Fulton Financial Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Fulton Financial Second Quarter 2020 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Matt Joswak. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for Fulton Financial's conference call and webcast to discuss our earnings for the second quarter of 2020. Your host for today's conference call is Phil Wenger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Joining Phil Wenger is Curt Myers, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Mark McCollum, Chief Financial Officer. Our comments today will refer to the financial information and related slide presentation included with our earnings announcement, which we released at 4.30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. These documents can be found on our website at fult.com by clicking on Investor Relations and then on News. The slides can also be found on the Presentations page under Investor Relations on our website. On this call, representatives of Fulton may make forward-looking statements with respect to Fulton's financial condition, results of operations, and business. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors and actual results could differ materially. Please refer to the safe harbor statement on the forward looking statements in our earnings release on slide two of today's presentation for additional information regarding these risks, uncertainties and other factors. Fulton undertakes no obligation other than as required by law to update or revise any forward looking statements. In discussing Fulton's performance, representatives of Fulton may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the supplemental financial information included with Fulton's earnings release announcement released yesterday and slides 14 through 16 of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now I would like to turn the call over to your host, Phil Wenger.

Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we will follow our usual call format, beginning with some prepared remarks. First, I'll provide a high-level overview of the quarter. Next, Curt Myers, our President and Chief Operating Officer, will share some thoughts on our business performance for the second quarter of 2020. And then Mark McCollum, our Chief Financial Officer, will share the details of our financial performance. And after that, we'd be happy to take your questions. COVID-19 continues to have a significant impact on our world and our company, but all things considered, we are pleased with what Fulton was able to achieve in the second quarter. I want to start out by thanking our employees for all they've done to serve our customers throughout the pandemic. It was truly inspiring to watch our team members who had their own questions answered Thank you for joining us today. We successfully administered the SBA's Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, providing more than $1.9 billion in loans to businesses and nonprofit customers. We offered loan deferrals and payment relief to consumers, and we put in place new benefit programs to help our employees throughout this confusing and difficult time. When I spoke with you in April, Fulton had responded very quickly to keep employees and customers safe while continuing to deliver essential financial services to the communities we serve. Now, three months later, while our unwavering focus on health and safety continues, we now view the virus as just one more factor we need to deal with as we go about our day. We're working hard to ensure that our team's energy remains focused on achieving our longer-term priorities of growth, operational excellence, and effective risk management and compliance. In June, we gradually began to expand lobby access for our customers, and currently, we have resumed regular lobby hours at 146 of our 223 financial centers. And a team of leaders from across our company has put in place a plan to gradually re-onboard employees who have been working remotely. This process will take place over the remainder of the year and can be adjusted or reversed at any time depending upon the progression of COVID-19 and the associated safety protocols that health experts recommend. Turning to our financial performance in the second quarter, our consumer and commercial lines of business perform relatively well given the environment in which we're operating. In consumer, we saw increases in deposit balances, growth in residential mortgages, and relative strong performance in wealth management. In commercial, our loan pipeline remains stable Deposits increased even after factoring out funds received through PPP. And we saw continuing resiliency in a number of fee income businesses, including merchant services, investment management and trust services, and swaps. Several credit metrics improved during the quarter, and you'll hear more detail about that in a few minutes. However, we'll need to wait until we know more about the depth and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic over the next six to nine months to be able to understand the longer-term impact on our customers. We have been and will be very actively managing our expenses over the remainder of the year to help mitigate the anticipated negative effects of the pandemic. Other highlights during the quarter included the opening of a new financial center in Baltimore, continuing our commitment to growing our presence in urban markets. We also announced the creation of the new Fulton Forward Foundation, an independent nonprofit private foundation funded by Fulton Bank. The foundation will provide financial impact gifts to nonprofit organizations that share Fulton's vision of advancing economic empowerment, particularly in underserved communities. The foundation is an extension of the bank's Fulton Forward Initiative, which promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, encourages the building of vibrant communities, fosters affordable housing, drives economic development, and increases financial literacy in the communities served by Fulton. In addition to our traditional and ongoing support of our communities, Fulton Bank made an extra $500,000 donation to the Foundation to support COVID-19 assistance programs in the markets we serve. About a week ago, the Foundation announced that it had distributed those funds to nearly a dozen worthy, worthwhile community programs. So as you can see, we've accomplished a lot in the first half of this year under very challenging circumstances. And now I'll turn things over to Kurt so he can discuss our business performance in more detail.