For Regional Banks These Days, Boring Is Better

In March, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. introduced TV ads and plastered signs across its branches arguing that it’s “brilliantly boring.” On an April conference call, Fifth Third Bancorp Chief Executive Officer Tim Spence boasted that the lender’s results were “boring.” And on April 25, Frank Namdar, chief credit officer of Columbia Banking System Inc., described his property loan portfolio as “really quite boring, which somebody like me loves to see.”

A year ago, as regional lenders found themselves thrust into the public spotlight, banking was anything but tedious. For an industry underpinned by trust—the belief ...