On this episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, cohosts Diane Brady, executive editorial director of the Fortune CEO Initiative and Fortune Live Media, and editorial director Kristin Stoller talk to Citizens Financial Group CEO Bruce Van Saun. They talk about Van Saun’s entry into the C-Suite while still in his ‘20s; what he’s learned from the multiple financial crises he’s lived through; and where Citizens Financial Group fits in the current banking landscape.Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.
Bruce Van Saun: When you're the CFO and you're like, doing deals and creating value for shareholders, and you're that Mr. Inside, running the bank and all the numbers are—you're delivering, you kind of feel like, you know, this is me. I'm totally ready to be CEO. You're the alter ego to the CEO. And you think they're going to rubber chicken dinners, and I'm the guy who's like, making it all happen. And then you get to finally be the CEO, and you say, wow, there's a lot more in that job than you realize.
Diane Brady: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the people…
Kristin Stoller: …and trends…
Brady: …that are shaping the future of business. I’m Diane Brady.
Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.
Brady: This week, we are talking about banking. More specifically, Citizens Bank, or Citizens Financial Group, and CEO Bruce Van Saun.
Stoller: Yes, and I am a customer of Citizens. Actually, not Citizens Bank entirely, but they're online products, Citizens Access, mainly thanks to my mom, who spent a crazy amount of time researching the best interest rates.
Brady: Can I point out, listeners, Kristin is a member of several banks. How many bank accounts do you have?
Stoller: Oh, I want to say I bank at maybe four banks, but I just, I don't like to put all my savings in one bucket. What if something happens?
Brady: Oh, FDIC, you're worried about a bank run.
Stoller: I am, and I'm also just trying to gamify my savings. You know, get money over here, get a bonus over here.
Brady: You are, you are unusual because the average American actually holds onto their checking account for 19 years.
Stoller: Yeah.
Brady: There's no reason—it's so commoditized in a way, that there's just, inertia is a powerful force, which is one of the challenges Citizens faces, because they've been on a tear trying. Certainly doubling down in New York. I see them all over the place.
Stoller: They're on every corner, it's weird.
Brady: And so I don't know if they're trying to get new customers or if they're trying to get the likes of me to either open a new account or switch.
Stoller: Yeah.
Brady: But there's not a lot of reason, and so I think that marketing challenge is interesting, and building out wealth management. The other thing is crisis. This guy has lived through almost every banking crisis during his lifetime.
Kristin Stoller: Yeah, it's a fascinating career. And you've talked with him before about it, right?
Brady: I did. I did. And he talked about—he was at Kidder Peabody, which basically people may not remember because it's no longer around. He was, during 9/11 some of his facilities were destroyed. He lived through the banking crisis with World Bank of Scotland. Another one of those, you know, famous names, not for the right reason, and he's been on the front lines of so many other challenges. So I think if you think about leading during crisis, you want to talk to Bruce Van Saun.
Stoller: Yeah, I think that's so cool, and I'm curious about how he's taking on the fintechs too, because he just tried to take on Jamie Dimon with the First Republic Bank acquisition, which failed...
Brady: Good luck with that.
Stoller: And then with his Citizens Access, the online products, I think he's trying to take on all these FinTech banks. Because for me, I would prefer to never have to go into a bank branch again.
Brady: I think banks would prefer that we never go into a bank branch again. It's an interesting category, because they're not the mega banks, you know, the Citigroups, the Bank of America, the JPMorgan Chase, it's that tier right below. And he suffered a bit from being associated with Silicon Valley Bank, and then, of course, First Republic, which he bid on and lost out to Jamie Dimon. So that's an interesting category. The US is actually a much more fragmented banking market than most markets in the world, and how you gain share, and what success looks like, I think, is really interesting in this environment.
Stoller: Absolutely.
Brady: And regulation. If you want to talk regulation, talk to a banker. So lots to talk about, and we'll be right back after the break.
Brady: The best business leaders today know the value and importance of empowering those around them, personally and professionally. By encouraging and enabling others to grow, take risks, and fuel innovation, business leaders are not only driving greater engagement and performance, but also future proofing their organization for years to come. I'm joined by Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte US, to talk more about this. Welcome Jason.
Jason Girzadas: Well, thank you. Diane, great to be here.
Brady: Innovation is about empowering the people around you, and that's something that a lot of CEOs struggle with. How do they embed it into their leadership style?
Jason Girzadas: Well, I think there's all types of CEO leadership styles, clearly, and proven that there's maybe not one recipe for success, but it does require, I do believe, a commitment to inclusive leadership, where all are expected and invited to contribute around innovation. I think there's also a collaboration and a collaborative culture that's a requirement that's also not something that maybe comes as naturally and has to be cultivated and be intentional about. And then also, I think giving leaders some autonomy to actually look at opportunities for innovation, look at opportunities for creative, new ideas to bring forth that requires a degree of trust and a degree of openness by CEOs in particular, to allow for that within an organization.
Brady: So Jason, I want to, on a personal note—I'm talking to a CEO here. What are some of the most effective strategies you think for fostering open dialogue, collaboration? A lot of what you're talking about [are] the ingredients to innovation.
Jason Girzadas: Well, for me, it starts with being genuine and authentic as a leader, being clear that the single leader doesn't have all the answers to every question, and certainly in my case, it's inviting a very broad organization to participate in addressing the issues and challenges that we face. So I think that genuineness and that transparency and authentic leadership style is the key ingredient from my experience.
Brady: Good advice. Thanks for joining us, Jason.
Jason Girzadas: Thank you, Diane.
Brady: Bruce, tell us about—Citizens occupies this unusual position of the regional bank. What is that? Define that for us. It's not the mega bank. It's not the tiny bank. Where do you fit in the banking ecosystem?
Van Saun: We have a great line that we like to use that we're big enough to matter and we're small enough to care.
Stoller: Oh, okay, that's good.
Van Saun: We have great talent, great technology, so we can go toe-to-toe with the big boys. We have to be selective. We can't cover the waterfront against the JPMorgans and the BofAs, but in places where we go toe-to-toe, we can outgun them, and we do. We win business from them on a regular basis. But then also we have the smaller banks who specialize on really knowing their customers and taking good care of them. So we like to think we can bring that as a differentiator when we're providing this really strong level of service and expertise.
Brady: Okay, them's fighting words, don't you think?
Stoller: I think so.
Brady: We have a customer here, by the way.
Stoller: But I have to be honest, Bruce, I am only a Citizens Access customer. Not an actual physical banker, and that is just because the interest rates were so good that I couldn't pass it up. But I'm curious about who your target consumer is, and are most of your Citizens Access customers millennials, my demographic, and then you have, you know, maybe older demographics doing the actual bank?
Brady: It's a good question, because we were talking about how long people hold on to their bank accounts, and it's—they're pretty loyal.
Van Saun: Right. So I would say Citizens Access is really a swim lane we created for digitally savvy, as you say, most likely younger but more affluent customers, who are kind of rate-sensitive, who say, you know, if I'm going to keep $100,000 at a bank, I need to get a good interest rate. And so by keeping you in a digital channel, we don't incur as much cost of the—all the branch costs and other things which, you typically get more service and a lower rate if you're operating through the branch channel. So anyway, we probably have $10 or $11 billion of deposits in Citizens Access, and our total deposit base is about $145 billion. So it's not that big, but it's a nice swath of customers.
Brady: Yeah, the cool kids.
Van Saun: You want to keep them in the bank. You don't want them to go looking for another bank who has those higher yields on offer. Or you want to attract some people in. And hopefully, if you like our service, then maybe you become a more full-fledged customer down the road. So it works both ways.
Stoller: Was that your answer to all these fintechs popping up, grabbing all the millennials and Gen Zs, or how are you thinking about that?
Van Saun: Well, actually, you know, what's been really interesting about the fintechs is they go after usually a narrow piece of real estate in the overall bank services and revenue continuum, and they do it really, really well. And so it's actually forced us to up our game in terms of customer service. So many times we'll talk to a fintech and say, Hey, we like what you're doing. Can we incorporate your technology or your training?
Brady: Does that mean can we buy you?
Van Saun: No, it often is just a partnership.
Brady: Okay.
Van Saun: And so we probably have over 30 partnerships with various fintechs that help us either run the bank better or serve our customers better. We have partners, for example, in credit scoring. So the most sophisticated ways to decide: Are you a good customer, and what interest rates should we offer you? We could try to build that on our own, which can take a lot of time and effort, or we can go with a partner who's already figured out how to develop that and works with multiple banks and is getting the benefit of all their thinking. So usually it turns out to be a better product and it's more cost-effective for us to effectively just rent that.
Brady: You know, Bruce, when I last talked to you, you were really doubling down on New York, it's a fascinating history for the bank. You've had a fascinating history, but let's, let's talk about today and pivot off Kristin's point, which is, what do you aspire to be? You've been growing your footprint in New York. You've, as you said, you've been going after these different markets. Do you want to be the next JPMorgan, Citibank, Bank of America? Is that the dream?
Van Saun: No, I don't.
Brady: Why not?
Van Saun: Size and scale aren't the be-all and end-all. So I think just delivering, having a bank that delivers really well for customers and has crafted a distinctive, sustainable franchise that becomes kind of a widely admired, top-performing bank, that's what we've been after. And I think as time has gone by that we've developed our strategy along the lines of a tripod or a triangle. So we say we have the transformed consumer bank that really serves—probably the target spot is mass-affluent and affluent customers.
Brady: Transform being, this is from RBS days to where it is today?
Van Saun: [Unintelligible] RBS, which was a roll-up of a lot of thrifts and savings banks that focused on an interest-rate-led value proposition. We can now do so much more for our customers, offering them great advice. Moved away from more of a transaction-based model to an advice-based model. We have a full product set...
Van Saun: Advice-based being wealth management?
Van Saun: Wealth is a key area. And you know how to save for the future, how to borrow money smartly to put your kids through college. So we have a full product set. And so that's one. And our deposit franchise is really, really strong. And to run a bank successfully, you need a granular, stable deposit base, and so that's what the consumer bank brings to us, first and foremost. I like to say the second leg of that triangle is the best positioned commercial bank. So we've hired some great capital markets people, we've done acquisitions of M&A boutiques. We've hired great coverage bankers, and we're targeting the key industry verticals where the U.S. economy has the most growth. So things like tech, things like health care, other sectors. And then private equity is being kind of a real focal point. So increasingly, private equity owns more and more of middle market America. I think they own more than half of the middle-market...
Brady: Yeah, private credit. Private equity.
Van Saun: So our ability to really serve that customer base and all the deals that they do, and that creates a lot of flow opportunities for M&A, for lending money, etc. That's been really big. So interestingly, the deal activity levels have been fairly sluggish for about three years now. We're all hopeful that that starts to lift off. I think the differentiation will shine through even more when we see a pickup in activity. But last year, you know, in the middle market, sponsor loan tables, we were number two. For most of the year we were ahead of JP Morgan, but again...
Brady: Take that, Jamie Dimon, who took First Republic away from you.
Stoller: Yes, you lost them recently.
Van Saun: They're 15 times our size but we're kind of right there with them at the top of the league tables. And then the third leg is really as exactly as you just indicated. We tried to buy out First Republic, JPMorgan won it. A lot of the talent didn't fit into the way JPMorgan runs their private bank, and they wanted to try to re-create First Republic 2.0. They came over to us. A big swath of the talent.
Brady: So you got the talent and they got what?
Van Saun: They got a balance sheet.
Brady: They got a balance sheet.
Stoller: How did you feel about that?
Van Saun: Look in the end, you can't, you take things, you take a shot, and if it doesn't work out, then what's your next move? And so the next move was, hey, talents looking for a home, this is a golden opportunity for us to effectively have a startup inside a bank that's 200 years old, right in the middle of all the turbulence in 2023. Yeah, let's go hire 150 really expensive people and make a go at getting into the private banking and private wealth business, and it'll cost us money in the first six months, but in 2024 we thought it would break even by the third quarter, which it did. We made money in the fourth quarter. And now for 2025, we think it's going to be 5% accretive to our bottom line. And that's just the beginning, because now it's up to 250 people, and we're continuing to add wealth teams who really want to come be part of this. So it's very exciting for us. So anyway, those are the three legs of the stool. We think that's distinctive. We don't really have to be bigger in any one place to keep going.
Brady: Big enough. Well, one of the things about banking—to say 200 years sounds very stable, like it's kind of, you know, banking maybe at one point was a boring profession. I don't think it ever was. But when I think about banking, especially in the U.S., first of all, it's highly regulated, multiple levels of regulation. So for [Unintelligible] regulation, there's that, but also the average person may hold on to their bank account for 19 years, but it's not that the patterns of, we had the savings and loans crisis in the ’80s, and then, of course, we've had various crises around what happened in dotcom boom, 9/11, especially the financial crisis, the banking crisis. And fintech, crypto, etc. Tell me a little bit about just—what is it about banking that makes us almost sometimes go all in? Because First Republic, one of its peers, was Silicon Valley Bank, and that was yet another crisis, a very different form. It's almost like we innovate, something happens, and then we regulate. I mean, what's your perspective, because you've been in the industry, you've lived through a lot of these crises. Is there something unique about banking that makes us have these boom-bust cycles?
Van Saun: What I would say is, you know, banks are key elements of the economy and our results are driven by how the economy goes. So in good times, we're making a lot of money, and in bad times, we're kind of hunkering down and trying to be resilient. So I think if you've been in the business as long as I have, you've seen all these cycles, and some of the elements that can fell and trip up the banking system are new, and some of them are kind of old, and people forget the lessons that they should learn. So most recently, I like to refer to it as not the regional bank crisis, but the West Coast bank crisis, because it really was First Republic and Silicon Valley that had the problems. But fundamentally...
Brady: Your New Jersey roots are showing: "That's a West Coast problem."
Van Saun: Yeah. But you know, the kind of age-old axiom in banking is, you know that, you know you have to manage your mismatch between your liability duration and your asset duration. And so, you know the problem the West Coast banks had is they took in a lot of hot money deposits that really were demand accounts, and they could flow out just like that with a social media post, and they invested that in very long duration assets, which, you know, the rates were really low. And so as rates started to go up, the cost of their funding was going up, and the yield on their assets were stuck. And so all of a sudden, profitability is looking very sketchy. And then depositors say, I don't know if I want to stick around for this. And then that money leaves. And then you've got a problem in how you're funding the bank.
Stoller: You've lived through so many crises. Is there ever a moment where you were just like, you know, this is, this is the breaking point. This is the final straw. Banking is not for me. I'm going to get out, or how do you get through it?
Van Saun: You know, it's never as good—when it's going really well, you have to be looking for the trap doors because it's not going to last. And when, when things are bad, you have to have the mantra [that] it's always darkest just before the dawn. And you have to keep your energy up, because it's going to get better. So try to keep stoical. Try to keep an even playing through things...
Brady: Do you meditate or is this just natural for you?
Van Saun: It's natural.
Stoller: Wow, and no coffee. I think that helps.
Van Saun: Yeah but you know, I'd say the toughest moment was after 9/11 when, you know, I was working at Bank of New York, and all our...
Brady: Your main computer center went down.
Van Saun: Yeah it was out of business, basically. And so we had to work very quickly with IBM to set up a new infrastructure up in Sterling Forest, New York, and get things back up running. And meanwhile, we're the hub for all of the government securities clearance, us and Chase were the two banks responsible for that. And, you know, the whole financial system is getting gummed up, and there was like real pressure to get things up and running and going again. So that was probably the toughest moment. And you know, at that point, you say, gosh, if New York's going to be kind of a target for terrorists, is this really what I want to be doing? Should I, you know, move to my wife's home state of Kentucky and go be a professor or something.
Brady: Rudy Giuliani was telling us to go shopping.
Van Saun: Anyway, I think I had that thought for about 15 seconds, and then I snapped to and I said, No, this is a challenge.
Brady: I want to be a banker.
Van Saun: We're going to figure this out, and we're going to build the bank back stronger than ever.
Brady: What did you want to be when you grew up? You grew up in New Jersey, did you want to be a banker? Was that always your observation?
Van Saun: I probably wanted to play center field for the New York Yankees and take over for Mickey Mantle, as all kids do, but…
Brady: …not basketball? I will point out, people may not see it, but you're also quite tall, perhaps your Dutch heritage.
Van Saun: I was actually a little better baseball player than I was a basketball player. But anyway, when you realize that that ain't happening, then...
Brady: ...circa puberty...
Van Saun: …so I kind of said, I'd like to, I'm good at math, I want to go up the finance side of a company and ultimately run a company and, you know, and then have a balanced life where I have a family and I'm a good citizen and all those things. So that broad picture of what I aspired to.
Stoller: What was your first job?
Van Saun: After college?
Stoller: I would say before college and then after.
Van Saun: Okay, well, growing up, I did what all kids in New Jersey do, which is hustle to cut lawns and shovel driveways and so I did landscaping jobs, and then ultimately, in the summers, I started lifeguarding. So I was a Jersey Shore lifeguard, which was a great job.
Brady: Jersey Shore, is it like how they have in the movie?
Van Saun: Don't believe what you see on the TV show, it's actually a very nice place. But, yeah, so I had some things like that, that I wasn't inside an office. And then eventually, when I got to college, I figured the path to really learn finance was to be an accounting major and an econ minor, and then go get certified. So I went to work for Haskins & Sells for two years and then, but I didn't want to be an accountant long term. I went back to business school as the next move.
Brady: It's like law school. Most people who become accountants don't want to stay accountants. It's a jumping-off point to a CFO. I want to mention two words that go together, because I used to cover GE. Kidder and Peabody. Tell me about, tell us about that, and tell us what happened there, because not everybody's going to remember this, you know, iconic brand that's no longer around.
Stoller: I have no idea what it is.
Brady: There you go, explain.
Van Saun: You don't know Kidder Peabody?
Stoller: I have no idea.
Brady: So this moment in history, you were there on the front lines. Tell us about what happened to Kidder Peabody.
Van Saun: I was gone when...
Brady: ...okay, yeah, dodged a bullet...
Van Saun: So when I was there, it was a lovely place. So I had worked for two years at General Mills, and then I was in their non-foods division, and they decided to divest the non-foods division, so I would have to move to, like, Minneapolis to keep a job. And my wife, I was just engaged, and my wife was moving up to New York. So anyway, long story short, I ended up talking to a recruiter who said, if you want to have a career in New York for two—family, work, couple—then financial services is it. New York is the financial services capital of the country, of the world. So I got a job for you down at Kidder Peabody. So I went and talked to the folks there, and he said, what's going to really be beneficial is these are all investment banks who've been running themselves as these collection of entrepreneurs without a central ability to run like a Fortune 500 company. So somebody like you could come into the finance side, help them to do budgets, do strategic plans, decide where to allocate the capital, just start running better, more professionally. So anyway, that was my entry.
Brady: So you were already in a leadership role?
Van Saun: Yeah, it was great.
Brady: You would've been like a child savant at that point.
Van Saun: I was in my twenties.
Brady: That's pretty good.
Van Saun: Yeah, it was good. And then I got lifted out of that, ultimately they had—GE ended up buying that. So there was a little thing with the risk ARB desk, and that wasn't the big thing, I was gone by the time the...
Brady: The big thing was sort of a ne'er-do-well. Well, how would you describe that? Because I think part of the interesting thing about the crises you've lived through is, they're all different. I think of Kidder Peabody as kind of a bit of a rogue actor. But not only that, that's an easy thing to blame, right?
Van Saun: Yeah, you know, as somebody who put tickets in their desk and was creating these fictitious positions trying to...
Brady: Fraud?
Van Saun: Well...
Brady: I'll say that, but you were gone, so...
Van Saun: I was gone. But when GE took over, we went from really being almost like a family business to now much more professionalized. And that actually helped me further, because GE is like, well, let me see the budget. "Where do I go to get the budget?" And I say, go down, talk to Van Saun, or "I want to see the last strap plan. Who do I see?" Go talk to Van Saun. So all of a sudden I could speak the GE lingo. But anyway, I wasn't, I was kind of at the point where I was getting itchy and I wanted to see if I could do even a bigger job. And it wasn't going to present itself right away in that context. So Wasserstein Perella came, and they were looking for kind of a CFO and a CEO type. They had been shot out of a cannon. Did you hear of them, Wasserstein Perella?
Stoller: Only because Diane just said it.
Brady: Well, Bruce Wasserstein maybe?
Stoller: The name sounds familiar.
Van Saun: He was the number one deal guy, maybe one of the best deal guys ever.
Stoller: I'm learning a lot of history. Keep educating me.
Van Saun: You can go read Barbarians at the Gate.
Brady: What did you learn from Bruce Wasserstein? Because he is, you know, an icon. What did he teach you?
Van Saun: Well, really insights in how to think about deals and the dynamics around deals was really good to learn from him. But the other thing was just, you know, he said to me: we had a very narrow focus on M&A, and M&A goes in cycles, and it kind of started to go down, and then we started to lose some of the key partners. So the business that was shot out of a cannon, the first boutique, extremely successful, started to fade. And Bruce was always calm. He just said, it's a long race, and the spoils go to the survivors. We just need to hang in here. And we can't be the car that's dead on the side of the road. We just got to keep going.
Brady: Sounds a bit like Wilbur Ross. We had him at dinner last night, of course, talking about...
Van Saun: Just stay in the game. Use the opportunity. You can buy back some stock from some partners who've given up the ghost, and I'll own more of the business. He always was thinking about ways to take advantage of situations. So anyway, yeah, a lot of great learning.
Brady: Kristin does remember one thing which must be the financial crisis.
Stoller: That I do remember, I was in high school.
Brady: 2008, and Royal Bank of Scotland was one of the banks that was bailed out. And talk about what—I mean, obviously, some people have seen The Big Short, there's all kinds of… What was it that happened with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the role that you had to play, which really is the genesis of Citizens.
Van Saun: So, I had been at Bank of New York, and we merged with Mellon, so that was a nice 11-year run in my career. I wasn't going to run it because we had to give the CEO job to Bob Kelly. So I had stepped out, and I was working with some private equity guys...
Brady: ...so you knew you wanted to be a CEO...
Van Saun: ...yeah, I was looking for—what's my entry point to get back in? And then RBS came calling, Steven Hester was appointed as the CEO, and he said, I need a world-class CFO who can help me put this thing back together and get it...
Brady: What happened?
Van Saun: What happened was, they had done an acquisition of AB and Amro Bank, which was a huge acquisition, and they had kind of loaded up on some overly risky asset classes, a lot of commercial real estate, a lot of leverage loans, and they had a very thin capital base and kind of a lot of borrowed money that was going to reprice. So some of the similar lessons of...
Brady: …sub-prime mortgage, mortgage-backed securities...
Van Saun: ...bad assets, and they had a shaky funding base that rates went up and then they were underwater, they were losing profitability, and they failed. So the U.K. government had to step in and bail out both RBS and Lloyd's. Huge checks for the size of the U.K. economy. £45 billion for RBS. I think the number was £30 billion for Lloyd's.
Stoller: And how did you feel at that time? I can't imagine that...
Van Saun: Well, I wasn't there yet.
Brady: [Unintelligible]
Van Saun: Just like we talked about earlier at Kidder Peabody, I wasn't there when the bad stuff happened.
Stoller: You always just miss the bad stuff.
Van Saun: I was part of the fix-it crew.
Brady: Quick call in Bruce Van Saun? Or where's Bruce Van Saun?
Van Saun: But there was a lot of pressure, because the deal had not been inked yet, and so we had the final negotiation. So when I came over in September of ’09, I and Steven were on the point of negotiating with the government the terms of the bailout. And as part of the terms of the bailout, they were saying, you can't get any cash bonuses, even though I just...
Brady: …[Unintelligible] Why would you run toward this opportunity?
Van Saun: Because it was, it was, I figured I would get a lot of growth because it was a huge bank, and it was a job that needed to be done, to me, just like having spent my life in financial services like Citibank needed to be fixed and stood up again.
Brady: Yeah, that was a huge fail.
Stoller: Very noble for somebody who wouldn't get a bonus.
Van Saun: So I just like, well, I could do this, and the good people need to pull together to try to fix this bank. And we'll see where it goes. I'll do this for a number of years, and I don't know where it's going to lead, but I think I'll enjoy it. I think I'll—living in the U.K. for a few years will be a good thing, and we'll see what happens.
Stoller: What made you want to then go to Citizens and leave the job?
Van Saun: Well, RBS owned Citizens and so I knew that going over there, but there were no promises that I would come back to run Citizens. But ultimately, when you get state aid under EU law, you have to simplify and shrink the institution. So, when I got there, we had 186,000 people. Four years later, when I left, we had 100,000. We had £1.6 trillion of assets and we had a trillion when I left. So we spent four years basically selling businesses, selling portfolios, shrinking the company, and ultimately the EU wanted us to do more, to get even more simple and easier to manage so it wouldn't fail again.
Brady: Yeah the EU was in multiple crises then too.
Van Saun: By the way, the U.K. government was still owning 80% of us for a long time, and so they also didn't want this U.S. business to blow up on them, and the political pain they would face for that to happen. So they agreed with the EU that, yeah, you should sell Citizens and close the Greenwich Capital big trading business that was up in Stanford. So anyway, that led to, we can't really sell it because the regulators aren't approving deals. So we're going to have to IPO it. Bruce is well known with investors. Bruce wants to scratch his CEO itch. He's an American. Let's send Bruce back to take over the Citizens CEO role.
Stoller: Good timing.
Van Saun: It all worked out.
Stoller: Yeah, okay. You got your role.
Van Saun: No commitments going over there. I did something for like, good reasons, and then it came back to me with the CEO role at Citizens.
Stoller: Now, Bruce, I want you to settle a debate because Diane was making fun of me earlier, because I don't—I'm not loyal to one bank. I have my savings in multiple banks, and I...
Brady: It's called arbitrage and I approve. I just don't...
Stoller: …how many banks do you use? Am I normal? Am I out of the ordinary?
Van Saun: We use two banks: Citizens and my old bank, Bank of New York Mellon, so I still have some loyalty to them.
Brady: Oh, wait, that sounds like inertia. You kind of kept one account open and then opened a new one.
Van Saun: It's a bit of inertia.
Brady: Why is, why is our brand loyalty so strong? Honestly, I'm not that happy. I'm going to admit it, I'm Citi, and I have enough money to be Citi Gold, so I get in free to the museum. I'm sure there's other benefits, but that's the one I cherish.
Stoller: It's a good one.
Brady: It's a good one, but not really. And what is it that makes me so hard to dislodge from this experience? I'm like, meh, it's okay. Like, is it that we just presume there's a certain commodification of banking, that when we hear about interest rates, we presume all interest rates are the same at all banks, or...but you, you're out there. In addition to grabbing new clients, you have to be growing your market share with people like me. What is it that resonates with somebody like me to say, you know, Diane, you could do better?
Van Saun: Well that there's, there's a lot that goes into that decision. So some of it is, do you identify with the brand? So what we try to portray as Citizens' brand is that we're really very involved in our communities, and we do a lot of good in communities. So we, I think, in our super regional space, we have more volunteer hours than any other bank, 250,000 hours last year. We have over 1,000 people serving on nonprofit boards. We give over $20 million to nonprofit partners. We're focused on workforce development, financial literacy, a bunch of things. And so that resonates with a lot of people. They like to see on social media. I see the things my bank is doing. I like the people. They're very attentive and customer focused. I think the tools, like the digital tools to bank on my phone are first-rate. So those are the kind of things you portray to people.
Brady: Banking is about rites of passage, right? It's buying a home, having babies...
Stoller: I'll play devil's advocate. This paints me in a very negative light, but if the interest rate wasn't what I wanted, I don't think I would care about the social media.
Van Saun: Well, at a certain point in your life, you'd think maybe more broadly than just transactionally, and that's kind of what we're trying to do is say, don't just view us as your bank. View us as the trusted advisor on your life journey. We'll give you good advice on how to save for things, how to invest your money. And we've got really talented people who care about you as a person, who take the time to get to know you as a person. So, that'll resonate with some people. Other people who, you know, like to tool around and point and click. I can move money over here and get another $500...
Brady: …the equivalent of day trade. One of the things, you know, there's been a lot of talk about regulation, and I can't, besides health care, obviously that was one, but banking is a sector where one of the ways we resolve crises is we throw more laws at it, right? It's basically: Now you have, then there's stress tests, and there's, you know, there's Basel IIIs. You've got laws in multiple jurisdictions. We're in a stage right now [where] the regulatory environment is supposed to get easier. What do you want to see? What's the optimal level of regulation that allows for growth and innovation while protecting us? Because, you know, I like FDIC, and everybody else does too.
Brady: We work, I think, well with the regulators to make sure we're running a safe and sound institution. So we want to have a strong balance sheet, enough capital, good funding base, good liquidity position.
Brady: You have to, right?
Van Saun: That's job one is to keep the organization safe, and then you come up with growth and all the things that are distinctive that I mentioned earlier, but job one is to run the place in a safe way, and the regulators want that too. And so I think the advent of stress tests, when they came in, almost 20 years ago, was a good thing. It actually got you a lot sharper in thinking about what are all the things that could happen, and am I prepared if those things happen?
Brady: What about today, though? Now, today we've got people with chainsaws and like, away with the—what do you think is going to happen in the U.S. market, given the rhetoric you're hearing?
Van Saun: I was going to say, like, the things that were the building blocks are good, and then they always go too far. So you get, like, the West Coast bank failures and then the knee-jerk reaction is, let's make banks hold more capital. Let's make them hold more securities instead of loans, and let's make them issue more permanent financing. That's very costly. What that does, it restricts banks' ability to lend. And I think the banking industry last year pushed back very effectively and hard and got a lot of political support that this was misdiagnosing what happened at those two banks...
Brady: ...with Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic....
Van Saun: ...was going far and would actually hurt the economy. And so they, the regulators, pretty much have stood down from all that, and I think that'll be codified now with the new people that Trump is putting in place, Mickey Bowman being the most recent at the Fed for supervision. I think we'll just go back to things that are kind of minor adjustments and not some dramatic overhaul proposal, which will be good for the banking industry.
Stoller: So you feel optimistic, then?
Van Saun: I feel good about that. And then the CFPB, I think, for years, had done...
Brady: ...let's tell people who CFPB is...
Van Saun: …Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So I'd say it kind of pushed banks to being more aligned with their customers and not charge excessive fees, etc, and so we were working cooperatively with them. I'd say the last two years it became very political, politicized, and we're going to cap these fees, we're going to cap those fees. We're not going to let you do this. We're not going to let you do that. And it was like, Okay, it's open season on banks. Let's just say that these are all junk fees, and banks are ripping off their customers, which we weren't: All those fees were disclosed and accepted by customers, we're providing services. So I think all of that now is going to also get rescinded, and we'll go back to something that is more balanced between the banks' customers and the banks, and so, you know, there's still some overlap between the CFPB and the other agencies that will get sorted, but I think the people that Trump's put in there as well are going to do a good job on that. So I think more sanity and kind of really just kind of considering the trade-offs between excessive regulation and the impact on the economy...
Brady: ...I'm from the government and I'm here to help...
Van Saun: ...the eligibility of credit to people who really need to borrow in their life's journey. I think that'll come into better balance. The other thing is, like, there's a massive amount of supervision that takes place. So on any given day, we have 30 to 40 supervisors in our bank looking at all kinds of things. I think sometimes that can cause you to miss the forest for the trees. And so part of this thinning: Let's thin the size of these organizations, which will almost de facto force them to focus on the biggest risks that the banks face, which I think will also have a salutary benefit. So I don't see us running the bank a hugely different way. I think we'll just free up our resources to be more innovative and do better with customers, etc, and not be mired in some of these kind of low level exams.
Brady: I know the phrase "too big to fail" is a phrase that we've not heard for a while. There are a lot of big banks out there. We've named some of them. Can you be too big? I mean, that's an existential question. But without naming names, you've said you don't want to be too big. How big is too big? What's the gauge?
Van Saun: That's a great question. So like when I was at RBS and we had that many people, 186,000 people, you can't really understand everything that's happening in the bank, and you can't get your messages through to create strategic alignment across the whole colleague base. So I think that really was too big to effectively manage, I would say. I mean, the biggest banks, JPMorgan and BofA, they do a pretty good job for as big as they are and broad as they are, but still, there's some challenges with that size. And occasionally you'll see things like the London Whale happens at JPMorgan. There's some toast stubs here and there, but for the most part, they've managed that pretty well. So it partly depends on the leadership of the institutions. But I find, in kind of my career, when I've been in institutions that have maybe around 20,000, Bank of New York Mellon had 40 after the merger, you kind of know where all the bones are buried. You can get your messages through to the whole organization. You're really not surprised very much. And you have to make choices. So to be successful at the kind of middle size, you just have to prioritize, well, make good decisions about where you have a right to win, where you can really serve customers that you can defend against all the comers, the bigger guys and the smaller guys, ankle biters coming after that turf.
Brady: Ankle biters, that's not a term I've heard.
Stoller: I love that term. You know, we talked about you going toe-to-toe with Jamie Dimon, but I'm curious, do you ever get together and talk with some of these other banking CEOs? Are you friendly with them? Do you go to them for advice?
Van Saun: Sure. So we have a number of industry forums. So the Bank Policy Institute is a lobbying group for the biggest banks, and so we talk about a lot of these issues, and what, what are the priorities for the industry? We're all members of the Clearing House, which is a payments venue for the banks, and we're kind of all the big 20, top 25 banks are all on that board. So there's numerous touch points during the year, maybe five or six times that we'll get together with other CEOs.
Stoller: Who do you say you look up to the most, either in the banking industry as a CEO, or just, you know...
Brady: Bruce is very tall, they all look up.
Stoller: He's looking down, yeah.
Van Saun: You know, I...
Brady: ...it's a tough question...
Van Saun: I don't want to flatter any competitor over the other.
Stoller: You don't have to pick a competitor. Even just, you know, a CEO in the world.
Brady: I would pick a dead one and—I'm just kidding. But how about outside the banking industry?
Van Saun: I like what the, you know, some of the tech companies are doing, just in terms of the way they innovate, and they spot where the next growth opportunity is. So to have the growth rates and the margins that these businesses have, and it never seems to slow down. I never want to buy those stocks, because I always think they're too expensive. And then I look back a year later and they're 50% or 100% more.
Brady: Says the banker. Oh my gosh, I'm so surprised.
Van Saun: We were out at Nvidia, and we got to spend like, three hours with them, and it's almost like, you know, they put you in a time capsule, and they shoot you into the future, and you see kind of how the world's going to be. And then you...
Brady: I don't buy individual stocks—I heard about Nvidia 10 years ago from John Chambers, and he said you should buy this and I just didn't.
Van Saun: They were a gaming stock back then.
Brady: I know, you know what, this is triggering for me. So I'm going to just...
Stoller: ...well, Bruce, then I'm going to ask you, while Diane takes a minute, I need to ask you some financial advice for all these Gen Zs, Gen As, and millennials out here, do you have a guilty-pleasure purchase that maybe you're going to splurge on no matter what, you're always gonna buy this?
Van Saun: Not really. I kind of make a lot of money so my wife can spend a lot of money.
Stoller: Wow, right answer.
Brady: Does she spend a lot of money? What's her guilty pleasure?
Stoller: Yeah, what's she buying?
Van Saun: Clothes, shoes, purses.
Brady: Oh my gosh, that's money well spent. Well, you said you had a CEO itch, so obviously you scratched that itch. Here you are. You've been in this role for quite a while. What surprised you about being in the CEO role? There are not many people who get to be in a position where there's nobody above you. You've got your board, but...
Van Saun: …for quite some time—so I was a CEO first at 32...
Stoller: …that's how old I am right now and I feel very bad.
Van Saun: When you're the CFO and you're like, doing deals and creating value for shareholders, and you're kind of that Mr. Inside, kind of running the bank and all the numbers are, you know, you're delivering, you kind of feel like, you know, this is me. I'm totally ready to be CEO. You're the alter ego to the CEO. And you think they're going to rubber chicken dinners, and I'm the guy who's like, making it all happen. And then you get to finally be the CEO, and you say, wow, there's a lot more in that job than you realize. Just in terms of managing all the stakeholders and being the public face of the institution. Being charged with the full leadership team and assembling a great team and managing people with different backgrounds, and figuring out how to motivate them because everybody's different, and constructing your board and making sure it's a collegial board and the relationship between management and the board is right. So, you know, I had probably a little, little bit bigger impression of myself and my ability to just ease right into it than was merited.
Brady: Kristin needs to hurry up.
Stoller: What's the toughest part? What was the toughest part of that transition?
Van Saun: I would say getting the team right, and doing it in a way that was graceful, because I had to rely on the folks that I inherited to get through the IPO, and they were good, and they had hit their ceiling, but we had bigger ambitions to take the company to a whole new level. So I was going to have to change out some people, and do it in a graceful way where they felt good about their contribution, but then the new people could come in, and they would have followership, and then we start populating the people. A lot of people came over from bigger banks, so like, Don McCree came over from JPMorgan. He was one of Jamie's top guys, and then a lot of people wanted to come work for Don so actually, you realize the power and leverage you get from putting a great team in place. And so the people that I hired in the financial roles were kind of different. They weren't as broad as some of the folks who sit around the top team table. And then, and then, obviously, the kind of communication part of it is a lot more significant. So it's not just talking on...
Brady: Would do you describe yourself as an introvert or extrovert? Because a lot of the CEOs I meet are introverts.
Van Saun: I think I'm a hybrid, so I have to be on all the time. So like doing these town halls. I just did one in Providence. I'm up on the stage in front of about 1,000 people and then you're kind of going on TV, and you just have to have an on switch.
Stoller: How do you get in the zone?
Van Saun: But you also need to be able to chill and just spend time with your family and just relax too. You can't all be on all the time, is what I find, right?
Stoller: How do you mentally prepare for that? How do you get in the zone?
Van Saun: So you just kind of, I always say, wake up every day with a grateful heart and a positive mindset and so, if you say, this is a great opportunity. Look what I get to do today. I get to go in front of all these people and tell our story. That is just motivational. I don't need coffee. I get excited by the situation that I'm in.
Stoller: Because I'm 32 and not a CEO: What is your top tip or personal hack for managing money efficiently?
Brady: I thought you were going to ask for career advice.
Stoller: Oh, that's part two.
Van Saun: She's got a good career, she's here with you.
Brady: I'm high potential. I'm still high potential.
Van Saun: You know, I would say, I think in the early days when I was your age, I was already married...
Brady: ...you were a CEO...
Van Saun: I was CFO, but, you know, I already had a kid, and, you know, and my wife was going to stop working when we had a kid. And so just like being disciplined about, you know, how much money we needed to live on, and then, like, how many vacations we could take, and then how much we wanted to save. We wanted to start saving. So I remember when my first child was born, we set up an UGMA account, which is a Uniform Gift for Minor Act that you can put money away, tax-free, for your kid's college. So you had like $10,000 a year that you could start putting into that account. So for like...
Brady: ...now they're called 529s, same thing?
Van Saun: I think so. Anyway, so I put $10,000 up four years in a row, I had another kid, and then I said, I don't need to do this anymore. I'm just gonna hope I make enough money that I can pay for my kids. But, but we established that sense of budget discipline is like, how much can you afford out of every paycheck? Or if you want to just do it out of your bonus at the end of the year, start saving. Start saving some money, and then, if you have a long horizon, get exposure to stocks. Because stocks have been a tremendous—I have stocks. I bought Microsoft in 1992 at the recommendation of the General Counsel at Wasserstein Perella. She said, You got to own this stock. I said, it's too expensive. She goes, trust me, buy it...
Brady: …there's this kid, BIll Gates....
Bruce Van Sau: …I put $3,000 into that stock, which today is worth like $450,000.
Van Saun: Wow. Okay, what should I invest in?
Van Saun: I don't know what the next one is but I have a lot of those. I have Costco, it's like I have some really great winners that if you just hold a stock for 25 or 30 years, and it's a good company...
Brady: …the beauty of compound annual interest...
Van Saun: ...good management, market share gains. Start doing that.
Brady: Give us a sense of the environment right now. Of course, it's very volatile for a multiplicity of reasons. People can guess—what are you seeing? Because you get to see how people are spending, investing, etc.
Van Saun: I think we're holding in. I think the headlines now around tariffs and some of the things that the Trump administration can do early through executive action tend to be a little bit dampeners on economic activity, so shrinking federal workforce and federal spend, tariffs, deportations, if they get more than just the criminals, could all be kind of dampeners. So the market is saying, is this going to affect demand? Is this going to affect growth? Do I really want to, if I'm a business owner, is now the time to invest, or should I wait to see more cards turned over, which I think is what's happening to some extent. But you know, you have to remember the key elements of the Trump agenda were, you know, let's extend the tax cuts and keep taxes low. That goes through the legislative process. Takes a little while, but it's coming later this year. Deregulate: That means putting that means putting new regulators in position. He's nominated some really good ones. They have to get confirmed. That takes time to come through. Some of the things on energy policy, his people are going to get in place and they're going to do that....
Stoller: …so you're optimistic?
Van Saun: So I think right now we're in a period of uncertainty. Hopefully those cards get turned over. We understand what the end game is, and it's and it's positive, net, and then the other stuff kicks in. So it still could be a very kind of positive year for the economy. We'll have to wait and see. But I think at the moment, you're seeing people go to the sidelines a little bit because of that uncertainty.
Stoller: I want to wrap a little bit on looking forward. And I want to talk about tech and AI, are there any innovations in the tech space that you're excited about at Citizens.
Van Saun: So I think AI has been really hyped, but it's real. Underneath it all, it's real. So we're already rolling out some use cases so that—the bigger things that are aligned with our strategy, that are going to have a big impact. We manage those centrally and put funding behind those things. So excited about that. We have to go a little slow, since we're so heavily regulated, but, but we're moving. We certainly, in the industry, don't want to be a laggard. We want to be kind of more towards the front of the pack on what we're doing. But you know, there's another tract as well: You want your people to get familiarity with AI, and so we've now put ChatGPT on everybody's personal devices. We've got signed up for a bunch of Microsoft Copilot licenses, like 2,500, so we want our people to start understanding the tool, experimenting, building some of their own use cases on a decentralized basis that can improve their own productivity. So it's pretty exciting. I'd say that's number one. There's also—at our tech conference, there's a lot of companies that are focused on protection. So cybersecurity protection, protection against fraud. There's so many bad actors out there for a bank, it's critical that we make all those investments to keep our customers data safe and their assets safe, and so I say that's another area where there's lots of innovation that we need to make sure we're accessing that for the benefit of our customers.
Brady: Here's my last question, which is, having lived through so many banking crises, what risks do you see in the environment right now that might precipitate the next crisis? What should we be watching? What should we be watching? Because, you know, obviously there's, there's always areas of excess. Would there be something that would, not necessarily keep you up at night, but you would keep an eye on?
Van Saun: Well, I think it's more the macro is still something to watch, like the kind of resetting relations with different trading blocs like Europe.
Brady: That's not banking, per se. That's more...
Van Saun: Yeah, but those things could affect the economy, right?
Brady: Well, Chrystia Freeland we had last night, and she, this is the former deputy prime minister, now minister of transport [in Canada]. She was saying she thinks the trade war will last till the midterms. That's a long time.
Van Saun: That would be a long time.
Brady: That's a long time for Canada.
Van Saun: That's the thing that you, as a banker, always keep your eye on, because you know, if the economy slows then it's going to hurt companies, going to hurt individuals, your credit losses are going to go up, your loan growth is going to go down. So you know, what's my next move if those things happen? So what was interesting is that the banks came through the conference circuit, early year conference circuit in February and early March. No one's come off the year yet, everybody still feels that there's a little bit of uncertainty now, but we'll fight through it. And so we're not changing our guide for the year. So...
Brady: …we live in interesting times, right?
Van Saun: Yeah, but we'll see how that plays out.
Brady: Great, thanks for joining us.
Stoller: Thank you, Bruce.
Van Saun: My pleasure. Great talking to you.
Brady: Great talking to you.
Brady: Leadership Next is produced and edited by Ceylan Ersoy.
Stoller: Our executive producer is Adam Banicki. Our theme is by Jason Snell.
Brady: Our studio producer is Natasha Ortiz.
Stoller: Leadership Next is a production of Fortune Media.
Brady: I’m Diane Brady.
Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.
Brady: See you next time.
Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortune‘s editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.
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