Regions Financial Corp.’s fourth-quarter results detailed digital transactions are gaining ground among a user base that is turning to mobile and online channels for everyday banking.
Supplementals tied to the company’s Friday (Jan. 17) earnings release noted that active mobile banking users were up 9% year on year to 2.6 million. With a bit more granular insight, the company said that 76% of customer transactions were digital, up from 71% last year. Zelle transactions surged 49% year over year to 5.1 million.
CEO John Turner said on the conference call with analysts that Regions’ treasury management products and services generated record revenue in 2024.
In the company’s conference call earnings materials, Regions said that the average origination FICO of its credit card customers stood at 772, with an average new credit line of more than $8,000, and a fourth-quarter net charge-off ratio of 3.9%.
With a nod toward technology investments, the company will “invest in enhanced online and mobile capabilities to take better advantage of the deposit opportunities presented by the 12 million small businesses located within our footprint,” Turner said. Branch small business deposit growth has marked 30% since before the pandemic, up $2.6 billion since 2019.
CFO David Turner said on the call that average and ending loans declined a bit on a sequential quarter and full-year basis.
“Within the business portfolio, average loans decreased modestly quarter over quarter, as our customers continue to carry excess liquidity and utilization rates remain below historic levels,” said Turner, who added that “client optimism is improving and further clarity surrounding tax reform and tariffs is expected to be a catalyst for business activity and lending.” For the year ahead, and overall, Regions expects to see loan growth of about 1%. Consumer deposits should grow at a modest rate as well, according to the CFO.
In response to analyst questions, David Turner said that “we want to use our capital to grow our business — in particular, for loan growth. But we don’t want to force loan growth. We want we want to have it [capital] there at the ready. We think loan growth will be fairly slow in the front half of the year and pick up. And the back half has more clarity with regulatory, policies as well.”
Later in the call, the CFO said that demand deposit accounts (DDAs), particularly “consumer DDAs and operating accounts of businesses are the fuel that make our engine work. We’ve done a pretty good job of continuing to grow checking accounts … we’re doubling down on investments in — on our consumer side — our branch small business, and our small business in the commercial side, and reinforcing to our relationship managers to grow new logos so that we can get the operating account.”
And in remarks on the state of the consumer, John Turner said that “consumers are still spending money, but probably a little more cautiously than they were. And so while we’re seeing some growth in our card portfolio, our other consumer businesses are fairly stable.”