Truist Financial Corporation CEO Kelly King shared his outlook for the economy that’s been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic during the bank’s third-quarter earnings call with analysts on Thursday.

“Loan growth is really challenging now, obviously. But, banks are a reflection of the economy. And so, we should not be surprised about that,” Kelly said on the call, adding. “The real question is what’s going to happen to the economy.”

While emphasizing that his outlook is “just one person’s opinion,” King first brought up the 1991 commercial real estate bubble, 2001 technology bubble and 2008 residential real estate bubble that all hit the economy.

He noted that this current downturn “didn’t have a bubble” the U.S. economy entered the coronavirus pandemic from a place of strength, with a 3.5 percent unemployment rate. To be sure, the shut down was appropriate for medical reasons.

“I’ll make that point to say that if this pandemic doesn’t go on too much longer, there’s a chance that we can get a snapback in the economy that most people would not expect because it wasn’t structurally in trouble to start with,” Kelly said.

However, if the pandemic persists for “a long time, then all bets are off,” he added.

Kelly said the firm is “somewhat optimistic, although cautious,” about where the economy will be going forward.

As the virus spread in the U.S., Kelly said the bank sat back, waiting for the pandemic to end before realizing that they needed to get on with business.

“One of the quotes that I got recently was clients to say, ‘it’s time to move on.’ And to be honest, that’s kind of what we said. We set back for a while and didn’t make virtual calls and said we were waiting for the pandemic. And then several months ago, we just kind of said, ‘We got to get on with running our business because our clients need us,'” he said.

King also mentioned that most of the bank’s middle and upper market clients have been “very resilient,” though the small businesses are struggling.

“Depending on how long this lasts, we will see a substantial shakeout in the small business, micro-market,” he said. “At the aggregate economic level, that will reshuffle and reallocate itself. But at a personal level for those small business people, that’s a very sad story. So, we’ve got to hope that this moves along as rapidly as possible.”

Truist, which formed after the merger of BB&T and SunTrust, is the sixth-largest U.S. bank holding company.

Shares of Truist fell 1.09 percent, or 46 cents, to close Friday at $41.65.