PROVIDENCE – Citizens Financial Group Inc. has its eyes set on the Big Apple and is hoping to make the New York City metropolitan region its next “home run,” according to CEO and President Bruce Van Saun.
Van Saun shared details about the company’s growth plans in New York during an April 19 call with investors after the Citizens Bank parent company released its first-quarter profits. The latest balance sheet includes $6.3 billion in deposits from the recently closed acquisition of 80 East Coast branches of HSBC Bank U.S. NA. Together with the $3.5 billion deal to buy New Jersey-based Investors Bancorp, which closed in April after the first quarter ended, Citizens expects to break the top 10 deposit rankings for the New York City metro region by 2023.
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“The goal would be like within three to 5 years if New York starts to take on a look and feel of what we built in Boston and what we built in Philadelphia,” Van Saun said during the call.
Already, the company is seeing early signs of growth, with Brendan Coughlin, head of consumer banking, reporting a $100 million inflow of balance sales in the New York market.
As for whether Citizens will continue its buying spree in the year ahead, Van Saun said the focus will be on integrating its new customers and employees into the bank. But he wasn’t ruling out future expansions, noting an “interesting” strategy in Florida, where the company also picked up a half-dozen new branches through the HSBC deal.
“There does not appear to be much to do that’s attractive inorganically, and the likely path is that we will open several more wealth centers in additional cities down the road,” Van Saun said. “In short, you can count on us to maintain the strong financial discipline we’ve exhibited since the IPO [initial public offering].”
What that means for the bank’s presence in Rhode Island is also unclear, as its local headquarters, in Providence, was not mentioned during the call.
Citizens maintains the top spot in Rhode Island with 37% of the in-state market share as of June 30, 2021, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It also has 70 branches across the state, according to PBN’s 2022 Book of Lists.
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Lavin@PBN.com.
