"Now, we have a much better capitalized company with plenty of flexibility to address what has been a lingering issue for investors (large unrealized losses)," Siefers wrote in the note. "However, we're giving up presumably the highest-value portion of the earnings stream to get there." Chief Financial Officer Mike Maguire said on the analyst call that the sale would allow Truist to evaluate a variety of capital-deployment alternatives, including shifting its balance sheet away from low-yielding securities and growing its core banking franchise, like loans. "While we recognize that there are trade-offs with any decision, we think it's timely to increase Truist's financial strength," Maguire said. "Truist's stronger relative capital position creates capacity for growth, allows us to maintain our earnings, gives us an opportunity to also improve our interest rate risk profile by reducing the duration of our balance sheet and, of course, capitalizes on historically high insurance-broker valuations."