Inflation is coming down, but it’s still a factor in most Americans’ lives. John Woods, Vice Chair & CFO of Citizens Financial Group, spoke with TheStreet about how U.S. consumers are feeling about the economy.
Transcript:
Conway Gittens: When you look at your loan portfolios, you look at the credit card data, you look at the deposits, what are those things combined telling you about the state of the consumer right now. And also in terms of enterprise.
John Woods: Yeah, I mean, I think we’re primarily a prime to high prime customer base. That’s said, we do know that some of our customers are starting to feel the pinch from several years of inflation. Also we had during the pandemic, we had a significant amount of fiscal spending and customer funds. That growth that we saw, surge deposits that because of the pandemic payments that were sent out, we see a lot of those large checking account balances have been spent down. And we’re also seeing credit card balances rise, which is starting to tell us that customers are starting to use their credit cards a little more, little less cash, maybe a little more paycheck to paycheck. And that means that we’re a little more susceptible to a hiccup on the credit side of things. But at least on the citizens side of things, we’re very diversified across the United States and across customer type and product type. And so we don’t see significant issues for us, but we are noticing that customers are starting to feel the pinch.
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Conway Gittens: And what do you see for the consumer. I mean, we’ve just got some data recently. Consumer confidence had a fell biggest measure in three years. People are concerned about the job market. As someone who is dealing with people’s money and you want them to come and bring that in. So you can then deploy it.
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John Woods: I mean, what are you seeing there. Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I think we’re seeing we’re seeing the fact that customers are spending a little less. And I think the paycheck to paycheck situation is starting to maybe kind of become more prevalent. And that’s where we tend to want to interact with our customers and help them with their spending goals and what they really want to achieve in their life’s journey. And we’re also there to help be a prudent lender when there’s an important life event that they’d like to be able to execute against. And, like I mentioned earlier, whether that’s buying a home or financing the education for their children or all really important things that help our customers achieve their potential is that’s why we’re there for them, is to be able to be strong enough to be able to support that.
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