Citizens Financial Group, Inc. Barclays 24th Annual Global Financial Services Conference

Yeah. I think we're positioned very well for the future.

It's been kind of a long transformation journey to get here. When I look at the strategy we have, we've tried to simplify the story and really talk about a triangle of businesses. That would be the consumer bank, the commercial bank, and Citizens Private Bank and wealth. I think we have really strong positioning in each three. Lots of things to focus on to both grow households, grow customer base, grow the balance sheet, grow our fee penetration. When I look at starting with the consumer bank, we're very strong in mass affluent and affluent households, and have had a lot of growth in low-cost deposits. The acquisitions that we've put together in New York to compete in this marketplace have gone exceptionally well, and I think it's our fastest-growing region in terms of households and deposits.

There's a lot more that we can do to get further growth. We're number one originator in HELOCs in the country. That's a lead product to bring people into the bank, especially mass affluent households. So feel very positive about that. We're investing in our digital and our data capabilities to keep upping the game in terms of customer experience. Lastly, I'd say we've started to tap into the great opportunity to cross-sell the wealth products and services. So see that as something that will continue to drive deeper penetration into households and our wealth fee revenue. In the commercial bank, I'd like to immodestly say I think we're the best-positioned super-regional commercial bank when it comes to, in particular, capital markets capabilities. As the markets heat up and there's more deal activity, I think you see our revenues are flexing up.

It's a proof point as to what we have. We're going to show, I think, faster revenue growth than most of our peers, given the investments that we've made over the years. We've also made a lot of investments in the payment space, and I think there's some great opportunities there. Embedded finance is one that we're focused on. So feel good about commercial. Clearly, Citizens Private Bank and wealth with what we did to start up the private bank by bringing over a lot of very talented bankers from First Republic after it failed, and scaled that up and have roughly $18 billion in deposits and $10 or $11 billion in loans and client assets. It's now 12% of the bottom line and got a 25% ROE, and it's growing in a controlled but very strong fashion.

That has kind of no roadblocks to continue to grow at a meaningful clip. Beyond just the businesses, Reimagine the Bank which I'm sure you'll ask me some questions about, so I won't steal your thunder on that. I think the deployment of new technologies, AI, agentic AI, rethinking how we serve customers, all the functions that we do at the bank, that's going exceptionally well. I think the fact that we know how to put these things in a program to deliver results is differentiating. Feel good about that. Lastly, I think One Citizens, we have a culture of working well in a collaborative fashion across the enterprise. Having the private bank with the commercial bank working together to bank successful people across their business needs, their personal needs, their family needs for both banking and wealth products is pretty differentiating.

A lot of the folks we compete against, they either don't have that full product set or they don't have that culture, or they operate too much in silos. I think that can really stand out and be differentiated for us as well.

Yeah. I think the economic backdrop has been relatively good. The GDP growth for the year, I think will be at least 2%. I think we could end up ticking up a little bit. When I look out the next four or five quarters, I think we could be at 2.5%. Some of that depends on geopolitical and other events. But if you look, the economy's growing. Unemployment is holding in in the low 4s. Inflation is being affected by the war and energy prices and tariffs. But those things get absorbed, and I think ultimately we should be able to bring that inflation down, particularly if we can have a resolution to the Iran situation. But I feel there's a lot of pent-up demand around the capital markets. They're open. Spreads remain relatively tight.

We've got huge pipelines, and companies generally, our corporate customers are all having good years. They're kind of sticking to their game plans. It's a little more throttled and conservative than if we were completely without some of this uncertainty. But they are playing offense. They are investing. They are borrowing money. I think on the consumer side, clearly high-end folks are doing extremely well. They're just getting the benefit of a really high value stock market and home values holding in really nicely. But even as you go down into the lower spectrum, folks are managing okay. I think they've become adaptable and resilient, and kind of make trade-offs in how they're spending their money. But we don't see a lot of stress. We don't see delinquency roll rates ticking up or anything like that.