SunTrust Banks Inc. is one of the largest banking companies in the country but unlike some of the other industry giants, its branch network is confined mostly to the Southeastern U.S.
However, SunTrust Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers doesn’t see that as impediment to serving clients.
“Our business isn’t defined by physical location anymore,” Rogers said in an interview Monday during a visit to Jacksonville.
Atlanta-based SunTrust serves business clients with teams of experts in a variety of fields.
“I think they expect that we know their business,” he said. “If someone from SunTrust shows up on your doorstep, they’ve done their homework.”
One of the company’s specialties is ports and logistics, a major Jacksonville industry that Rogers thinks can benefit from SunTrust’s experience.
“We can bring some of that expertise to bear,” he said.
Rogers said he looks at Jacksonville as a city with “a lot of upside” because it wasn’t hit as hard by recent downturns in the economy.
“We see Jacksonville with great potential,” he said.
Besides logistics, SunTrust is also focusing on franchising and health care and aging services as specialties that can benefit Jacksonville customers, said Brian Parks, president and CEO of SunTrust’s North Florida Region.
“We have a lot of competition. What they don’t have is our ability to connect the dots for our clients,” Parks said.
SunTrust ranked fifth in the Jacksonville metropolitan area with about $2.2 billion in deposits in 27 branches, giving it a 3.9 percent share of all deposits in the market, according to midyear 2015 data compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The company employs about 220 people in Jacksonville, Parks said.
Rogers said SunTrust doesn’t need a bigger branch network to grow in the Jacksonville market, as services such as online banking and automated teller machines have reduced the need for physical offices.
“We like our position,” he said. “We have opportunities to take share.”
SunTrust ranked 10th nationally at midyear with $148 billion in deposits in nearly 1,500 offices. The branch network stretches from Florida north to Maryland and west to Tennessee.
As a regional bank that has been confined to the Southeast and into the mid-Atlantic states, SunTrust has often been mentioned in takeover rumors over the years, with speculation that a bigger bank looking to expand into the Southeast would see it as an attractive target.
However, Rogers said he isn’t concerned about that. “Our job is to run a great business. If you run a great business, you control your destiny,” he said.
*Ranked by deposits in Jacksonville metropolitan area offices as of June 30. Source: FDIC