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Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Citizens Financial Group’s move to seize market share among the Northeast’s rich is gathering pace, executives said during the bank’s first-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
Citizens Private Bank now boasts $2.4 billion in deposits as of March 31 and around $500 million in assets under management, the bank’s earnings presentation noted. That’s up from $1.2 billion in deposits and $400 million in assets under management in the fourth quarter of 2023 and $200 million in deposits in the third quarter of the same year. Most of those deposits, the bank said, were commercial deposits and nearly two-thirds were in savings accounts.
“We’re taking the opportunity to fill the void left by the banking failures last year,” CFO John F. Woods told investment analysts Wednesday.
The 2023 bank failures took out two major institutions serving high-net-worth customers: Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. The former was absorbed by North Carolina’s First Citizens Bank and the latter by JPMorgan Chase.
Citizens is building its new arm in part with hires from other institutions, like the 50 wealth managers it picked up from the defunct First Republic Bank last summer, two former JPMorgan Chase wealth executives it hired away in February and Citizens Private Bank’s newest addition: former Morgan Stanley managing director Paul Casey, whose appointment to oversee its Citizens Wealth Management and Citizens Private Wealth Management divisions was announced Monday.
Woods said the bank plans to continue “opportunistically add talent” at Citizens Private Bank for the rest of the year. The private bank now has around 200 bankers, Citizens said in the press release announcing Casey’s hiring.
As of March 31, the private bank boasted $1.1 billion in loans, split roughly 80-20 between commercial and consumer debt, with a yield of 8 percent.
“The ship has landed and we’re off to a great start. We expect that to continue and even accelerate,” CEO Bruce Van Saun said Wednesday, and noted that the bank also recently opened a wealth management office in Palm Beach, Florida.
