A Zions Bank branch in Cottonwood Heights, Monday, March 13, 2023.amid reaction to March’s banking alarms, Zions Bancorp on Wednesday reported lower-than-expected earnings for the first quarter as the regional bank sought to highlight signs of its stability.
Zions Chairman and CEO Harris Simmons said in a statement the bank’s “fundamentally solid” first-quarter results were being overshadowed by liquidity worries flowing from the mid-March failures of California-based Silicon Valley Bank and New York’s Signature Bank.
Meanwhile, the CEO said, Zions gained more than 7,000 accounts between March 7 — when the banking crisis first struck — and March 31, with a total value of $629 million. Simmons said similar trends for deposits had taken shape in recent quarters across the industry after rapid deposit growth during the pandemic. He noted that Zions’ deposits were still up 18% over their pre-pandemic levels, at the end of 2019.