Regions Financial Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to the Region's Financial Corporation's quarterly earnings call. My name is Shelby, and I'll be your operator for today's call. I would like to remind everyone that all participant phone lines have been placed on listen only. At the end of the call, there will be a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Dana Nolan to begin.

Thank you, Shelby. Welcome to region second quarter 2021 earnings call. John and David will provide high-level commentary regarding the quarter. Earnings documents, which include our forward-looking statement disclaimer, are available in the investor relations section of our website. These disclosures cover our presentation materials, prepared comments, and Q&A. I will now turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Dana, and thank you for joining our call today. We're pleased with our performance this quarter, and importantly, we're beginning to see increased activity across our footprint that gives us greater confidence for overall growth in the second half of the year. Earlier this morning, we reported earnings of $748 million, resulting in earnings per share of 77 cents. Credit quality at Regions and across the industry has demonstrated remarkable resiliency throughout the pandemic. Broadly speaking, since the pandemic began, I believe banks have done a tremendous job staying close to customers and supporting their needs by providing capital, advice, and guidance. As I've begun to travel our footprint again and meet with customers, I see them gaining confidence in the economic recovery and their own business plans. I've seen the strength of our markets firsthand. This combined with the ongoing successful execution of our strategic plan has positioned regions well for growth as the economic recovery continues. We remain focused on client selectivity, risk-adjusted returns, and capital allocation, all while making investments, particularly in talent and technology, to support growth. For example, over the last year, we redesigned our mobile app and are continuing to make further enhancements to both our online and mobile platforms. We digitized the sales process. You can now apply for almost any consumer banking product online. We're putting digital tools in the hands of our bankers and contact center associates, allowing customers to start a process in one channel and seamlessly transition to another. We now have e-signature capabilities across most of the franchise. As a result of all of these changes, year-to-date, digital sales are up 53%. over the prior year. We have also leveraged artificial intelligence to build lead generation and Nest's best action tools for our bankers. We're also utilizing artificial intelligence in our contact centers. Reggie, our virtual banker, is on pace to handle over a million customer calls this year. Technology investments have also allowed nearly 100% of our contact center associates to work remotely. providing permanent cost saves from reductions in legacy corporate space. In addition, over the last three years, we've increased mortgage loan originators by approximately 150 and will continue to add talent as we grow market share. We've also added approximately 80 client-facing associates across the corporate, bank, and wealth management, with a particular focus on growth markets. We've consolidated over 215 branches while opening 75 de novo branches, primarily within dense, fast-growing markets. These new branches have contributed almost 20% of our total retail checking account growth over the last three years. We're also investing in products and capabilities to serve our customers. In wealth management, we deepened our expertise in the not-for-profit and healthcare space through the acquisition of Highland Associates. And we're working on a digital advisory solution with deployment targeted for late this year or early next. Last year, we purchased Ascendium Capital to help small businesses with their essential equipment needs, and the platform has performed well throughout the pandemic. On the consumer side, we just announced an agreement to acquire Interbank, a top five originator in the home improvement point of sales space. which we're really excited about. Going forward, we'll continue to look for bolt-on acquisitions that provide products and capabilities that are important to our customers. We're in some really great markets, as reflected on the slide you see now. These markets, coupled with our go-to-market strategy and aided by technology investments, have helped us realize some really nice growth in consumer checking accounts. Our year-to-date account growth is nearly three times higher than our 2019 pre-pandemic rate for the same period. So we have a really solid strategic plan that supports our goal of generating consistent, sustainable long-term performance, and we have a proven track record of successful execution. We feel very good about our progress and believe we are really well positioned to grow as the economic recovery continues to gain momentum in our markets. Now, David will provide you with some details regarding the quarter.