Accounting Policies (Policies)

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2021

Basis of Financial Statement Presentation

BUSINESS

PNC is one of the largest diversified financial services companies in the U.S. and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We have businesses engaged in retail banking, including residential mortgage, corporate and institutional banking and asset management, providing many of our products and services nationally. Our retail branch network is located primarily in markets across the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Southeast. We also have strategic international offices in four countries outside the U.S.

Basis of Financial Statement Presentation

Our consolidated financial statements include the accounts of the parent company and its subsidiaries, most of which are wholly-owned, certain partnership interests and VIEs.

We prepared these consolidated financial statements in accordance with GAAP. We have eliminated intercompany accounts and transactions. We have also reclassified certain prior year amounts to conform to the current period presentation, which did not have a material impact on our consolidated financial condition or results of operations.

In our opinion, the unaudited interim consolidated financial statements reflect all normal, recurring adjustments needed to present fairly our results for the interim periods. The results of operations for interim periods are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the full year or any other interim period.

We have also considered the impact of subsequent events on these consolidated financial statements.

When preparing these unaudited interim consolidated financial statements, we have assumed that you have read the audited consolidated financial statements included in our 2020 Form 10-K. Reference is made to Note 1 Accounting Policies in our 2020 Form 10-K for a detailed description of significant accounting policies. These interim consolidated financial statements serve to update our 2020 Form 10-K and may not include all information and Notes necessary to constitute a complete set of financial statements. There have been no significant changes to our accounting policies as disclosed in our 2020 Form 10-K.

Use of Estimates

We prepared these consolidated financial statements using financial information available at the time of preparation, which requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported. Our most significant estimates pertain to the ACL and our fair value measurements. Actual results may differ from the estimates and the differences may be material to the consolidated financial statements.

Recently Adopted Accounting Standards


Accounting Standards Update	Description	Financial Statement Impact
Income Tax Simplification - ASU 2019-12 Issued December 2019	• Simplifies the accounting for income taxes by eliminating certain exceptions in ASC 740, Income Taxes, relating to the approach for intraperiod tax allocation, the recognition of deferred tax liabilities for outside basis differences and the methodology for calculating income taxes in an interim period. • Clarifies areas of the income tax guidance around franchise taxes partially based on income, step-ups in the tax basis of goodwill, and enacted changes in tax laws. • Specifies that an entity is no longer required to allocate the consolidated amount of current and deferred tax expense to a legal entity that is not subject to tax in its separate financial statements.	• Adopted January 1, 2021. • The adoption of this standard did not impact our consolidated results of operations or our consolidated financial position. PNC will no longer allocate the consolidated amount of current and deferred income tax expense to certain qualifying stand-alone entities, which may impact the presentation of parent company tax expense subsequent to adoption.
Accounting Standards Update	Description	Financial Statement Impact
Reference Rate Reform - ASU 2020-04 Issued March 2020 Reference Rate Reform Scope - ASU 2021-01 Issued January 2021	• Provides optional expedients and exceptions for applying generally accepted accounting principles to contracts, hedging relationships and other transactions that reference LIBOR or another reference rate expected to be discontinued because of reference rate reform (codified in ASC 848). • Includes optional expedients related to contract modifications that allow an entity to account for modifications (if certain criteria are met) as if the modifications were only minor (assets within the scope of ASC 310, Receivables), were not substantial (assets within the scope of ASC 470, Debt) and/or did not result in remeasurements or reclassifications (assets within the scope of ASC 842, Leases, and other Topics) of the existing contract. • Includes optional expedients related to hedging relationships within the scope of ASC 815, Derivatives & Hedging, whereby changes to the critical terms of a hedging relationship do not require dedesignation if certain criteria are met. In addition, potential sources of ineffectiveness as a result of reference rate reform may be disregarded when performing some effectiveness assessments. • Includes optional expedients and exceptions for contract modifications and hedge accounting that apply to derivative instruments impacted by the market-wide discounting transition. • Allows for a one-time election to sell, transfer, or both sell and transfer debt securities classified as held to maturity that reference a rate affected by reference rate reform and that are classified as held to maturity before January 1, 2020. • Guidance in these ASUs are effective as of March 12, 2020 through December 31, 2022.	• ASU 2020-04 was adopted March 12, 2020. ASU 2021-01 was retrospectively adopted October 1, 2020. • Refer to Note 1 Accounting Policies in the 2020 Form 10-K for more information on elections of optional expedients that occurred in 2020. • During the first quarter of 2021, we elected to apply certain optional expedients to derivative instruments that were modified in the first quarter due to the adoption of fallback language recommended by the ISDA to address the anticipated cessation of LIBOR. These optional expedients remove the requirement to remeasure contract modifications or dedesignate hedging relationships due to reference rate reform. • As of March 31, 2021, we have not yet elected to apply any optional expedients for contract modifications and hedging relationships to any other financial instruments. However, we plan to elect these optional expedients in the future.
Accounting Standards Update	Description	Financial Statement Impact
SEC Paragraph Amendments – ASU 2020-09 Issued October 2020	• Amends the financial disclosure requirements for guarantors and issuers of guaranteed securities registered or being registered, and issuers’ affiliates whose securities collateralize securities registered or being registered in Regulation S-X. • Improves disclosure requirements for both investors and registrants. • Provides investors with material information given the specific facts and circumstances, making the disclosures easier to understand and reducing the costs and burdens to registrants.	• Adopted January 4, 2021. • In accordance with the requirements of this ASU, we included Exhibit 22 in the Exhibit Index of Item 6 of this Report to disclose PNC’s guarantee of the PNC Capital Trust C preferred securities.