Synovus Financial Corp.

Good morning and welcome to the Sonoma's fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin Brown, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. During the call today, we will be referencing the slides and press release that are available within the Investor Relations section of our website, synovus.com. Kessel Stelling, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will begin the call. He will be followed by Jamie Gregory, Chief Financial Officer, and Kevin Blair, President and Chief Operating Officer. Our executive management team is available to answer your questions at the end of the call. We ask that you limit yourselves to two questions. Let me remind you that our comments may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties, and the actual results could vary materially. We list these factors that might cause results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, early developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. During the call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. You may see the reconciliation of these measures in the appendix to our presentation. And now, here's Kessel Stelling.

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings call. This past year was one that none of us will ever forget and certainly challenging for the industry and for our company. From the pandemic to social and political unrest, the year presented more intensive challenges in a more concentrated period than any single time in my 40-plus year banking career, including the financial crisis just over a decade ago. So I want to start by thanking team members for their dedication and their tireless efforts to get us through another year of uncertainty, and by thanking customers and communities for trusting us to play an active role in helping them recover and rebuild. Slide 3 includes some notable achievements from 2020, starting with the Paycheck Protection Program, through which we extended approximately 19,000 loans, totaling $2.9 billion to customers across the Southeast. P3 represented a truly Herculean effort by our team to quickly deliver critical aid to customers and communities in need. We're also off to a very strong start with the newest round of P3, with approximately 5,000 loan applications submitted, totaling $700 million in new requests. We operate in one of the best geographic footprints in banking, and last year, we continued to improve our competitive positioning for 2021 and beyond. This past January, we announced our transformational Synovus Forward initiative, and we made significant progress throughout the year, executing on our phase one revenue and efficiency efforts. As previously stated, We expect to achieve $100 million in pre-tax run rate benefits by the end of this year, and Kevin will provide more detail later on plans for an additional $75 million in benefits by the end of 2022. We made additional investments in talent and solutions to support growth and to enhance technology that further improves the customer experience. Last year, we made upgrades to our mobile and online banking portal, online account origination capabilities, and other digital touchpoints. And we continued to invest in and grow our existing businesses while also building out new offerings. During the year, we onboarded new affordable housing and agribusiness expertise, significantly expanded our merchant services business, and further matured our structured lending and treasury and payment solutions capabilities. Also during the year, Given the dramatic change in the underlying economic environment, we moved quickly to further strengthen our balance sheet and capital position. Our CET1 ratio increased over 70 basis points, ending the year at 9.7%. In addition, our ACL ratio increased 75 basis points from day one CECL implementation, and our total risk-based capital ended the year at 13.4%, the highest level since 2014. As a result, we enter this year very well positioned to facilitate additional growth while also effectively managing balance sheet risk. I'm also proud of our work last year in important areas that are not directly disclosed in financial statements but are important sources of value, such as ESG reporting, financial literacy outreach, and financial support of nonprofits and community agencies, including the establishment of a substantial scholarship endowment for African American students through the UNCF in honor of our former colleague and longtime Georgia State Representative, Calvin Smyre. Finally, we announced last month that I'll be transitioning from chairman and CEO to executive chairman of our board in April following our annual shareholders meeting. I'll serve in that role until January 1st of 2023. To be clear, this is not my final earnings call, so no farewells or goodbyes just yet. I'll participate in our first quarter call in April, and then we'll hand the reins over to Kevin and team to take it from there. With that, I'll turn to Jamie to share fourth quarter financial highlights beginning on slide four. Thank you, Kessel.