John Woods, Vice Chair & CFO of Citizens Financial Group, joins TheStreet to give his take on the current state of the U.S. consumer.
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00:00When you look at your loan portfolios, you look at the credit card data, you look at the deposits,
00:06what are those things combined telling you about the state of the consumer right now,
00:12and also in terms of enterprise? Yeah, I mean, I think we're primarily a prime to high prime
00:19customer base. That said, we do know that some of our customers are starting to feel the pinch
00:31from several years of inflation. Also, during the pandemic, we had a significant amount of fiscal
00:40spending and customer funds. The growth that we saw surged deposits because of the pandemic
00:50payments that were sent out. We see a lot of those large checking account balances have been spent
00:56down, and we're also seeing credit card balances rise, which is starting to tell us that customers
01:02are starting to use their credit cards a little more, a little less cash, maybe a little more
01:08paycheck to paycheck. And that means that we're a little more susceptible to a hiccup on the
01:15credit side of things, but at least on the citizen side of things, we're very diversified across the
01:21United States and across customer type and product type. And so we don't see significant issues for
01:27us, but we are noticing that customers are starting to feel the pinch. And what do you see for the
01:33consumer? I mean, we just got some data recently, consumer confidence, you know, had a biggest
01:39measure in three years. People are concerned about the job market. As someone who's dealing with
01:44people's money, and you want them to come and bring that in, right? So you can then deploy it.
01:50I mean, what are you seeing there? Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I think we're seeing
01:54we're seeing the fact that customers are spending a little less. And I think the paycheck to
02:00paycheck situation is starting to, you know, maybe, you know, kind of become more prevalent.
02:06And, you know, and that's where, you know, we tend to, you know, want to interact with our customers
02:11and help them with their spending goals, and what they really want to achieve in their life's
02:15journey. And we're also there to help be a prudent lender when there's an important life event that
02:22they'd like to be able to execute against. And, you know, like I mentioned earlier, whether that's,
02:27you know, buying a home, or, you know, financing the education for their children, or, you know,
02:34really important things that help our customers achieve their potential is, you know, that's
02:39what that's why we're there for them is to be able to be strong enough to be able to support that.