Motley Fool Money - Bank On This?

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Citigroup’s Jane Fraser is looking to reinvent one of the Big Four banks. Can she do it? (00:21)Matt Frankel and Deidre Woollard discuss: - The challenges facing Citgroup. - Why big banks have to get serious about high-yield accounts. - Charles Schwab’s opportunity to build an integrated platform. (19:49) Mark Dixon, CEO of IWG, talks to Deidre Woollard about the changing role of the office in business life. Get your Stock Advisor discount here: www.fool.com/mfmdiscount Companies discussed: C, IWG, SOFI, WFC, BAC, JPM, ALLY Host: Deidre Woollard Guests: Matt Frankel, Mark Dixon Producer: Ricky Mulvey Engineers: Annie Pope, Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Will a rising tide lift all banks? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Deidre Willard here with Motley Fool analyst Matt Frankel. Matt, how are you doing today? Good. It's been a while and I'm glad to be here. We are going to talk some banking because it's banking season.

Banking earnings are usually the first part of earnings season. A little appetizer before we get into the tech earnings that start later this week. Last week on the show, we had Dylan and Jason Moser. They covered some of the banks that reported on Friday. They covered Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase. One they didn't talk about too much that I'm kind of fascinated by is Citigroup. Also reported on Friday. This one has had a bit of a rougher trajectory than even Wells Fargo, which has had

its own challenges. They had better than expected revenue, but they are really doing some major changes. Tell us a little bit about that and how we should think about it. Yeah, well, Citigroup reminds me of, Back in the day when I was single on dating sites, there was an option you could choose that said, it's complicated. That's kind of how I view Citigroup to be right now. Everyone asks, how did Citigroup's quarter go? It's complicated. So the numbers look pretty strong, but there's a lot more going on.

So just to kind of go through the numbers, revenue and earnings both grew year over year. Revenue was up 9% year every year. Net interest income looks really strong, surprisingly so. Investment banking was a surprisingly strong point, especially considering how weak. it has been at other banks. But on the other hand, investors care about the stock performance and not just the numbers. You know, you can't have one without the other and still have it be a good investment. And City's track record has not been great. Over the past five years, it's underperformed the market by 105 percentage points when you're talking about total return. But on the other hand, it's a very, very cheap stock. So I care. I care.

remember, thinking back even before the financial crisis, when you could get one of the big four banks with a 5% plus dividend yield, the city has 5.2 right now. It trades for 48% of its tangible book value. It's rare for a solid bank to have below 100% of its tangible book value. So, you know, the numbers look great, but it really isn't shown a lot of performance. And on the earnings show today, we actually said it perfectly. City Group, one of the biggest banks, a really solid history of not being well managed. Well, let's talk a little bit about that because you said it's one of the big four banks. And you've got CEO, Jane Frazier.

I'm rooting for Jane Frazier. First female CEO of a major bank. She's got some aggressive plans here. She wants to strip management. She's cutting through five layers of management. She's breaking down silos. It's going to take them about another 2,000 jobs. I think they've cut around 7,000 so far.

What do you think? Is this going to be a turnaround? Is she going to do it? I want her to do it. But I'm a little skeptical. I mean, to be totally fair, Jane Frazier took over in March 2021. So let's give her time. It's been like two and not even two and a half years yet. So let's give her time. A mess, the scale of city group takes longer than two and a half years to fix, even if things are going well. She's not the first person to try to overhaul city, but definitely the most aggressive in my mind so far in terms of the plans. And a lot of them are

already starting to bear results. One of the big priorities, for example, is just automating processes throughout the bank that they used to have to pay people to do. And that's one thing they've done really well. They've been selling off some of their international banking business. One of the biggest handicaps of Citigroup is that it's, I mean, compared to the other big four banks, is how much international exposure it has. It's just like completely like fragmented. Like one department has nothing to do with the other and things like that. It just, you It's about to close the sale of its Indonesia bank business in the fourth quarter. It just recently announced a deal for part of its China business.

It's streamlined. It's reorganized its business into five different business units. This is the first quarter. That was in effect. And as you mentioned, they're really kind of honing down on the management structure. You mentioned removing five layers of management. That's going from 13 to 8. I can't even fathom what 13 layers of management looks like.

Like, I mean, at the Motley Fool, there's not 13 layers of management. That would be a nightmare to deal with. I mean, if I had 13 layers of bosses to talk to and get approval for projects and things like that. So it's definitely not the optimal structure. And it's never fun to talk about people losing their jobs. But the reduction in headcount could be if the business is really that inefficient, which historically the numbers tell us that it is, it could be exactly what's needed. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

And I think, like you said, consolidating some of the international makes sense and also lessen some of their exposure there, which I know has been a concern. They're doing some other stuff. And here's a part where I'm somewhere stuck between skeptical and, hey, that's innovative. And that's the city token services thing. So uses blockchain technology. They say that this can facilitate around the clock cross-border payments. Sounds like a good thing for a fairly internationally focused bank. I want to like this.

I hear the word blockchain. I hear the words token. I get a little bit nervous. Should I see this as innovation? And does this really contribute to the bottom line? Yeah, for me, every time I hear the words blockchain and banking these days, it's like a cross between interest and eye rolling. Yes.

It's kind of the way I would describe it. We've been hearing for how many years now, how blockchain and cryptocurrencies are going to revolutionize the banking business. And a lot of banks have incorporated blockchain technology to one degree or another in their business. A lot of financial services companies, MasterCard and Visa both have big blockchain divisions, for example. But I'm yet to hear a use case that really trickled down to bottom line profit for any of these banks. It absolutely makes sense. It's 2023, and it's still a nightmare to quickly send money internationally in a lot of institutional cases.

So the need is definitely there. They had a successful pilot, which makes it a little more encouraging. And there is a big need for what they, as they put it, always on financial services, which don't exist right now in a lot of cases for international companies. And City claims the market size for being able to tokenize digital securities like this is going to be a $4 to $5 trillion opportunity by 2030. I'm not skeptical that this is a problem. that needs a solution and that this could be the right solution to it. I'm skeptical as to how it benefits City in terms of me as an investor. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. And it's also, blockchain tends to be a little bit like AI. It's thrown into releases to, you know,

to jazz things up. But it's really important to think about how it's going to play out. I want to talk about one more thing with City before we move on. And that's their partnership with Edward Jones financial services. I like this a bit more than I like the token thing. It feels like a smart deal also feels like something, again, that's going to take a while to bear fruit. I feel like with City, there's some stuff that we've talked about here that's promising, but as you said, the stock has performed so badly. Is this one where if I'm getting in at this low price, I want to be there for a long time because I know I'm going to have to be patient? Yeah, I like the Edward Jones partnership a lot, like you said, a lot more than the other one,

just because I can see how it could translate to bottom line revenue and bottom line profitability. Just to kind of throw some of the numbers out there, Edward Jones has over 8 million clients among about 19,000 financial advisors with a total of about $1.8 trillion in client assets. So that's a lot of money that could potentially get come onto the city's platform. How it's going to work is essentially Edward Jones is going to offer what I would call co-branded financial products. with Citigroup to its clients, starting with checking and savings accounts. This won't start until 2024, but they'll be able to offer, say, a high-yield checking account that's backed by

city to its clients. A lot of people want high yield. This is why, for example, just to name one, Welsh Fargo's deposit base has declined by 5% over the past year, because their yields don't compare to what you can get through high-yield online players. There is a big subset of the population, specifically like the other 95% of Wells Fargo's depositors, who have no interest in leaving a secure platform that they trust to put all their money with, you know, SoFi or ally bank or one of the online players where you can get four to five percent yields. Now, if there were high yield products and online checking products and things like that backed by city that were comparable to those, it could be a very interesting proposition, especially from a financial

advisors perspective, which a lot of financial advisors won't recommend the high-yield platforms and things like that, especially after the banking drama we saw earlier this year. So I mentioned Wells Fargo's deposit base decline. Cities did as well, Bank of America, JP. All of their deposit bases are declining as people look for higher-yield options. That decline essentially stopped, at least temporarily after the high-profile bank failures earlier this year. And the reason is because they're perceived as high quality, just rock solid, too big to fail institutions. And if Edward Jones' partnership could use that to its advantage,

this could be a bigger deal than people are expecting. Yeah, I think that's true. And you made a really good point about the high-yield savings. And I think the awareness of that is growing. I think a lot of people, especially after bank failures, they just wanted to be somewhere safe. And now they're like, wait a second. If I'm missing out on four, four and a half percent on cash that's just sitting there, that is too much to just leave around. Yeah, a lot of people don't want to leave that money on the sidelines, but the problem is big banks generally don't have great savings products. My Wells Fargo savings account doesn't pay much, which is why I don't keep much money in it. I keep my savings account with SOFI, a bank that pays me four and a half percent.

Because, I mean, not that my savings account at SOFi is enormous, but I'm not giving up hundreds of dollars of free money, and a lot of people would feel the same if they had an option that's backed by a big-name bank. Other big-name banks are figuring this out and are doing a better job of creating higher-yield deposit products. Capital One is an example that's doing a really great job been doing it. But a lot aren't, and a lot of customers aren't aware that you can get a high yield with a reputable big-name bank. And I mentioned Edward Jones's reach and the trust that they have with their clients. You know, you've 8 million people who trust their advisor, and when their advisor offers them a city-branded product, it could be a big deal. Yeah, absolutely.

Let's keep the financial train going. Let's talk a little bit about Schwab. They reported earnings. You know, not a great quarter for Schwab revenue down around 16%. But good reasons. This company is dealing with two things. One, greater economic climate, as we've discussed, not so favorable for the work that they do. And the other thing is they're integrating TD Ameritrade that has dragged on their income as they get all of that sorted out.

This stock has been beaten up a bit recently, but I don't feel that's fully deserved. What do you think? No, a lot of people don't realize that Schwab is not just a brokerage. They're also technically a regional bank. They have a big deposit platform. There was a lot of question about how much of their deposits were FDIC insured at the time of the big crashes. So it's essentially in a way being treated like a regional bank stock, or at least it was, at

that point. I don't really think that that's fully kind of worked out of it yet. But you mentioned the TD Ameritrade integration, which as a TD Ameritrade customer, who's, I have a total of five accounts between things like for my kids and, and, you know, and, you with TD Ameritrade, and only one of them has been migrated to Schwab so far. And I can tell you that the integration is going very seamlessly. I've had absolutely no issues. I think you mentioned a stat to me before we recorded.

We're only like 45 people out of a million are reporting problems with this. Schwab expected some client attrition, and the most recent numbers I could find were from August, where they said the attrition was roughly 4% of TD Ameritrade's revenue before the deal is leaving TD Ameritrade and going elsewhere. And as I mentioned, that's somewhat expected. A lot of people are using this as the excuse they need to move their broker to, you know, more, you know, an online user-friendly app-based platform. I have a brokerage account at SOFi, too.

A lot of people, I'm sure, have, you know, small accounts at some of these more tech-focused brokerages and are using this as an opportunity to jump ship. But for the most part, just to name the latest figures, as of the end of 2022, there was about $1.8 trillion of client assets at TD Ameritrade. 1.5 trillion of that has already been migrated. They did retirement accounts first, which is why some of my accounts are still there, because those are my non-retirement accounts. But $1.5 trillion has already been migrated,

and there's still two waves of account migration to go, one in November and one in January, early 2024. They're saving the more active trading accounts for last. I think mine are going to be in November. I don't consider myself an active trader. So, like, four of mine have still have to be transferred over, and I have no intention of moving them. So it's been going well.

They've maintained their customer service during the transition, which is something that a lot of people were worried about. They still claim it takes less than one minute to answer the average phone call, which a lot of brokers, that's not the case. I can tell you that firsthand. So that's very solid. And they're doing a good job of integrating the best parts of both businesses. Just today, they announced that Think or Swim, the TD Meritrade trading platform, which when they

announced this merger, my biggest question is, am I going to lose access to Think or Swim? That was my biggest number one thing that would keep me or lose me as a customer. Now they just announced today that Thinkerswim is available to all Schwab customers. They're calling it Schwab Trading powered by Ameritrade as kind of a more broad name. And a lot of this is rolling out, and it's really, it's adding. into their ecosystem. That was kind of the goal. It's not just to acquire TD Ameritrade's customers, right? It's to combine the best of both platforms, what works, what doesn't work. And if they're doing that, it's going to be a more valuable product going forward, even with some

attrition in the meantime. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. On the call, they called it a, the CEO called it a bull market for advice right about now. So you just mentioned that the Thinkers Win platform, you know, So that sort of competes with some of the other kind of newer, flashier players that are in the industry. So you've got this sort of older brand with Charles Schwab. There's a lot of options out there. Are they really going to, what do they have to do to stay relevant with both the retail investor as well as their more traditional client base? Well, one thing I would point out is Schwab's bread and butter is retirement investing.

I mentioned that's pretty much what they've migrated so far. And it's been something like 80% of TD Meritrade's assets. So that part, I don't think they're going to have much of an issue with losing to, you know, a SOFI or things like that. I mean, I'm not moving my solo 401k to SOFI. Right. Yeah. The retirement clients are kind of the backbone of Schwab is what I would call it.

I feel like Schwab targets a different set of investors than, say, Robin Hood or Weble, or even SOFI, which is, I'd say, a little more long-term investor-oriented. But those are generally, Robin Hood especially, is skewed towards smaller accounts, not a big material impact to the potential asset base that Schwab could bring in. Schwab's bread and butter is big accounts. And I don't really see that jumping ship. Even the Robo Advisory platform has, last I checked, had the highest minimum of any Robo Advisor on my radar. I want to say they had a $5,000 minimum to be a Robo Advisory customer. customer, which a lot of them, like, SoFi's minimum is zero. You could start an account with nothing.

I think that they're staying relevant by combining the best features of both platforms. I think Thinkerswim is still the best trading software I've ever used. And I think that, you know, customers that are in their target demographic are going to appreciate it and stick with them. Last question for you. We started talking with blockchain. I got to bring in the other trend, which is AI. Charles Schwab, you know, there is sort of maybe a little bit of an existential threat here with the impact of AI on the investing space and the advising space. Like you said, Schwab, they already have robo advisors. They seem to be embracing the future of AI while they still have to support all of those wealth advisors and everything like that. Is that a tricky thing to

navigate for them going forward? It is. The robo advisory thing isn't new. So a lot of people who want to be robo advisory clients are. And I mean, most retirement plans are a bunch of index funds and things like that. And I don't see AI as a big existential threat to companies like Schwab, maybe to a Robin Hood or something like that. But I don't, the robo advisory business isn't a big enough piece of the puzzle where we're having that out competed would be that big of a deal, if that makes sense. So I don't think AI is a giant threat to Schwab, and I think they're a big enough company that they can kind of stay ahead of the curve on AI. Every company that is at least a little bit tech-focused is investing in AI right now. So I don't see them

letting themselves get out-competed by smaller players in the space. Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for breaking this down with me today, Matt. Sure. Always glad to chat financials. These days I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well-made and versatile, it's just not worth it. That's honestly why I love Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the cuts are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes high-quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen, silk and organic cotton poplin. They work directly with safe ethical factories and cut off the middlemen so you aren't paying for brand markups or fancy stores, just quality clothing.

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two stock recommendations per month, and access to stock advisors' full scorecard of companies, visit www.fool.com slash MFM discount. Before there was WeWork, there was Regis and Mark Dixon. I talked with Dixon, founder of IWG, the parent company of Regis, about hybrid work and the future of offices. We're recording this in mid-October, so we're about a month into many of the return-to-work mandates. We're seeing some increase in attendance in the U.S. What are you seeing so far from? your aspect. Well, look, from our aspect, we're sort of at the receiving end of a change in the way people

are working. So in terms of return to, you know, the whole idea of return to work hasn't really affected us because people are working with us, but working with us in different places. The idea of return to work is sort of confusing the sort of narrative about what companies are actually doing, which is increasingly moving their workers to more convenient workplaces, closer to where people live, and they're still using cities, but they're just using cities, the larger cities less. So there's a huge change going on. The narrative hasn't yet caught up with reality, but we are benefiting from it. We had record results on our half year,

this year, both in revenue and profitability and growth, all three, in fact, and growth in the network. That's caused by more and more people wanting to work in a different way, and more and more companies adopting a different way of working. Well, you sort of had this dramatic tension between what workers want and what companies want. I heard this new trend word recently called coffee badging. I'd never heard of this before, but this is employees swiping their key card, which of course is used for attendance, get coffee and maybe they don't stay the whole day. What are you seeing in terms of how people are using workspaces? Are they coming in and out? Is there more flexibility there?

Well, look, we're entirely flexible anyway. True. So, you know, essentially we've got three and a half thousand buildings that you can use whenever you want, any way you want. So the whole mantra of, of what we do is around flexibility. And that's why companies are coming to us because they want to give, and what the companies want,

companies want their people to be productive and well-supported. They want them to be efficient. And they want to get the maximum from their investment in that employee or group of employees. That's what companies want. What the workers, you know, the team members, is not to have to commute every day.

The ability to work, not at home, but close to where you live, some of the time is a huge benefit. And it's one that workers very much value. And it's what is actually happening. And it significantly reduces the cost for the company as well. So, you know, the trend is gathering momentum, which is a, you know, a change in the job. geography of work, allowed by technology, facilitated by technology, allowing people to work

in much more convenient locations. And that's what's happening. So, you know, we're opening up in provincial locations all over the world, all over the United States. And these are, you know, villages, smaller towns, smaller cities. And these are particularly successful as workplace locations. because people, you know, they just don't want to commute. It's commuting that really is the elephant in the room that people are trying to avoid. The amount of cost, the amount of time it takes really makes, you know, the job more unattractive if they have to do that every day. Okay, to go into a central office to collaborate with colleagues.

You know, once, twice a week? Absolutely. But not every day. It's just unnecessary. And for some workers, it's almost never necessary. And they have worked in a flexible, sort of hybrid way for a long, long time. This is not a new thing. It's just more workers are adopting it.

Well, and I think this is interesting, too, because what you're talking about is the idea of less of going to the office and maybe going to multiple offices. I know that you've talked in recent interviews about hybrid beating that people want to work, like you said, not necessarily. from home, but near home. Maybe they go to an office near their house one or two days a week, and then they go to the office maybe in the city once a week or something like that. So it seems like there's a lot of optionality now in how we consider work. Yeah. Look, it's what we call platform working. You have a platform of places you can work. And as a worker, you decide where you're going to be the most productive on that day. And, you know, it's about convenience.

You know, basically technology allows you to work from anywhere. So why would you travel to an inconvenient place to just use technology? You travel to an inconvenient place to collaborate with other people if that's what you're going to do, but not if you're doing basic background work, which most people are doing most of the time. So, you know, it's a fundamental change. And it's sort of, it's been gathering momentum started pre-COVID, pre the pandemic. And the pandemic accelerated it, and now it's got terrific momentum.

With, you know, all research points to most companies reviewing hybrid as a change to the way some of their workers, or maybe all of their workers in some cases will work. Much cheaper, much better for people, much better for the environment. you know what and basically be the most popular thing you ever do for your employees are you seeing it sort of unilaterally happening or are you noticing different trends in different companies uh countries because of course you have you have offices all around the world so what do is there a difference in in attitudes in the u.s versus elsewhere that's a really really interesting question so look it's it's not it's not linear that's for sure right but if you look at the most traditional

countries like Japan that you would think are very traditional. They're also the countries with the longest commute times, very good transport system, but commute times are long. So really rapid change in places like Japan that's very traditional. It depends somewhat. You know, if you go into places like China, very good transport system and basically homes are smaller. There may be more. families in one home or generations. So it really depends on where people live and how they're living and how good the transport system is as well. Places like Australia, worst in the world is Australia because the commuting's not very good because there's not that much public transport. Most people commute by car and homes are larger and the technology is very good in the

homes. So you get people working more locally in place like Australia because the commute's longer. The dittoed, you know, Bay Area California or Los Angeles. I mean, it's almost impossible to get from one end of Los Angeles to another unless you want to take hours doing it, you know, so depending on where you are. So these, it's sort of down to geography somewhat, but it's also down to different traditions in different countries, but it's pretty universal. There's not a single country. It's not happening. It's just at what speed is it happening.

And this is large corporations pretty universally looking at it. And of course, small companies and startups only do this because best way to control your costs. Last thing you want is investing in long-term property when you don't know where your company's going to be in a year's time. You don't want to be putting capital into property. You want to be putting it into your business and just, you know, you rentalize. No way you would do that. So they're high, lots of companies are hybrid only. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about. And Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Deidre Willard. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you tomorrow.