Truist Financial is reorganizing its leadership structure, the latest in a series of steps aimed at improving the regional bank's worse-than-promised efficiency and its lagging financial performance.
Two months after Truist
The $543 billion-asset company said that it has reworked its 11-member executive management team into a 21-person "operating council" that's designed, in part, to help break down silos.
Truist also named a new chief operating officer and announced that it's hiring an ex-Wells Fargo executive to oversee wholesale banking.
"This evolution of our management team speaks to the client-centric, performance-driven company we are building," Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers said in a press release. "Our updated leadership structure will streamline decision-making, deliver superior client experience, drive accelerated performance and actualize our purpose to inspire and build better lives and communities."
Analysts described the moves as another example of Truist trying to appease investors who have
"This is yet another data point that Truist is finally waking up to create a more dynamic firm that's willing to make tough decisions," Mike Mayo, a Wells Fargo Securities analyst, said in an interview.
Mayo, who was critical of Truist earlier this year, described the company as now being more focused on achieving better returns, becoming more efficient and improving its stock price performance. "This is all part of Truist 2.0," he said.
Under the new management structure, several former SunTrust executives are taking on larger roles. Vice Chair Hugh "Beau" Cummins III will take over as chief operating officer, a role that Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers had been filling.
Cummins, who has been Truist's vice chair since 2021, is an ex-SunTrust banker who served as that company's co-chief operating officer and wholesale segment executive prior to the merger with BB&T. Rogers also came from SunTrust.
Cummins will lead enterprise strategy, operations, payments, a newly formed governance and controls group and longer-term strategy and transformation efforts, Truist said.
His new role does not come with a pay raise, Truist noted in a regulatory filing. Last year, Cummins received a compensation package worth $7.1 million, Truist said in its most recent proxy statement.
Meanwhile, Dontá Wilson, who has been serving as Truist's chief retail and small-business banking officer, is taking on an expanded role as chief consumer and small-business banking officer. Wilson, who is a legacy BB&T banker, is in charge of consumer, premier and small-business banking, virtual client service centers and Truist's 2,000-plus branches across the Southeast, mid-Atlantic and Texas, the company said.
Wilson's duties also include core deposit and loan products, consumer capital markets, national consumer franchise businesses, marketing, client experience strategy and digital banking. He served as Truist's chief digital and client experience officer from 2019 to 2022.
Kristin Lesher, a longtime Wells Fargo executive, will be Truist's new chief wholesale banking officer. Lesher will oversee corporate and investment banking, commercial banking, commercial real estate and wealth management — all of which were most recently run by Cummins. Lesher most recently served as Wells' head of middle market banking, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Cummins and Wilson have started in their new roles, while Lesher is expected to join Truist in February, the company said. All three will report to Rogers.
Truist also said that it "introduced a number of other organizational changes," including the promotion of Brian Dowhower to head of Truist Wealth. Dowhower, another former SunTrust executive, was most recently Truist's head of wealth and institutional advisory services, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He succeeds Joseph Thompson, who will take over as chief governance and controls officer, which is a new role, according to a Truist spokesperson.
Analyst Scott Siefers of Piper Sandler said the various changes should help the effort to simplify and streamline Truist, which should put the bank in a position to improve its returns.
The company has forecasted a 7% increase in expenses this year from 2022. But it also says that it expects to keep expenses flat in 2024.
"Broadly speaking, if you look at the series of events over the last few months, between the cost-saves program and board reshuffling and now this management reorganization, Truist has really begun to be more on its front foot than on its back foot," Siefers said in an interview.
The next step may — or may not — involve selling Truist's remaining stake in its highly profitable insurance business, analysts say. Earlier this year, the company
"All eyes are on their insurance business," Mayo said. "So either Truist sells it or explains why not."
