Fifth Third Bancorp Barclays 24th Annual Global Financial Services Conference

Yeah. Thanks, Jason. Quarter's coming together nicely. We're quite pleased with the progress we're seeing out of the company right now. The slide, if you look at it's the same guidance that we provided back at earnings. But we're actually coming in now at the upper end of our NII guide, the upper end of our fee guide, and the lower end of our expense guide, and right in the middle from a charge-off perspective. So we feel really good about what we're seeing from the performance of the company perspective. Loans are coming in as expected, and we've seen quite a strong quarter from a deposit growth perspective as well. So the trajectory of the business and the expectations that we're expecting to get out of Comerica both from a revenue growth and an expense synergy perspective are coming in right as expected.

So we're set up quite well for the fourth quarter delivering on the deal model in terms of 19% plus ROTCE being in a position to deliver a run rate 53% efficiency ratio as we head into 2027. So the trajectory is in really good shape.

Yeah, line utilization's actually been steady this quarter. We've not seen really much volatility there. From an activity perspective, gross pipelines are very, very strong right now. I would tell you the rate environment and some of the recent volatility is certainly causing some customers to pause a little bit. But for the most part, we're seeing activity continue to come through. It's in line with what we've said from a loan growth perspective. I think a lot of customers, the feedback they'll tell you is that they just can't wait any longer. Yes, they would like to have a little bit more productive interest rate environment, but the reality is it's time to go. They have to do some investment.

I think on the margin with the higher rates, some of the M&A activity could slow down a little bit from a financing perspective, but that's not really been the core of our business. We're primarily a working capital lender. We've seen commitment growth. We've seen line utilization stability. So we think that activity is going to continue to go.

I guess I'll start with not burying the lead, which is that it was a very successful conversion. We were able to complete all of the core system migration from Comerica, including all of the employee infrastructure as well. All of their employees are now inside the Fifth Third umbrella. The next steps on the conversion would be the wealth conversion is scheduled for Halloween. You like to do those on a month-end that is not a fiscal quarter end. The HR systems conversion will be January 1st because you do not want to reset people's FICO in the process. That went very well. Our goal heading into this was deliver a perfect conversion for every customer. That might be an unattainable goal. In my 27 years, we have done nine bank conversions.

I think this conversion was as close to perfect as I have seen at Fifth Third. There are always a few wrinkles and a few hiccups in terms of surprises. We had a lightning strike on a Fifth Third branch that burned circuitry, so that branch was closed. Those customers had to go to the nearest Comerica branch, and obviously that makes for a very busy day inside that branch. If you look back how this conversion unfolded, if you look at how Old Kent was, it was a multi-geographic play with rolling conversions over 3 months. Then you look at our last conversion with MB, where it was a little more straightforward with a single city, predominantly a commercial bank, 90 branches. Then you look at Comerica, it is the most complicated conversion we have had and the largest transaction in the company's history.

It was a little bit of both in terms of how we went about doing it. We pre-converted as much as possible. Everything from swap dealer conversion on legal day one, capital markets over the summer, syndicated loans over the summer, TM preview period, all of the ATMs, all of that was done ahead of Labor Day. Labor Day was a very busy and successful week. Coming out of it now, all of these customers, and we can watch login activity has been great.

The activity we are seeing with the customers Playing around in Jeanie and with some of the other tools that we have, it is very encouraging, and I think ultimately will do a great job of driving primacy.

I think the best data point, besides my being here today, in terms of how well the conversion went was, if you look at MB, it was May 6, 2019, and we had a five business day week, and we were a much smaller company then. You look at Friday of last week versus the Friday of the last week of MB. With Comerica, there were 352 branches. We had to consolidate roughly 60 of those, so we turned on 293 Comerica branches. We have a bigger branch network. We have obviously had all of the growth at Fifth Third from a household perspective since MB through Comerica.

And one of the big changes we made in order to cover the West Coast is we have extended call center hours, so 3 extra hours per day. So bigger customer base, longer window for somebody to call. And on Friday of last week versus the Friday of the first week of MB, we had 15% fewer inbound phone calls.