First Horizon’s leadership team discusses the bank’s recover from the scuttled TD Bank deal | PaymentsSource

The timing couldn’t have been worse for Hope Dmuchowski. 

There was a storm of bank failures, a scuttled acquisition by a well-heeled buyer with compliance issues. And more than 1,000 nervous investors who wanted answers.

“We faced an unforeseen future as an independent company,” said Dmuchowski, chief financial officer at First Horizon Bank. Dmochowski had an arduous task in front of her, but she didn’t face it alone. “Our team went into overdrive.”

Overdrive meant a call with investors on the day the TD Bank’s $13 billion deal to buy First Horizon was canceled in May 2023. And coming up with a plan to ensure the bank’s stability and a path to growth. A year later, that plan is showing early progress as earnings and the bank’s stock price gradually improve, though challenges in adding automation and navigating a tough economy as a regional bank remain.

During that time, Dmuchowski and other senior executives, who are located in different cities and were unsure how long they’d be working together amid the TD acquisition that never was, have shared challenges and successes in their work and their lives, forming a bond that’s as much personal as it professional. “We’ve always assumed a positive intent when working on something,” said Beth Ardoin, First Horizon’s chief communications officer. “That has helped with problem solving and moving the bank forward.”

On a summer day in August, Dmuchowski gathered with colleagues, including senior executives from other departments that worked on First Horizon’s post-TD plan, at a meeting at the Dixon Gallery, an art museum and sculpture garden in Memphis, not far from the bank’s headquarters. 

It’s much calmer today than the crisis of 2023, and the camaraderie and easy communication that helped Dmuchowski and her colleagues guide the bank through a challenging year is readily apparent as they crack jokes and finish each other’s sentences. “Being together helps,” said Tammy LoCascio, chief operating officer, adding the cross-department leadership team meets together regularly in person. “Events like today’s are a good way to build relationships.” 

The majority of First Horizon’s executive management committee consists of women, a rarity in financial services, where 18% of C-suite and board members are women, according to Women’s World Banking. The First Horizon team includes Dmuchowski, LoCascio, Ardoin, Terry Akins, First Horizon’s chief risk officer, Tanya Hart, chief human resources officer, chief operating officer, Erin Pryor, chief marketing officer, and Susan Springfield, chief credit officer. The women have diverse backgrounds. LoCascio’s experience in banking spans more than two decades and includes stints at National City Bank, Regions Bank and Union Planters Bank. 

Hart has worked for First Horizon for more than 22 years, including roles in staff benefits, compensation and talent development. Ardoin has worked in banking and publishing; Springfield has held roles in credit risk, business strategy and development and commercial banking over her 30 year career; Pryor has worked at USAA, Opus Bank and Madover Media; Atkins has worked for Iberia, Wachovia and as a consultant. 

“The industry didn’t look like this when I first started,” said LoCascio of the bank and banking industry’s diversity, which despite the current gaps, is still better than in past years. 

The meeting at the Dixon is more like an after-work hangout than a group interview during a companywide leadership meeting. Beyond retelling the tale of First Horizon’s pivot from the canceled deal, there’s stories of kids going to school, sports and other activities, and travel from different First Horizon offices. 

“We really do care about each other,” said Hart. “We know about what’s going on with each other’s families.” The past 15 months have brought a lot of long days, lots of meetings, and tons of cross-department work. 

“The big thing is our culture,” said Akins. “There is a sense of collaboration.”

A new deal

TD’s acquisition of First Horizon was called off, reportedly due to regulatory problems at TD Bank, which is still suffering financially and paying billions in fines due to failing to prevent money-laundering.The $81 billion-asset First Horizon dodged the TD money-laundering bullet, but had to instill confidence that the bank could thrive alone, even as several high profile bank failures that accompanied the demise of Silicon Valley Bank had the entire industry in a near panic. 

First Horizon was already working on a conversion. Companies usually have teams in place ahead of a large acquisition, with stakeholders from different parts of the company assigned to manage individual parts of the conversion. These tasks had to change from figuring out how First Horizon would fit in with TD Bank into how First Horizon could manage strategy, employee retention and morale, and demonstrating stability. 

Once the acquisition was called off, First Horizon had to go into a rapid action plan, said Mary Eyre, managing director of mergers and acquisitions at Cornerstone Advisors.  “That’s an immediate assessment of the implications of the change,” Eyer said. 

Determining how to fill gaps in departments or company processes requires collaboration between units, which fits into how First Horizon navigated the period after the TD Bank deal fell through. 

“It’s an approach that can leverage team leads, in areas such as retail, mortgage, commercial lending, etc. They have to figure out what they’re going to do now that they’re not getting acquired,” Eyre said. Much of the early work was assuring investors, analysts, customers and employees that the bank was on solid footing.  “There were a lot of calls, every day and night,” said Dmuchowski, who began her banking career as an intern at Deutsche Bank, followed by a stint at Truist before joining First Horizon shortly before the TD deal was initially announced. “[After the TD deal was called off] We needed to instill confidence in what we are working on for the future.”The group at the heart of this work, First Horizon’s executive management committee, develops the strategic direction of the organization, including culture, tone and performance expectations.  

Following the initial investor call in May, First Horizon conducted a more formal investor day 30 days later. “Most of my days and nights were spent directly engaging with investors, ensuring they had the direct access they needed during that tumultuous period,”  Dmuchowski said. The second Investor day attracted over 600 attendees. First Horizon’s stock has since stabilized, and in late summer of this year it was trading at about $16.60 per share up from a low of about $10 in the fall of 2023.”The team has done a good job of hitting the reset button,” said Chris McGratty, managing director and head of U.S. bank research at KBW, which upgraded First Horizon to “outperform” from “market perform” in April. “They protected the franchise, raised deposits and the stock has done better.” 

In the summer of 2023 and beyond, First Horizon launched a campaign to boost deposits, offering higher rates on certificates of deposit. That increased First Horizon’s customer acquisition costs, but it also enticed more than 32,000 new customers. 

The bank later in 2023 lowered the introductory rates while retaining more than 96% of the new deposits. That resulted in more than $6 billion in new deposits, according to the bank, adding its overall customer retention rate over the past year is 90%.”They may have lost steps because of the merger plan. So there’s a lot of areas, like the branch and call centers. They needed to shore up those resources,” Eyre said.

Other initiatives in late 2023 and early 2024 include a $154 million retention program that enabled the bank to retain 94% of its employees, and a $50 million investment in the First Horizon Foundation, which focuses on community investment. Additional projects have focused on building goodwill in the bank’s footprint through community initiatives. This included a program to build bicycles for underserved youth in Nashville. Bankers from different departments worked together to build bikes while hosting sessions on health, safety and financial literacy with local students. Other programs include financial education through an American Bankers Association “Teach Children to Save Day” and participation in a food sustainability program in Memphis. 

Employee retention around the time of a merger, which is then called off, is key, Eyre said. The original merger causes uncertainties around staff redundancies due to the combination with a new firm. Then there’s another round of concern about the company’s health if the merger or acquisition is called off, and  then the potential instability following the scuttled deal.  “As you can imagine, people get nervous around the time of an acquisition,” Eyre said.

High tech

Another major investment at First Horizon has been a $100 initiative to accelerate technology development. That has included a 20% boost in the technology team staff and internal training to increase the overall staff’s digital acumen. During the past year, First Horizon created two groups to manage innovation. The emerging technology group is responsible for First Horizon’s virtual bank and the nCino team. nCino is a cloud-hosted bank operating system that supports small business lending, treasury management and client onboarding. First Horizon has been implementing nCino with its staff to streamline workloads. The bank originally added nCino following an acquisition that did go through–First Horizon’s $3.9 billion merger with Iberiabank in 2020. That deal sparked a multi-year cost-cutting initiative at First Horizon that created funding for the bank’s automation strategy. 

The second technology group at First Horizon, an internal consulting unit, focuses on quality and process improvements. This group conducts monthly meetings with 30 frontline employees who provide feedback on ways to simplify operations. The bank’s technology department, under LoCascio’s leadership, reviews operations and the staff feedback and identifies opportunities for improvement. Employees from other departments can additionally submit suggestions. 

First Horizon

In about a year, staff have submitted more than 500 ideas with 80 projects underway. Recent projects include adopting Quick Deal, an nCino product designed to reduce navigation for internal work. That deployment has cut 1,500 hours in staff work on a yearly basis, 44% fewer screens, 21% fewer clicks and 20% fewer required fields when filling out digital forms for internal tasks. “The investment in emerging technology has created tangible, economical value for the company and has transformed how the bank conducts business,” said Bryan Jordan, chairman, president and CEO of First Horizon, in a statement.

Gender equity

In an industry still plagued by a gender gap, women play a major role in First Horizon’s leadership team. 

Female executive committee members make up 60% of the leadership team. And 54% of staff in senior and mid-level management positions at the bank are women. That’s higher than the range of 26% to 42% at the largest U.S. banks, according to Statista, which included ten large banks in its research, ranging from a low of 25.9% at Goldman Sachs to 41.9% at Wells Fargo. Sixty-three percent of First Horizon’s 7,400 employees are women, higher than the range of 50% to 59% of overall bank employees cited in the Statista survey.

Women are largely underrepresented in leadership at financial institutions. Women occupy less  than 30% of C-suite roles at North American financial institutions, according to McKinsey, which is greater representation than Women’s World Banking study, but still well less than half. And four women are promoted for every five men that move up,  according to McKinsey, adding  women are also less likely to have a role that supports a flexible or work-from-home policy.

McKinsey additionally notes women are more likely to provide support and empathy. Eighty percent of women in financial services say they have given emotional support to a coworker, compared to 72% of men. And about half of women have played a lead role in team bonding, compared to 38% of men. And 21% of entry-level women have organized group work events, compared to 8% of men. At First Horizon, there are programs and events in which women share experiences and provide training and other help for younger workers on career-building and leadership, drawing participation from across genders. “A lot of men come to these meetings,” Dmuchowski said. The meetings also provide a chance for First Horizon’s leadership team to share their experiences and ideas to guide the next generation of executives as they develop their careers. And to pass on the culture of camaraderie and collaboration that helped them through the past year. 

“Whenever there are challenges, we have been able to use our differences in background or experience to solve any problem,” Pryor said, answering a question, nodding toward Dixon seated at the table.