Following its decision to acquire HSBC’s East Coast retail branches, Citizens may be eyeing more acquisition activity down the line.

“I feel good that there’ll be some announcements over the course of the second half of the year,” CEO Bruce Van Saun, said in an investor conference call today. The $165.7 billion bank reported net income of $648 million in quarterly filings. Citizens’ equipment and software expense ticked up by 6%, attributed to continued investments in technology, the bank noted in its filings.

Citizens announced in May that it would acquire 80 of HSBC’s East Coast branches, netting the bank about $9.0 billion in deposits and approximately $2.2 billion in loans. Commenting on the HSBC acquisition, Van Saun said that it “fills in some geographical holes” for Citizens, particularly in the New York metro area.

“We saw modest loan growth during the quarter and expect that to accelerate in the second half as the economy continues to grow and excess liquidity is redeployed,” Van Saun added in a statement announcing the earnings release.

The bank also registered growth in its digital sales activity, which grew by 61% on a yearly basis, and it has plans to further leverage digitization to expand self-service interactions and boost sales, according to its quarterly investor presentation.

The bank sees opportunities emerging out of its planned implementation of a “next-gen technology program,” which includes further streamlining of its applications and plans to optimize its branch density, CFO John Woods, said during the conference call.

Citizens Bank has also been exploring how to leverage artificial intelligence to extract information from documents, RJ Sherman, the vice president of innovation at Citizens, previously told Bank Automation News. The bank also recently finished work on automating parts of its commercial bank underwriting, Vinay Jha, chief data officer at Citizens, said during a June webinar organized by BAN.

Ally Financial

Ally Financial reported net revenues of $2.14 billion this quarter, with its all-digital Ally Bank registering 81% year-on-year growth on its mortgage offering.

“Anchored by our leading Auto Finance and Ally Bank franchises, and a transformed funding profile, our strong core earnings and [pre-tax pre-provision revenue] trends reflect a structurally enhanced business model that is positioned to deliver sustainable returns,” CEO Jeffrey Brown, said in a statement announcing the earnings.

Auto-finance raked in pre-tax income of $917 million for Ally, while insurance brought in $87 million, denoting a quarterly growth of 14% in auto and 38% dip in insurance. Ally originated a total of $12.9 billion in auto loans this quarter from a “record” total of 3.5 million decisioned applications, the firm noted in its investor presentation.

Ally Financial uses AI software developed by San Francisco fintech Informed.IQ for auto loan origination processes. This has helped the lender take out a bunch of manual work from the processes, according to published reports in May.

Ally added about 60,000 customers last quarter, of which nearly 70% were in the younger age groups, Brown said in an investor conference call today. He added that Ally is well-positioned to gain from the overall shift to digital among customers and has plans to “push forward what we do on the digital analytics side.”

Shares of Citizens Financial Group Inc. [NYSE: CFG] were trading at $42.67 at 4:00 p.m. today, up 3.57% for the day. Shares of Ally Financial Inc. [NYSE: ALLY] were trading at $50.90 at 4:00 p.m. today, up 6.13% for the day.