Citizens Financial at Barclays Conference: Strategic Growth and AI Focus

On Monday, 08 September 2025, Citizens Financial Group (NYSE:CFG) presented at the Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference. Chairman and CEO Bruce Van Saun outlined the company’s strategic initiatives, highlighting significant investments across its banking divisions. While the company remains optimistic about achieving its financial targets, challenges in the office sector were noted. The integration of AI into operations was a key focus, promising enhanced customer experiences and efficiency.

Key Takeaways

- Citizens Financial aims for a medium-term ROTCE target of 16% to 18%.

- The "Reimagine the Bank" initiative leverages AI for improved customer service.

- Private banking, acquired from First Republic, is exceeding expectations.

- The company plans to reduce non-core assets significantly by year-end.

- Focus on disciplined expense management and strategic capital allocation.

Financial Results

- ROTCE Targets: Current Q2 ROTCE stands at 11%, with potential improvements of 4% from time-based benefits and 2% to 3% from strategic initiatives.

- NII and NIM: Aiming for a NIM of 3.25% to 3.50% by 2027.

- Expense Management: Targeting a 4% expense growth this year, decreasing to 3% next year due to private bank expansion.

- Capital Allocation: Q3 share repurchase reduced to $75 million from $200 million in Q2. Non-core assets expected to decrease to $2.5 billion by year-end.

Operational Updates

- Strategic Pillars: Focus on a strong consumer bank, a scaled-up commercial bank, and a high-end wealth business.

- Private Bank: Surpassing targets in deposits, loans, and AUM, with a positive cultural fit.

- Commercial Bank: Expansion in New York Metro, Florida, and California, with a focus on non-bank financial institutions.

- Digital Transformation: "Reimagine the Bank" initiative using AI to enhance operations and customer service.

Future Outlook

- Loan and Deposit Growth: Continued growth expected across all segments, driven by private bank expansion.

- NII and NIM: Anticipated growth in NII with NIM expansion.

- Credit Quality: Positive outlook, with expected decrease in CRE charge-offs.

- Capital Allocation: Emphasis on organic loan growth and potential dividend increase.

Q&A Highlights

- Client Sentiment: Corporate clients remain adaptable but cautious amid uncertainty.

- Non-Core Assets: Aiming to decrease to $2.5 billion by year-end.

- M&A Activity: Anticipating activity mainly among smaller banks, with a focus on organic growth.

For more detailed insights, please refer to the full conference call transcript.

Full transcript - Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference:

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Very pleased to have Citizens Financial Group with us. From the company, we have Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO. Bruce has been a very long supporter of this conference, CFO of Bank of New York Mellon, CFO of Royal Bank of Scotland, and for many, many years, Citizens Financial Group, where he’s Chairman and CEO. Bruce, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Always a pleasure.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Maybe the best place to start is I remember back, this is many years ago, when Royal Bank of Scotland was about to spin out Citizens Financial Group, and we had breakfast at the Barclays headquarter building. It’s amazing the progress you have undertaken to transform the franchise and to where it is today. Just maybe update us in terms of how you’re feeling about the current positioning.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Sure. It’s been quite a journey, and it’s a transformation that few have been able to successfully achieve. We feel good about the fact that we put the foundation in place and built a great team and worked on a vision for how Citizens could be distinctive and really focus on areas where we have a right to win. Today, our strategy, I like to describe as a tripod, that we have a very strong consumer bank, and we’ve spent many, many years moving from transaction-based bank to advice-based, moving to digital and investing in data, and then actually trying to move more upmarket to go after mass affluent and affluent customers and transform the value proposition we offer. I think what we started with was more rate-led collection of thrifts and savings banks, and over time, we now have a very strong performing consumer bank.

Ultimately, that’s the kind of lifeblood of a bank, to have low-cost, attractive deposits that you can grow on a consistent basis. I think we’ve achieved that. We did make an investment in the New York Metro region. You can see around town here our branches. I think that was always something we had a gleam in our eye to find a way in, because if you’re going to be a strong northeastern-based bank, you have to figure out how to get into New York City. Buying HSBC’s East Coast branches and Investors Bank, having roughly 200 branches in this region, and then bringing our style of banking into an already highly competitive market, that’s gone extremely well. Right now, that’s our fastest growing region, mid-single-digit household growth, high single-digit deposit growth last year. The consumer bank is poised. There’s still a very significant wealth cross-sell.

We’re not fully penetrated yet. There’s some big upside if we can keep making progress there. The second element of the strategy really was to scale up and expand the capabilities of our commercial bank. I think we feel really good about that. We’ve covered middle-market companies. We cover mid-corporate companies. We moved more upmarket. Mid-corporate companies need more industry expertise. We had to bring in new coverage bankers. We brought in corporate finance types and merger and acquisition specialists to really go after some of these attractive industry verticals. We saw the opportunity early on to really dig in and cover sponsors, because they were eventually going to own more and more of middle-market America. As they’ve broadened out and become private capital, they have private credit. They have other asset management activities. We’ve been growing with them to help them be successful.

We now cover the full product gamut, and we have an attractive coverage profile. What you haven’t seen really over the last three years since we’ve been in a lull in capital markets activity is the full power of what we’ve assembled. I think that’s starting to change now that conditions are improving. I think you’re going to see the capital markets revenues really expand and start to demonstrate that we’ve built a great business. The third aspect is really trying to figure out how to get into the high-end wealth business beyond just the branches. We had made an acquisition several years ago, Clarfeld, up in Tarrytown, New York. That was a really good franchise, but not really at scale, the scale that we desired. We made the play for First Republic.

We didn’t get it, but a lot of the talent decided that this would be a good place for them to come over to Citizens, and they could build a First Republic 2.0 with even kind of, I think, more sophistication, broader product set, et cetera. Couldn’t be more pleased how that’s going. We’re hitting and exceeding all of our markers in terms of deposits, loans, AUM. The cultural fit’s been great. We’re working really hard to get service levels to the level that First Republic was at. Very excited about the potential for that business and the impact that it can have kind of on our overall valuation.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: That’s helpful. We’re going to put up the first ARS question. We’ve been asking these in all the rooms. Bruce, while they do that, maybe we’ll start big picture, and then delve into a lot of what you talked about. You talked to the 16% to 18% ROTCE in the medium term. You just highlight a lot of different strategies that could potentially maybe get us there. You’re only 11% in the second quarter. Maybe just help us bridge that gap. If you can offer kind of any thoughts on when you think you can get back to that level.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Sure. You know, I’d say we’re under-earning really the potential of the franchise now. We do have the legacy swap portfolio. We have kind of the drag from the non-core that we’re running off as aggressively as we can. If you look at kind of what we refer to as time-based benefits, there’s probably 4% there over time. We don’t really have to work for it. It’s kind of the cake is baked on that. That gets you up closer to 15%. The initiatives that we have, private bank going from startup to being significantly profitable, making 20% to 25% return on equity, which it will do this year, by the way, will continue to scale and continue to sustain that level of return. Plus, the commercial bank investments keep coming in with more activity.

What we’ve invested in in the payments business, I think there’s easily another 2% to 3% ROTCE improvement from the initiatives, I would say. We’re still over-providing on credit, given some of the CRE office book that we’ve been working through. Ultimately, if we’re kind of slightly below 50 basis points charge-off ratio, I think through the cycle number, as we continue to refocus on kind of safer lending areas, should be 30% to 35%. There’s a tailwind, I think, coming from credit as we work through the CRE. I’d say one of the offsets is you’re benefiting from the drag in AOCI, which is compressing your equity. That moves a little bit the other way, although you’ll be repurchasing shares. We show a walk in our earnings material that lays all that out. I feel very confident in our ability to deliver that.

I think, you know, I don’t think the market necessarily is fully bought into the out years, 2026, 2027, because it is a lot of growth. If you attribute a lot of that to NII and NIM, then it’s not a big leap to execute the rest of it.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. Maybe just pull up for a moment and just talk to kind of what you’re hearing from clients on the commercial side, and just how is client sentiment, just given the tariffs and all the stuff we keep on reading about?

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: I’d say on the corporate side, our clients are in very good positions. One thing that companies got good at over the last, call it five years, has been to become adaptable and resilient. Getting through COVID, the high inflation, the tariffs, I think businesses have become good at doing different scenario planning and making sure they have alternative ways to run their business in terms of supply chains and things like that. I’d say most of our companies are having very strong years, good cash flow, but they’re not fully leaning forward. That’s the thing, that there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty. The way the tariffs have rolled out, the way they change on a fairly regular basis, I think has people just holding their position and not fully leaning in yet.

Although I think there’s less uncertainty now than there was at the beginning of the year, the Liberation Day. Worst-case outcomes were quite anxiety-producing. I think we’ll probably not see the worst-case outcomes. We have the tax bill, which has a lot of incentive for people to get off the sidelines and start investing. You have regulatory appointments. Folks are being confirmed. There’s a big deregulatory agenda, too, that’s very positive. Now it’s likely the Fed is going to start cutting here this month. There’s a number of tailwinds, both on the fiscal side. I think what we did last year is we started running ahead. We’re very disciplined, as you know. If we put targets out there, we want to hit them. We said that we’d be break-even in the second half of last year. We had that kind of in the bag.

We said, what market do we want to go to next to make some investments? We decided Southern Cal was where we needed to be. We had very big presence in Northern Cal. What happens when you hire private banking teams is there’s a J curve. All the cost comes day one, and then eventually the customers migrate over, and they start to build their book. We thought we had enough room to actually make that step and expand in that important market. I would say, again, we’re running at a very good clip this year. You could see us start to think about similar things. Should we densify some of the markets that we’re in? One of the markets that’s interesting to us is Florida. We’re in Palm Beach.

I have been advised that West Palm Beach is a completely different market, even though I can look from our office and see the building they want to be in in West Palm. Anyway, First Republic had very good presence in particular Southeast Florida, from Jupiter down to Fort Lauderdale. We have our eye on certain things. We will just continue to calibrate that to scale it up, but maintain the discipline around profitability and returns. We are also hiring a number of wealth teams, liftouts of folks that are on either broker platforms or RIA platforms. We have now got eight teams that have come on board.

The big draw for these teams is the caliber of the private bankers and the ability to get referrals from us, and then also the ability to use the balance sheet to solve client needs, which they cannot get many times if they are on other platforms or pure RIA platforms without access to balance sheets. We have a lot of inbounds of folks who would like to get on our platform. I think we can be selective. We are trying to bring those private wealth teams in close proximity to the private banking teams so we can do joint calling and actually really dominate those markets. Those are a little different, because when those teams come over, they are usually in the broker protocol, and they can bring their clients day one. The kind of payback on that is quicker than on a full-scale private banking team.

I would say, you know, where do we go with this? I think we will easily do the 5% this year. If you play this out on the trajectory that we are on, I could see us in the not-too-distant future getting to a double-digit contribution.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Nice. Maybe we’ll put up the next ARS question. It is on your recently announced Reimagine the Bank initiative. I recall back in 2019, at this very conference, you announced your transformational Top Six program. I think that was $300 million to $325 million in pre-tax benefits. Maybe you can indulge us again in just more details on this Reimagine the Bank initiative. You kind of hinted at it on the July earnings call. It sounds like it’s a multi-year transformational Top program. You kind of hinted at some AI bent to it. Just, you know, talk about maybe some of the investments needed for the program and just how this plays into the 16% to 18% ROE efficiency objective we talked about.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: I’m extremely excited about this. I don’t think you can do kind of a major transformational type top program every year. The top programs that we’ve had through Top 10 have mostly been more tactical, finding ways to run the bank a little better or deploy some new technology, grow certain customer revenue streams. They haven’t been a huge lift in terms of re-architecting technology or databases or things like that and kind of going to really dramatic change in terms of the technology capabilities that we have. I think with generative AI and agentic AI, there’s fresh ways to think about how the bank operates. Can you have, for example, in agentic AI, human and bot teams? Like our contact centers have human and offshore call center teams.

Can you replace your offshore call centers over time and just have bots and have your well-trained agents here in the U.S. handle the more sophisticated questions? Obviously, you want to start at the source and try to take out as many questions as you can. The focus is on improving customer experience and re-architecting journeys and offering more self-service. The kind of nomenclature Reimagine the Bank was to try to get the people inside the company to not just do things incrementally, but step back and say, what would we like the future to be in three years or five years? Then kind of paint that vision and work backwards and say, this is what we need to do in order to make that vision become reality. As you know, we’re very financially disciplined.

I think there might be some murmuring out there, gosh, is this going to require huge investments? Are the expenses going to lead the PP&R benefits from this program? I would say we’re architecting it in such a way that that would not be the case, that we will pull benefits in. Some of it may be a little more tactical, because we still have tactical things we can do in order to be able to self-fund some of the initial investments that really deliver a very strong payback when you look out two years, three years down the road. To me, this is from a financial sense, it’s more icing on the cake. We can get to the 16% to 18%, and we will.

If we can really have big impact from Reimagine the Bank, I think that can kind of be a game changer in terms of taking those numbers even higher.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. I guess Brendan Coughlin is leading this initiative, but you hired a new CFO recently, who I know pretty well, both from State Street, where he was the Chief Transformation Officer at Barclays. He co-led our Investment Banking Simplification Initiative. Just how does that impact that program?

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. This fellow, Anoi Banjari, who’s our new CFO starting October 24, that was one of the appeals. We had huge interest in the position. I think what stood out was the depth of transformation experience he had in addition to ticking the boxes on all the financial stuff. We have a mini exco that works with Brendan to drive the program. When Anoi gets here, he’ll be on that team that kind of oversees the program. I look forward to getting his insights into some of the things that he’s done at previous pit stops.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. Now we’re at the halfway mark, so you know it’s coming. Guidance. We’re going to go through it in detail, but maybe big picture.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: You know what my answer’s going to be.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: I got to try. You have 3Q guidance out there, full-year 2025 guidance out there. I know there’s always some puts and takes. Maybe any kind of update you want to provide?

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. No, I feel really good about how we’re tracking, you know, both for the quarter and for the full year and the trajectory that we have going into 2026. If you look at the sequential quarter earnings jumps from kind of Q1 to Q2, what’s in for Q2 to Q3, and then Q3 to Q4, that’s kind of bringing our profitability back to levels that it’s really nice to see. I think with the NII lift really driving that and fees being very robust and conditions particularly favoring capital markets and wealth, I think we’re in a very good position on the revenue side of the equation. You can count on us always to do a really good job on expenses. I think credit is behaving as expected, so relatively benign.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Maybe you can kind of run through some of the key drivers, starting with loan growth. You were talking kind of low single-digit loan growth at the start of the year. Maybe talk about what areas of the portfolio you’re most optimistic about and give us some more flavor.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah, I’d say one thing that we have going for us at Citizens is this build-up of the private bank. As the bankers bring their backbook customers over or attract new customers, that’s really idiosyncratic to us, that we can grow deposits and grow loans that really isn’t market-reliant. It’s just taking market share. That to me is a foundation block for the projections around spot loan growth and spot deposit growth that’ll lead the way really in the second half of the year. The nice thing in the second quarter was that we actually saw consumer have net loan growth and commercial have net loan growth in addition to the private bank.

Some of that activity that we’ve had to kind of optimize the balance sheet in terms of in commercial, we’ve been kind of running off low-yield single product relationship where we thought we’d get more cross-sell and we didn’t, or we’re running down commercial real estate from the wake of the Investors Bank acquisition is let’s bring ourselves back to scale in commercial real estate. We actually now are seeing that we can grow, notwithstanding the continued drag from some of that cleansing. The good news is I think that is starting to subside. The growth is kicking in. A lot of the growth is around non-bank or non-depository financial institutions, so subscription lines, securitization lines. Line utilization is going up. We already have the lines out there. That’s been helpful.

We’re seeing a little bit of line utilization benefit on the corporate side and some of the new business wins that we’ve been able to pick up in the middle market. We’ve expanded teams into the New York Metro region, into Florida and California, and that’s starting to pick up the growth a little bit on the corporate side. In consumer, you know, steady as she goes, but we have a nice HELOC business and product offering, and our mortgage business is solid. Those have been growing at a decent clip. We have some aspirations that our card business could grow. We just launched five segmented cards last quarter, and we’re seeing a nice tick-up on that.

As the non-core division, which really was consumer loans, kind of starts to wane, it’s kind of dropping off, then you’ll see less drag from that non-core runoff, and you’ll see the consumer loan growth eclipsing that as well. Top of the house, I think we should continue to see some growth across all three as we look out in future quarters.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: At what point do you think we stop talking about non-core?

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: At the end of this year, we should be down to about $2.5 billion from $14 billion, by the way. That’s quite a lot of progress in a relatively short period of time. That should be about $1 billion by the end of 2026. Whether we continue to report it at the end of next year or just fold it and collapse it in, we can make that call later next year.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. Maybe turning to deposits, maybe just talk about the competitive environment for both consumer and commercial deposits, level, mix, pricing, what you’re seeing.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: It’s always competitive out there on deposits. I’d say, again, the private bank has nice growth as they expand their book of business. That’s been good to see. I think our targeting, the way we manage deposit pricing and the offers that we make to attract deposits in consumer, I would put right up there with anybody. I think we’re quite good at that. These are manageable pressures. They’ve always been there. I think we can achieve our spot loan and growth and deposit growth objectives and keep our kind of LDR relatively stable in the high 70s.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. Maybe throw up the next ARS question. It is on NIM. Bruce, I guess, rate expectations, you mentioned the Fed potentially cutting next week. Maybe just update us in terms of how you’re positioned from an asset-liability perspective. You talked to this 3.25 or 3.50 NIM for 2027. Just maybe some of the drivers, the kind of low-end versus high-end, and where you think you fall out.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Getting into that range on the back of time-based benefits, it’s not a Herculean effort to see the NIM continue to go kind of consistently higher. We have that working for us. I think we still have the active swap portfolio providing some benefit, and then we have frontbook, backbook dynamics providing some benefit. I think the ability to achieve that 3.25% to 3.50% is, you know, I’d say pretty assured. There’s always external factors there, but we feel confident in our ability to get there. We have hedged the path for forward rates that kind of locks in that low end of the cone, 3.25% to 3.50%, provided the Fed rates stay 2.75% or higher. We’ll continually re-evaluate. We’re hedged through 2026 and halfway through 2027, and we’re hedging out in 2027, 2028, and 2029. We have a buy box and a discipline about how we do that.

That feels good. The things away from just where rates move would be our own trajectory on deposit growth and the mix between non-interest bearing and interest bearing. There’s some execution around how deposits grow, what is loan growth, et cetera, that can impact that NIM trajectory. I think we’ve proven that we’re pretty good at managing that. I’d say our beta performance this cycle in the upcycle, we were number 4 of 10 in our super regional peer group. I think we’ve transformed that deposit base, and we’re quite good at how we price and manage balances.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: I guess as we start to think about 2026, 2027, just how you’re thinking about the trajectory of NII.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. I think NII is going to grow nicely, you know, based on the NIM kind of continued ascension and expansion. I think the economy will be strong enough that the areas that I described around loan growth and then less drag from kind of runoff and balance sheet optimization should facilitate attractive NII growth. I think we haven’t been in a strong fee backdrop environment for some time. We’re starting to see that this year. I think that potentially could extend well into 2026 and 2027. Businesses like capital markets and wealth and some of the investments we’re making in payments can actually continue to sustain a relatively good level of growth in our fee businesses.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. Capital markets and payments have been good, I guess, fee drivers. Mortgage is an area we haven’t really talked a lot about. Rates have seemed to be coming down, you know, more recently. Just maybe update us in terms of what you’re seeing there.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. We don’t have the same scale of business as we did when we crushed it after we bought Franklin, and we were still in the wholesale business. I think we got fee revenues up to $900 million only to revert back to $300 million two years later. I think we’re targeting the use of our balance sheet. A lot of these mortgage producers stay on bank platforms because they want to do non-conforming business. We’re making sure that those producers are linked in to serving bank customers or bringing new customers to the bank who are going to be full wallet customers. I think we’ve ring-fenced the business a little bit to be more strategic and less just being in the mortgage business for being in the mortgage business and going after scale. I’d say that’s not a business that I’m counting on to see significant growth.

I’d rather just keep my bets on capital markets and keep it on wealth and payments.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: On the expense side, you were talking about 4% expense growth this year, maybe closer to 3% next year due to private bank build-out. Talk to how you’re approaching the 2026 budgeting process, where you see the efficiency ratio going over time. I think you mentioned positive operating leverage earlier, just your thoughts around that.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: I think when you have an opportunity in front of you, like we do with the private bank, we can’t artificially constrain the level of expense investment and then miss the opportunity, because there’s a void where First Republic was operating, and we want to get there and grab that. Adding a 1.5% expense growth rate on top of 2.5% to get to 4% like we did this year is, I think, very prudent. You’ll see the revenue benefit that comes from that. You’re already seeing it. I think when we look at next year, the lift on revenues is going to continue to be very significant, driven by NII and continued good fee performance. That gives us the wherewithal to keep investing and keep that flywheel going. We’re going to be just as disciplined as always on expenses.

We’ve got Reimagine the Bank teed up to continue to get more efficient. You can make purposeful investments that actually drive the positioning of a very important business and drive future PP&R. That’s how we think about it.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Maybe on credit quality, you mentioned the office portfolio earlier. Could you update us in terms of what you’re seeing there and any other portfolios you’re keeping an eye on, any other sectors of note, particularly against this evolving background?

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. Look, we’ve passed the halfway mark. I don’t know if we’re already at the seventh inning stretch on office, but it feels like it’s been a slog. Maybe we need to shorten the pitch clock on this thing. The game’s been going for a while. We’re working through. We’re not seeing any surprises, and we’re not seeing any new flow. We haven’t for over a year of new credits coming in to be worked out. This is really just a passage of time. I think, you know, this year the quarterly charge-off rate on CRE is lower than last year. Next year, it’ll be kind of lower again. That’s one that, you know, I wish we didn’t have it, but I feel it’s contained, and it’s going away, which is really good. Outside of that, you look at C&I.

C&I is clean, and consumer’s clean in terms of our delinquency trends and NPA trends, et cetera. Feel quite positive about credit. No real flash points that we’re greatly worried about.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. Maybe put up the next ARS question. You know, C2 on ex-AOCI was like 9.1% in the second quarter. You talked about share repurchase of $75 million for the third quarter, down from $200 million in the second. Maybe just talk to how you think about capital return, you know, given your comments on loan growth. You also haven’t raised a dividend in like 10 quarters. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. Our kind of first priority has been to back organic growth and loan growth. With the past couple of years, with running off the non-core book and commercial real estate running that down a bit, we had plenty of capital. We were still making decent profits, and we were freeing up capital. We bought back a lot of stock, especially last year. I look back on that. What’s interesting is a lot of banks or companies in general will buy their stock when times are good and the stock price is high. We bought a lot of stock when the stock price was low, which is smart. Now that we’re seeing loan growth pick back up, you shouldn’t be surprised the first half loan growth was a bit subdued. We bought back more stock. Now loan growth is picking up. We’ll buy back less stock.

In any case, I think that’s a good discipline to be regularly in the market buying your stock. You can gauge it based on the need for capital to support loan growth and also where your stock is trading. On the dividend, I would say stay tuned. I mean, we’re aware that investors like to see consistent dividend increases. All banks saw their profitability drop after the Fed raised rates and impact on NII, and profitability is being restored. We’re pretty close to where we’d like to be in terms of payout ratio to take a step there.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Got it. You know, bank consolidation has certainly been a recurring theme we get asked about a lot. You mentioned HSBC and Investors earlier as being additive. JNP has been additive in the capital market space. You’ve proven to be a good acquirer. You mentioned Franklin earlier in the mortgage space. You’ve proven to be a good acquirer. Just how are you thinking about consolidation in general?

Bruce Van Saun, Chairman and CEO, Citizens Financial Group: Yeah. Not surprisingly, you’re seeing some deals start to pop, even a couple of banks in our peer group doing relatively modest size transactions. I think there’s a lot of pressure at the smaller end, community banks and smaller regionals, just in terms of keeping up with all the things going on in technology and security and digitization and regulation, frankly. There really wasn’t a market to consolidate in under the Biden administration. There was a lot of sand in the gears of doing deals. I think you’ll see some of that pent-up need or desire start to loosen, and people see a window here. You should expect to see a decent amount of M&A activity in the bank space. I think most of it will be at the smaller end. I’m not sure there’s a meaningful amount of sellers at the higher end.

That may be why you see a Huntington or a PNC dipping down sub $30 billion to get a deal done. Maybe if you were hoping to do something at $100 billion, you buy three at $30 billion. They’re more manageable if they’re smaller and less complex to integrate. From our standpoint, I think we did a really good job on HSBC and Investors Bank. I have confidence in my team’s ability to execute if we see something. Right now, we have so much organic growth, and the private bank is so important to us getting that right and capturing that opportunity that it would be a pretty high bar to go do something. I think we want to avoid being distracted. That’s where I think about it today.

Conference Host, Citizens Financial Group: Clear enough. On that note, please join me in thanking Bruce for his time today.

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