Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Truist Financial Corporation Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this event is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Mr. Brad Milsaps.

Thank you, Rocco, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Truist's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. With us today are our Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers and our CFO Mike Maguire. During this morning's call, they will discuss Truist's fourth quarter results, share their perspectives on current business conditions, and provide an updated outlook for 2024. Clarke Starnes, our Vice Chair and Chief Risk Officer; Beau Cummins, our Vice Chair and Chief Operating Officer; Donta Wilson, Chief Consumer and Small Business Banking Officer; and John Howard, Truist Insurance Holdings Chairman and CEO are also in attendance and available to participate in the Q&A portion of our call. The accompanying presentation, as well as our earnings release and supplemental financial information, are available on the Truist Investor Relations website ir.truist.com. Our presentation today will include forward-looking statements and certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please review these disclosures on slides two and three of the presentation regarding these statements and measures, as well as the appendix for appropriate reconciliations to GAAP. With that, I'll turn it over to Bill.

Thanks, Brad and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our call today. Before we discuss our fourth quarter results, let's begin with our purpose on slide four. As you know, Truist is a purpose-driven company committed to inspiring and building better lives in communities. I'd like to take just a few moments to highlight some of the ways we demonstrated our purpose during 2023. Through Truist Community Capital, we committed nearly $2.1 billion to support more than 15,000 units of affordable housing. This helped create more than 15,000 jobs and serve more than 130,000 people in low and modern income communities this year. Also, our teammates impacted 5,300 organizations and causes through their charitable giving and more than 62,000 hours of volunteer service. In addition, we started a small business community heroes initiative, which empowers our branch teammates alongside our virtual small business specialist leveraging our digital solutions to proactively connect via caring conversations with small business owners, who tirelessly work to serve our neighbors, create jobs, build our communities, and help drive our economy. So those are just a few examples of the meaningful work we're doing as a company to have a positive impact on the lives of our clients, our teammates, our communities, and our shareholders as we work to realize our purpose. All right, so let's turn to some of the key takeaways on slide six. Truist reported solid fourth quarter results, adjusted earnings after excluding several discrete items that impacted our results. The largest of these items, of course is a $6.1 billion goodwill impairment charge. Mike's going to provide more details later in our call, but this is the result of our annual impairment test, which we conduct each year as of October 1. So importantly, this is -- charge is non-cash,…

Great, thank you Bill and good morning everyone. For the quarter we reported a GAAP net loss of $5.2 billion or $3.85 per share. As Bill noted reported earnings per share were impacted by several items detailed at the top of slide eight. Those include a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $6.1 billion, a special FDIC assessment of $507 million, and a discrete tax benefit of $204 million. Excluding these three items, adjusted net income was $1.1 billion or $0.81 per share. In addition, merger-related and restructuring charges, primarily related to severance and branch consolidation associated with our call-saves initiatives, negatively impacted EPS by another $0.10. Before providing further details on this quarter's underlying financial performance, I do want to provide some additional background on the goodwill impairment charge that occurred during the quarter. We test our goodwill for impairment annually on October 1. This year's test resulted in an impairment of $6.1 billion. The impairment was primarily driven by the continued impact of higher interest rates and higher discount rates and a sustained decline in banking industry share prices, including Truist share price. Importantly, as Bill noted in his opening remarks, this is a non-cash charge and has no impact on our liquidity, no impact on our regulatory capital ratios, our ability to pay our common stock dividend or to serve the needs of our clients. Moving on to the results for the quarter. Total revenue increased 50 basis points sequentially due to a more modest decline in net interest income than expected. Adjusted expenses declined 4.5% or 5.2%, if excluding the impact of TIH Independence Readiness Costs. Our net interest margin improved 3 basis points to 2.98% during the quarter. We added 20 basis points to CET1 capital in the quarter and increased our ALLL ratio by 5…

Thanks, Mike. So looking back at 2023, I'm really proud of the work our teammates accomplished, which helped accelerate our transformation into a simpler, more profitable company. As I discussed in September, our transformation is centered on improving efficiency and realigning certain aspects of our leadership and operating model within our three current operating segments, wholesale, consumer, and insurance, to increase our efficiency and drive revenue opportunities. In the third quarter, we've realigned and consolidated several lines of business within consumer and wholesale, including creating a single enterprise-wide payments group, consolidating three commercial real estate units into one, and consolidating four consumer lending platforms to leverage technology and capital resources. During the fourth quarter, we announced significant leadership appointments within consumer and wholesale, and we formed a new operating council composed of key business leaders from across the organization. These leaders will help improve accountability, efficiency, and ultimately drive better growth across our platform while controlling risk, all of which are primary benefits of the simplification plan. These strategic organizational changes designed to improve long-term revenue growth are complete, and we're beginning to see the impacts from our cost savings initiative. To that end, and as Mike discussed, our cost saving efforts are going well and reflect the planning and execution that was ongoing throughout 2023. These cost saving efforts are funding important investments in our risk management infrastructure and core businesses, while also helping to offset natural expense growth in other parts of our organization. We accomplished all of this while growing net new deposit accounts, strengthening our balance sheet through organic capital growth, and strategically allocating our capital to core businesses. Looking beyond the fourth quarter, our top priorities for 2024 include growing and deepening relationships with our core clients, leveraging our more efficient platform to gain market…

Rocco, at this time, will you please explain how our listeners can participate in the Q&A session? As you do that, I'd like to ask the participants to please limit yourselves to one primary question and one follow-up, in order that we may accommodate as many of you as on the call as possible today.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And today's first question comes from John McDonald with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Mike, I was wondering if you could unpack the outlook for the net interest income in 2024 a little bit, including, you know, the assumptions around deposits and whether taking out some Fed cut assumptions would change the outlook and how sensitive they are? Thanks.

Yes. Good morning, John. No problem, so I guess if you think about ‘24 NII, I mentioned in the prepared remarks that we've got five cuts in our base plan, the first in May, and then really another 25 at each meeting with the exception of November. On balances, you know, we mentioned I think, you know, loans probably a touch of pressure in the first quarter, maybe down less than 1%. And then relatively stable on the C&I side, we see a nice, a more stable outlook for the year on the consumer side, a bit of pressure. Deposits, sort of, picking up where we left off in the fourth quarter, so down call it a 1.5% or so in the first, and then declining, but I think albeit it may be a declining rate over the year. So that's, I think, the primary piece. You know, John, we think about repricing. And I think you've heard from peers as well on this. I mean, probably a bit of caution warranted around the betas. So we think that some of the faster stuff that moved on the way up probably moves fast on the way down, but there's still going to be a considerable amount of repriced lag. And so I guess those are the fundamentals. And then I guess you asked about cuts and whether there were fewer. I think we mentioned we're relatively neutral versus our base case on the five cuts. So whether there are three or four, maybe six or seven cuts, I think we have less sensitivity there. That being said, I think it's an area where there are no cuts, you know, that would be, or significantly delayed cuts, that would be a headwind for us.

Okay, and then just a quick one on expenses, the guide for adjusted expenses, you know, in the 14 area. What expenses should we keep in mind for a modeling that are outside that adjusted so that you have some amortization that's usually, I guess, around $500 million and then some merger restructuring expected this year?

Yes, and you're right on the amortization that would be excluded. On the Mercs, you know, we mentioned, you know, we've got 25 left on our cost savings initiatives based on estimates in the first quarter. You know, they'll be down versus last year. You know, so, you know, should not be as much noise in ‘24 as we saw in ‘23.

Okay. And I guess just other Mercs or incremental operating costs, like any of that throughout the year that we should keep in mind or placeholder for some of that to occur beyond the first quarter?

You know, maybe just to touch, John, but I don't expect that to be a significant factor in our ‘24.

Okay, great, thank you.

Thank you, and our next question today comes from Scott Siefers with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning everybody. Mike, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about sort of how you might see loan demand projecting through the years? Certainly understand and appreciate the comments about a little more pressure on loan balances in the early part of the year? And then more stability, but just curious how you're thinking about whether demand can come back if we begin to get some rate cuts, more macroeconomic clarity, et cetera?

Yes, Scott, I think you're right. I think in our base case, we're assuming a couple of things. The five cuts we think will benefit demand a touch, but to the extent that that's underestimated, that would be welcome news. And I think we mentioned from a C&I perspective, we do expect modest growth in that portfolio, at least in the second quarter, third quarter, and beyond. I think most of the pressure that we're seeing for the year is still on the consumer side. Others may weigh in on other factors, Bill?

Yes, and it's not just part of the pressure on the consumer side is we're creating, you know, as we're really reducing some of our focus on, you know, indirect as an example. And that's somewhat offset by the growth in Sheffield and Service Finance, but that doesn’t sort of isn't a perfect balance in there. So the consumer reflects probably a little more of our own action and capital allocation than where we are from a market perspective. And then I think as Mike said, I mean, on the C&I side, you know, we're open for business, you know, so, you know, we're going to serve our markets. And I think we've got really, really strong markets. And when I think recovery comes, it will come disproportionately faster in our markets. And if that happens sooner, we'll see the benefit of that. And we'll be a recipient of that, because we are, I think, gaining share in most of those capabilities. And then the other part I just mentioned is that like and when we're winning, we're winning more disproportionately, so on the C&I side particularly, you know, just you know 15% to 20% more of the deals are in left leads as an example. So, you know, if we look at some of our portfolio last year, we're winning more on the left side. So that's got more profitability and more tailwind in terms of an ability to expand those relationships. So I don't know if we're being conservative, to use that word, but I think we've got to sort of see what's in front of us. And hopefully by the end of the year, you know, if the rates turn out as we all forecast, we'll see a little spur in the economy and I think we'll be direct beneficiaries of that.

Perfect. Thank you. And then, Mike, just a more minutia-oriented one. Obviously great to see the nearly $3 billion improvement in AOC. I'm curious if you have an estimate for what your adjusted or sort of fully loaded common equity Tier 1 ratio is relative to the stated 10.1%?

Yes, Scott, I can give that to you. So, you know, on a stated basis, you know, we finished the quarter at 10.1%. You know, if you look at our -- the new balance from an OCI perspective, and this would include the AFS security, as well as the pension, that's about a 2.9% impact. So that would take you down to, you know, call it, I guess 7.2%. And then, you know, the other factors like the thresholds and the RWA inflation we mentioned, you know, earlier in the call that we have done more work around an estimate for what the RWA impact might be under Basel and also a little more work on the thresholds, call those another percent. So that walks you down to low-6s.

Okay. Perfect. All right. Thank you very much.

And our next question today comes from Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, Bill, I'm wondering if the optimization, maybe you could call it Truist 2.0 is going fast and deep enough, and I do recognize two items. One, you’ve mentioned headwinds in the past from rates, regulation, and retooling. And second, your new efforts, the $750 million savings program, 4% less headcount, 4% less branches ahead. But then I look at the core efficiency numbers, I'm like, oh, this is not what we signed up for, right? I mean, slide eight, nine, I think lists your core efficiency at 59% in 2023, and now you're guiding worse for 2024, and your pre-emerger target was 51%. So are you guys doing enough and doing it fast enough to optimize?

Yes, Mike, I think an appropriate challenge is always, we've done a lot. So I think I'm really encouraged by the momentum and you can see it really in the third and fourth quarter. And you see that significantly and particularly the expense declines. And we're committed to what we, you know, what we talked about in September. I think our $750 million plan, I'm really proud of our teammates. I'm proud of our leadership. You know, they really got the sleeves rolled up and got after it. So the intensity that's in this company right now about being more efficient, I feel is demonstrably better. And being able to apply that over this more simplified organizational structures where we see the benefits. So if you think about, as I've made in my comments, I mean sort of that process is complete. So now this intensity, these efforts, these initiatives, we apply that over a much more simplified business model. And the decisions that leaders are making, I think are just better, stronger decisions, which lead us to a more efficient company long-term.

My follow-up on optimization, I'll give to my colleague, insurance analyst, Elyse Greenspan. Elyse?

Yes, thanks, Mike, and good morning to everyone. On the insurance side, I know there's been press reports on the potential monetization and sales process of that asset. So I was just hoping that you can provide, you know, an update to us and just, you know, where you stand with that process?

Yes, so I think we've said pretty clearly that, the insurance business creates a capital opportunity for us and then like outlined that in a lot of specificity. We've said clearly that we're always evaluating alternatives and we're going to do the best thing for the insurance business and the best thing for Truist going forward. And I don't think as it relates to any specific timing and those type of things, I don't think I really should comment beyond that.

Okay, thank you.

Great, thanks.

And our next question today comes from Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. I wanted to ask you to expand a little bit on your outlook for credit. Noticing the NPA decline this quarter and you have an expected charge off normalization path. I'm just wondering what you're seeing in terms of what areas of the portfolio you're expecting to see that loss trend higher in the most and just your general sense of just how the customer set feels in terms of, you know, that certainly implies a good ramp from here, but one that's controllable. So just kind of juxtaposing that NPA decline with your expected ramp and losses? Thanks.

And this is Clarke. Thanks for the question, our ‘24 NCO guidance, as Mike said, it assumes we're going to continue to see normalization occur, both in consumer and wholesale. We've already seen a lot of it in the consumer side. We have a higher mix, as Bill said, of higher margin consumer finance businesses and less relative mortgage and prime auto, that's a factor on the loss assumption. But I think the biggest one that you’ve pointed out, we're working really hard to get ahead of any potential areas of stress, think CRE office and so our guidance also reflects opportunities to be opportunistic to work through if we see more challenges in that space as that structural risk unfolds. So we hope to do better, but we're assuming we're going to work hard to make sure of that we get ahead of any risk.

Thanks, Clarke. And just one follow-up, I'm just wondering, I know you said that you're expecting a hopeful bounce in the investment banking business. Just wondering where those level of conversations are and just given your mix of business, where we might expect to see that either come back sooner or have a lag relative to the environment? Thanks.

Yes, great question. And the good news is we've got a really good balanced investment banking business. So, and, you know, seeing some positive things on, you know, a lot of the different buckets. So if you think about equity capital markets, I mean they're starting to come back. I think we're starting to see some IPO components of that. Our pipeline there is probably the strongest it's been in a long time. And pipeline as active book runner. When and if all that comes to bear, I think that's we'll just have to, that'll be a little bit market dependent. On the debt side, sort of the high yield investment grade, I mean, you've got a lot of maturity sort of running off in ‘24, so there's sort of a natural refinance opportunity. I think, again, sort of that'll be where clients are projecting where they think rates are going to come. So they've got a lot of natural things they have to do and they'll have to pick that point of demarcation where they want to start the refinancing side. And then the M&A pipeline is really strong. We spent a lot of time in energy with our verticals and being really relevant. So the size and scope of some of the things that we're doing are proportionally higher, but we've also built this really great pipeline with our transition advisory business, with our commercial clients. And we've got more in the pipeline there than we closed all of last year, just as an example. So that's sort of that core bread and butter kind of work. And then we have things that were like public finance, which was sort of a nascent business for us 12, 18 months ago, and now starting to build up some momentum and as we see public finance opportunities starting to grow. So we have a lot of cylinders that are working that I think can offset each other and would be a good reason that we would be confident in a pretty nice recovery on the investment banking side. It will be like everything else, a little bit quarter-to-quarter dependent, but hopefully a little less volatility for us given that we've got a lot of cylinders running.

Great. Thanks, Michael.

Yes.

And our next question today comes from Erika Najarian with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. The first question is for Bill. Bill, Mike is not saying anything too different about loan growth from the rest of your peers for 2024. That being said, I think obviously one of the genesis of the merger of equals is this combined franchise in this footprint that was better than everybody else's? So I guess my question here is, you know, how much of your current adjusted capital, state right now is sort of impacting still how you're thinking about growth and going to market? And you know, clearly there's going to be a lot of questions on use of proceeds, you know, if you do sell the rest of Truist Insurance Holdings. But how much different is your approach going to be to market, if at all, if you do monetize TIAs?

Yes, let me answer the first part of that as well. So, you know, I think that's a great question. And, you know, if you look at sort of the barometer, I was trying to say this earlier on sort of where we go, I think we will reflect our economy and our opportunities. So, and we'll just have to see sort of how that gets unleashed going forward. And I think the correlation will probably be more directly seen in the C&I side, because we're -- as I mentioned before, not just a capital preservation, but or optimization, but really more around optimization around return and sort of looking at our core and non-core. So we've pulled the throttle back on some of the consumer side that we consider to be less capital efficient. So that's got a little bit of an overhang in terms of where we look at this. I think if we go into 2024 and trying to answer your question, I think the barometer for us ought to be on the parts of consumer where we're investing and C&I overall. And as I said earlier, I think when we see the recovery, we'll see it more disproportionately in our markets and we should reflect that. So I think that's exactly right. But the net of your whole question, we're not capital constrained in terms of the opportunity for growth in the business, in poor business, in the places where we're investing.

Got it, And just a follow-up question for Mike. One of your peers had framed it this way, so I think the investors found it helpful. But you did mention earlier that you had caution on the betas to the downside, and your first cut is presumed to be May. Considering a lag could you give us a sense of what your range of assumptions is in terms of downside betas for the first 100 basis points of cuts that's embedded in your guide?

Yes, Erika, you know, I'm not -- it's a great question, and one we're spending a lot of time on. Look, I mean, I think initially out of the gates, and if these come, call it, you know, ‘25, you know, at a time and you think about the first 100s so the first four for us, I think the first-half of that, it's going to be really pressured by guys still repricing up across the retail business and certain products and segments. So I guess my use of the word cautionary is thinking about kind of where we're ending up right now on a cumulative beta perspective and just acknowledging that we're going to be lower than that out of the gates for certain. But I don't think, if you think about our NII outlook, I think you've got a pretty good sense for how we're thinking about the reprice trend. And we mentioned we think in the first quarter in sort of a static rate environment, we're going to be down 3% to 4% on balances and day count and a touch worse on rate paid. And you know, from there, as we start to see the cuts, in our case, we think we flatten out and are pretty stable.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. I guess, I just wanted to follow-up maybe Bill and Mike on the goodwill charge. I'm assuming it's more than a mathematical exercise and it's hard for me to imagine that higher rates are structurally bad for banking organizations with good deposit base, which is the case for Truist. So to some extent I guess the read-through is some of the deal synergies tied to the SunTrust BB&T merger no longer look as appealing as they did at the time of the deal announcement. One, is am I missing something there? And secondly, Bill, just so you've talked about a bunch of strategic actions, is it fair for us to expect that if we look a year from now, we will see very clearly some of the synergies, be it in terms of market share gains, efficiency tied to the deal where investors can start getting on board with the franchise?

Yeah, I'll go on the first one. Ebrahim, thanks for the question. You know, you sort of said, hey, I assume it's sort of not just math, or maybe you said it is mathematical, and that's right. I mean, at the end of the day, we do an annual test for impairment. There are I mean thousands and thousands of factors that go into this work. There are customary evaluation approaches. You know, you evaluate each reporting unit. You know, if you think about it the factors that are significant that we cited in our prepared remarks is that you do have a very you know you've had degradation in operating conditions for the industry you had a significant decline in broadly speaking bank stock valuations, Truist market valuation at the time and we do this test as of a certain day each year. In our case, it's October 1. So all those factors are considered and influence the outcome. But at the end of the day, the estimated fair value is below the carrying value, and that's the output. But again, just to reiterate this, absolutely zero impact to our financial condition or how we think about our opportunity or our strategy or what we're doing.

And it's just done by segment too, Mike.

Yes, that's right. You look at the various reporting segments, the reporting units for us, which are the consumer and wealth business, at least in ‘23, corporate and commercial, and then insurance.

And then on your second question, hopefully, what I was indicating is that process has started. So if you look at the net new account gains we're seeing, the growth in primacy accounts, the growth in market share and investment banking. So those things are actually underway and happening. I think they'll continue to accelerate, they'll continue to build, they'll continue to manifest, as you said, both on the revenue and both on the efficiency side. I think you actually pointed out, you know, you'll see both sides of that.

Got it. Thanks for that. And just one quick follow-up. When we look at the commercial real estate multifamily book, there are a bunch of like Southeast markets that are probably seeing a fair amount of supply coming through. Any concerns, I mean, what are you seeing in the multifamily CRE today, and any markets where you are particularly focused on in terms of oversupply over the next year or two?

Yes, I'll give Clarke to comment as well. But yes, there are, you know, part of the great part of our markets is we have a lot of in-migration. So we've had a lot of building in anticipation of that. So if you think about some of our larger markets, Austin, Orlando, I mean, some of the suspects where you've seen a little bit of that. I'll get Clarke to comment on the quality of the portfolio. So that you know the multifamily, large developers that were in and long-term the migration positive continues. So I was looking at some data interesting enough just to make a comment broadly on that. Within our markets last year, we added a metropolitan Charlotte. So just think about that in context. So we added about 2.2 net in-migration into our market. So the overall demographics are good, but I think in fairness to your question, we probably have a little bit of a shorter term watch item versus worry item. Maybe Clarke, you can…

I agree with you, Bill. Overall, we still think multifamily long-term is a very favorite asset class and some of the current challenges from our perspective relate more to a margin or current debt service coverage risk issue, given rate increases, higher operating cost, and to your point the new pipeline supply that's coming on. And we just view that very differently than the structural risk we see in office as an example. So we're working with our borrowers to address their specific situations as we look out and how they're going to address this impact. Again, so what we would expect more temporary increase in watch lists, some non-accruals, but nowhere near the same loss risk exposure you see in office. And I would remind you that there's very active secondary placement sources, a lot of equity sources willing to come in. And the clients that we have, to Bills point, they want these assets and they're supporting those. So we think it's a manageable risk, even though there's some short-term pressure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Matt O'Connor with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Sorry I missed it, but have you guys talked about what your targeted capital level is? You know, obviously you said going from here with no buybacks in the near-term and again, with the impact on the RWAs from the Basel III and getting proposals, but how are you thinking about targeted capital levels over the medium and long-term? Thanks.

Yes, Matt, for right now, we're at 10.1 in building. And so I think until we get more information, until we sort of understand the dynamics a little bit more and think about our company construct, I think the best thing for us right now is to be in an organic capital building mode. So we haven't set a specific target, but I think 10 plus for the short-term, the medium term seems a good place for us to be landing right now.

Okay. And as you think about kind of the 10 plus medium term, is that including AOCI? Because obviously you're already 10 plus now and you're going to create capital fairly quickly this year with things given earnings and not much balance in growth?

Yes, no, Matt, I think we're just, you know, in the moment we're in, you know, we're looking at spot capital, we're thinking about transitioned, you know, capital measurements if we phase into new rules and we're looking at fully phased in. I think the whole industry is thinking about it that way. So I think when Bill thinks about 10, I mean I think about it on a transitional basis, staying at or above 10 is probably what Bill is implying. But I think shorter term is like we're building capital, we're going to continue to do that through organic earnings and hopefully we'll have a little more visibility on this rule and can give you a little better sense for kind of a medium term target.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Gerard Cassidy with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Bill. Good morning, Mike. Bill, when we go back to the original merger, I think if I recall correctly, there was a targeted 20% return on tangible common equity and you've just discussed about the capital levels, you know, Basel III being higher than what I presumed to be lower numbers back and when the deal was announced? Can you share with us, are you still thinking 20% return on tangible common equity is a reasonable goal or you can attain it even with these higher capital levels that you and the industry has to carry?

Yeah, I mean, I think, Gerard, if we go back to 2019, that was a different world and a different environment, both in terms of, you know, where we were from a rate standpoint and where we were from a capital standpoint, regulatory standpoint. Now we've got Basel III in front of us. So I think in fairness 20, certainly short and medium term is not necessarily in the windshield. But I think we can continue to perform at a high level in terms of ROTCE. And so all the efficiency opportunities and things we're building, revenue growing, those are things that are continuing to build on that. So I think to think about us being a top performer in that category versus setting a specific target that was constructed in 2019 in a different environment is maybe a different way to think about it.

Very good. And then coming back on -- obviously, you guys talked about credit quality. You referenced, Mike, about commercial real estate in your opening remarks and you just talked about multifamily again. And Truist has always been good on its credit. So my question on commercial real estate in the office area, and maybe this is for Clarke, can you kind of draw a line for us from early ‘22 when there wasn't really any problems before rates started to go higher in downtown office, really, or maybe just emerging? And incrementally, it's clearly deteriorated. Clarke, can you share with us, is the deterioration accelerating on a sequential basis in the office market? Or have we seen the rapid acceleration of down values, real workouts taken charge-offs? And going forward, yes, you're still going to see higher charge-offs probably, but the actual incremental deterioration is lessening or worsening, can you share with us from that standpoint?

Great question we talk a lot about, Gerard. And so I would say as I mentioned, as opposed to multifamily, we view the risk in the CRE sector as more structural, and it still will take some time to play out over the next couple of years. And the way we think about it, everyone with credit in the sector is exposed to the risk. And so the big challenge will be for those that have large concentrations, which we don't. So we feel good about that. And our strategy has been to try to identify the risk early and work through with those borrowers to address all options. And you see that in how we approached risk rating, accrual status and reserves. So that's kind of where we are right now. We feel good about our efforts. But to your point, we still think about the fact there are very few real trades today. So it's hard to know what real price discovery and whether we've hit the bottom of the cycle or not. I think everyone's trying to recognize that and so you've seen that acceleration. What I think is still left to come incrementally, as we are still seeing, as leases fully mature, companies, lessees resizing their space needs. And so you can have performing loans today and a good outlook, but you really don't know until you see the leases mature. The other thing I would say is we are seeing some interest, some early interest on long-term investors coming in and that may help. So I would say still more to come.

Great. Thank you.

We have room for one final question and that comes from Manan Gosalia with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to come back to the NII guide, and I appreciate all the detail on loan growth and deposit betas. Can you talk about how we should think about the impact of securities repricing and the impact of swaps as we think through that 2024 NII?

Yes, no problem. On the securities repricing side, not a huge factor. As you know, our speeds, we mature, call it, $2 billion to $3 billion per quarter, and so probably not as big of an impact on -- in terms of upside for '24. But as you think about the swap book, I think, I mentioned in the fourth quarter, we had a little bit of a tailwind to the tune of, call it, $20 million to $25 million relative to Q3. Our outlook for '24, really interesting enough, the first half, it's a tailwind with some of the payers in our portfolio. But we do have some received fixed swaps that will become effective throughout the course of the year, which will later in the, call it, first-half begin to mute the benefit and then by the second half, create a headwind. But for the full year impact, it's actually negligible at least based on the current curve. But that's all factored into our NII outlook.

Got it. And just as we think through the sensitivity to the different rate environment, I think you mentioned some forward starting swaps. Is there any more color, any quantification there? Or anything else we need to think through in terms of the impact on NII from any swings in the forward rate assumptions?

Look, I mean, like we disclosed this. I mean if you look at our swap portfolio, we've got about $30 billion of receivers on today. About $10 billion of those will be effective sort of day one this year, and by the end of the year, most will be effective. But again, that's incorporated into our outlook.

Got it. Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Brad Milsaps for closing remarks.

Okay. That completes our earnings call. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team. Thank you for your interest in Truist, and we hope you have a great day. Rocco, you may now disconnect the call.

Thank you, sir. This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a wonderful day.