Truist Financial Corporation (TFC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. We're going to get started here. Up next, we're excited to once again have Truist joining us with its MOE integration largely behind it. Truist is now shifting from integration to execution, which we believe should lead to better than peer growth and operating efficiency over time. Here to tell us how they're going to accomplish this and joining us once again is CEO, Bill Rogers. I'm going to turn it over to Bill for a presentation that will be followed up with Q&A.

Great. Thanks, Ryan. It's a pleasure to be here this morning. Before we get started, please take note of our forward-looking statements and non-GAAP information on Slides 2 and 3. So moving to Slide 4. Our investment thesis outlines our company's opportunity set, and what makes Truist a compelling investment and a great place to work. First, we're a purpose-driven company that seeks to inspire and build better lives and communities. Our deep sense of purpose guides everything we do. Second, from that purpose-first foundation, we've built an exceptional company with a comprehensive and diverse business mix, and we have strong market shares and opportunities in many of the most vibrant U.S. markets. We've got distinct capabilities in insurance, investment banking and digital point-of-sale lending, and we're leveraging our extensive industry expertise to deliver value-added advice for our clients. Third, due to the merger of equals, we have a more modern, best-of-both technology stack, allowing us to lean further into the future of banking. And fourth, combined with our conservative risk profile, our goal is to generate superior earnings growth and profitability with lower volatility than our peers over the long term. Continuing on Slide 5. As you all know, Truist was the largest bank merger in over 15 years. And as I like to say, the only purpose-first bank MOE. The merger was exceptional in design financially, culturally, strategically and the opportunities we have today are even better than those we imagined in 2019. I'm also very aware that the past 3 years have not met our expectations or yours. Revenue performance has been slower than our peers. The expense story has been complex, best-of-both took longer and cost more than anticipated. And therefore, we've underperformed our peers in total shareholder return. The good news is, the integration is behind us, and we're moving forward with an incredible foundation that's even better than we could have conceived in 2019. Looking ahead, our focus will be on core execution, actualizing our purpose and achieving our integrated relationship management and revenue synergy opportunities. We will accelerate purposeful growth and maintain a strong profitability profile. The completion of our 3-year integration process enhances our ability to fully realize our investment thesis, details of which I'll share throughout the presentation. Turning to Slide 7. Our purpose-driven culture is the foundation for our success as a company. It drives performance and defines how we do business every day. Our purpose intentionally begins with the word Inspire. And to be inspirational, it's often necessary to be bold and to be first. Truist One Banking and the recent increase in our minimum wage highlight how we're putting our purpose into action and how purpose and performance are inextricably linked. Benefiting from the launch of Truist One, branch personal deposit production was up 11% year-over-year for the combined months of August, September and October. The increase in our minimum wage has also improved our ability to attract and retain talent. Relative to the first 7 months of the year, teller turnover from August to October was down 30%, while the average annualized turnover rate in our call center was down 45%. The sharp improvement in turnover reduces the time we have to spend training new teammates and increases the time we can spend anticipating and meeting client needs. Now turning to Slide 8. Truist's client base is over 15 million strong. Our core retail, small business, commercial, community banking and wealth business operate primarily in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, where we have leading market share in many of the fastest-growing U.S. markets. We go to market locally, which means we keep decision-making close to the client, have knowledge of the local economy and its unique business needs and have a deep commitment to the communities where we operate. We supplement this local presence with industry and product expertise to ensure our clients receive the full benefit of Truist's intellectual capital and capabilities. We've also done a great job building our brand as Truist currently has the fifth highest brand recognition and consideration in our markets with momentum building. We have a highly diverse business mix that extends our presence well beyond our core banking markets. Several of our businesses operate nationally, including insurance, CIB, mortgage, CRE, consumer finance solutions and wholesale payments. These businesses supplement our local presence, augment our capabilities and expertise and create opportunities to benefit our clients through integrated relationship management. We also operate in the sweet spot when it comes to size. We have a broad range of capabilities, yet we're small enough to maintain a strong local connected team. Culture -- and this culture is essential to our integrated relationship management. And while we're large enough to generate substantial capital and that can be used for organic growth and shareholder returns, our less complex and more diverse business model results in lower capital requirements than our peers. At Truist, we view ESG as an opportunity to put our purpose into action. We've made significant progress against our $60 billion community benefits plan, which for us is just the beginning, not the end. We surpassed our goal to increase ethnically diverse representation in our senior leadership roles to at least 15%, well ahead of schedule. And we're externalizing our commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by advising our clients on how to make their own transition to a lower carbon economy. All of this progress, combined with our enhanced ESG reporting and transparency, has positively impacted our ESG scores and resulted in increased recognition. What we're most proud of is how we're impacting our communities. Now turning to Slide 11. As I mentioned, our core retail, commercial and wealth lines of businesses have an enviable market position. Our markets continue to be projected to grow faster than our peers, a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic. We also have a higher deposit market share in our markets than our peers have in theirs, which has benefited us in the form of low deposit betas and brand momentum. We have a 1, 2 or 3 market position in 17 of our top 20 markets including Atlanta, Charlotte, DC, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, just to name a few, making us the dominant player in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Given our market position, our broad set of capabilities, and our ongoing investments, we believe Truist is well positioned to maximize this market advantage. Now turning to Slide 12. One of the most compelling and underappreciated benefits of our merger is greater diversification. Due to the limited overlap between our heritage companies, the merger essentially cut in half the contribution from areas like investment banking, insurance and subprime auto, to name a few. This has led to a much lower PPNR volatility relative to our peers, as you can see on the right. It's also created opportunities for growth given our increased relevance and significantly more scale and capital to deploy on behalf of our clients. Continuing to Integrated Relationship Management on Slide 13, our diverse capability set also creates significant opportunities for Integrated Relationship Management or as we call it IRM. IRM is the concept that when we deliver the breadth of Truist's capabilities to our clients in a seamless and integrated manner, they'll achieve success and more financial confidence. Our focus on IRM is gaining momentum. And as I mentioned, the opportunities are significant. Each of the 7 checkmarks on this slide represents a 9-figure IRM incremental opportunity over the long term, and we're putting substantially more time and investment towards each of them. Our teammates are incredibly excited about the expanded toolkit that's available to them post-merger. They're also energized to be able to focus their time on deepening and growing client relationships rather than our own integration activities. While we have many IRM opportunities across each line of business, our largest IRM opportunities exist within the commercial community banking, where we have long-standing relationships with almost 200,000 closely held businesses and middle-market companies. Our regional presidents within CCB serve as the chief integrators, meaning they quarter back IRM on behalf of Truist, and they're responsible for insurance -- ensuring that the breadth of Truist is delivered to their local relationships and to their communities. For privately held businesses and their business owners, we refer to this opportunity as business life cycle advisory. From seeking early-stage capital all the way to business transition, our clients have access to all the expertise and capabilities they need at Truist. Turning to Slide 14. Many of you heard Mike Maguire and John Howard speak about consumer finance and insurance at BAB, and I'd like to use this opportunity to focus on Truist Securities. We've invested significantly in talent over the last 15 years to build a universal banking platform with a full range of product capabilities and extensive industry expertise. Clients choose Truist Securities because we have the same qualities -- I mean, same capabilities and expertise as our larger peers, but we deliver them in a One Team manner with our strength in the middle market. This unique combination of capability and delivery is the source of our value proposition, and it's why we've consistently taken market share over the past 2 decades. Since 2006, our investment banking income has grown almost 10% annually, and our overall ranking in the league tables, excluding M&A, has improved from 23 to 12. All of this growth has been organic and driven by the success of our teams and significant and purposeful talent additions to this business over 2 decades. Our value proposition is even stronger as Truist, and that's why we continue to take advantage of the challenging environment, to invest in Truist Securities by selectively adding talent to drive long-term share gains as we've successfully done through previous market disruptions. Now turning to Slide 16. Our post-integration technology and digital strategy largely can be bucketed into 2 major areas: First, we have to ensure that Truist has a modern tech foundation. We took a major step forward with the merger to establish a solid foundation, but there's always more work to do in certain key areas. Second, we need to continue to deliver distinct, secure and successful experiences for our clients and teammates, particularly as digital expectations continue to rise by the day. Each element of our strategy is intended to make every interaction with Truist as simple, secure, reliable and intelligent as possible. Continuing to Slide 17. You can see how the strategy is having a real impact on our digital banking capabilities for clients. Thanks to the merger, Truist has a more modern, modular and simple tech stack, all of which significantly improves our agility and our responsiveness. So far this year, we've delivered 3x more production releases across retail, small business and wealth than in all of 2021. Our ability to rapidly incorporate client feedback has resulted in improved client satisfaction scores, which have risen consistently since our initial introduction of Truist Digital in waves in 2021. Our mobile app had an average rating of 4.6 on Apple and Android on November 30, up from 3.1 a year ago. And on a relative basis, our mobile app rating has gone from bottom quartile to ahead of the pack. However, there's still more work to do with Digital as we continue to increase the percentage of accounts that can be opened digitally end-to-end. Truist Digital is a key component of our broader T3 strategy to create more consistent end-to-end onboarding experience for clients and teammates regardless of their choice of channel. Now turning to Slide 19. Truist's long-term financial performance is fundamentally determined by our ability to manage risk, and the foundation of our risk management program is our disciplined and thorough risk appetite framework, which measures on a granular basis and across all risk disciplines our actual risk position relative to our moderate risk appetite. This long-standing approach has led to Truist consistently having loan loss rates that are amongst the lowest in the CCAR severely adverse scenarios. While the range of economic outcomes is uncertain as we look into 2023, we're confident that our disciplined risk management will help Truist outperform in any economic environment. Continuing to Slide 20. Truist has intentionally taken a balanced approach to managing rate risk, being well positioned to benefit from higher rates, but also mindful of maintaining some downside protection. Our core client balance sheet is structurally highly asset sensitive. We have a strong floating rate loan mix in a retail-oriented deposit franchise. This has been balanced with a fixed rate securities portfolio that has extended more than we originally anticipated. In addition, our relative loan growth has improved nicely through 2022, as we've come further away from the conversion. The net of these factors has led to Truist demonstrating core NIM and NII performance that has been broadly in line with our peer group thus far. Now turning to Slide 21. When we first announced the merger, we believe the pro forma company would have industry-leading efficiency ratios in ROTCEs, which at the time would have been in the low 50s and low 20s, respectively. For the first 9 months of this year, Truist's adjusted tangible efficiency ratio was 57% or second in our peer group. We also achieved an adjusted ROTCE of 24%, and excluding the impacts of OCI, was still strong at approximately 20%. Both data points ranked first in our peer group. While the efficiency ratio remains above our initial target, partly due to environmental factors like rates and inflation, it also reflects structural changes, including growth and higher efficiency ratio businesses such as insurance and investment banking as well as the ongoing decline in service charges. Our main goal going forward is to maintain industry-leading returns and accelerate our growth, both of which are required to drive total shareholder return. Turning to Slide 22. We are very close to achieving our remaining cost saves, which relate to the decommissioning of data centers and redundant applications. The cost saves we've achieved have been instrumental in limiting growth and adjusted noninterest expense. Excluding acquisitions since 2019, adjusted noninterest expense has declined 2%, reflecting strong cost saves, partially offset by inflation and investment. In addition, merger-related costs have decreased by approximately half in 2022 compared to 2021, and they'll cease entirely in 2023. The trajectory should be welcome news to shareholders as diminishing merger costs correspond a less complex narrative, improved earnings quality and more capital generation. Turning to Slide 23. Truist has a strong capital position, particularly relative to our profitability and risk profile. We also have very clear priorities for how we allocate capital. At the top of the list is organic growth as we identify opportunities to enhance the client experience and meet our clients' needs, whether through technology, new or improved products and services or organic loan growth. Next is our dividend. Our Board, on behalf of our shareholder, highly values a stable and growing dividend. After dividends come target strategic acquisitions and investments that build our long-term capabilities and to add new clients and finally, share repurchases. Strategically, our goal for acquisitions and investments is that they enhance our scale, markets or products, improve the client experience, enhance the future positioning and to increase our ability to deliver upon Integrated Relationship Management. Service Finance, Kensington Vanguard, BenefitMall and BankDirect Capital Finance reflect those principles and provide significant growth scale and/or IRM opportunities. On Slide 24, our goal financially is to produce strong growth and profitability and to do so with less volatility. Early in the presentation, I highlighted our progress in achieving industry-leading returns, reducing expenses and having a diverse model that limits volatility. However, to generate sustainable shareholder value, we must complement our strong profitability with better growth. Truist has lagged our peers in growth due to the integration, but our strategic pivot from integration to executional excellence is taking hold. And our third quarter results built upon our second quarter progress even as market conditions diminished overall PPNR trajectory. Over the long term, we've got the potential to generate much stronger organic growth given our markets, our differentiated business mix and our ability to capitalize on IRM and revenue synergies. Our organic growth will also be complemented by targeted acquisitions and partnerships that strengthen our competitive advantages, add new capabilities or clients or position us for the future. Ryan, I assume you're going to ask me about a fourth quarter update. So let me just go ahead and do that from the podium and provided here. In October, we guided to mid-teens basis point increase in our NIM, a 1% sequential increase in adjusted expenses and approximately 10% sequential adjusted PPNR with some upside. Overall, I'd say our fourth quarter is on track with that October expectations, and we remain on track to achieve positive operating leverage on both on a GAAP and an adjusted basis for the full year. So in conclusion, this has been a pivotal year for Truist. The integration is complete. We'll achieve our remaining cost saves by the end of the year. Merger-related costs will end this year. And most importantly, we've pivoted from integration to executional excellence. We have an incredible foundation. Truist is on the right path going forward. Our focus will be on our core execution and achieving our IRM and revenue synergy opportunities. We'll continue to realize our growth potential and maintain profitability profile, all of which we believe will drive outperformance. Thank you for your interest and support of Truist and Ryan, I'll come join you.

Great. Thanks, Bill. I appreciate the fourth quarter update.

Eliminate one question for you.

I don't know what you -- made you believe I was going to ask that. Given that we've done in everyone. So Bill, I appreciate all the color in the slide deck. Slide 24 showed that revenue had underperformed during the merger, but you've gone through decommissioning efforts. You're now shifting to execution. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about what you're thinking in terms of what are going to be the key area of focus for Truist over the next few years?

Yes. Ryan, I would say, first, relative to where we've been in the past 3 years, I think the most important thing we've done is we've set a fantastic foundation. So not only I talked about from the prepared remarks, from a technology standpoint and our product and capabilities but what really sets us apart is we've set a strong cultural foundation. That's what we led with in the -- before the pandemic. We spent time with our teammates talking about purpose, not about numbers, not about products and capabilities. And I think that's what actually sets a strong foundation. So then fast forward from that foundation, where is the focus over the next 2, 3 years? It's actualizing Truist. It's really making sure that we're performing at the capabilities that exist, that we're performing relative to the incredible markets that we're in. It is taking this incredible concept for us of integrated relationship management, applying that across our franchise with more intensity, more accountability, more systems, more incentive, all the things that drive that. So the real focus is Truist. Now the other part, when I talk about going from integrating to operating, I tend to talk more about the revenue side of that, but there's also an efficiency play in that because we've consolidated. So we've got now the core stack -- the core systems. And now what we have an ability to do is look at all of those processes, look at the automation, look at the digitization, all the improvements that can happen in those processes. And not only are we focused on the revenue side, actualizing our markets, but just doing it across not only a better platform, but a more efficient platform.

So you showed on the slide, you guys have had to make a lot of investments regarding the merger. A lot of them were in technology where you ended up picking the best-of-both over the -- and integrated over the past few years. Where do you feel you're now ahead of the pack? Where do you feel you still need to invest a bit more in catch-up?

Yes. So I'm going to go back here. I think where we're ahead of the pack is we're alive. We're culturally alive. We've got One Team. They're all -- it's all Truist all the time. And then if you sort of take the technology side of that, one of the most important decisions we made in this concept, the best-of-both is on the digital side. And we said, actually, what we want to do is we want to create our own platform. We want to create a modern stack on the digital. We want to create something that has a ton of agility and a ton of flexibility and that covers more than 1 business. So we have a modern core proprietary nondependent on third parties, digital platform that covers our personal side, our wealth side and our small business side. So that front door has a very similar impact. I showed some of the results of where we've seen and the adoption and the things that we're doing on the digital side. So I think we are absolutely positioned where we wanted to be on the digital side. We're always going to want to invest. We're always going to want to improve, but I think we're starting from a position of really, really good strength. The other areas that were really positive from the merger side is we did a lot of things in the commercial side in terms of loan origination and servicing. We did a lot of innovative things in that area. I think in fairness, we've got the platform. We've got to leverage it better, and that's part of actualizing against that. On the mortgage origination side, we did a lot of work there to make sure that we have a sort of a digital end-to-end experience on that side. So I think those are areas where I consider us to be above parity and have really good opportunities. And then sort of in that big middle is things that we just did well. I mean that we've got the tools and capabilities and pick investment banking, pick wealth or things that we've added in those platforms, some of these core basic platforms. And then the area where we've been conscious about where we want to invest more is in the area of payments and consumer and wholesale payments side. I think those are the areas where we've got improvement. And I think we have left lane opportunity. I mean I think the timing actually is quite good in those areas to expand our reach and capability.

You said left lane, I'll refrain from any car references, but you talked a little bit on Slide 24 about some of the drivers of better revenue growth. Is 2023 going to be the year we start to see some of these coming through? Knowing that just measuring one on NII growth is not the benchmark that you like to use, what should we be thinking as the way to judge the success of these are actually coming through?

Yes. I mean we -- I've said this before, I think sort of total revenue growth, obviously. I mean, I think our revenue ought to exceed others in the sense of the capability and tools that we have and the markets that we serve and the capabilities that we have. But really what that translates into the correlation with shareholder return is PPNR growth. So it's not revenue for revenue's sake. I mean we'll obviously have some NII tailwind, but we also have sort of this organic Truist tailwind. As we're coming from this integrate to operate, we're creating our own tailwind. We're operating just at higher capabilities and higher efficiencies. So while there may be some economic headwind, we have our own personal Truist headwind -- I mean tailwind in terms of our markets and our capabilities.

So Bill, maybe now is a good time to get through the awkwardness. There was headlines out there.

It's never awkward with you, Ryan.

I don't think it's awkward between you and me. Just the next question might be a little awkward. So there's obviously headlines about the potential for a 30% sale of the insurance broker business. I'm not going to ask you directly if you're going to sell it. But can you maybe just comment hypothetically, why would one maybe think about selling? Would it be the unlike value, recycle capital into other parts of the business? And hypothetically, would this be viewed as an offensive or defensive move?

Okay. So I'm not going to go down the hypothetical path with you, but I do appreciate the attempt. So I thought that was a good attempt. But I would like to just not to comment on a rumor or anything like that, but maybe just a comment about the insurance business as a whole, which should be very comfortable doing. One of the really great strengths for me, particularly in terms of coming to this merger is actually learning more about the prowess and capability and the leadership and the IRM capability and the advice capability that sits within the insurance business. And the insurance business is a growing business. It's -- and we participate and it's a scale business. And it's in a business we want to make sure that we can continue to invest in. We can continue to grow. We can continue to have its relevance. I think we've got an incredible team that's been able to assimilate a lot of acquisitions over time. We also have an incredible team and focus on the value of not only the insurance business as a stand-alone, but the insurance business as part of Truist. And its key component in what we do in Integrated Relationship management. And keep in mind, we're the only institution that can do it of scale that can have that conversation with the client and look at their overall management of risk at their company from really soup to nuts. And that's just an advantage that we don't want to compromise.

Got it. Bill, maybe to hit on some other things that were talked about in the slides. One of the slides showed not only the population growth in your markets, but the weighted average deposit market share, you being top of the charts. And obviously, there were lots of different reasons for the merger, but one of the reasons to have more power within -- market power within your markets. And can you maybe just talk about how this has transpired in terms of deposit pricing? What you've seen? And how is this different from the legacy companies? And where do you expect this to be in terms of deposit pricing for this cycle?

Yes. First, I mean, and you noted, I mean, one of the compelling reasons to merge among many was this ability to just create really good market share in the best markets in the country. And we can talk a little bit about that. And we're feeling that. So that sense of ubiquity, that sense of market presence, that sense of branch presence, ATM presence, the ability to allocate and maximize your marketing, the ability to create a digital platform on top of that, the ability to support the community overall and have that experience. We're feeling that and where you see that is our beta has lagged a bit, which we think is really good. Our sort of total deposits have sort of held up a little bit. And I think just our ability to offer so much more for clients than just rate paid is really materializing. And I think that's just going to continue to improve. I mean I made a comment earlier, our deposit production is up sort of double digits. Well, not everybody is up double digits. That's sort of the organic part. So it's not only our ability to retain and have good pricing momentum, but it's also the ability to acquire new clients. Truist One has been incredibly successful. We're acquiring clients that are improving the profile of what our business looks like. So to your other question, betas at the 2 heritage companies were probably somewhere in the kind of mid-30s. We're sitting now in sort of the 20s. I mean, beta is going to eclipse that somewhere along the path. But I think we've got this unique capacity to lag that as we go through that process just due to all the things that we can offer for our clients.

Yes, obviously, rates are much higher this time.

Yes, exactly. Rates are higher on an absolute basis.

So Bill, let's talk a little bit about loan growth near to medium term. Just across both commercial and consumer. What are the areas you're leaning into? And how are you feeling about loan growth into 2023?

Yes. So this is a little bit of the same conversation of Truist tailwinds. And we had talked about overall loan growth through the merger we had -- we've lagged. I mean we know that. There was a lot of focus on integration and you started seeing in the third quarter, some of that impact of our focus and the opportunities we have with our clients. That's not stretching. That's not taking incremental risk. I mean we just have this incredibly disciplined process, but it's growing where we want to grow and it's growing where it's relevant to our clients. So we'll see sort of core C&I growth continue to grow on an absolute basis this quarter. The rate of growth will be lower. I mean, I think that rate of growth sort of wasn't sustainable, but continue to grow. I think we'll be disproportionate and reflecting that, again, all the same discipline on getting returns from that loan growth. I think for us, we've talked about this a little bit as the growth -- loan growth for growth's sake is not the winning formula. So can we really grow and increase the return? So I think some of the areas like some of the mortgage correspondent side and some of the indirect auto side, that's the case where the margins of those businesses just don't really reflect what I think is the appropriate return. So we'll have those businesses probably reduce a little bit. But where we want to grow, the point of sale, the consumer side and the C&I side, where we want to grow the middle market, the components of that, I feel good about it. And I think we can continue to have positive momentum even into next year.

So I know you're very deep in your '23 planning process. And just wanted to get -- take the pulse on the puts and takes how investors think about regarding adjusted 2023 expenses. I know you highlighted at another conference. They would be up. And maybe just help us understand what the goalposts are, how to think about operating leverage, fully recognizing it's not 900 basis points as you teased me at dinner last night.

Well, Yes. You said you set a new mark out there. So just thinking about sort of being constructive and all the things that we talked about in terms of this integrate to operate and the focus that we have on growing the top line and managing the bottom line better as part of that process and maximizing those 2 levers. We'll have -- this year, we'll have positive operating leverage. As I said, you were sort of nicking our cleats going over the bar, but we're going to go over the bar. Next year, we'll have much more positive operating leverage. How much of it will have some market dependencies. But all of our businesses have business plans as we're entering into the '23 planning cycle, that reflect positive operating leverage. And then they have fulcrum points related to that. So they're going in with a more efficient platform from an expense standpoint. And if we get some market tailwinds probably more in fairness towards the end of the year, we're going to have a chance to exceed some of those plans.

So we're brushing against time here, so maybe I'll throw 2 into one. You had a slide that showed capital allocation priorities. Capital is well below the [ 9 75 ] like less updated target. Where are you comfortable running and then outside of insurance buying or selling, what are the inorganic priorities from here?

Yes. I mean just first to the 9 and 3/4 initial target, that had a lot -- we had a lot of merger risk in there. And we sort of don't currently sort of sit with an element of merger rate. So I'm very comfortable with the capital position where we are right now. We also showed in those charts that, that diversification and that risk profile that we have with lower absolute losses and lower volatility, I think our capital that we're holding against that reflects that. And our priorities against using capital will be growing our business. Today, we've sort of had some absolute RWA growth, but other places where we can grow our business. Our strong and growing dividend, which are really key. We've got a really good institutional and retail shareholder base, and we want to be consistent with that. And then acquisitions that fit our criteria. I mean, that are accretive to the businesses that we're in, that are accretive to our IRM strategy and incrementally add to that and then share repurchase would be at the bottom of that list.

Maybe just one to close out. You showed on the slides, where the efficiency and the returns for the organization of the efficiency higher than you would have thought returns sort of in the right ZIP code. Again, you talked about low 50s efficiency and low 20s returns. Do you still see a path towards getting to those types of levels?

I think the path rather than sort of the absolute numbers is ought to be where should we be in a tier of leading. And in both of those, we're leading. And I think we continue to be leading in those, but with growth. And I mean that's sort of -- I think the highest correlation to return is not do we have the lowest efficiency ratio. And I think we have a model that allows us to have an industry leading efficiency ratio, but can we grow our franchise. And can we grow our franchise that represents the growth and opportunity that exists in that and that's where the focus is going to be.

Great. Well, unfortunately, we're out of time. So please join me in thanking Bill.

Thank you.