Truist Financial Corp (TFC) 2020 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Truist Financial Corporation First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this event is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Ryan Richards, Director of Investor Relations for Truist Financial Corporation. Please go ahead.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today and sincerely hope that you're doing well. On today's call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Kelly King; and our Chief Financial Officer, Daryl Bible, will review our first quarter results and provide some thoughts for the second quarter of 2020. We also have Bill Rogers, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Chris Henson, our Head of Banking and Insurance; and Clarke Starnes, our Chief Risk Officer, to participate in the Q&A session.

Note that we are conducting our call today from different locations to protect our executives and teammates. We will reference a slide presentation during today's call. A copy of the presentation as well as our earnings release and supplemental financial information are available on the Truist Investor Relations website.

Please note that Truist does not provide public earnings predictions or forecasts. However, there may be statements made during this call that express management's intentions, beliefs or expectations. These statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, including the impact of COVID-19, and Truist actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary notes regarding forward-looking information in our presentation and our SEC filings.

Please also note that our presentation includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to Page 3 and the appendix of our presentation for the appropriate reconciliations to GAAP.

And now I will turn it over to Kelly.

Thank you, Ryan. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our call. I certainly hope you and your families are safe and well in this difficult environment we're all living in. I want to take a minute before we get into the numbers to just talk about culture because I believe now more than ever culture matters most of all of the things we can talk about.

So you've heard us say that our purposes to inspire and build better lives and communities. This is absolutely a critical time for us to live out that purpose. SO our mission is focusing on our clients, our teammates and our stakeholders in that order, and we do that very, very seriously every day. Our values are to be trustworthy, caring, operate as one team, focus on success and ultimately, happiness for our teammates. We are focusing during this environment, number one, on the health and safety of our teammates. We are pleased to have about 35,000 of our 58,000 teammates are able to work remotely. We are spending a lot of time supporting our clients, particularly on the Payroll Protection Program (sic) [Paycheck Protection Program]. We're spending a lot of energy and focus supporting our communities through our Truist Cares $25 million philanthropic donation that we did early in the cycle. I'll tell you that our teammates are working really, really hard. They're working 24/7 in many cases. They're working very, very closely together. It's incredible to see the kind of positive results that we're getting, particularly like in the PPP program where our people were able to stand up literally overnight in automated portals to allow our clients to access automatically with us in terms of getting their applications in. Our teammates are bonding faster than we would ever have expected. And I can say to you today that our culture at Truist is really, really strong.

If you follow on the presentation, I'm on Slide 5. Just as a reminder, after the combination, we are the sixth-largest U.S. commercial bank by assets and market value. We have a very strong #2 weighted average deposit market share in the top 20 MSAs. We have 12 million households, 58,000 teammates. We are very well positioned, we think, to achieve our purpose. We are recognized as one of the highest-rated financial institution, and we're continuing to grow loans and deposits, particularly in this period of flight to quality. Daryl is going to cover a lot of information about our very strong capital and liquidity in just a bit. But I would point out that our diversification is a real strength. We are very diversified in products, services and geographies.

On Slide 6, we talk about some of the things we're doing with regard to the prices. Like others, we have been providing payment relief assistance, including forbearance, deferrals, extensions, other ways we can help our clients. We've already done over 300,000 accommodations for consumers, 16,000 for our commercial clients. We've temporarily waived ATM service charges. And we're uniquely offering a 5% cashback on qualifying card purchases for important basic needs.

We're really pleased that we've been able to continue to allow our appointment interventions with our clients in terms of particular needs they have. We're fortunate that 90% of our branches have drive-through, so we've been able to keep those branches open in terms of activity.

We've been really focused on the Paycheck Protection Program. Our average loan amount is about $323,000. We've been authorized for 32,000 companies, representing about 1 million employees. And we're expecting funding to be a little more than $10 billion on the first round, and it will likely be more on the second round if it is, in fact, approved. We're providing financial relief programs for our small businesses in many other ways also, and we've been able to fund without hesitation extensive line draws for our commercial clients.

For our teammates, we've awarded $1,200 coronavirus relief bonuses to about 78% of our teammates making less than $100,000 a year. We've been very aggressive in providing work from home and other alternative work strategies for our teammates to provide safety for them. We also increased our on-site special rate pay for those that have to be at work in critical roles at $6.25 special pay for those on hourly and $50 a day for those that are not. Our Truist Foundation is contributing $4 for every $1 that our Truist teammates donate on our One Team Fund, which helps our teammates that are in financial hardship and need assistance.

For our communities, we announced earlier a $25 million philanthropic contribution. This has really gone a long way ahead. We donated $1 million for each of the CDC Foundation and Johns Hopkins. And our Truist Foundation donated $3 million to local United Way organizations.

On Page 7, just a few financial highlights. We did have $5.6 billion in taxable-equivalent revenue. Our adjusted net income available to common shareholders was $1.18 billion. Diluted earnings per share on an adjusted basis was $0.87. Our return on tangible common equity adjusted was 15.5%, which is very strong in this environment. And our adjusted efficiency ratio was 53.4%. So we feel really good about that.

Our January and February, we're like a lot of people, really strong. And then we, of course, ran into all the challenges that we're all experiencing because of COVID-19. Interestingly, insurance and mortgage continued to have strong performance throughout the entire quarter.

Our asset quality as Clarke will describe to you, is actually very good right now, but we know that's the calm before the storm. And that's why we added a strong $893 million provision in anticipation of the challenges we know we will face. We have a tight focus on our teammates and our clients and our communities, which we believe is our job #1 right now.

If you'll go to Slide 8, just a couple of the unusual items this quarter. We know it's a little messy, but we got the issue of the merger and the COVID impact. So our merger-related charges are $107 million before tax, about $0.06 negative impact after tax. The incremental operating expenses, they are the ones that provide future benefits, but they're not a part of our ongoing run rate, so we call them out separately and that's $74 million or $0.04 a share. And then the COVID impact in terms of cost and forgoing revenues is about $71 million or $0.04. So there really is, in my view, about $0.14 of unusual items, which gets you to the $0.87.

If you go to Deck 9, Slide 9. In loans and leases, it's been an interesting period. You can see that our first quarter average loans was $301 billion. But by the end of the period, it was $319 billion. Obviously, we had a surge at the end of March. We had about $18 billion in drawdowns that continued in the early part of April. We had another about $1.4 billion. Again, it's kind of subsided and it's been relatively flat since then. We do expect substantial PPP funding. As I said, we have in process about $10 billion in committed loans that we expect will be drawn down relatively soon.

In terms of the market, I know everybody wants to know what's going to happen. I do, too. But the truth is, we just don't know. It depends, obviously, on the depth and the length of the health crisis as we work through that and then how that has the mark-off effect with regard to the economy. The good news is, in the end of this, the economy was very strong. The bad news is small businesses will really struggle to recover from this. Still, I would say to you, Americans are resilient. And I believe our country is likely to outperform the worst expectations.

If you look at deposits on Page 10, same kind of thing, our average balances were $334 billion. It popped up to $350 billion as we had an increase of $15 billion during that period of time. About $7 billion of that was line draws, but then we also had some seasonal increases and some flat to quality deposits that moved in, which we were very pleased to see. Our total average cost of deposits decreased by 6 basis points, which we're very happy to see.

So let me turn it to Daryl now and let him give you some detail.

Thank you, Kelly, and good morning, everyone. Today, I want to talk about the key points from the first quarter and provide some color on current business conditions.

Turning to Slide 11. Net interest margin was 3.58%, up 17 basis points. Purchase accounting contributed 52 basis points to reported net interest margin. Core net interest margin was 3.06%, down 8 basis points. The decline reflected the full quarter impact of the merger of equals, lower interest rates and our liquidity bill in March. The yield on loans and leases held for investment increased 8 basis points as the benefit from purchase accounting more than offset lower short-term rates. The yield on our portfolio -- security portfolio decreased 3 basis points. We became more asset-sensitive due to floating-rate loan growth, expected higher prepayments, terming out Federal Home Loan Bank advances and increased noninterest-bearing deposits. Our loan mix was 55% floating and 45% fixed. Current trends suggest our net interest margin will decline further from a full quarter impact of lower rates, line draws, PPP funding and elevated reserves at the Fed. To protect loan yields, we are implementing for an all-new production and we continue to aggressively reduce deposit costs.

Turning to Slide 12. Noninterest income increased $563 million, reflecting a full quarter from the merger of equals. Insurance income increased $39 million or 7.6% versus first quarter '19 due to higher P&C commissions, organic growth, strong retention and increased pricing. Residential mortgage income was strong with origination volumes at $11.7 billion. Refi was 56% of originations, and gain on sale margins were 176 basis points. While forbearance is a potential headwind, that could be offset by higher volume and spreads.

This quarter, several fee income categories were impacted by the pandemic. Investment banking and trading was impacted by $92 million due to the increase in CVA reserves arising from lower interest rates and wider credit spreads. As shown on the slide, discretionary actions resulted in lower service charges on deposits and card and payment-related fees. Current trends include seasonally strong insurance income, strong residential mortgage production, partially offset by lower service income due to forbearance, lower asset valuations and lower purchase volume related to COVID.

Turning to Slide 13. Noninterest expense increased $856 million, reflecting a full quarter impact from the merger. Merger-related costs included $107 million of merger-related and restructuring charges and $74 million of incremental operating expenses related to the merger. Discretionary actions in response to COVID impacted noninterest expense by approximately $65 million and included a $1,200 bonus to all teammates earning less than $100,000.

Personnel expense included $44 million of incremental operating expenses related to the merger. This was positively impacted by the decrease in the market value of nonqualified plan assets, which is offset in net interest income and other income. We also updated our intangible valuation. As a result, annualized full year amortization expense for 2020 was revised to about $660 million. Current trends in expenses include relief measures, such as special pay for some client-facing teammates and measures to better protect our teammates, clients and communities. We continue to have good core expense discipline even in the face of COVID health crisis.

Turning to Slide 14. Asset quality remains strong, but economic conditions have deteriorated. Truist will continue to apply the CECL standard adopted January 1. Our NPA ratio increased 9 basis points to 23 basis points largely due to the adoption of CECL and the transition from PCI to PCD. NPLs were 32 basis points of total loans, up 17 basis points from year-end, primarily due to the PCI to PCD transition. Adjusting for this transition, our NPA and NPL ratios were essentially flat from last quarter.

Net charge-offs were 36 basis points of average loans, down 4 basis points. The provision was $893 million and reflected the reserving in accordance with CECL. The increased provision was mostly due to a significant loan growth and scenarios reflecting a weaker economic outlook. The increase also reflected a full quarter of post-merger activity.

Our allowance coverage ratio was 1.63%. A combination of our allowance and the unamortized fair value mark remains a very robust 2.71% of total loans. The adoption of CECL resulted in strong coverage ratios at 4.76x for net charge-offs and 5.04x for NPLs. We expect second quarter asset quality metrics to be elevated, reflecting COVID stress across the loan portfolios.

Turning to Slide 15. The table on the left summarizes our exposure to industries we believe are most vulnerable in the current environment. We have very low exposure, reflecting meaningful diversification from our merger. Outstanding loans to the group totaled $28.4 billion or 8.9% of loans held for investment at the end of March. Our oil and gas portfolio is weighted towards lower-risk sectors. Outstanding balances on levered loans totaled $10.5 billion or $3.3 billion of loans held for investment. 42% of our leveraged loans are investment grade or the equivalent. We are actively managing these portfolios, and we'll continue to make underwriting or risk acceptance adjustments as appropriate.

Turning to Slide 16. The $582 million increase in the ACL from the initial CECL adoption reflects rapidly evolving market conditions. Our standard practice is to use 3 scenarios to inform the CECL allowance, implying judgment to define the probability of each scenario. These scenarios include Moody's baseline with implied rates, one optimistic scenario and one stress scenario. We also consider heightened industry concerns from the pandemic effects, together with the impact of government relief packages when calculating the CECL estimate.

Slide 17 adds additional details on our loss estimation approach.

Turning to Slide 18. Our capital ratios declined slightly, mostly due to a significant balance sheet growth related to line draws. However, our capital levels remain strong relative to regulatory levels for well-capitalized banks. Our CET1 ratio was 9.3%, down 9.5% in the fourth quarter. Our dividend and total payouts were 61.4% for the first quarter.

We are taking a prudent approach to capital due to the uncertainty of the economy. Our 2020 CCAR submission incorporated this impact. Ending CET1 ratios for the internal baseline and severely adverse scenarios well exceeded regulatory minimum and internal post-stress policy goals. We intend to utilize this 5-year CECL transition for regulatory capital purposes, which provides a 17 basis point benefit to CET1. We expect to grow capital and serve our clients throughout this challenging time.

Turning to Slide 19. This slide shows the second-best performance among peers under stress conditions and from a capital resiliency perspective due to strong PPNR and lower credit losses. The table compares credit loss reserves reported by Truist and its peers at March 31 to the respective stress losses under 2018 DFAST. We used stress losses from 2018 as this was the last year that Fed published DFAST results for BB&T and SunTrust. We think that 2019 would be similar given the improved risk profile and earnings power of the combined company.

As the column on the right shows, Truist's 35% ratio of credit loss reserves to stress losses is above the peer average of 33%. However, after layering the unamortized fair value marks on the SunTrust portfolio, which totaled $3.5 billion on March 31, Truist's stress loss coverage increased to 58%. This is a great illustration of how the merger enhanced the risk profile of both companies and resulted in a defensive balance sheet that is insulated by purchase accounting marks and CECL reserves. It is also another example of why we believe we are better together at Truist.

Turning to Slide 20. We acted quickly in response to the pandemic to term out short-term borrowings and increase cash to meet capital funding needs. As such, our liquidity ratios remain strong with an average LCR of 117% and a liquid asset buffer of 19.6%. Our access to secure funding sources remains robust.

We have experienced a flight to quality amid recent market volatility with total deposits increasing $15.5 billion and we continue to see robust growth this quarter. We have sufficient liquidity to fund our PPP loans from our existing Fed balances at the Fed. In addition, holding company cash is sufficient to cover 17 months of contractual expected outflows with no inflows.

We are withdrawing our guidance for 2020 given the uncertainty going forward. For the second quarter, we are providing guidance on several categories based on linked-quarter changes versus the first quarter of 2020. We expect earning assets to grow in excess of 5% on linked core average basis, reflecting the increase in the loans from C&I line draws and the PPP program.

Total taxable-equivalent revenue will be down a few percent linked-quarter, reflecting a meaningful decline in net interest margin driven by lower rates, liquidity bill and fee income pressure, as noted earlier. Core noninterest expense adjusted for the merger, amortization and COVID expenses is expected to be flat linked-quarter, excluding the adjustment for the nonqualified plan. We're making good progress generating savings from third-party spend and facility optimization.

Depending on the length of the economic downturn, how deep the downturn goes and how effective the government programs play out will influence scenarios that unfold. You can see net charge-offs increase throughout the year and possibly add more pressure to build the allowance.

We are also striving to achieve positive operating leverage despite this challenging environment.

Now let me turn it back to Kelly for an update on the merger and closing thoughts and Q&A.

Thanks, Daryl. So in terms of the accomplishments, and keep in mind, we really just merged these 2 companies in December. So we've accomplished a lot. Most importantly, we rolled out the Truist culture. We were able to complete 32 town hall meetings. We had a few at the very end that we had to cancel or defer because of COVID-19. But we got through most of the enterprise and the reception to it was extremely good. We introduced and rolled out our Truist visual identity and logo. We did complete the purchase of Truist Center, which is our corporate headquarters here in Charlotte. We launched our Truist Foundation. And we were able to go ahead and begin consolidating some redundant real estate portfolios that we had that we could go ahead and begin to get some early cost saves.

So in terms of the next steps, if you think about it right now, we really have 2 major priorities. Number one priority is focusing on COVID-19. We are laser-focused on taking care of our teammates, making sure everybody is safe and well. We're doing everything we can possibly do to support our clients, not only in terms of their safety in terms of interaction with us, but also in terms of helping them sustain the economic challenges that are going along with this terrible experience we're all going through. We're trying to be very willing to invest and be creative in terms of how to support our communities. And we're doing some really interesting things there in terms of broadband and all types of things that we could do to help communities that are really, really struggling.

So the second priority, of course, is keeping the integration and conversion on track. We believe we are in a good place there. It's hard to know exactly what may happen with regard to any delays. We -- it really depends on the depth and the length of the health crisis. But at this point, we still feel good about where we are in terms of our planned conversion and integration activities.

In terms of our performance targets, we still believe in the medium term, we would project a return on tangible common equity in the low 20s, adjusted efficiency in the low 50s. You can see we're already pretty much there. And we still remain very confident in terms of our $1.6 billion in net cost saves. You know exactly when we achieve that kind of depends on the -- obviously, the environment we are living in. If it's a V, then we'll recover pretty quickly and we'll hit these in the not-too-distant medium-target type of range. If it's a U, it will take a little bit longer and that's just pretty obvious. Regardless, we believe that we will be a top-tier performer whatever the absolute numbers are. I will say to you that all of the benefits of the merger look better now than they did a year ago.

Finally, if you look at our value proposition slide, we believe we provide a really strong value proposition. We are a purpose-driven company committed to inspiring and building better lives and communities. That's really important, more important than ever in today's world. We have an exceptional franchise with diverse product, services and markets. We have strong market share in vibrant, fast-growing MSAs in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and a growing national presence. We have a very comprehensive and diverse business mix in banking, capital markets and insurance. And very importantly, we are simply better together. We're stronger. We are more resilient. We have best-in-breed in terms of talent, technology, strategy and processes.

We are very uniquely positioned to deliver best-in-class efficiency and returns while investing in the future. That said, we have net $1.6 billion of net cost saves yet to come. These complementary businesses are clearly going to yield substantial revenue increases as we develop these synergies. Our returns and capital are buoyed by purchase accounting accretion, which Daryl has described to you. And we're making meaningful investments in technology capabilities, our teammates, marketing and advertising.

We have a very strong capital and liquidity with a resilient risk profile enhanced by the merger. We are very prudent and disciplined in risk management and financial management. We have a very conservative risk culture, leading credit metrics among the highest-rated large banks. We have diversification benefits that arise from the merger that we've discussed. We stress test very, very well separately and together. We have a very strong capital and liquidity, our position, and being enhanced even with the flight to quality. And we have a very defensive and, I would call it, strong and resilient balance sheet supported by purchase accounting marks, combined with the CECL credit reserves. Because of the strength of our balance sheet and our liquidity, I would expect us to continue our dividend as we go forward into -- as far as we can see.

So like I said in January, if you like us a year ago, you should love us now, but we continue to believe our best days are ahead.

Ryan, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Kelly. John, at this time, will you please explain how our listeners can participate in the Q&A session?

(Operator Instructions) We will take our first question from Saul Martinez of UBS.

Wanted to ask a little bit about the outlook for credit and the interplay with the accounting and a lot of the moving parts there. So on Slide 16, you go through your day 1, January 1 true-up and the additional reserve builds in the first quarter. But Daryl, how much of the -- can you just tell us how much of the $3.5 billion credit mark is -- $3.5 billion loan mark, sorry, is for credit versus liquidity and rates?

Yes, Saul. So first, I would tell you, when we came up with our day 1 estimate on our reserve, we had 3 scenarios that we came up with and we weighted our stress scenario of 40% on day 1. So we started the year off with a strong reserve from that perspective. When we moved over and made our provision this quarter, we went through multiple scenarios like we always run. And then with Moody's changing for scenarios every few days, we actually ended up running 10 different scenarios through quarter end into early April, trying to help use an overlay to help us adjust on that CECL number that we came up with. And then at the end of the day, you go back to using expert judgment. I mean we always have qualitative factors this year or this time. Clarke and Alan and the team really had to spend a lot of time qualitatively because the models have limitations on the government infusing over $5 trillion and they have to weigh in on what the effectiveness is. You have all these payment plans basically out there and you need the expert judgments on how effective those programs might be. So there's lots of qualitative adjustments that we came up with. We feel very good about the reserves that we have there. As far as your fair value mark, we basically -- it's a combination of credit, liquidity and interest rate and it's at $3.5 billion.

Makes sense. How much of those credit versus interest rate and liquidity?

We didn't disclose that, Saul. At the end of the day -- Saul, at the end of the day, I mean, it's all going to accrete into earnings. It's all going to be used as a lower value for when we -- you get a little bit of benefit because you have a lower book value so when you apply your reserves. So it's all going to count. Whether it's credit, interest rate or liquidity, it really doesn't matter.

Okay. Got it. But I'm trying to understand the loss-absorbing capacity for credit a little bit more. And just going forward, though, I mean, you did mention that there is a possibility for reserve builds. And if I think about it going forward, if the economic environment does worsen and credit does worsen more than what's sort of embedded in your outlook, how does that play? And obviously, on the SunTrust that you'll have to -- and on your BB&T legacy book, you have to true up your ACLs, but on the credit mark, did -- do you -- if it turns out that whatever that portion of the $3.5 billion that's for credit marks is insufficient and the losses will be larger than that. How does that work in terms of the accounting? Do you need to reestimate that down and then get a subsequent benefit on purchase accounting accretion? I guess what I'm asking is that even going forward, do you get a -- is there a risk of sort of a double hit to your equity base on reserve builds and credit mark adjustments that only come back over time?

Saul, when you come up with your CECL reserves, you really don't take into account the fair value mark. It is a lower book value, so you end up providing less. It really is going to depend on what I said in my prepared remarks, what happens in the economy; is it going to be more stressful; if the government plans, how effective they're going to be and then how deep it really is.

Clarke?

Saul, we assumed -- through a weighted probability of all those scenarios that Daryl described when we did our estimate, we assumed very sharp initial GDP contraction spike in unemployment and then lingering high single-digit unemployment for the 2-year reasonable supportable period. And our mean version was basically similar to what we experienced after the Great Recession. And so then we did, to Daryl's point, a good bit of [productivity] analysis around the different stress portfolios. We looked at the historical and projected redefault rates on the different mods and deferrals and we've baked all of that into our qualitative overlay. So we feel like the estimate today is the best. We know, obviously, if things deteriorate worse, we would have to provide more. If they -- if it holds up as we projected then we're well reserved.

I understand it on the CECL reserve. But on the unamortized loan market, the losses are greater than $3.5 billion when you recalibrate those estimates. And you now have (inaudible) how does that work?

So you have a year to true up your goodwill, so that's based upon any miscalculations you had at 12 6. And so we feel pretty good that we finalized all the marks, like I mentioned with the new amortization amount is on the intangible. So all that was trued up this quarter. Actually, we have a table on it in the deck. So all that kind of finalized from that perspective. We really can't go back and readjust on any of that.

Okay. Okay. So there's no -- there's not really a risk there that there's an incremental loss associated with that on top of this, I guess.

That's correct. Yes, that's right, Saul.

We will now take our next question from Gerard Cassidy of RBC.

Daryl, can we assume as it looks like your purchase accounting accretion came in stronger this quarter, your tangible book value obviously jumped up to $26 a share that was probably attributed to, I guess, stronger purchase accounting accretion. Can you give us some color on how that worked out this quarter versus maybe the prior year expectation?

Yes. So we came in higher than expected and it was mainly due to loans paying off, both on the corporate side and on the consumer side. So it's a little bit above our own estimates that we had. On a go-forward basis, I would say that you can't count on that. Basically, overestimating throughout the year is possible, but you wouldn't count on it. So if you look at core versus reported margin, we're a 52 basis points difference. I would probably think it averages closer to 40 basis points on a consistent basis, but you never know what's going to happen on a quarter-to-quarter basis on payoffs. It's just when people pay off their loans, you have to basically take in all the accretion.

Very good. And then Slide 19 was very insightful, and I appreciate you put that -- putting that together. Can you share with us and maybe is as simple as the economic assumptions are not -- are different than the stress test, but one is in CECL accounting, if anyone, you and your peers, are looking at life of loan losses, why aren't the reserves even higher and yields in the highest relative to the stress losses? Why don't they match what the stress tests we're testing for? Is it as simple as these dynamic assumptions?

Yes. So there's a difference between CECL and stress testing. Stress testing is a dynamic, living, breathing process, so you basically have to project new volumes and growth or runoff depending on whatever happens. CECL is basically a static balance sheet with runoff assumptions. So there's differences there. The chart that we put in on 19, just to give credit, we basically plagiarized that from Jason Goldberg. I give Jason a lot of credit for that. But I think on that table, it clearly shows that our reserves that we have versus the combined company's losses that we added together from 2018 is at 35%. So that's a little bit above the peer group. And as you add in the fair market value, it's at 58%. One thing to note, though, if you actually look at our company run results on a combined basis in '18, that number was basically 44%. The reason I'm telling you that is that we don't have our 2020 CCAR stress results yet from the Fed. That will come later this quarter. But we do have what we submitted to the Fed a few weeks ago. And if you look at what the company runs stress results were in -- on the severely adverse, we were basically at 52%. So I think that shows a good indication that as we put the companies together, Clarke and Ellen have really derisked the company and we just are a less riskier company than we would have been on a combined 2018 basis. So our reserves then at 52%, and then if you add in the fair value mark, you're at 84% of our -- we came up with $10.8 billion of losses in our 2020 severely adverse.

We'll now take our next question from Betsy Graseck of Morgan Stanley.

Two questions. One, just -- you gave us the number of customers that have been requesting deferrals, I think it's 330,000 on the consumer side and 15,000 on wholesale side. Can you give us a sense as to the percentage of balances that those each represent?

Yes. Betsy, this is Clarke. On the consumer side, it's about $9 billion. That's for both onUp and service for others, so it's about $8 billion for balance sheet, so roughly 3%. On the commercial side, it's about roughly $10 billion or so, 5% or 6%. So again, I would note, the far majority of all of our reagings have been with accounts that are current, to start with, even in our subprime, I'll give that as an example. So again, I think this is a very unusual environment. So you have a lot of people that are worried, that have -- maybe have lost their job or maybe have not, but they're worried and -- but it's a little different than normal and that most are current to start with.

And in your forward look on the CECL that we were just talking through, how high do you expect those numbers to go?

I mean, it really depends on the 3 factors I said earlier, Betsy. I mean, right now, we feel we are adequately reserved from what we know. There is a lot more that we don't know than what we know though and how things are going to impact. I mean, the government is going to have over $6 trillion of stimulus when it's all said and done. That's 3x more than what they had in the Great Recession. We really don't know how effective those programs are going to be. So you really need to let a lot of that play out. All the forbearance that's been occurring right now. I mean that all has to play out. And some of the clients may not make it. But it is -- we feel really comfortable where we are reserved today and we'll just see what happens as we move forward.

Betsy, keep in mind, too, that the effects of the payroll protection program will keep people whole in terms of their income. And those that are furloughed, in most cases, as I understand it, their unemployment insurance because there was an increase in the normalized unemployment insurance substantially. In many cases, people have more take-home income than they had before. So it's hard to see exactly, today in the short run that there would be a huge negative impact. Obviously, if this is extended and the government programs don't provide continued stimulus, then it will be a factor. But in the short run, the government, in fact, have done a pretty good job in terms of providing short-term buffer.

Got it. Yes. Okay. And then just moving to expenses on the $1.6 billion. I understand it's hard to know the time frame given everything that's going on. I'm just wondering how much of that $1.6 billion do you feel you can control today versus, maybe you put on the -- put aside because it's redundancies that you don't want to touch at this stage?

Well, it's -- all of it is a return that is still achievable. You're right, though. Some of it may be deferred because of the environment we're in today, because of more people being working away from the office connectivity. There may be some things that we're not able to do as quickly as we had anticipated, but our people are studying this daily. And as of today, they have not discovered any material issues that will dramatically slow down our progression in terms of integration. And the progression of the integration is what drives cost saves.

Yes. I'll give you a couple of examples. So on third-party vendor, right now, our teams are still working on it, but we're probably 35% to 40% of the way of our target. So we will have about close to $100 million annual run rate save this year. And for the next couple of years, we have already locked in $135 million of that. So that's progressing well. We're making really good progress on our corporate real estate portfolio. We have over 30,000 square feet. Right now, we have known savings in there of about $66 million of what we're executing on. If you look at what we're going through right now with people working at home, we have to really evaluate the impacts of that after it's all said and done. But that could be an opportunity for much more saves. So we have $30 million. We might go down to $20 million over the next 3 to 5 years. I mean, you just don't know that. So that could be even a bigger opportunity. So those are just a few examples, Betsy.

I will now take our next question from Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo Securities.

A few more questions about your forward guidance. Kelly, I thought you said, or maybe Daryl, talked about the potential for positive operating results this year, which seems pretty tough with your second quarter guidance as it relates to that guidance. Only flat expenses in the second quarter, you just mentioned vendor, real estate, all these other things that you said that was the ex the COVID effect. And then the other part of the guidance, some other banks have said expect much higher reserves. Is there building from the second quarter? I know you've given some numbers on that, but just exactly where you stand.

Yes, Mike. So I would definitely say it's going to be a challenge from linked-quarter from first to second. We will continue to execute and do the best that we can within the parameters that we have. And we aren't giving up on our positive operating lever. We're going to do the best we can. We may not achieve it this year. But we still may. It is not out of the woods. It all depends on how quickly the economy recovers. And if it is short, we have a shot at it.

And the other question? The reserve build in the second quarter? I mean, some banks say, hey, look, since the end of the first quarter, conditions have gotten worse, unless you say you use Moody's. I guess, maybe perhaps some flexibility to use your own capital markets group for forecast, like some of the larger banks. Or given the decline since the end of the first quarter, would you expect more reserve building and that -- even though you said you're 84% reserved for what your 2020 bank-submitted stress test, which is a big number. That's all in with your purchase accounting marks, if I got that correct.

Yes. You're right on that. As far as -- we use Moody's and we also have a couple of other scenarios that we run. But we went into early April running scenarios on adjusting our reserve. So we didn't cut it off on the 31st. We closed a little later this quarter just because we're later in the cycle. So we went through at least the 1st week of April with that information.

Yes. And again, if the kind of be actually underperformed those scenarios, we would have to provide more. But based on what we know today, we think we're well reserved, but we're certainly watching it.

Okay. And so how much of the expense savings have you achieved so far? And you said some of the time frames might slip. And then you mentioned some areas that you still have. But -- I mean, you have a pandemic with the biggest merger in the history happening at the same time. So it's a tough situation. It sounds like you're managing through it, but maybe just get out on the table now what we should expect as opposed related to later.

Yes. So from a specific expense savings, we have some savings that are in and some slippages with what happened in March. And that with COVID, some of our expenses are a little bit elevated. We pulled forward buying a bunch of our laptops and WiFis and other equipment that got pulled forward into the first quarter that we were planning on later in the year. So we're a little bit elevated from that perspective. Our goal was to try to get our expenses down to 30% of the $1.6 billion by the end of the year. We are on track so far this quarter to doing that. We were trying to have some buffer and be ahead of that. It doesn't get any easier as we get into this next quarter, to be honest with you. But we still have a shot at getting our 30% at the end of the year if we have a sharp recovery.

We will take our next question from John Pancari of Evercore ISI.

Regarding the exposures, the at-risk credit exposures on Slide 15, the $28.5 billion, I know you indicated on that slide that you have qualitative overlays for the affected industries. So can you give us a little bit more color on that, on the magnitude and maybe the amount of loan loss reserve against those portfolios and maybe the loan mark against them?

So we haven't disclosed that level of details. I would tell you this, that for each of those segments, we have done detailed analysis, things like risk-grade notching and a good bit of sensitivity to the downside in each and every one of those. We've looked at the modification or deferral request. And so we've used that to add additional overlays on top of what the models would have driven and they're considerably higher than the other segments. I would just tell you that.

Okay. All right. And then the -- in terms of the insurance business, I know you indicated in your second quarter outlook that you -- or in your outlook that you do expect COVID to dampen organic trends in the business. Can you give us just a little bit more detail how that could play out? And is there an offset from perhaps any better pricing that you see in the industry? Just wanted to see how you think about how that plays out.

Chris will handle that.

Yes, this is Chris, John. Thank you for the question. First off, we would expect second quarter to be up about 3%. That's our seasonally strongest quarter of the year. And you're right, the slowdown as a result of COVID really is creating declining and slower exposure units. That could be lost people, lost business, what have you. And that will slow economic and new business production. But to your point, there will be a potential pickup in pricing. When we went into the Great Recession, we went in with the backdrop in a soft insurance market. We get into this one, it's actually a very strong market on the back of '17 and '18 being the 2 largest considerable losses in history. So we're kind of in the up 4.5%, 5% range right now. If you got to go into one, that's a good backdrop to have it through -- to continue to have at the back. And just for this quarter, for example, rates were up 4.5%. If you throw on top of that lower interest rates, we like -- I mean, the P&C underwriters are going to be struggling in the investment return, so they will likely continue to keep upward pressure on the rate environment. So I think your intuition is exactly right. We expect momentum in pricing for the balance of the year. But we do see tough new business reduction. So where we might have been looking at this past quarter, we had 7.2% organic growth. Kind of looking forward, it's looking more like maybe in the flat to 2% kind of range for the balance of the year.

We will now take our next question from Ken Usdin of Jefferies.

Daryl, just wondering if we could step back out a step on the revenue side. You talked about second quarter revenues down a few percent. And just following on the bit of the fee part that was just talked about, can you help us just understand NII versus fees? There's so many moving parts in both, but if you can directionally just help us understand the moving parts and direction for each, that would be helpful.

Yes. Just high level, Ken, I will tell you, and Chris commented on insurance. Insurance is seasonally strong second quarter, that will change from that perspective. Service charges, we have some programs in place to help our clients during this time of stress. That's what Kelly talked about, the 5% cashback. We have been waiving ATM fees so people can meet their banking services. People who are coming in now, we're getting more requests for relief on NSF and we're granting that. So I would say that, service charges overall, we might be down a touch from that perspective. Depending on what interest rates do and credit spreads, those areas, while the volumes are all lower, there is CBA, the $92 million, that line item has a chance of recovery potentially on what happens with that. And then mortgage, mortgage will have good volumes, strong. The offset will be the impact on forbearance on the servicing. We did try to factor in some estimates on the MSR valuation already. We don't know if that's the full impact of that. But it is embedded in there. So we did adjust for that accordingly. So mortgage will probably have a decent quarter would be my guess.

And on the NII side, also, can you just help us understand the balance sheet like looks like it's going to keep growing. And you mentioned the difference between stated and core NIM. But can you help us understand just most -- a lot of other peers are talking about NII growing from here. You guys have the purchase accounting as an extra factor in that. Any way you can help us just parse out the moving parts there, too?

Yes. Yes. I don't foresee our -- unless purchase accounting really is stronger than we think, I don't foresee NII being positive second quarter versus first. Core margin, if you looked at our sensitivities and you probably need to go back to our disclosures back in January when we disclosed what a down 100 basis points. Now as our disclosures that we show on our earnings reports are gradual. So it's assuming that the 100 basis points would go down throughout the 12 months. At that point in January, it was a negative 1.78% or 1.72%. If you say that's equivalent to like a shock of 50, so what we experienced in March was a shock of 150. Now you had a little bit -- we're going on with LIBOR and LIBOR, we'll talk about in a second. But we had a shock of 150. So if you take the 1.72% and multiply it by 3, that would probably be what the impact would be, rough estimate, on what our NII change might be for second quarter from that perspective. Then we have built a lot of liquidity. Now we built liquidity -- because we're in a stress period, we want to make sure we can meet our clients' needs, both from a funding and from a deposit perspective. So the cost of carrying what we're carrying at the Fed right now is anywhere from 10 to 15 basis points. I mean, if you look at our balance sheet right now and through Friday, on March -- or on April 17, our balance sheet and total balances are $518 billion. Our deposits now are $364 billion. So all the government stimulus checks have started to come in last week. We had one day, I think it was Wednesday, where we went up $6 billion in deposits in that onetime period. Our PPP funding is going to start going on the books. It started last week. It's going to go on this week and the following week. We'll probably have $330 billion of loans. So we're definitely going to have much higher earning assets. The other thing I would note is that our deposit costs, we were at 7 basis points down 12 on an interest-bearing basis. If you look at March, our interest-bearing deposit costs were already 56 basis points. When you go back and look at the Great Recession and you look at how far the deposit costs get down to back then, we got down to about 23 basis points. So I don't think we're going to get to 23 in the second quarter, but we're going to get in the 20s for sure over the next couple of quarters as we continue to push down rates if these rates stay where they are. So I think we got a lot of things that we happen to manage with. But our margin will be down, will be down because of liquidity. But once we feel that the stress is over, we can reverse the liquidity pressure there pretty easily and you get that core margin back. So hopefully, that's helpful.

Very much so, Daryl. We're going to talk about LIBOR and that is a point I was wondering if you could talk about. How are you seeing LIBOR normalize down as you look out over time?

Yes. So it peaked on April 1 at 102, it's now at 67, 1-month LIBOR. We have about $130 billion net LIBOR asset side, the 1-month LIBOR right now. So as that migrates down, that will kind of put in that full effect of that interest rate sensitivity that you saw there. We aren't there yet. It still has room to come down some more, but that will also allow us to push down our deposit cost faster too as LIBOR is coming down as well. When you look at the money market equivalent, that will all kind of come down together. So it will hurt our asset side, but we're going to make it up on the deposit side.

We will now take our next question from Matt O'Connor of Deutsche Bank.

So you guys have addressed the risk that some of the integration gets delayed if we don't get a V-shape recovery here. I guess on the flip side, the risk of losing customers and stack to competitors is probably a lot less than maybe some people feared, partly because of the virus, partly the actions that you're doing for your staff seems very generous. So maybe you could just talk, Kelly, Bill, about the engagement of your staff and how you keep the cultures kind of both in the same direction. You can't do it from the town halls that you were doing before. But just talk about some of those kind of softer aspects of doing the business and the customer base, employee base?

Bill, why don't you go ahead and maybe I'll add a comment at the end.

Okay. Yes, thanks, Matt. I think as you point out, I mean, the retention numbers were already there and coming in from a teammate perspective. And we just did a survey that was an engagement proxy. And in this incredible environment, the survey actually showed high levels of engagement from our teammates. In many ways, the cultural integration has been accelerated by months, if not years, because people are operating under stressful conditions. The teamwork has been spectacular. I think, Kelly, you would echo that. No one's wearing a jersey because they're all headed towards the same objective. So I think you point out accurately, there are elements like this that are advantageous as we go through this process. And I personally have been just really, really proud of the work that our teammates have done. The town halls and the rollout of purpose mission and values, they were well underway there, they might have been a really good catalyst because everybody's got something to lean forward on. They're all speaking the same language and operating from the same playbook.

And I would just point out one additional point. I said earlier that culture matters always. It really matters in a time like this. And a really big part of our culture is just taking care of our teammates, and we get that our clients come first, but you can't take care of your clients without doing a really good job for your teammates. And so Truist is unique in terms of having a fully paid for pension plan and a 6 on 6 401(k) match. And then we do things like $1,200 bonuses and premium pay for people on the line. So all of those things, our teammates really appreciate. And so they see that during difficult times, we're going to take care of them. Even if there's some stock slice in terms of short-term profitability, we're going to take care of our teammates for they can feel safe and secure and then they can help our clients feel safe and secure. Those memories will be here for decades. And so we feel very good about our culture. As Bill said, it has accelerated and it is strong as steel.

That's helpful. And then I just have a question for Daryl. You talked about for new loans implementing some floors. Can you just talk about the rates, how much above the floor as you are? And I assume as loans come up for renewal, you'll account to be the same thing on those loans?

Yes. So David reported, I think, a week or 2 ago that the floor that he's putting in range anywhere from, I think, 25 to 75 basis points from a LIBOR perspective. I think those are the floors that he's putting in from that perspective. That's the LIBOR rate. That's the spread over.

We will take our next question from Erika Najarian of Bank of America.

I just had one follow-up question. Of the $480 million in annualized cost saves that you noted, how much of that is achievable without interruption to pandemic-related support of your employees and your clients? And if I'm interpreting, Daryl, your answer to Betsy's question, $100 million of annual run rate savings from third-party vendors, $66 million from loan savings in corporate real estate. So it sounds like at least $166 million of that $480 million would have nothing to do with supporting your employees or clients?

So Erika, just one comment. Erika, you're right, you can count, I think, in terms of expenses being bifurcated, there are expenses that are independent of targets, like, I will say, some of our vendor contracts are independent of targets. And we've seen substantial reductions in our run rate under contracts already and more to come. With regard to the teammates, there's a onetime big charge we have with regard to the $1,200 bonus. But the ongoing from this point forward, teammate charges are not marginal or incremental. And in terms of the impact on the conversion, it really depends. But today, our people are functioning very well working off-site. And keep in mind, we -- in the technology area, we've already -- we've got thousands of people working off-site forever. So this is not a new idea, it's just more people doing it. And so as long as they're able to continue to do their scoping and the mapping and their programming remotely, which now we see that they can, it's not self-evident that there will be a dramatic change with regard to our integration and conversion schedule.

Yes. For the second quarter, Erika, we are paying a premium to our teammates right now that are on the front lines. There, you'll see you have seen elevated charge in personnel with that. Depending on how quickly we basically can adjust from work at home, that will fade away. We also are actively getting more laptops in, some more people on the call centers can do more of their work at home. So that will subside as we get more of that equipment in as well that we've accelerated from that perspective. As far as like the implementation of third party and facilities, as they execute and play out, that's when you get the savings. So you may not see as much early on this year. But as it goes out throughout the year and as we continue to move, it will start to build. But at the fourth quarter, we'll have a higher annualized impact than what you would see at this point from that perspective. So a lot of good things, although some of the third-party savings is tied to conversions. I mean, just to be transparent, there's some big card conversions coming up, some big conversions coming up in the wealth and broker-dealer areas. So I think right now, in Joe's world, he's planning to still stay on track with an earlier conversion in his broker-dealer. I think that's going to be in the first part of '21. If that stays on track, that might miss a little bit at the end of '20, but he wasn't supposed to be there at the end of '20. He's scheduled more for early '21. But if that plays out, then some of those savings will come in at that certain time.

We will now take our next question from Stephen Scouten of Piper Sandler.

First, I wanted to say thank you, guys, for the way you all are leading in community impact. Being in one of your affected communities, I'd say it's appreciated and important. I wanted to ask you as it pertained to your capital and your -- how you've talked about longer term, when you get back to 10% to resume buybacks, and I think in this environment, it will probably a far ways out. But I'm just curious, how are you thinking about that number, the 9.3% CET1 versus kind of the -- I think it was 8.7% if you had fully phased-in the CECL impact? And kind of how that pertains to that 10% target? And where you think about buybacks way down the line?

So nobody is thinking about buybacks today. We are in a very strong capital position and are still of leading capital. I mean it's still made $1 billion even for adjustments this year -- this quarter. So we will be steadily moving up unless there are dramatic increases in loan losses, which we did not project at this time. Again, if it's a long view, that makes a difference, we all understand that. So we had said that our kind of immediate term target was 10%. We've said we did that because of the uncertainties that we knew about with regard to the merger. We said we were doing that because of uncertainties we didn't know about. We didn't know about COVID, of course. But thank goodness, we did prepare for that and we're in a really good position. Now as those uncertainties subside in terms of the merger integration, and surely, the health crisis will go away, and surely, the economy will improve, then we have said, and I would reaffirm, we have capital opportunities as we go forward below that 10% level. It will depend on the then-existing circumstances, but there are opportunities available for our shareholders.

The other minor point is, remember that PPP loans that were put on the books have a 0% risk weight. So we put $10 billion on from the first round. That's why it kind of cost us in the risk-weighted capital. And then from a leverage number, even though we're going to fund it ourselves, it's not going to really cost us because we're basically just trading out at 10 basis points balance at the Fed to 100 basis points earning assets from PPP. So from a capital perspective, those should be fine.

Helpful. And then one other thing. I'm curious, we've seen some others in the industry is on a tight underwriting standards around resi mortgage, HELOC, other categories. Have you guys -- I mean, you've always been fairly conservative on lending, but have you further tightened any of your underwriting standards? And kind of within that, what are you seeing with the forbearance request in terms of industry concentrations?

This is Clarke. I would say yes to that question. Across all our asset classes, we've done pretty extensive reviews. And we have made underwriting and risk acceptance changes as appropriate, as you would expect us to do. So I think we would be more on the conservative end, and they are in place today. We've also worked hard to be very careful about what we call any nonessential lending right now given the uncertainty. So as far as the modification requests, I'd say from the commercial side, we've had a lot in the stressed industries that we laid out, things like hospitality, et cetera. And then on the consumer side, it's been predominantly on the mortgage and the auto side right now.

And as you recall, we have made some adjustments with regard to our underwriting standards that we didn't previously cover. So that's right, while we have already been anticipating a potential slowdown, we've made adjustments already.

We will take our next question from Christopher Marinac of Janney Montgomery Scott.

Daryl, is there an average life on the PPP loans that we should expect?

So Chris, we don't really have a good estimate on how much forgiveness is going to be out there. If I gave you a number, it would be a pure guess right now. So I don't really know. Whether it goes out, my guess is we're -- everybody is making the loans now so you got a big tsunami. Remember, the SBA has to process all these forgivenesses in 60 days. They probably are going to take some time to process all that. So my guess is it might linger on into 3, 4, 5 months and all before all the forgivenesses are happening, and we'll see how quickly they do that. But then there will be some and portions of some loans that will stay the full 2 years. We will accrete the earnings. We'll be booking them at a discount. The last time I looked at our average discount that were put on the books is about 2.7% discount and that will accrete in. And then when it pays off for forgiveness, we'll take long that in at that point in time. If it plays out to 2 years, you'd need to earn it over that time period.

And we will take our final question from John McDonald of Autonomous Research.

Two quick follow-ups. Wondering if you could give any color on how the reserve is allocated between consumer and commercial buckets as of today?

Yes. John, I would just say -- and one noteworthy thing for the increase for Q1, about 70% of that reserve -- that provision increase was related to commercial and about 30% was consumer. Then as far as -- also we can see on the split between -- I guess, we'll get back to you on that, John. In the actual allowance itself, we can get you that.

Okay. And then just kind of wondering, this comes up, this question, frequently. Is there a dumbed-down example you guys could give us of how the marked absorb credit and how that helps? Is it just the idea that if you have a write-off on a marked loan, you're marking it down from a smaller amount, so it it's a $100 loan, you're running it down from $95 as opposed to $100, so it's a smaller charge-off? If that's kind of the question, like how does that mechanic work of helping absorb losses for marks?

Yes. That's exactly right. So that -- basically, your book value is lower. So you apply your reserve against the lower balance. So it helps you a little bit. But I think of it as it's earnings that are coming in, those earnings can be used to provide for other provisions or could fall in the bottom line from an earnings perspective.

Meaning the PAA?

I think -- yes, exactly. I think to your first question...

I've got it.

You got it?

Yes. John, back to your first question, the wholesale reserves for Q1 are about $2.370 billion, and the consumer is $2.941 billion.

Okay. And Daryl, when you think about the loss absorbency, it comes in the form of PAA, so you've got an extra cushion. That's how you kind of think of it absorbing losses is giving -- you have more cushion on the PAA side.

Yes. We definitely have more absorption, more cushion from that perspective. But also, I think when we just cut the bank coming together and the diversification of how we came together, I mean, we really don't have any really significant exposures in any of our portfolios because as we came together, we're much more diversified. And that should play out when the new stress test come out from the Fed later this quarter. Our hope is that we're going to have a really strong PPNR and really strong loss number and a very resilient capital ratio. We should hopefully be well under the 250 basis point stress capital buffer.

And remember that in all of our portfolios, essentially, the exposure was reduced in half because of the doubling of the denominator, so there's an automatic diversification that's material in those kind of environments.

Okay. Thanks very much. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Hope everybody has a good day, and please stay well.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.