SunTrust 2015 Annual Report Download - page 5

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for both Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) and equity originations, a
testament to our increasing role as the strategic advisor to our clients.
This is also reflected by our 20% annual growth in lead relationships
since 2011. Going forward, CIB will continue to be an important growth
driver for the Company, both on its own and as we export its skills,
discipline and capabilities to other lines of business within SunTrust.
Commercial and Business Banking (CBB) represents roughly 14%
of SunTrust’s revenue and is a key growth business for us. Our goal
is to further enhance this business by moving from an organization
that has successfully met the core banking needs of its clients to
one that is a more holistic, strategic partner—focused on helping our
clients achieve smart growth. We will do this by delivering relevant
industry expertise, providing corporate finance solutions and advice,
and leveraging the full capabilities of the entire Wholesale Banking
platform. Executing this strategy will enable us to more effectively
serve our commercial clients. The early results of this strategy are
very positive: for 2015, capital markets-related revenue in our CBB
business grew 37%, and SunTrust received eight Excellence Awards
for middle market banking by Greenwich Associates.
The scope of our Commercial Real Estate (CRE) business today
includes a much greater focus on meeting more than just lending
and deposit needs. CRE has had increased success in partnering with
other Wholesale Banking businesses in order to deliver capital markets
origination, M&A advisory, and treasury capabilities to our CRE clients.
This has resulted in 80% growth in deposit balances and a quadrupling
in capital markets fees since 2011, albeit from small bases.
In T&PS, we have been upgrading digital capabilities across our
small business, commercial, and corporate cash management
platforms. In addition, specialists within CIB and T&PS are working
more effectively together to help our corporate clients optimize
their liquidity strategies through the use of all products, including
deposits. This helped us deliver 16% growth in average Wholesale
Banking deposits in 2015.
Within Consumer Banking, we have focused resources on our
Omni-Channel strategy, which enables us to serve clients when,
where, and how they choose to do business. To this end, we have
significantly increased our investment in our digital capabilities over
the past few years, as clients increasingly expect more self-service
functionality to conduct their banking business. In 2015, we made
several enhancements to our overall digital offering, including
auto capture for mobile deposits, touch ID sign-on capabilities for
mobile banking, and a new online banking website. We continue
to place high emphasis on investments in technology in order to
deliver increased capabilities for our clients and improved capacity
for our teammates.
The marketplace for consumer lending continues to evolve rapidly,
as a growing number of consumers are moving to digital offerings for
unsecured lending. To capitalize on these trends, we have continued
to invest in our LightStream® business, which is an online platform
focused on direct lending to super-prime clients in a manner that is
low in cost and high in customer satisfaction. The application process
is easy to understand, and the vast majority of our clients apply, fund,
service, and repay their loans completely online. We also introduced
LightStream into our branches last year and saw solid early results, as
29% of all LightStream loans were originated from a SunTrust channel
in 2015. Similarly, our partnership with GreenSky allows SunTrust to
provide streamlined financing for the home improvement needs of
prime and super-prime clients. We also upgraded our credit card
offerings, providing better individual card products, in addition to
increasing rewards as clients grow their overall SunTrust relationship.
All three of these portfolios are relatively small today, but continue to
grow at an attractive rate, and should enhance our profitability and
growth trajectory over time.
In our Mortgage business, while we are consistently focused on
targeted growth in production and servicing, we are equally focused
on delivering the entire bank to our Mortgage clients. As an example,
we introduced the capability to use information from a mortgage
application, with the client’s consent, to also approve them for
“We are a Top 10 bank across
most dimensions and are
therefore large enough to have
the breadth of capabilities to
meet an array of client needs.
However, we are also small
enough to be nimble and reactive
to evolving client preferences
and market conditions. Our
range of capabilities, combined
with our SunTrust OneTeam
Approach, allows us the unique
opportunity to deliver the entire
bank to our clients.”