• Our clients were incredibly engaged, rewarding us with deeper relationships and still higher net promoter and satisfaction scores, even as service deteriorated at many of our competitors as they struggled to fill positions and keep clients satisfied.
  • Average net promoter score of 73.3% across all markets measured by Coalition Greenwich.
  • Average Overall Satisfaction of 77% across all markets measured by Coalition Greenwich.

• And our shareholders were enriched by top-quartile returns largely driven by impressive growth in loans, deposits, fees, earnings and tangible book value per share.
  • Common share price: $95.50 at Dec. 31, 2021 – 48.3% growth YoY
  • Diluted EPS: $6.75 – 67.5% growth YoY
  • Loans: $23.0 billion – 11.7% annual growth (excluding PPP loans)
  • Core deposits: $29.3 billion – 24.7% annual growth
  • Non-interest income: $395.0 million – 24.7% growth YoY
  • Tangible book value per common share: $42.55 – 14.2% growth YoY

The pace of growth across all of those metrics may surprise some. But we believe difficult operating environments only serve to showcase the competitive advantage we can offer to associates, clients and shareholders. They give us a platform to flex the power of our culture, our service experience and the consistency of our shareholder returns.

As the challenges from 2020 lingered throughout 2021, never was the power of our culture more evident.

While many are experiencing a “Great Resignation,” we attracted new associates from vulnerable competitors at a record pace, driving growth, and we retained roughly 94 percent of our existing associates, making that growth sustainable.

While many companies battled against accelerating declines in service quality thanks to concurrent crises, we continued to top our markets in many of the service metrics that define client loyalty and advocacy.

And while economic uncertainty has tested many areas of the market and at times made the Fed’s response difficult to predict, Pinnacle’s share price set records and hit a significant milestone in the face of headwinds for the banking industry as a whole.

That combination of rapid organic growth, baked-in sustainability and a track record for performance is the Pinnacle story in a nutshell, all thanks to two crucial beliefs:

• People matter. They built our company and fuel its rapid growth.
• “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” It makes our growth sustainable—even in difficult times—by fostering deep loyalty in our existing associates and clients, as well as attracting more,even in a fiercely competitive environment.

Since 2000, we have made significant, consistent and long-term investments in both people and culture, leading to more than two decades of rapid, reliable and sustainable growth.

And just as it did following crises in 2001 and 2008, we believe the performance of our associates and our firm in 2021 proves that Pinnacle is poised to continue and accelerate that trend going forward.

The new normal for work and service relationships

For many, 2021 was a year of slow and tiresome implementation of changes made in reaction to the crises that arose in 2020. Suddenly more and more companies realized how much their people matter and how treating them poorly can quickly turn an upward trajectory into a race to the bottom.

Depending on which poll you look at, anywhere from half to two-thirds of all American workers are thinking of changing jobs or actively looking for a career change. Employees everywhere have realized they can quit their jobs at any time and go almost wherever they like, or they can choose to take a break from work, with money often a secondary concern instead of the primary driver.

That’s bad news for many banks, where clients are more loyal to people than to bank logos. But at Pinnacle, we are not only ready but eager to capitalize on that power shift. We’ve been prepared for it since Day 1 because we have always believed that a happy and successful workforce, and a bank’s ability to attract and keep them, is the difference between growth and contraction, between investment in the future and austerity.

All workers expect more of their employers. Customers, particularly in financial services, are maybe more frustrated than ever with poor service at a time when they have an increasing number of options for new providers.

According to Coalition Greenwich, overall satisfaction scores at America’s top 10 banks for both small and mid-size businesses have averaged less than 50 percent over the last three years. To us, that means clients are just as likely to leave as they are to stay, which is a poor reflection on our nation’s most powerful financial institutions.

For Pinnacle, it means compounding opportunities to move bankers and business away from these firms.

While the world’s circumstances have changed a lot since we opened our doors, we have always been driven by a belief that workers want and deserve more from their jobs, and customers won’t stand for poor service when they have an increasing number of options.

Put another way, everyone deserves a great place to work and a great place to do business. That’s never been truer than it is right now, and in fact we believe everyone expects a great place to work and will accept nothing less than a great place to do business.

That belief has made us one of the strongest banking franchises in the United States.

Investing in people and culture

In our view, rapid and sustainable growth is the primary ingredient for producing outsized shareholder returns.

If attracting top performing people is the primary driver for rapid growth, and creating a best-in-class culture is the way to make it sustainable, then nothing can be more important than investing in both—especially now.

The fundamental thrust for why people work and how they choose their employer has changed, and the companies that can meet these needs will enjoy continued growth.

The drivers are no longer just a matter of paychecks and perks, although that may be what brings some to the door. Now more than ever, companies have to invest in balance, flexibility, care, compassion and purpose to keep their associates happy.

Balance and flexibility aren’t that difficult to achieve anymore. Hybrid work and creative scheduling became the norm in 2020, primarily in response to the pandemic. So care, compassion and purpose appear to be the holy grail of associate engagement and retention. They speak directly to culture, which is something that can’t be easily fixed by throwing resources at it.

Culture has to be part of the foundation and nurtured deliberately over time. If it’s not authentic, baked into everything a company does, and if it’s not permanent, aimed at the long term, it just doesn’t work, and people will leave.

This is why we are so focused on our work environment, our culture and our associates above all else, why our investments in them are not just acceptable but strategically critical. Few banks would plan for double-digit expense growth primarily centered in people. But as a result of that kind of investment and the reliable loan and deposit growth our model has produced, we were able to budget for a strategically advantaged expense to asset ratio near 1.85 percent in 2021.

Our investments in people and culture are the key. Every time we get better, our competitors become more vulnerable to losing their best associates and clients to us.

Attracting and retaining the very best financial professionals ensures Pinnacle’s continued growth and success for the long term. It’s right there in the model that is responsible for all of our growth, both organic and acquisitive:

We are growing because of our culture, not at the expense of our culture.

What started in Nashville has proven itself successful in several of the hottest markets throughout the Southeast.

Pinnacle won local workplace awards in essentially every market we serve in 2021. In Nashville, we were retired to the Hall of Fame after 10 straight years of Best Place to Work wins.

An obsession with work environment and wowing clients

There’s no better word than “obsession” for our focus on the key aspects of our business model. Every single associate has a laser focus on work environment, culture and client service.

That’s what led us to become one of the largest, strongest banks in the country with one of the best share price performances of any publicly owned bank in the nation since our IPO.

Pinnacle’s investment in these vital areas is one of the central reasons for such consistent success in each of our markets, regardless of whether we entered de novo or through an acquisition.

The financial metrics show growth almost across the board over 2020. In third-party client surveys, the bank and our relationship managers (we call them financial advisors) earn high marks consistently in every market measured for categories directly correlated to client satisfaction and loyalty.