opportunities to be more lean and improve the team member experience, improve the client experience, which will trickle down to the shareholders as well. And so I think on the efficiency side, I mean, we do all the normal expense efforts now, which would include real estate, procurement, just headcount efficiency, processes, automation, robotics. But what really gets us excited now, I mean, to your point, we've been on this journey since 2019 in a heavy way. What gets us excited now is that there are just so many -- everything is moving so fast that we think that there are a lot of areas of opportunity right now that will come out in '25, '26 to be more efficient, leveraging these new tools and new platforms. So it's not necessarily specific but we have a lot of work streams going right now, but we think that there's going to be material ways we can reduce our cost base.

It looks like that gives you enough flex over the next few years to manage expenses without having a big negative sort of surprise?

That's absolutely the case. I mean, it's our intent to grow expenses at a rate. You look at the normal inflationary rate. We pay our team members, we increase their merit, cost of living kind of increases. We have other new hires, new growth, and then you have efficiency saves that come off that. And so that's a normal year for us. This year is a little elevated. We have about $30 million in spend going through 2 strategic initiatives. Kevin described $10 million of it. That's going to be in 2025. We're really excited about that. We think that, that is very accretive for the shareholder when you look at '26, '27. So we're pretty pleased with like the plan for 2025. And it will make things like operating leverage, et cetera, in the future, just a lot easier when you get the benefits of the efforts we're going through today.

We'll hit upon like 2 or 3 different growth initiatives. One, just from a market standpoint, remind us in terms of your outlook for the Florida franchises, be it the banking, wealth, like where does that stand? And are there other markets within the geography that you're particularly excited about?

Yes. We noted that there are 7 growth markets, and Florida has 3 very large ones in Tampa, Central Florida, and South Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Miami. And the opportunity there is, look, when we start looking at our density of bankers relative -- in our relative market share, there's opportunities to continue to add. As you know, when we bought Florida Community Bank, they were a fairly small retail franchise. They were what I would consider branch-light and they were heavy in kind of corporate and middle market banking. So where we're continuing, we're not going to go add 100 branches in Florida, but we're continuing to add to both the middle market and specialty banker base in all 3 of those markets. And I think there's tremendous opportunity there. We've been doing that over the last couple of years and I think that will continue. And we should see good growth out of Florida. The other markets that we focused on, obviously, Atlanta is our biggest market. We'll continue to invest in Atlanta. And then there are some secondary markets that when you look at it from a population or MSA size, it's things like Charleston, Savannah, Birmingham. Those are markets where we feel like we also have the right to win, and we already have a level of brand awareness and density that will allow us to add additional bankers. But at the end of the day, what you won't hear there is that we're expanding into new markets. We're not doing LPOs. We're not trying to de novo. We think there's enough opportunity based on our 5-state footprint that we can continue to add additional density with bankers that will allow us to win market share and you're not having to tell the market who you are. We already have established a fairly good brand. So that's where our efforts are focused. And I would just say maybe what feels different this year, and I've said this in some of our meetings, Ebrahim, we've been adding bankers for the last 5 years. So I don't want anyone to think like we suddenly woke up and said, "Let's start adding bankers." We've been doing that. But to Jamie's earlier point, our team has found ways to offset that investment with savings elsewhere. And one of those areas was in our community bank. And the reason for that is for 125 of our 136 years, the community bank was our only line of business, right? It's where everything ran through. Well, when you start creating middle market and you create CRE specialty and you create other specialties, that unit became smaller because some of the clients that you were banking in your community bank went into those other portfolios. So when we had bankers in the community bank retire, we may not have replaced that position. We would have just combined that portfolio within another banker's portfolio and said, manage it. So we've been shrinking our bankers in the community bank over that period of time. Well, now we've reached a period where we feel like the gearing ratios, we've optimized that, and now it's a time to start investing there again. So where in the past, as I mentioned, we've added 11 middle-market bankers. You don't see that because we may have cut 10 community bankers and optimized our branch network. Well, we're not closing a lot of branches anymore. We feel like that network is optimized. We're not shrinking community bank. So the outcome is when you're adding bankers and you're not subtracting elsewhere, it shows as a bigger add. And that's really the change. It's less about that we've woken up and started to add. It's more so that we're now adding across all of our businesses, which means it's a net add overall.

Got it. I guess the idea where you've focused on has been the CIB capital markets business. Maybe give us a status check on where that stands? What's your outlook for that business, both NII and fee?

Yes. I mean, we made about $20 million in pre-provision net revenue this past year in CIB. It has about $1 billion in loans, 23 FTE. And so it's done what we wanted to do. It's proven out that you can be relevant in that space. And it's not heavy on the IB, it's heavy on the C, which is corporate banking. And what we announced is that we'll be expanding one of the verticals in financial institutions. We've done very well in that vertical, and it's predominantly been focused on insurance, money managers. So we'll add additional resources in '25 to expand the FIG vertical into some other industry categories, and that gives us a great deal of excitement. On the tech, media and communications side, as you know, when we rolled that out, there was a lot of valuation changes in the technology sector. And so it's probably grown a little less quickly than we had wanted, and same thing with health care. But we've really doubled down on the FIG side, and we'll continue to invest in TMC and health care over time. But it is proving the point. Now we just have to get more of the full relationship so that we're funding with good deposits, we're getting the strong fee income. I think about 25% of their revenue comes from fee income today. We'd love for that to be 25% to 30% so we're not having to use just balance sheet. So I would say, look, we're winning there. We just want to win more holistically across all the verticals.

Any other fee categories where you're particularly excited, treasury management, mortgage? I'm just wondering.

Definitely, I'll start with treasury. We grew treasury this past year 11%. If you look at it over the last 5 years, it's grown about 16% a year. And so what gets me excited there is I still feel like we have a lot of low hanging fruit. Last year, about 80% of our sales happened to existing clients, which says that our first opportunity is to make sure that our clients have all the solutions that they need to efficiently run their business. Two, we're continuing to add additional solutions there. We have a payables platform. We've added an FX trade platform. We've rolled out, last year or 2 years ago, an AR platform. So our commercial credit card is growing. I mean, so treasury is great. Two, capital markets. We've produced last quarter about $12 million. What's great about that is a lot of the fee incomes come from our lead arranger fees from a syndicated platform. It wasn't until last year that we added a platform. And I think it was just 2 years ago that we did our first lead arranger deal. So we're just starting to scratch the surface. As loan production picks up, that will pick up. Derivative income will pick back up. We have been getting some DCM fees, which we haven't had in the past. So capital markets is more diversified, and I think, situated for growth based on loan demand. Wealth, we're rethinking our wealth platform. We've focused a little more on the business owner wealth strategy where we have 15,000 commercial business owners that we bank and only 8% of them have a personal relationship. Last year, we added about 300 new relationships from those business owners. And if we keep that up, it's just a revenue stream that keeps building and adding additional capabilities or additional growth opportunities on the wealth side. So they're out there. And then I'll end with our third-party payment strategy. As you know, we have a mass product that we've kind of back-burnered for now. We're trying to figure out how we can better build a more efficient platform to sit on the independent software vendor's platform. Meanwhile, what we've done is we've doubled down on our sponsorship business. So commercial sponsorship is where we sponsor independent sales organization's access to Mastercard and Visa. We make about $20 million a year on that. The individual who's leading that third-party payments, commercial sponsorship area is going to lean in a little bit there and generate incremental revenues that should drive good growth year-over-year. That will allow us to continue to fund some of the new initiatives like MAAST and the like. So the great news is, and Jamie said this earlier, we've spent a lot of time and energy trying to develop a lot of sources of growth and not to become overly reliant on 1 fee income category like you see with mortgage or MSRs. Like we don't have that volatility and we haven't put too many eggs in 1 basket. So what should allow us to continue to grow is that we have a lot of categories that have sustainable growth opportunities.

And just if you don't mind spending some time on the GreenSky relationship. I mean, generally, what we've seen over the last few years is banks are optimizing their balance sheets, how they use what really a big focus on deposit relationships or having a holistic relationship with customers. Just tell us how GreenSky fits in within that framework.

I mean, it's a balance sheet-light sponsorship. We help to originate their $6 billion to $7 billion in loans every year. We receive an underwriting fee upfront and an administration fee as long as the loan's outstanding. This past year, we made a little less than $30 million on that. We get some compensating deposits for anything that sits in the held-for-sale category. So in a perfect world, you're using very little capital, very little liquidity to make $30 million in fee income. So those are the type of relationships we like. Now what we haven't done is gone out and expanded to have 20 more GreenSkys. I think where banks get in trouble and maybe stretch too far is where if you're doing those sort of relationships, you should do it with fintechs or partners that you know and that you can serve from a compliance and regulatory risk standpoint. And so you haven't seen us go out and say, "Let's add 30 more there." What we've focused on is building new solutions with GreenSky and their new owner to generate additional revenue, whether it's us providing more banking services for them, whether it's seeing how their production, as their production grows, so does our revenue. But you won't see us go out doing a bunch of other sponsorship deals with other fintechs as a result of that. Never say never, but we just think that you've got to stick with your knitting and know who you're partnering with and do it very well so that you don't get in any sort of penalty box by not following the appropriate procedures.

And just talking about partnering, I think the other thing that you're discussing or it's coming up a lot in terms of banks' origination capabilities married with private credit, direct lenders. So one, I think, are they a serious competitive sort of threat to your business from a day-to-day standpoint? And are there partnering opportunities where you are originating and passing on an asset that may not belong on the balance sheet?

Look, obviously, I think I'd be foolish to say that they're not going to represent competition because, obviously, they have a lot of capital and they can deploy it in a way that I think gives them a bit of a competitive advantage. They're not having to carry the level of capital banks have and have the regulatory oversight. As everybody knows, they entered the marketplace probably leaning in, doing more pref deals or term loan B or things that had a little hair on them. And as they've generated growth and they have more dollars to invest, they're coming more down the mainstream commercial lending platform. And so you're obviously competing with them. But just like with fintechs or just like with new banks entering the marketplace, they're going to compete on price, right? They probably can do it and arbitrage the marketplace by not having to carry the level of capital. But I think the great equalizer for us is we're a relationship bank. And what I know about our clients is they do care about capital and access to capital, but they care about the consistency of their access to capital. And I think where banks like Synovus thrive is we build relationships. And so they know when they call us up that the capital is going to be there for them. They also know that when they call us up, that we'll provide more than just capital. We'll give them the type of treasury solutions and the depository solutions that they need. And so we don't want to be a transacting bank. So if you need to go transact and you want to get the lowest price, we're probably not the bank for you. We've got to focus on folks that value the relationship and the value that we bring to the table. So we've got to acknowledge it. You can't compete with them dollar-for-dollar because I think they can kind of arbitrage it. But at the end of the day, I think a lot of people go to private capital because they don't want to mark their balance sheet to market. There's no value for that asset because they're not having to play out in the public domain. As I think private capital becomes more mainstream, it almost feels public. And I think some of the advantage is people will move away from private capital because they can no longer say that there's no valuation of their company or something that they'd have to mark. But at the end of the day, they're going to be a competitor. We've got to do what we do well and stick to the places we have the right to win, build relationships, and I think we can compete with those guys.

And you mentioned regulations. Obviously, there's a fair amount of optimism around a return to a more balanced, predictable regulatory backlog for the banks. Do you share that view, number one? And second, in what aspects can Synovus actually see tangible relief, either regulations or supervisory?

Maybe Jamie and I have been the contrarian that you've heard today. We have a great partnership with our regulators. I feel like everyone that we've added in the C-suite over the last several years have come from a Cat IV or Cat III bank. And so when they enter our institution, it's not like they come to Synovus and say, "I won't do what I was doing at the previous institution." What they say is, "Look, as we've become larger and more complex, let's invest the money to improve our risk management practices." So it doesn't mean you go out tomorrow and do LCR, but you should put some things in place that allow you to look at things like LCR. So I don't know if there's anything will stop, and we haven't seen a major change in our regulators like I've heard some other banks where they've had exams canceled, we haven't seen that. But I also think it's because we're doing the right thing. And we're continuing to improve our risk management practices as we've become larger and more complex. And it's not about getting to $100 billion. It's just about getting better every day. And as an institution, as investors, you guys want a bank that is managing our risk and trying to mitigate those risks. And I think that's what we do. So when you ask me like what do we say? I was telling Jamie, maybe a couple of million dollars a year in regulatory spend and a lot of that has to do with resolution planning that we have to implement for 2026. But I can't pinpoint things. What I can say is that if we have less examinations, less oversight, it will create more capacity for our teams. Our credit teams spend a lot of time with our regulators going through files, things like that. So if there's 1 thing we know in life, you can't create more time. But if you have less regulatory, administrative burden, then our team members will have time to be able, hopefully, to deploy to more revenue generation.

Got it. Maybe just spend some time on capital management. I think the $400 million buyback authorization. You grew capital last year despite buying back stock. Just remind us, capital deployment priorities, where you're managing capital to and how quickly can you -- do you plan to execute on those buybacks?

Just like prior years, we've built our capital plan to be ready for a range of scenarios. There's a lot of uncertainty heading into 2025 with regards to loan growth and balance sheet growth. And so we want to be ready for all sides of what could happen. And so we believe that if you've had little to no loan growth, you could -- we could buy no shares to maintain relatively stable capital. Or if you have high single-digit or even double-digit loan growth, we think we can maintain capital in the 10.5% or higher area with no share repurchases. And so we're just going to watch as we go through the year, watch capital ratios, watch the environment, look at loan growth and try to manage to relatively stable capital ratios. I mean, there's nothing that we have as far as our modeling. Kevin mentioned we do kind of stress tests like the Cat IV banks, Cat III banks. There's nothing in that analysis that says we need to have 10.8% capital. That is a lot of excess capital embedded in that. But we are managing there as we look at kind of where the industry is, where others are, where some of the smaller banks are, and we just think that's a prudent place to be. We're just going to manage that as we go through the year. We're ready for all scenarios, but stability is what you should expect from us.

Got it. And I guess 1 last question just around you shared an interesting anecdote at a conference you were on bank M&A. But give us a sense, so you've done 1 deal in the last several years on banks, which is meaningful in size. So in a world where the regulatory backdrop is a little more conducive to get deals approved, et cetera, like how attractive is that as a strategic option for Synovus?

Let me start by saying, we believe that our organic growth strategy is very compelling. And I think we can continue to execute in our 5-state footprint and generate growth, as Jamie has mentioned, both from adding new clients, expanding our relationships, and seeing things like margin expand. So it's always been kind of a back-burner strategy for us where you feel like you have to do M&As. To your point with FCB, FCB was a great example where in Florida, we had limited density. We were in the Panhandle. We were in Jacksonville. We really had nothing south of there. And if you're going to be a bank in the Southeast, you should have a more relevant franchise in South Florida and we were able to acquire FCB. And as Jamie reminds me, when you go back and look at that transaction, all the metrics changed because of interest rates. But when you look at what we paid for FCB and you reflect on that today, it was, I think, a really effective and efficient deal for Synovus. But when you think what would drive M&A across the industry, I mean, what you see today and we've talked a lot about this, if you look at the deals that have been announced, Ebrahim, and you see that you take a company who is executing with a 1% ROA, and they're able to generate enough synergies from that deal that now they're going to operate at a 1.20%, 1.30% ROA and an ROTCE of 17% and 18% versus a 12% and 13%, those cost synergies and the initial PAA that comes with marking the balance sheet to market are quite attractive from an EPS accretion standpoint. So I think what changes the market is we look at ourselves and we say, we want to be the best. We want to be top quartile in what we do. Nobody wakes up every day saying, "I want to be average." But if everybody else goes out and does deals and they generate a tremendous amount of synergies and the top quartile ROTCE went from 15% to 18%, you look at what you would have to do organically to get there, it becomes more difficult. So what would change our strategy is if the market around us changes, and again, striving to be top quartile. If we had to use M&A to compete with those sort of returns, you'd have to do it. But in the interim, we think we have a very clear path to being top quartile by executing on our current organic strategy.

It's a good way to think about it. Jamie, Kevin, thank you so much for the time. Thank you.

Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you.