Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

everyone, and welcome to the Citizen Financial Group First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Ivy, 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 Silverberg, Head of Investor Relations. Kristen, you may begin.

Thanks, Ivy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. First this morning, our Chairman and CEO, Bruce Van Saan, and CFO, Anoy Banerjee, will provide an overview of our first quarter results. Brendan Coughlin, President, and Ted Swimmer, Head of Commercial Banking, are also here to provide additional colour. We will be referencing our first 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 will hand it over to Bruce.

Okay, thanks, Kristen, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call today. We're pleased to start the year off strong, notwithstanding geopolitical tensions and uncertainty in the macro environment. We delivered good financial performance in a seasonally soft quarter, with year-over-year EPS growth of 47%, positive operating leverage of 7%, and NIM expansion of 24 basis points. Our balance sheet position continues to be robust, with Set 1 at 10.5%, and our allowance for loan losses at 1.52%. Credit trends continue to be favorable across our portfolios, and we continue our loan mix shift towards deeper relationships with lower credit risk. Execution on our strategic initiatives continues to track well. The private bank and wealth business showed further growth in customers, balance sheet, and profitability, now accounting for roughly 10% of our pre-tax income while delivering an ROE in excess of 25%. During the quarter, we opened three more PBOs, bringing the total to nine. Reimagine the Bank is off to a solid start, and we reaffirm our 450 million P&L target by the end of 2028. We estimate about 100 million in 2026 exit run rate benefits at this point. Our positioning with private capital continues to be excellent. We anticipate a strong year for private equity sponsor activity, which should provide balance sheet and fee opportunities for us. We've reviewed all of our lending to private credit vehicles at a granular level, and we feel good about our credit exposure. The New York City Metro Initiative also continues to show further progress. We are growing across retail, small business, and middle markets. We're in the process of analyzing Citizens' existing branch footprint for net new investment and optimization, with New York City likely to see growth in branches in coming years. We should have more details to share with you on this mid-year. We're also focused on an initiative we call One Citizens, which is systematically finding ways to work across the enterprise to deliver valuable solutions to our customers. Now that we have stood up the private bank and continued the build-out of our corporate bank, we have the capacity to provide both personal and corporate services to successful business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs. We will report more on this as the year progresses, but we're already gaining real traction. As we look ahead to the second quarter and the full year, we remain cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to navigate through external challenges and still deliver the strong results we projected coming into this year. So far, markets have behaved rationally despite the war, with equity markets holding in and credit spreads only slightly wider. We intend to stay on our investment plan for the year unless the macro takes a meaningful turn for the worse. We're pleased with the regulatory changes we see coming from Washington, D.C., and we look forward to the upcoming CCAR stress test results which we're hopeful will give a more accurate result for citizens than what we've seen in the past. So to sum up, a good start, well positioned with a great strategy and a great team, and optimistic for a strong 2026. With that, I'll turn it over to Anoy for the financial details. Anoy? Thanks, Bruce. Good morning, everyone.