It's not every day that you get a "thank you" letter from your bank. Not a notice of higher fees ahead. Not a credit card bill. Just an out-of-the-blue letter to a "Dear Valued Customer," signed by the chairman, president and CEO.

2023 isn't an everyday kind of a year, though. Banks can no longer take a lot for granted, especially as troubling headlines about bank failures and high interest rates are driving many savers to move their money out of banks into money market funds and elsewhere.

Nearly half of consumers are anxious about the safety of the money they have in accounts at banks or other financial institutions, according to a Gallup poll conducted April 3 through April 25. In that group, 19% said they were "very worried."

Gallup noted that the latest readings are similar to those in 2008. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, Gallup noted that 45% of U.S. adults said they were very or moderately worried about the safety of their money.

A message of strength, stability and resiliency

Curtis C. Farmer, chairman, president and CEO of Dallas-based Comerica Bank, sent letters dated May 31 to customers to personally assure them that "Comerica is a strong company with a solid capital position, high liquidity, excellent credit results and tenured colleagues."

He spoke of Comerica's "stability and strength" in a 174-year history. (The bank, according to its online history, originally opened its doors as the Detroit Savings Fund Institute in 1849. It was called Detroit Bank & Trust in the 1950s and later named Comerica in the early 1980s. It merged with rival Manufacturers National Corp. in 1992 and moved its headquarters out of Detroit to Dallas in 2007.)

"Throughout our long history," Farmer wrote, "Comerica has successfully navigated through world wars, the economic turbulence of the 20th century, the Great Recession of 2008, and the recent COVID pandemic."

He stated: "Resiliency is our hallmark."

Again, not a letter you'd expect to get from your bank. But these aren't ordinary times for regional banks, like Comerica.

The 2023 banking drama continues

This year, buzz has been building around the startling drama of the bank failures, the easy outflow of bank deposits, the steep rise in interest rates after 10 aggressive moves by the Federal Reserve to put a lid on inflation and ongoing concerns about the future health of commercial real estate given the major pushback for returning to the office to work.

Stock prices for many U.S. banks, including Comerica, plunged in 2023 after Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed in March. On May 1, federal regulators seized the troubled California-based First Republic Bank; its deposits and a majority of its assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase. It was the third bank to fail in 2023 and the second largest bank failure in U.S. history.

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On May 11, the holding company of the struggling Pacific Western Bank reported that the bank lost 9.5% of its total deposits in a week.

Banking stocks felt more heat June 5, as some investors began to worry that banks could lose more deposits when a flood of new U.S. Treasury bills hits the market in the aftermath of the debt ceiling woes. But things calmed down a bit later in the week.

How Comerica has been doing

Comerica's stock price has been slashed nearly in half the past year. Comerica closed at $43.22 a share on June 6 — down 47% from its close of $81.84 on June 7, 2022.

In earlier statements, Comerica said its loan growth has been strong but deposits have fallen as some customers diversified their money elsewhere. Comerica stated that it still has relationships with those customers and maintains that opportunities exist for deposits to return in the future, but the bank has acknowledged that it's not relying on those deposits returning, either.

Comerica disclosed that its average deposits dropped by $3.5 billion to $67.8 billion in the first quarter, down nearly 5% from the fourth quarter last year. That's down about 14% from $79.1 billion in deposits in the first quarter of 2022.

Eric Compton, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said he does not see Comerica as having any serious, existential problems. "I think the stock is overreacting and Comerica’s core business will be fine over the long run," Compton said.

Comerica, Compton said, will likely get some deposits back over time and get new deposits. "Deposit growth is likely to resume eventually," he said. "The most obvious lever to pull in order to increase deposits is to increase your pricing by paying more on deposits."

Compton's recent report on Comerica highlighted potential legal and regulatory issues brought to light in a May 29 report in the American Banker. The report, based on internal documents, raised compliance questions involving Comerica's handling of Direct Express, a U.S. Treasury Department program that provides federal benefits on prepaid cards for more than 4.5 million consumers who do not have bank accounts.

The American Banker report noted that Comerica allowed "fraud disputes and data on Direct Express cardholders to be handled out of a vendor's office in Lahore, Pakistan," which could be in violation of the government contract.

Farmer, in a letter to the American Banker, took issue with the article and defended the program, which is used by 25 different federal programs across eight agencies. Social Security and veterans benefits can be issued on that prepaid debit card.

Morningstar's Compton noted in his report: "The overall impact of the Direct Express program on Comerica’s profitability does not appear to be material to us. The bank has received somewhere between $100 million and $151 million per year to operate the program, and it seems to pay out the majority of that to third-party vendors to assist with running the program. The primary benefit for the bank appears to be the roughly $3 billion of low-cost deposits that are estimated to be associated with the program, or roughly 5% of the bank’s overall deposit base."

Compton stated that the bank has estimated in the past that even if it did not win the contract renewal, not all of these deposits would leave. The contract is still in force through 2025.

A lot of letters being sent

One might feel special — maybe, say, if you did withdraw a big chunk of money this year — to receive a letter from a CEO. But Comerica confirmed that the bank is sending the letters to all of its customers. The mailings, which began at the end of May, are expected to be completed in a few days, spokesperson Matt Barnhart told the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday.

"We understand that several banks have sent out messages and social media posts in a similar vein this year," Barnhart said.

Widespread letters, though, aren't terribly common. I reached out to a few banks and was told by Fifth Third Bank, PNC Bank and Bank of America that those banks have not sent letters to all customers in light of the news and ongoing concerns associated with this year's banking industry turmoil.

In many cases, bank employees across the industry are offering information about the stability of their bank to reassure customers who ask. And those who work with larger clients are reaching out proactively to communicate the strength of the bank.

Bankers, in general, continue to address the shocks that hit the banking system in 2023 by stressing that we're not looking at another financial crisis or deep recession ahead. "Crisis is too strong a word," Bank of America Corp. CEO Brian Moynihan said in April at a Bloomberg forum in New York.

Moynihan, who spoke at the Mackinac Policy Conference, has stressed that the deposit insurance system has done a good job at protecting customers.

Moynihan told those attending the Mackinac conference May 31 that a mild U.S. recession is forecast ahead in the third and fourth quarter this year, as well into early next year. But he said the recession is expected to end and move into a recovery mode. He, too, stressed that the bank industry has strong regulation and is well capitalized but blamed the 2023 failures on very unusual circumstances on how those companies operated and how the shift in economic conditions took a toll on them.

Comerica's Barnhart said Comerica's letter is designed to communicate its commitment to serving customers as the bank has during its history, even as the country and the financial services industry may face challenging economic cycles.

Comerica will give updated information June 13 at the 2023 Morgan Stanley US Financials, Payments & CRE Conference, as well as on Comerica's earnings call July 21.

And you can bet that many will continue to look for more clues — and reassurance — as to what's next in the banking saga of 2023.

Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @tompor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Comerica surprises customers with a letter from the CEO