For Regions Bank, deepening customer engagement and solidifying customer relationships represent two major priorities for 2016. And it is well on its way toward those lofty goals.
“During the year, we focused on the fundamentals, growing and deepening our customer relationships, while also strengthening our financial performance by investing in initiatives that will drive revenue growth and create a more efficient and effective organization in the future,” Regions Financial CEO Grayson Hall said, according to Seeking Alpha, during the Jan. 15 fiscal fourth-quarter conference call. “As a result, we’re a much stronger organization today and are committed to continuing to build sustainable franchise value.”
Hall is confident in Region Financial’s strategic focus.
“We remain focused on expanding and deepening relationships through our needs-based approach to relationship banking and our 2015 results demonstrate that this 
approach is working,” he explained. “During the year, we delivered strong average deposit growth of $3 billion or 4%. The mix of our deposits continues to strengthen as 92% are now low cost deposits and as we have noted before, our markets provide us with unique and competitive advantages from a deposit composition perspective.”
Consumer lending was also strong in 2015, Hall noted. Total loans exceeded $30 billion at year’s end, an increase of 5% over 2014. Mortgage led this growth with loans increasing $496 million or 4%.
“Additionally, our new point of sale initiative bolstered growth in indirect lending with increased loans of $339 million,” he said. “Additionally, credit card balances increased 7% from the previous year, which drove growth in card and ATM income of $30 million or 9%.”
Hall said Region Financial’s recent acquisition of BlackArch Partners, along with its planned initiatives, are expected to further augment capital markets’ income in the future.
“Wealth management had a strong year with income increasing 10% over the prior year,” he said. “Our focus to grow wealth management by continuing to retain, recruit, and develop talent was evident in the success of our financial consultants and insurance initiatives. With respect to the economic environment, while the U.S. economy is still slow and steadily improving, there is a clear significant pressure from the global economy. Low oil prices continue to create challenges for certain industries while benefiting others. Consequently, we continue to closely monitor our energy portfolio.”