I guess it's officially good afternoon, everybody. I was just telling our next guest of honor that we are kicking off the consumer part of the day. We've heard a lot about cap markets and corporate, and now we have with us from Truist Dontá Wilson, and he is the Chief Consumer and Small Banking Officer at Truist. Welcome, Dontá.
Thank you for having us, Erica.
Absolutely. So for those of you on the webcast and in the room that may not know your story, could you just share a bit about your leadership journey at Truist and how that led you to this leadership role?
Yes, sure, will. I'll have this storybook type of journey.
Oh, let's hear it.
Where 30 years ago, I started as an intern. It was really a directed study that I begged for because our company was so small. We didn't have such a program back then. I didn't do what our interns do today. I didn't do strategy, brand, portfolio optimization, M&A work, or modeling. I was going to Dunkin' Donuts to get donuts.
You were doing what?
Going to Dunkin' Donuts to get the donuts for the team. I was going to grab lunch and taking their cars to get washed. And that's what I did starting out my sophomore year. But over time, I began to do more banking activity. And by the time I graduated senior, I was fully incorporated in adding real value. But I was at least in the room and was able to learn a lot from these executives that were really focused on values and focused on performance. So that really influenced me. After graduating, I joined our retail banking team for a short period of time. And I managed branch, and I managed multiple branches. And then I immediately went to the wholesale side of the bank, where I spent most of my career.
So I went over there as a commercial banker, did corporate banking, did commercial real estate lending. I ultimately became a regional president very early at the age of 29 in our Greater Washington market. And that was a phenomenal experience. It was back when everything reported to the regional president. So corporate banking, CRE, wealth, underwriting, senior credit officer. So we had loan authority to really grow our market appropriately. And I was focused on really integrations of acquisitions. So we would buy banks, and then I would integrate it, run that particular business, grow it, and then move on to the next one. So I left the greater D.C. market, went down to Alabama you probably remember when Colonial Bank failed integrated that, built it up, went over to Georgia because Georgia was our largest market in size.
Then in 2016, something very pivotally changing happened in my career. I got a call from the CEO at the time. He called and he said, "Hey, Dontá, come down and talk to me." So I flew in. He invited me to join the executive leadership team. I was really excited. But you can imagine, on my way there, I was dreaming up what I might do. I was like, "Oh, maybe I'm going to run commercial banking, or maybe I'm going to run corporate banking, or maybe retail." To my surprise, he said, "I have this wonderful job for you. It's called the Chief Client Experience Officer." If you go back to 2016, banking didn't have such a title. I took that title, took on that job, and was able to lead marketing, CX.
We ultimately added to call centers and added digital. I went on to lead ventures, also ran CorpComms and CRA. We ultimately added data and analytics and then enterprise operations, both from the consumer side and wholesale side. Then in 2022, I was given the wonderful privilege to come lead consumer and small business banking, which is our retail mass our retail client base, our mass affluent, and small business segment. I also kept digital marketing for the enterprise our digital for the enterprise. I kept marketing for the enterprise, client experience, and innovation. Then we have the products that are also in the business. So you think about deposit products and consumer lending, which includes LightStream, Sheffield, our mortgage portfolio.
I'm actually really glad we did that, by the way, because that gives investors a full picture of the experience that you're bringing to the table. Let's set the stage for the consumer and small business banking division at Truist. At a high level, define that for us. What is your scope, and what's your edge, other than awesome socks?
Yeah, I can get you a pair of these wonderful Truist socks.
Yep, please do. For those of you in the webcast, there are purples or striped, and they say Truist, and they're spectacular.
Listen, always on brand. And if anybody listening or all those in the room, if you want a pair, bring us a deposit. I'll make sure to personally bring you a pair of Truist socks. But the scope within CSBB, we mentioned we have the three segments. And you have the product groups, and you have innovation, digital, and marketing. But when you think about the business itself, we divide our company into two organizations. So you have wholesale, which my fantastic talented teammate, Kristin, leads. And then you have consumer and small business banking. And so within consumer and small business banking, we serve 14 million clients within our digital banking mobile app and digital banking experience online. We serve them through our 1,900 branches, in which we're in the, I think, fastest growing markets in the country. And we have dominant market share in those particular markets.
From a business perspective, we make up 52% of the revenue. On the deposit side, we're $212 billion in deposits. We make up 60% of the deposits. What's really great about that is we have these very 10-year low-cost deposits. 42% of those deposits are checking accounts. So you're paying 1 bp or less for that deposit. Then on the lending side, we represent 43% of the balance sheet. So we have a great portfolio. I think what makes us special is how we go to market. So when you're leading large sales teams at scale, so 20,000 teammates, it's very important for everybody within the business to see themselves in the business. So we lead with extreme clarity on what's important for us. And what's important for us is framed in the 3D framework. That's deposits, deepening, and also being digital first but not digital last.
So if you were to go visit our Collins Avenue branch here in Miami, and you asked them, "What are y'all focused on today?" They would say the 3Ds. And they know we're going to have an excellent day if we did all three. We'll have a good day if we did two. And if we only do one, go out and generate a new deposit. And that leads us to why clients choose us. So they choose us for three specific reasons. They choose us because they are empowered. They choose us because they're supported and they're rewarded. So when you think about empowerment, clients rather be empowered than helped these days. And what I mean by that is that they want to be able to handle their banking activity within the palm of their hand. So we're putting AI-powered mobile experience in the palm of their hand.
They want to be supported. We support them two ways. We support them in their mobile experience through our Truist Insights. That's an AI-enabled advisory. So when clients sign in, we provide them financial advice. We provide them recommendations on kind of cash flow behavior. And then we also support them in our branches, where we have very talented teammates. They are also leveraging data and analytics to be able to provide advice to clients. And the third, they are rewarded. So we reward our clients for doing more business with us. So as they bring more deposits to us, then we reward them. For example, in our flagship account, which is Truist One, we're able to give them additional bonus points on their credit card spend. Or if they get a mortgage and they bring us their core deposits, we're able to discount their mortgage. So we reward them.
Underneath that, Premier Banking is a big priority for you. How are you planning to scale this high-value business? And going back to your experience as the Chief Client Experience Officer, what do you think is sort of the secret sauce in terms of really growing a business that we've heard, "Well, focus on this," and other banks focus on sort of the Premier set of consumer?
Yeah, Premier Banking is our major growth engine within consumer and small business banking. So much value in the opportunity to really grow the business, deepen the relationships, and add significant profitability by optimizing and executing against our Premier strategy. When you think about our Premier book, 60% of our current deposit balance sheet is made up of Premier and Premier potential clients. So big opportunity. We make our client lifetime value 6 times more profitable on a Premier client than mass retail and 4 times more profitable than a small business client. So huge opportunity to drive profitability. But what's equally exciting is the off-us-deposit opportunity. So these are clients that we have already won. We have a right to win. And they have with them $650 billion of deposits off us.
And so we know that because we have financial plans and some analytics that allow us to see that. And they have $2.5 trillion of investable assets off of us. So just a real meaningful opportunity to grow the business. And it's much more efficient to do business and more business with an existing client than to pay for a new client. So we really are positioned well. And how we're scaling to attack that opportunity are 3 ways. First is digital. We mentioned we're digital first but not digital only. So we're providing digital financial planning at their fingertips so they can do goal setting, and they can start their process, and then get on a trajectory to financial success. Second is we're investing in our branches. So of course, we're putting branches in mass affluent markets and branches that are already in mass affluent markets. We're renovating them.
But we've been upskilling teammates along the way to be prepared to better serve that clientele. And we're investing in the right tools to help them identify which client to talk to for the Premier opportunities and what the primary gaps and products are for that client when they come in. And the third, we're expanding our Premier Banking team. So we're investing in increasing how many people we have covering that segment because it's a super important segment. And we're already having real success. So in 2025, our production went up 20% in deposits for the Premier segment. Our lending went up 30%. Our financial planning went up 13% year-over-year. And what's important about the financial planning is that it's the core to the relationship. When we have a financial plan with a client, we make 39% more revenue.
We have good momentum, and we feel excited about what 2026 offers for us.
I'm guessing that the response to this question is going to tie back to what you've started to unpack. What are the 2 to 3 big priorities for you in 2026 in terms of deepening relationships and executing on profitable growth, which are clearly cornerstones to achieving your 15% ROTCE target at the top of the house?
Yeah, so the number one priority is focused on performance management because we have this amazing opportunity in front of us. And as you know, execution is critical. That vision without execution is ultimately hallucination. So we're focused on really executing. And so that means that we have clear accountability. We've elevated our performance standards. We're managing great routines. We're using dashboards in real time to make sure we understand the performance of our company. And that is continuing to improve on a daily basis. I like to say we manage by the watch, not the calendar, and how well we're doing and performing for clients. So that's the first thing that we're focused and dialed in on performance management. Second is around really deepening with our Premier clients because it's a wonderful opportunity to grow that particular franchise. We already have a right to win.
And we talked about the 3D kind of execution model. So we know that if we get that deposit first, and then if we have primacy so not just any deposit, but if we have primacy, we make 80% more from that not 80% more, excuse me. We make 20% more in revenue from that client. That gives you a chance to deepen with strategic credit, with payments and investments. And then you ultimately try to get them into a digital experience that can serve them in the most cost-efficient manner. So delivering the 3D model. And then the third thing would be really around executing our national consumer lending businesses. If you really want to accelerate our ROTCE, those businesses Sheffield, Service Finance, and LightStream give you your quickest way to doing that because those are high ROA businesses. And we have a competitive advantage in those markets.
Just wanted to ask a follow-up question on performance management. Are you happy? Have you realigned the incentives in terms of trying to motivate your teammates towards these targets, particularly given the wealth franchise that you have?
That's exactly right. We have done a really good job of not only making sure that our incentives are aligned but our scorecards are aligned. So we manage both of those to be able to drive the performance. And as you can imagine, deposits is the most influential thing on their scorecard and their incentive. And as you mentioned, this is really about creating a continuum of success. So if we do a really good job with our Premier clients because we're serving the mass affluent, then our job is to graduate them up to the wealth experience. And then Kristin and her talented team can take you from there and help them continue on their journey to financial success.
You talked about empowering the consumer at the palm of their hand. Clearly, digital channels continue to reshape the client acquisition and client experience process. So how are you leveraging technology and digital to enhance the banking experience and, more importantly, drive that growth and that deepening across your base?
So digital is central to our success. Can we talk about digital first and not digital only? So it's critical to how we win in this particular space. 2.5 million clients sign in digitally every day. And so our goal is to make sure that we are developing experiences that are digitally empowering but also deeply relational. So we'd like to play at that intersection. And some things that we're doing first on the engagement side, we're investing in Truist Assist. So Truist Assist is our AI-enabled mobile bot that has over 200 use cases that solve client experience items for clients. 80% of those transactions or queries are solved within their digital experience. So they don't have to go to a branch, or they don't have to go to a call or call a call center. So that's one way.
Truist Insights, again, we're delivering over 500 insights a year to clients. We're investing in things that really improve the navigation. So UI, UI, UX. We're investing in Bill Pay and Zelle. So all the things that will transactionally help deliver a very good experience for them. That has allowed us to now move 70% of our transaction experiences to the digital channel. And so when you do that, you obviously open up capacity for teammates to do more financial planning, to do more deposit gathering. The other area we're investing in is digital commerce. So our largest branch is a digital branch. And so we're very focused on investing in a digital experience. Think about search engine marketing, search engine optimization, digital display advertising.
We're investing in things like ID verification so that when clients come and they try to open up an account, we have APIs that go to DMV to verify that their uploaded driver's license is legit so we can bring more clients through the front door. We've invested in direct deposit switching. So the clients used to have that friction and didn't never wanted to change banks. But now we allow that in our experience. All those things are adding up to really meaningful results. So 40% of our new-to-bank clients now come through our digital channel. And if you think about the type of client that we're getting, the average age is 36 years old. And the average income is $80,000. So these are wonderful future Premier segment clients. And we're showing just really, really good success driving the business in those channels.
So speaking of AI, I'm glad you brought that up. You mentioned Truist Assist as a real-time example in terms of how you're using AI today. What are the most compelling projects that you're working on within CSBB? And if you just take a step back and think about AI in three to five years in terms of the delivery of the retail model, how is it going to change?
All right, so you know you're about to really excite me being a former chief digital officer.
Let's go.
You want two hours on this topic. The one thing I would share is that at Truist, the good news is that we're not starting from scratch. We're starting from experience. And so we have already been doing AI and implementing AI use cases for many years. But in fact, in CSBB, we have over 16 use cases that we're tracking that's already adding real value, real client engagement elevation. We're already saving $millions. We're making $millions. And we're underwriting $billions of loans. So we talked about Truist Assist. We talked about Truist Insights already. I'll give you a couple of other examples. One is within our call center. We get millions of calls, as you can imagine, every single week.
With those calls, our agents a year ago would have to write down the next follow-up activity and also track what those complaints were. Well, today, we have AI that's able to do that in 2-3 seconds. So that agent can get on to the next call. Then we have the effective tracking mechanism to be able to document what happened on that particular call. Another area that we're using it is LightStream. LightStream is one of our phenomenal platforms. In LightStream, we're underwriting $ billions because we have AI on top of our underwriting system. That allows for our auto decisionings to be more elevated than they were a couple of years ago. So we went from 55% to 75% auto decisioning using AI.
And of course, we use them in things like marketing and content where you can use generative AI to be able to do that more effectively and save costs versus investing in teammates. But it's all complementary because then we're taking those teammates, and we're putting them on other assignments that they can add more value to the company. But the real way to think about AI and how I think about it and what we're working on is to make sure we're thinking about it in the context of a much more robust opportunity, much more transformational. And so I like to use a 4R framework when thinking about the opportunity. So most people are talking about risk management when they're talking about AI. They're talking about resiliency, which is operational excellence and how to take out money.
The conversation has to shift to how are we better engaging relationally, leveraging AI? Ultimately, how are we generating more revenue leveraging AI? That's why some of those cases I mentioned were revenue cases. We need to take that 4R framework and apply it in the end to a segment and then look at that segment and go through each sub-journey and say, all right, how are we marketing? What are we doing that requires human behavior that ultimately we can replace with some dimension of AI? When we onboard them, what are the jobs that need to be done by humans or can be done by AI when we service them or when we depart them?
Then you take all the AI solutions you have, all the way from basic RPA to machine learning to Gen AI and then one day agentic, and then you do something transformational to drive revenue and have a different client engagement model. One area to explore, for example, for us as a small business, we are providing our small business delivery 100% virtually. So we're already super efficient. However, applying AI to elevate that in a way that we can be more efficient and drive additional revenue is something that we're exploring. So those are some things that we're doing as it relates to AI. As you talk about the future, the future is unlimited. And what's going to determine what we can do or not will be guided by the regulatory environment. But in the near future, obviously, people are trying to unlock Agentic AI.
If we get the right regulatory environment to do that, you could see agentic commerce take place in your digital experience. So when you come down here to Miami, you'll say, "I want to go to this particular hotel. I want to dine at this particular experience. And this is how I want to travel as it relates to air travel." And you'll just talk to your mobile bot, and it'll take care of all the reservations and pay for it. So that's something that'll easily happen. If you're trying to optimize your portfolio, you'll have your bot. As soon as the market changes, you can optimize your portfolio because your bot will react to that information. So you'll see that happen. Beyond that, the next phase of it is really interesting, Erica, because we're going to start to see B2B experiences evolve.
When I say B2B, that's bot to bot. So as we're thinking about building our bot, remember, clients are getting more educated. They're going to build their bot. And so journeys are going to change because at each point in the journey, you would think or have to solve for how are clients thinking and then what's their emotion around the purchase or that particular transaction. Well, bot to bot may remove some of the emotion. So you've got to remember that that exchange will now be different because it's bot to bot. And how do you build a different experience that's bot to bot but also keep empathy at the center? Because innovation, well, empathy is empty.
Then long term, I think about things like when quantum computing is on top of Agentic AI, the speed in which you're able to deliver services for clients, so a lot of people talk about hyper-personalization where you're going to go to hyper-intuition because it's going to have all these data sets. And it's going to feel like I already made that decision because it's going to be so quickly available for you to make an action. Those are some of the things you'll see in the future.
Where does the branch fit into all this? So you did mention expansion plans, 100 new branches, refurbishing 300, but also retrofitting them, maybe not just physically but just thinking about it differently and trying to future-proof that delivery mechanism. What does the new branch look like? And how does it fit into everything that you just mentioned?
So our branches are insight-driven branches. So they're different on purpose and by design. And when you think about the 100 branches that we're going to build, they're going to be in mass affluent markets, so consistent with our strategies to deliver for our Premier client segment. And the branches that we're renovating on top of our normal renovation run rate are in mass affluent markets as well. These branches are focused on advisory, not transactional. So they have a smart design layout that leans into planning and making sure we have all the capabilities being staff trained and skilled but also the technology to help planning be delivered in a very robust and efficient way. And so those are the things that we're going to do to make sure our branches are fit for purpose and fit for Truist's future.
An example of an insight-driven branch, if you went to our Collins Avenue branch here again in Miami, you would walk in, Erica. You'll be greeted by someone that has a very upbeat personality, a warm smile. They'll say, thank you for visiting us at Truist. How can I care for you?
Someone like Brad.
Someone like Brad, exactly, or Marissa. How can I care for you? Then they would walk you over to their office. And they would pull up your profile. And as they're pulling up your profile, what we've done is we have now powered them with data and analytics that tell them more about you so that they're more prepared to have a better conversation. They're more confident. And their call conversion success increases. So we have this thing called connection tiles. There's five things that pop up and say, these are the most important five things for Erica based on what we know about her. So if there's any product gaps that you have or if you had a deposit come in, and it's in your checking account, and you don't have any money market solutions with us, the teammate will click on that connection tile.
It gives them the script. So again, that gives them the confidence. And they'll have a conversation about something that's more real-time in your life. And that improves the overall experience. So that's what an insight-driven branch is. And the way we think about branches, we are investing in such a way that accelerates our return. So it's very scientific. We use an S-curve type of model looking at what's the branch density. And we want to be at a minimum of 5%. And we don't want to be any more than 15%. Above 15%, you have diminishing returns. Below 5%, you don't leverage the scale that's available. And so we're going to markets that have great population growth, good employment, and where we already have momentum, so Austin, Dallas, Philly, Atlanta, Charlotte, D.C., Orlando, and right here in Miami.
Let's put that all together in terms of core deposit growth, right? We've seen strong loan growth in 2025. The company continues to emphasize core deposit growth as a strategic focus this year. What's your approach in terms of growing these consumer deposits? You've talked about the different ways to capture and deepen and distribute. Are you leaning into new products? How do you think about pricing? And again, how much does experience matter as you attract and retain consumer deposits?
So we're coming off a year in which we have some really good momentum. So if you think about three years in a row, we've grown net new. Last year, we were able to grow net new as well. And then last year, we had better than peer performance in consumer deposit growth despite the overall industry and consumer being a little modest in growth. We outperformed peers in growth. We also outperformed peers in managing rate paid. So we're growing in a very profitable way. We're going to take that same profitable framework into 2026. And they've already begun to do so. And the way to think about how we're very targeted and making sure we continue that and do even more is that we're focusing first on a Premier opportunity because we already have a right to win. Those clients already enjoy their experience.
We know who they are. We're proactively calling them because this is a contact sport and sharing the value proposition in ways that perhaps we haven't shared before. We're focused on small business. Small business, we have 1 million small business clients. We have good market share. However, we only have 20% of our small business clients that bank with us. That's a huge opportunity. We just didn't ask before. Now we're calling. We're asking. And we're winning. That's a significant way to grow our deposits. It aligns our small business strategy to our Premier strategy, which is an inclusive strategy. The third item is about retention. It's great to have a lot of production. But if you're not doing a great job with client experience and creating distinctive services and distinctive experiences, then you'll lose it on the back door.
We're very focused on retention. Again, we outperformed the market last year in retention. That's with our talented teammates but also how we build the connected channel experience where you can get the best of both service delivery. It doesn't matter if it's in the call center, in the branch, or if you're talking to your banker.
So you touched upon earlier in our chat about some differentiated lending businesses at Truist, Sheffield, Service Finance, LightStream. Can you talk a little bit more about these businesses and why they're important to the company?
Yes. We have a very high-quality, diversified consumer lending portfolio. What's really exciting, we have a couple of these national consumer lending platforms that give us the optionality to really accelerate our returns given that they generate high-yielding assets. They have return on asset or return on yields around 7%, 8%. So they have good ROA. We have good credit quality. We know how to execute these businesses at scale. We have number one market share, for example, in the Service Finance business. We're top two market share in Sheffield. In LightStream, we're in the top 10. So we have the ability to dial those up when we need them to accelerate returns. That's what we're going to be focusing on this year.
So this year, we're going to dial those portfolios up, continue the growth trajectory they've been on over the last year and a half. And that will accelerate returns for us. Those businesses, just to describe what they are, LightStream is an end-to-end digital business that allows us to take an application digitally, allows us to close it same day. It's targeted towards super-prime clients. And again, it offers high-risk-adjusted yields for the company. So that's a good platform. We have good share. We've actually taken that product. And we've integrated it into our core Truist mobile experience. And we've integrated it into our branch experience. So not only are we growing nationally, we're growing better within our core. Our Service Finance business is a great business.
That business is focused on providing contractors the opportunity to provide loans for their clients when they are at the kitchen table talking about home improvements. And so that's a good business that continues to grow, getting good, attractive returns in that business. And then Sheffield is a phenomenal business. That business focuses on financing sports, power sports, as well as outdoor power equipment and trailers. And we have good dominant share there. And we're really able to effectively grow that business.
I would think Service Finance can be particularly compelling given the amount of home equity in homes as well, right, and the desire for people to expand given the lack of movement in new homes. Let's talk about auto for a second. You've had strong growth in auto last year. There have been some recent concerns on consumer sentiment and health. So how are you thinking about the growth in both dealer finance and regional acceptance? And are you seeing any signs of credit stress in these portfolios?
So we're not seeing any signs of credit stress. That's more elevated than where it has basically normalized at currently. Back in 2022 and 2023, we de-risked these portfolios. So we were ahead of the game to make sure our credit quality was good and stable and met our appetite. And as it relates to these portfolios in 2026, you'll see us dial consumer auto down because we're dialing up things in commercial. And we're dialing up Service Finance. We're dialing up Sheffield and LightStream. So we're focused on portfolios that could be a lot more accretive to our financial returns. So we're intentionally dialing it down. But what's really good is when that portfolio is more accretive and has better financial returns, we know how to quickly dial it up. And that's that optionality I mentioned across the portfolio.
Switching gears to small business banking. Clearly, small businesses have faced significant challenges over the past five years: COVID, inflation, the like. You do have a new head of small business banking on board. How are you thinking about supporting your clients and driving growth in this business?
Yeah. Really excited about our small business opportunity. 90% of our revenue in small business comes from deposits and from fees. So it's highly accretive to our return profile. We brought in Claudia last year. She's brought in a very upbeat, focused, high-performance orientation. We've elevated our performance returns. We have trained our teammates and continue to train them and upskill them. We've brought in new analytics to identify what our greatest opportunities are so we can have greater call velocity and improved call conversion. We're looking at how do you do that even more efficiently, leveraging the technology tools. She's bringing some ideas as it relates to, like, hey, not only be virtual, but let's be digital so it can be more efficient in our attacking of the marketplace. We're excited about it.
One of the best things we did was align it with our Premier strategy. So we're able to not only win in small business, but our small business teammates now talk to their clients about bringing in their personal deposits. So we're going to do the combination of those things to drive our small business performance.
So let's just pull back. I know I asked very specifically about auto. And I was just looking at your schedule for today. You did meet with a lot of international clients. There's a whole sort of theme of the K-shaped consumer in the United States, the K-shaped economy. What are you seeing, right? You have a very good lens in terms of overall financial health for the consumer. Can you talk about any areas of concern and maybe areas of concern that you think are sort of overrated, right?
Yes. So I get the great privilege to be with thousands of clients every single month and studying millions of clients every single day and watching what's happening within the market. And I would tell you, there's some very interesting things happening, Erica. So two observations. One, when you look at the K-curve, you have the upper income bands that continue to perform well. You go to any of the restaurants here in Miami, it's packed. Shopping centers are packed. And so things are kind of business as usual. So their spend year-over-year has continued to improve. When you look at the low income bands, you're seeing some liquidity drop. And you're also seeing some deterioration in credit but not significant. And they're continuing to also spend. So it's interesting.
The K-curve is lifting in the same trajectory as it relates to spend, although the deposit liquidity has come down a little bit and some credit deterioration. So that's the first observation. The second observation is even more meaningful, that consumers' beliefs don't match their behaviors. And my dad used to tell me a long time ago, watch what people do more so than they say. And you'll learn a lot more. So they're giving surveys or taking surveys that sentiment may not be as high as we would hope that it would be. But what they're actually doing is totally different. They're spending. They're active. And so that's something that we're seeing. And the driver behind that is really employment. So employment is still generally strong. Not only that, but you have wages that are increasing at a pace higher than inflation.
So that means they have more purchasing power. So the thing that I look at is, all right, what would need to change for that to go in a different direction? Well, unemployment would need to go up higher. And if you look at a regression analysis, go back to 1995. We looked at the data and say, well, what number would that need to be? Well, you're talking about 70 bps or more before you have significant deterioration. And if you look at what Moody's has projected for this year, it's only 40 bps. So that gives you a sense of a potential stable economic environment for this year. But if unemployment did go up 100 bps, 150 bps, then what happens? The first thing you would see from a signal perspective is that your deposit liquidity would come down. You're not seeing that today.
The deposit liquidity is about the same per household. Second, you would see the request for minimum payments go up. So in our credit card portfolio, for example, we have 6.5% minimum payments every single month. That number is down from last year. So it's going the opposite direction. Then you would see utilization go up on their credit cards or on their home equity lines of credit. And today, the utilization is about the same as it was last year. So you're not seeing that take place. And after you see that, you'll start to see FICOs come down. And then obviously, you'll have credit challenges. So we're not seeing that today. Now, that could change. Another 2 months or 3 months, I could be back in front of you talking to you about a different environment. But in the near future, we feel optimistic. But we're very alert.
We watch it every day. We have the optionality to dial up or down our appetite at any given moment. We pay attention to those signals and make those determinations every day.
Did any of the spend trends in the consumer, do they get impacted by any sort of the policy noise, the way corporates get impacted? Or was it a fairly straight observation as you think about Liberation Day last year and all of that?
Spend was the same. The only thing that really impacted spend, like take the lower income, they moved more away from discretionary to undiscretionary. You have those type of patterns. It had nothing to do with policy. It's just where they are on the income band and what's happening in their unique lives.
Got it. We talked a lot about different topics today. I think it was super helpful for investors to hear about what's going on in your business. As we look ahead, what excites you the most about your business? Is it growth, innovation, deepening client relationships? What are the two to three things that investors should sort of watch out for from Truist in 2026?
The same thing that excited me day one in doing this job is the same thing that excites me today. And that is helping our clients have better lives and get to financial success. And if we do that well, we win. And if we win, shareholders win. So I'm excited about driving that 15% ROTCE target by way of starting with the client. And what investors should watch for, or what markers, would be increasing client deposits, deepening with Premier clients, making sure that we elevate our digital engagement so we are serving clients in the most efficient way. Sustained credit discipline is super important. And then we need to make sure that we're doing a wonderful job of retaining clients because that's super important. So watching how we perform from a voice of the client perspective. We're doing that today.
These are good markers that are already signaling that we're winning. I'm excited about the future, Erica. The momentum is real.
Great. So that's another bullish presentation from the morning. And I don't see any questions in the iPad. So Dontá, thank you so much for your time today.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you.