Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Citizens Financial Group Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Denise, and I will be your operator today. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a brief question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this event is being recorded. Now I will turn the call over to Kristen Silberberg, Head of Investor Relations. Kristen, you may begin.

Thank you, Denise. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. First this morning, our Chairman and CEO, Bruce Van Saan, and CFO, John Woods, will provide an overview of our second quarter results. Brendan Coughlin, Head of Consumer Banking, and Don McCree, Head of Commercial Banking, are also here to provide additional color. We will be referencing our second quarter presentation located on our Investor Relations website. After the presentation, we will be happy to take questions. Our comments today will include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to differ materially from expectations. These are outlined for your review in the presentation. We also reference non-GAAP financial measures, so it's important to review our GAAP results in the presentation and the reconciliations in the appendix. And with that, I'll hand over to Bruce.

Thanks, Christina. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call today. We announced strong financial results today that exceeded expectations, notwithstanding tremendous uncertainty in the macro environment during the quarter. Highlights include strong NII growth of 3.3% sequential quarter, paced by NIM expansion of five basis points, and the resumption of net loan growth across consumer, private bank, and commercial. Good fee growth of 10%, which was paced by wealth, card, and mortgage. good expense discipline with expenses broadly flat, resulting in 500 basis points of operating leverage, and credit trends remaining favorable and continued meaningful share repurchases. It's worth noting that capital markets still manage to have a pretty good quarter, notwithstanding the uncertainty in the environment. Our diversity helped as strength in equity underwriting and loan syndications offset weaker debt capital markets and a delay in the completion of several significant M&A deals. We expect that we will record over $30 million in fees on these deals in July, and our pipelines remain strong, setting us up well for the second half. Our balance sheet remains rock solid across capital, liquidity, funding, and our credit reserve positions. We continue to execute well on our strategic initiatives. The private bank has strong growth in loans and AUM with average deposits up nicely, but spot deposits impacted somewhat by the timing of inflows and outflows. We remain on track to hit all full year targets. The business is on track to deliver in excess of 5% accretion to citizens bottom line and a 20% plus ROE in 2025. In addition, efforts across New York City Metro, private capital, payments, and BSO are all tracking well. We've commenced work on a project we are calling Reimagining the Bank, which will be led by Brendan and other top leaders. The objective is to redesign how we serve customers and run the bank, taking advantage of new technologies like GenAI and Agentech AI. This requires changes to our organizational model our underlying technology and data architecture, and imparting new skills to our colleague base. It will be multi-year in nature and ultimately serve as our next top program. Stay tuned for more details later in the year. With respect to the second half, we believe that economic conditions and markets are trending favorable. No further machinations around tariffs continue to present a degree of uncertainty. Rather fortunately, the fundamentals to drive higher deal activity and a pickup in loan demand remain intact, and we feel well positioned to capture the opportunity and to deliver good results. We remain comfortable with the full year guide for 2025 we gave back in January, and we're well positioned to sustain that momentum into the medium term. In short, we feel good about our positioning overall from a strategic business and financial standpoint. We will stay focused on execution and the things we can control as we continue our efforts towards building a distinctive great bank. With that, let me turn it over to John.