Interview: Jim Daly, Regional

Jim Daly Regional President BB&T (now Truist)

How has the increased M&A activity impacted the banking sector?

With regard to our clients, M&A activity is very much a function of where a company is in its life cycle. A baby boomer who owns a company that has been growing will be looking at options to grow or to sell these assets. We can bring strategic advice to companies that are looking at their options. We try to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes to increase shareholder value for their company and obtain the best valuation and outcome.

What are the emerging trends in the industry that you’re keeping a close eye on moving forward?

Truist is at the front end of one of the emerging trends, which is consolidation. Not too long ago, there were 15,000 banks in the country and now we’re down to 8,000. This is down to a number of factors, including the requirement to invest in technology, which takes capital. We feel really good about our ability to invert in technology going forward. Another trend is ease of doing business around technology, and clients are eager for us to solve more problems with advanced technology. A lot of that is compounded by hand-holding in terms of implementation, troubleshooting and problem-solving. I think those two trends will continue.

What is needed to sustain market growth and ensure a strong economy in the long term?

We need to invest in a couple of key areas. First, transportation has always been a little challenging and this involves making sure everyone has access to the job opportunities in our market. Some markets have done a little better at this than we have. Another area is that we have a severe skills gap. There are a lot of jobs in the Tampa Bay region that require skill levels that many people living in the region are not necessarily qualified for. Our job in investing in the community is ensuring that job mobility is available to every one of our citizens as they launch their careers. This takes investment and communication.

As technology continues to develop in banking, the need for brick and mortar branches is reduced.

( ) with $124 million in fines for exposing 339 million guest records. Although these were nowhere near the maximum fines allowable under the GDPR, they were a clear signal from the ICO that lax data protection will not be tolerated.

Mortgages As developments spring up across the region, CoreLogic Inc., a New York-based real estate data company, published its ranking of mortgage markets and the news for Tampa Bay-St. PetersburgClearwater was not good. It came in as the sixthworst mortgage market out of all major metro areas in America in terms of mortgage fraud risk in 2019. In fact, Florida was the third-worst state in terms of mortgage application fraud, and Tampa was the third highest-risk market in Florida, ranking better than only West Palm Beach and Deltona-Daytona Beach