M&T Bank at Morgan Stanley Conference: Strategic Insights on Growth

On Wednesday, June 11, 2025, M&T Bank (NYSE:MTB) presented at the Morgan Stanley US Financials Conference 2025, offering insights into its current performance and future strategies. CFO Daryl Bible shared an optimistic outlook, highlighting improvements in customer sentiment and deposit growth, while acknowledging challenges in loan growth and competition.

Key Takeaways

• M&T anticipates stronger loan growth in the latter half of 2025, particularly in consumer and commercial sectors.
• The bank is maintaining a strong capital position, targeting a CET1 ratio of 11% and continuing share repurchases.
• Positive developments are noted in the criticized loan portfolio, with upgrades outnumbering downgrades.
• Fee income is accelerating, driven by corporate trust, loan agency business, and European expansion.
• Strategic investments focus on technology and business line enhancements.

Financial Results

• Net interest income (NII) and net interest margins (NIM) are performing as expected, aligning with guidance.
• Deposits have rebounded in Q2, showing growth across various segments.
• Fee income is on the rise, supported by strong performance in corporate trust and loan agency businesses.

Operational Updates

• M&T is focusing on organic growth within its existing footprint, emphasizing community banking and technology investments.
• The consumer portfolio is expanding, with significant growth in indirect auto, RV, and marine lending.
• Competition remains intense in commercial and real estate lending, with tight spreads in the CRE space.

Future Outlook

• M&T is optimistic about maintaining a strong capital position and delivering shareholder value.
• The bank is open to M&A opportunities in the fee business space but remains focused on organic growth.
• Stress tests are being utilized to validate derisking efforts and improve market perception.

Q&A Highlights

• CFO Daryl Bible emphasized M&T’s role as a regional champion, committed to serving its communities.
• The bank is confident in its ability to compete on pricing while maintaining sound structural practices.
• Support was expressed for regulatory priorities that balance supervision with industry support.

In conclusion, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a more detailed understanding of M&T Bank’s strategic direction and financial performance.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley US Financials Conference 2025:

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Good morning, and welcome to day two of the sixteenth Annual Morgan Stanley US Financial Conference. I’m Manan Ghisalia, the mid cap banks analyst. We have M and T kicking off for us. I’ll get our usual disclosure out of the way, which is for important disclosures.

Please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. The taking of photographs and use of recording devices is not allowed. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. And with that, we’re delighted to have with us today Daryl Bible, CFO of M and T. Daryl, welcome back.

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Thanks, Manon. Thank you for having M and T here. And thank everybody in the audience for being bright and early and here to hear about M and T.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: That’s great. We have a lot to look forward to. Dow, maybe let’s start with the environment. There’s significant focus on tariffs. We’ve had some time to digest the announcements.

We’ve had some positive headlines. Can you talk about what you’re hearing from your customer base? Are borrowers still on pause? Or are things picking up a little bit?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yes. I think the way I would kind of frame it up, when the tariffs came out during liberation day or whatever and the shock that was in the system, That seems to have baited and a lot has changed. So I think sentiment is moving much more positive from that. I think our customers are eager to make investments in their businesses, make acquisitions and do all that. I just don’t see a lot of it happening this quarter.

I think it seems maybe potentially building as the year plays out. But we’ve got some positives coming potentially with a new tax bill coming maybe later in the next month or two. And that would be real positive. And it seems like they’re making a lot of good progress on a lot of the tariffs. I think we’re hopeful for a really strong second half of twenty twenty five for us and the industry.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: So it sounds like things are going the right way for loan growth, and we’ll dig in a little bit more there. But from a credit perspective, is there anything you’re specifically watching? I know you flagged industries like retail, trade, manufacturing, construction. Is there anything you’re seeing there?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yes. So we follow about a group of 700 customers that are in those categories. And in that grouping, you’d expect you have a mixed bag there overall, and that’s what you have. You have some that are we’ve probably downgraded less than 10 to really lower levels, maybe three have actually went into criticized from that perspective. But we’ve also upgraded some credits.

And I firmly believe that as time goes on, our customers, U. S. Business people will continue to adapt and make adjustments. The ones that I think we’re seeing are successful are the ones that were successful during COVID. They were able to adjust supply lines and adjust their businesses.

And I think those are the same folks that are taking that same positive mindset and making it happen for their companies now.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Are there any specific industries that you’re talking about or is it more broad based?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah, I think it’s just broad based and I think it’s what they can control and how they want to deliver and just having that positive mindset, they will figure it out and overcome. It’s kind of The US way of doing things.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: All right, perfect. So before digging into some of these other topics that we had on the list, you released a slide deck last evening with some details on the guide quarter to date. Can you talk about some of the drivers for us?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah, so we really didn’t change any guidance for the year. And if you look at the second quarter, I think we’re very comfortable with where consensus is coming in. So we feel that is in the ballpark of what you expect out of us with one month to go from that perspective. I think overall NII is coming in as expected, margins coming in as expected within our guide. Even with modest loan growth, think we’re still delivering from that.

Deposits continue to be positive for us, growing that. Fees continue to be a strong accelerator for us. It’s growing nicely. And then expenses continue to be in check. And from a credit perspective, net net overall, we’re at a point now where we get a lot of financial statements from our corporate borrowers from year end, and we really review most of that in the second quarter rather than the first quarter.

And we’re seeing many more upgrades and downgrades in there, which is also a positive sign for us.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Lots to dig into. On the loan growth side, I know you call that positives in the consumer portfolio. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah. If you look in the consumer portfolio, and foremost, our strategy for the last several years is really to deemphasize CRE and become more diversified. And we’re doing that by trying to grow C and I and consumer such that right now CRE is about 19% of the balance sheet. But from a consumer perspective, we’ve seen tremendous growth in the indirect space, both in auto, RV and marine. We had, I think, our largest month ever in the last month or two, which has really been positive.

So consumer side, things are growing well. Even our home equity portfolio is growing, which is really positive. That hasn’t really grown in the last several years and that’s growing in the marketplace. So I think retail consumer seems to be very healthy and seems to be moving forward from that perspective. We’re also growing our residential mortgage portfolio, balance sheet and more mortgages and you’ll see some growth out of that portfolio this quarter.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: So it sounds like that’s not being impacted too much by the fact that the ten year is up a lot?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: No, I mean, from a ten year perspective, it impacts more in the mortgage area, the refinancing. And we aren’t seeing a lot of refinancing, probably not a lot of new home building, but what we are is we’re balance sheeting more on the balance sheet and all that. So I think that’s positive. Our commercial mortgage business with the higher tenure is doing amazingly well. They’re beating their plan and performing really strong from that perspective.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: So maybe while we’re on the CRE side, M and T successfully reduced the CRE concentration. I think you’re at about 136% as of last quarter. You’ve talked about being comfortable with this level of CRE. So how are you thinking about CRE originations from here? What are you seeing on the pay down front there?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: So our pipelines continue to build. Now within the pipelines, we’re growing most categories with the exception of office. But a piece of that pipeline is in the construction book and construction lending. Obviously you have the line, it takes twelve to eighteen months before you actually see that line get fully filled from that perspective. But pipelines are building there.

We’re going to be under 136 at the end of this quarter. But as we look out, I think that as the year plays out and if we can more certainty in the marketplace and a lot of good news from the government, I think you’re going to have a strong half of the year. We’re hopeful that CRE will be growing by the end of the year.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Right. So when you say it takes about twelve to eighteen months for these pipelines to come through, it’s already been building for several quarters. That’s why you see an uptick towards the back half of the year.

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah. I mean, we’ve had more build within the pipeline every month, and we are putting more and more on. And the construction book is all part piece of that, and those will start to fund as the year plays out.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And what about on the C and I side? You noted that the sentiment is definitely moving in a positive direction. You’re not seeing it just yet in the loan portfolio. How quickly can that change and how quickly can loans come onto the balance sheet?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Oh, I think we know our customers very well. I think we can move pretty fast from that perspective. We have anecdotally a customer in Baltimore, they want to invest and put more money into a couple hotels that they operate, like a 70,000,000 or $80,000,000 loan. They’re on pause right now because they’re waiting to see what type of traffic is going to come into the hotels and all that. So there’s a lot of people coiled really to be out there to, I think, invest more once they have a little bit more certainty.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Got it. And how would you characterize the level of competition for both C and I and CRE?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: It is competitive. It’s always a competitive industry and this is no difference from that perspective. But we are doing a good job. We start with supporting our customers that we’ve had for a long time and we’re very supportive and we do what we need to make sure that we can meet their needs. And then we also are growing and trying to add to that as well.

So I think people know us in the marketplace. We’re out there, competitive. We get our fair share of all that. We don’t win all of them, obviously. But we’re going to grow as the market grows in that space.

We aren’t going to stretch and do anything that’s not sound from a structure perspective. We can compete on pricing if we need to and want to from that perspective. So I feel pretty confident that we will continue to deliver that. And as the market grows, I think we’re going to continue to grow and perform very well.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And as I’ve spoken to some of the banks here, some banks have spoken about spreads coming in a little bit. Some banks have spoken about more competition for new clients rather than existing clients. Is there anything nuance that you’re seeing in your portfolio?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: In the CRE space, there’s definitely a lot of there’s not as much volume as you would like in that space and there’s much more competition in that space. So in that space I think you’re seeing it to be really extremely competitive there. C and I I think is a little bit less so from that perspective. But I think from a CRE perspective, it just tends to be a little bit more competitive. But we’re winning our share.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And where is this competition coming from? Is it other banks? Is it private credit? I know Renee wrote a lot about private credit in his annual letter. So can you talk about where you’re seeing that competition coming from?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah, I mean, it is obviously coming from other banks, but it’s coming from non banks. And private credit is there. It’s mainly in the C and I space, is where we see them. We have lost some lending relationships from our C and I customers. When that happens though, we still maintain their deposit relationships or treasury management revenue sometimes.

Depending on how much leverage is put into those companies, we might still retain a senior lending position there or not. So it kind of ebbs and flows from that perspective. But it is competitive out there, but you turn that the other way. Private credit is also a big customer of M and T. We do a lot of business with them.

We lend to a lot of their structures that they have, that they actually use to actually compete against us in the middle market space. We also have a significant relationship in private credit customers in our ICS corporate trust business in both corporate trust and loan agency. So net net, overall we probably make much more revenue on private credit than what we lose from private credit right now.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Got it. And how do you think about the risk there? So I know it’s diversified amongst more loans, but how do you underwrite that risk?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: From an underwriting perspective, that’s kind of our bread and butter. That’s kind of our history. I would say of all the banks I’ve worked for in my career, M and T is probably as good or better than any of those in actually analyzing credits. We are really good at underwriting credits, really knowing how that works, how it performs. If you look at our long term history of our performance in stress times, we’re still really strong from that perspective.

I think our underwriting, I don’t worry about our underwriting piece and all that. We have really strong credit people that work really hard and you do the right things from that perspective.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: All right, excellent. Maybe we can pivot over to deposits. I think you noted in your slide deck that the deposit trends are strong. I think you said deposits are moving higher quarter on quarter. What are the puts and takes across the different businesses, commercial, retail, wealth?

Yes. In the

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: first quarter, we were down in the customer deposits. That’s the time in five quarters. And we had some seasonal outflows that were a little heavier than what we expected. It’s bounced back in the We have really good growth in pretty much all of our businesses. Strong growth in our consumer deposits, broad based, some non maturity in that space, Growing checking accounts, operating accounts really well.

Business banking is also having a really good year of growing operating accounts as well as overall customer deposits. Commercial is performing strong. Wealth is an area and it’s a huge opportunity for us. If you our new leader that runs wealth, Lisa Roberts, when you look at our customer base that we have and the amount of loans and deposits that we have from that customer base, she said it should be three times that over that. So it’s a good opportunity and she’s really focused on growing that.

So I think we’re excited to see how that plays out over the next couple of years. And then if you look at ICS, ICS deposits tend to be a little bit lumpy that we have, but they come in and really have a good impact when they come on to the balance sheet. And lastly, in our mortgage area, our escrow deposits, getting that new subservicing piece of business that we have as we continue to bring in good escrow deposit growth. So I think we’re hitting on all cylinders pretty much on deposit front.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And you spoke about averaging a 50% deposit beta as rates come down. This is the first quarter where there’s no impact from rate cuts. We don’t get more rate cuts anytime soon, how are you thinking about deposit costs from here?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: So we trim around the edges, but we also run promotions too. So it’s kind of a mixed bag. I think this quarter will be relatively flat from a deposit cost perspective. But puts and takes, we cut in certain areas where we think we can still make adjustments. And we put special promotions in place and we price for our customers in certain areas and all that.

It’s kind of a mixed bag, but we’re doing a good job growing the book. As long as we’re growing deposits and it’s under our marginal funding curve, that’s going to be positive. We can continue to pay off non core funding from that. If we don’t have loan growth, we have loan growth. That’s even better from that perspective.

So I think we have really good discipline. The treasurer that I have is doing a great job working with all the businesses that we have and making sure that we have the right pricing discipline And so it’s a really smooth running machine right now.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: So that’s a great segue into net interest margins. Last quarter, think your NIM was at about three sixty six. You’re saying that NIM should be up Q on Q. There’s some positive benefits coming from the loan growth side, even a little bit on the deposit side. Think by the end of the I don’t know if you are ready yet to say you can go over $3.70.

I guess the question there is what would need to happen for NIM to be below three seventy at the end of the year?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: The biggest drivers to our net interest margin right now is really loan growth. It’s really getting the CRE book to start to grow. C and I is going to happen. I feel pretty good about that. So that I think will come on strong.

But getting CRE to turn and also start to contribute I think is really key. The other thing I would really focus on is the yield environment. Right now yields have stayed up relatively well. We’re relatively neutral. If they do come down, we’ll go down a touch maybe in NII or margin a bit.

We aren’t 100% neutral, but we’re relatively neutral from that perspective. And the shape of the curve has actually been positive for us, which is good, but it’s been very volatile going up and down. I think net net overall, we will continue to guide in the mid to high 360s and we’ll just see how things play out right now.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And with the higher belly of the curve, that’s clearly a positive from the fixed asset repricing story. Is there any level at which the volatility or if it moves even higher, does that become a headwind at some stage, maybe for loan growth or in any other way for NII?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah, I would tell you, that’s a great question. So if you want us to make the most net income, you want interest rates to fall for us. And it may not be the best thing for an NII perspective, but our fee businesses will be stronger. You have more business activity. Mortgage will be strong.

Our credit will be much better, will improve faster than what it is today, and all that. So we’ll have much lower credit costs. So net net we probably have a better bottom line. If rates stay where they are or go higher, NII will be stronger and contribute well. Credit will still be good and it will still stay on a downward trajectory but not improve as fast.

And the fee businesses will perform well but maybe not as much as what they could. So I think we’re positioned to benefit either way. But it’s hard to predict which rate rates go. That’s why we want to be really diversified.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And just to be clear on that comment, when you’re suggesting rates move higher or lower, you are talking about

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: a barrel shift. You would prefer a steeper yield Yes. Steeper yield curve would help, obviously, for NIM. But it could also shift down depending on how much if the Fed decided to drop rates at some point down the road.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Got it. So as of now, you still feel good about the mid to high 360s on NIM? Yes. All right. Perfect.

The other topic I wanted to hit on was fees. I think that’s an underappreciated aspect of M and T. You previously highlighted opportunities in wealth, mortgage, treasury management. What do you see as the largest opportunity?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: thing I just want to highlight, we have a really strong net interest margin, and that generates a ton of revenue. If you normalized our net interest margin of what the peer average is, our fee income would actually be average to the peers. So it’s because we have a strong margin is why our fees look smaller than the peers. But from a fee perspective, we have tons of momentum in our markets. If you look at trust, our corporate trust, loan agency business is having a really strong year again this year.

We’ve opened up and invested and we have a couple 100 people now in Europe. We’ve expanded in Europe. That’s starting to grow now, which is positive in that space. On the mortgage front, we brought in some new sub servicing in the first quarter. So we have higher revenues in that space.

We’ve hired over 100 more originators in our New England markets and all that. So even though we aren’t getting a lot of volume from refinancing there, we’re getting more volume there than we did just because we have more producers in that space. As far as treasury management goes, treasury management continues to be a strong performer, high single digit grower for us. Continue to invest in that space as we grow relationships. Especially in our business banking space, we’re really getting a lot of traction in the treasury management space from that perspective.

And then you have wealth. Wealth is an area we’re investing in. For us to grow wealth, segment wealth into three broad areas. The ultra high net worth, the high net worth, and then affluent. Fluent had a record year last year.

That’s the business that actually gets the customers and supports customers from a consumer portfolio perspective. That’s having another strong year. The middle part that we have in the wealth area, that’s the area that’s going to grow from our bank. Getting more and more referrals from business banking, from the commercial area. And our new leader Lisa is really working to drive those referrals in to help drive from that space.

And the high ultra net worth area, we are very competitive in that space. Those are very large accounts and can be chunky at times and all that. But net net overall, I think we will have good momentum in wealth, that will be a good long term performer for us.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: So I guess there’s three pillars there. There’s wealth and trust, there’s treasury management, and there’s mortgage. Wealth and trust treasury, there’s momentum, there’s core growth coming through there. On the mortgage side, that’s a little bit more dependent on rates. Is that fair?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: To some extent. The servicing piece is a little bit immune. I’m surprised and pleasantly surprised how well commercial mortgage is doing, even with our volatile interest rates that we’re having. They performed very well there. So I think there’s just a need for that channel right now to get more permanent financing and we’re helping fill that need.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Got it. Maybe pivoting over to expenses. Earlier in the quarter, spoke about how M and T has seven key strategic projects going on, several of which have required hundreds of millions in aggregate investments. And I think you said three of these are close to completion?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah, I think if you look at the ones that are closest to being done, the one in the commercial area where we basically remade how a loan is produced and monitored from a credit perspective and all that. That should be done in the next quarter or so. So that’s a huge positive piece there. With the finance transformation, we’ll complete sometime in 2026. GL will come probably the next thing happens maybe in the early part of 2026 from that perspective.

We have put in three new data centers. We are putting applications also up into the cloud. That’s been going on for a couple of years. That will play out into ’twenty seven. So I think those are the three largest ones that we have out there that are closest to completion.

We have other ones that we’ve started knowing that these other ones are starting to wind down. So we are putting in the new AFS Vision system in commercial servicing. We’re looking at investing in our corporate trust space. Haven’t started that yet, but that’s potentially out there. And then we’ve also added and started something in our digital, how we operate and process debits all originations in the operations, that new system is actually going in and starting to happen there.

There’s always going to be investments that we’re making in our company. What I really look at is we have a disciplined approach of how we allocate the funds, how we monitor how the funds are being used, how the projects are progressing. So we have transparency and accountability from all that perspective. And then I look at it and balance it, how is the company doing. So with all these investments we’re making, we’re still growing expenses in the 2% to three percent range.

Still probably going to have positive operating leverage this year, pretty sure so from that. And if I can still produce positive operating leverage and make these investments within that expense base, I think that’s showing a lot of good balance that we have

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: there. Excellent. Let’s pivot over to credit. You’ve seen several consecutive quarters of declines in criticized loans, especially on the commercial real estate side. I think you noted in your deck that there’s more room in 2Q as well.

With the volatility in the belly of the curve, what impact is that having on CRE paydowns and criticized assets? And how do you see that evolving from here?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: The good news about CRE and from the financial statements that we’ve gotten is we’re getting a lot of upgrades in that portfolio. So that’s a real positive. We’re still getting payoffs in that book too. But net net, we feel very comfortable that the CRE space, criticized book, will continue to come down. If you go switch to the C and I space, C and I space is a little bit lumpy.

To be honest with you, you’ve got some upgrades, you’ve got some downgrades, you have some impacts depending on what the government’s doing and all that from various things that we’re seeing. So net net, I would say C and I will be flat to up a little bit in that space. I think overall we can net it to be overall maybe net down. But we’ll see how that plays out as the quarter ends.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Are there any risks that you’re seeing on the credit side overall?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: We’re monitoring things very closely and really looking at what the potential impacts are. That’s really the most attention that we have there. So I don’t foresee anything surprising us coming out of the blue that will have any surprises that you’ll see from us from a credit perspective. Got it.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: I’m going to come to the audience in just a sec, but maybe we can talk about capital a little bit. M and T is in a pretty strong capital position, 11.5% CET1. I think AOCI is actually a marginal benefit for you. You’ve talked about getting to 11% this year or 10% at some point after that. How are you thinking about that evolution of capital as we go through this year and next?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: For us, and foremost, the capital we have, we deploy into our communities and to our customers. That’s and foremost. The other thing is we want to make sure we pay a strong dividend, a growing dividend. I think you’ll see that out of us as well. Then it comes down to what else can we do with that capital.

You can do acquisitions or share repurchases. Right now from an acquisition there’s nothing imminent. So we’ve been repurchasing shares And we’ve been very opportunistic with the share repurchases from that perspective. We’re going to continue to guide towards 11 and see how that plays out. There’s some other things that we will look at, see how the economy performs, we’ll see how we do on our stress tests, see how our credit quality continues, those are probably the pieces that we’ll look at.

Our long term target is still 10%, and I’m sure eventually we will get to that point somewhere down the road. But right now 11% is the target. That’s a fair amount of capital distribution if you just look at that that we have from 11.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Yes, I was just going to say with you guys have created about $400,000,000 of capital each quarter after dividends. Last quarter’s buyback was about $660,000,000 eleven percent is still a long way off. I mean how aggressive do you think you can be through this year on the buyback front?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yes. I don’t want to predict exactly what’s going on. I don’t want to signal to the marketplace. But we’re going to repurchase well over $2,000,000,000 share repurchases this year. I think that’s a fair amount.

We’ve had a little bit softer loan growth out of the start, so we’ve been repurchasing more. We’ll see how that plays out. But right now, we’re targeting 11% and been very opportunistic.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: And we have the CCAR results later this month. You’ve opted into the stress test this year. How are you feeling about the stress capital buffer? Clearly, you’ve taken actions to bring that down.

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah, I think we opted in because we felt that we’ve made significant strides in derisking our balance sheet and our company having stronger PPNR, earnings generation, as well as having much stronger from an asset quality perspective. And this will help validate and show to the marketplace, our investors, our rating agencies, and other constituencies out in the marketplace that we continue to move in a forward direction. We actually did an issuance of debt yesterday. You guys were part of the transaction. And if you look at what we were able to issue at.

If you looked at M and T a few years ago, we were wider than all of our peers. We are now within and maybe slightly better than some of our peers. So we’ve made tremendous progress. I think our fixed income investors have seen that.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Got it. And as you think about the impact of the stress test results on capital management, as the SCB goes down, that gives you more confidence in that 10% CET1 number. Is that how we should think about it?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: I think it’s confidence, but it’s also really just getting everybody, our constituencies, to see the progress we’re making and get everybody more comfortable out there. It’s the one test out there where people are all put on the same scale and measure equally. To be honest with you, we were one of three that dropped last year. We hopefully will drop this year. But our SCB is still too high.

We need to move that down. And hopefully we make progress doing that this year. All right, I’ll quickly see if there’s any questions in the room.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Right. Maybe we can discuss M and A a little bit. You’ve spoken about how M and T doesn’t have any aspirations of being a national bank. Can you expand on that strategy a little bit? Why not consider opportunities outside your footprint?

I mean, M and T has a brand. Have the products there, the capital.

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah. So if you look at M and T, I view us as a regional champion. We operate in 15 states plus the District Of Columbia. And we really want to serve our communities and our customers in those communities. That’s really important.

We do have businesses obviously outside those states. But in times of stress or whatever, we really focus on supporting and growing that and foremost before we do anything else from that. I think for us it’s continuing to take our M and T model, the community banking model, and continue to expand that within the markets that we serve. People’s got us into New England. We have five new states.

We don’t have the density in those markets. There’s other pockets in our footprint. We don’t have density. So I think the more that we can fill in and get density and serve our customers and communities in that space, I think the better off we will have. Being a community bank and how we go to market, there aren’t many of those left in the industry anymore.

And I think our motto is really differentiated and has been very successful for us in the past. And we believe it’s going to continue to be successful in the future.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Is there anything you might want to do on the fees front? Is there anything you might want to build out there?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: We always are looking at growing fee businesses where we can. We’ve divested some businesses. We’ll probably start to maybe look at investing in some other fee businesses if it makes sense for us. So I think we’re always looking and we look at a lot of stuff. We pass on most of what we look at.

But we will continue to be curious and be in the marketplace. And when something we think feels right that meets all of our check boxes and all that stuff, we will move forward with something there.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: All right, perfect. And then maybe to wrap up, Dale, last Friday, Michelle Bowman spoke about her priorities in the new role as Vice Chef for Supervision. Tailoring, I noticed featured early on that list, and there’s several potential changes that investors are watching for. Can you talk a little bit about how you view that, how you view those priorities and what potential changes would impact M and T the most?

Daryl Bible, CFO, M and T: Yeah. I actually watched it online after. And I know we got a lot of reports from that. But she’s very passionate about doing the right thing for our industry and really focusing on the real risks that you need to be focused on, whether it’s credit risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, capital. I think we are fully supportive of that.

She used an example of party, and party shouldn’t be weighted like credit risk or interest rate risk from that perspective. And I think we’re all in agreement with that. And getting and training and the supervision side, I think we’ll continue to be much more balanced from that perspective. So she’s focused on the right areas, very passionate about participating and supporting the whole industry from larger banks all the way down to the very small community banks, which is the right mindset because that is what’s really important to The United States over the long term. So I think we’re supportive and look forward to working with her.

I know she has a conference coming up in July and I’m sure we’ll get a lot more good information out of that as that plays out. So we’re really excited about it.

Manan Ghisalia, Mid Cap Banks Analyst, Morgan Stanley: All right, perfect. With that, we’re out of time. Darrell, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Manon.

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