KEYCORP NEW

Noninterest expense for 2024 was $4.5 billion, compared to $4.7 billion for 2023. Figure 5 gives a breakdown of our major categories of noninterest expense as a percentage of total noninterest expense for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024.

The following discussion explains the composition of certain elements of our noninterest expense and the factors that caused those elements to change.

Figure 5. Noninterest Expense

(a)Other noninterest expense includes equipment, operating lease expense, marketing, intangible asset amortization and other miscellaneous expense. See the "Consolidated Statements of Income" in Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data of this report.

Personnel

As shown in Figure 6, personnel expense, the largest category of our noninterest expense, increased by $54 million, or 2.0%, in 2024 compared to 2023. Overall activity for the year was driven by higher incentive compensation from strong capital markets activity during the year, partially offset by a decrease in severance expense. Salaries and contract labor were down reflecting a decrease in FTE’s, offset slightly by increased contract labor costs.

Figure 6. Personnel Expense

N/M - Not meaningful

(a)Excludes directors’ stock-based compensation of $4 million in 2024 and $3 million in 2023, reported as “other noninterest expense” in Figure 5.

Non-personnel expense

In total, other non-personnel expense decreased $243 million, or 11.7%, in 2024 compared to 2023 primarily due to items impacting non-personnel expense in 2023, including a $190 million FDIC special assessment charge, as well as corporate real estate related rationalization costs recorded within other expense.