Dive Brief:
- Truist has shuffled its executive team following this month’s departures of Scott Case, the bank’s chief information officer, and Denise DeMaio, its chief audit officer.
- Brad Bender, who had been Truist’s head of enterprise operational services, was appointed interim CIO this month. He’ll occupy the role while the bank looks for a successor to Case. Grant Harbrecht, previously Truist’s chief compliance officer, was named chief audit officer April 15, according to the bank’s website.
- Meanwhile, Truist made leadership hires within its payments business, “an area we see significant opportunity for growth over time,” CEO Bill Rogers said Monday during the lender’s quarterly earnings call. Satyan Melwani, formerly at Barclays and Citi, joined Truist during the first quarter as head of consumer payment products, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Dive Insight:
Case and DeMaio were members of Truist’s operating council, created late last year “to expand leadership opportunities, ensure inclusive feedback and break down silos to enable the company to more effectively pursue its goals,” the bank said at the time. The council now stands at 24 members.
Last November, the bank created a chief operating officer role for its vice chair, Beau Cummins, and hired Wells Fargo veteran Kristin Lesher as its new chief wholesale banking officer.
Case came to Truist from SunTrust. The 15-year Bank of America veteran joined SunTrust in 2015 and served as chief technology officer for two years, according to his LinkedIn profile. He left briefly, and returned in 2018 as CIO, continuing through SunTrust’s 2019 merger with BB&T to form Truist. Case left Truist to pursue other opportunities, American Banker reported.
In a LinkedIn post last week, DeMaio said she retired from the bank, where she had been since 2022. DeMaio held auditing roles at MUFG and TD prior to joining Truist, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Truist is in the midst of executing a $750 million cost-cutting plan, which includes job cuts and paring its branch network. Also included in that plan: cutting four division heads and reducing tech spend. The lender logged $70 million in restructuring charges in the first quarter, with the bulk of that related to severance and branch closures, Truist CFO Mike Maguire said Monday.
The sale of the lender’s remaining stake in Truist Insurance Holdings, valued at $15.5 billion, to a group of private-equity firms is expected to close this quarter, executives said. By selling the insurance business, Truist will “have capital capacity to play more offense in our consumer and wholesale businesses,” including seeking ways to accelerate loan growth, CEO Bill Rogers said during the call.
Loan demand remains “muted” for Truist, although the bank is seeing some improvement in terms of commercial lending prospects, he said.
The bank’s first-quarter net income slipped 21%, to $1.2 billion, according to a news release Monday. Revenue on a taxable equivalent basis dropped 9%, to $4.87 billion, the bank said.
