Release Date: April 30, 2024
For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.
Q & A Highlights
Q: Hi, this is Eric on the line for David Feaster. Thanks for taking the questions. I just want to touch on the hiring side to start. Like even after recruiting and adding talent, just curious, what's the pipeline and appetite for additional hires and where you're focused on adding talent? Just curious how the pipelines are trending, too, for the treasury management and capital call teams you've recently added?
A: The capital call team, we're not doing a lot of additional hiring there. There may be additional analysts and those sorts of positions. But right now, we've got a great team. They're doing a great job. And so things are pretty stable there. On the deposit side, we are in the process of recruiting more talent. I would say that it's less from just a number of people than we've had historically. So we're continuing to look for deposit talent and it can be difficult to find. Sometimes we have a particular type of person we're looking for with a particular business max. But there are folks out there and there is a pipeline. I would expect, though, that the increases that you've seen in personnel expense would be moderating a bit in the next several quarters, relative to what they were, as far as from an increase perspective.
Q: Okay. I think we talked about maybe that running in line with loan growth. Is that a good way to think about it --?
A: Yes, I think that's not a bad way.
Q: Thanks for answering the questions here. Hi, just to stick it on M&A, I guess it sounds like you're looking at maybe some certain business lines that maybe banks might be getting out of, or loan pools, anything specific, anything if you look at your franchise and your product suite that you might want to add that you don't currently offer?
A: You know, we're always looking for a variety of different opportunities, and that includes going across the securities businesses and the banking business. I think that just this is the type of market that you often see banks start to pare back businesses, or people. And so there's been some different opportunities that arose, whether it was in the insurance premium finance business on the life side, things like that. So there's different areas that we like and we just remain opportunistic and just want to make sure we have the capital to do that. So our capital ratios are very strong, and give us the opportunity to look at those, those types of options that arise in these kind of markets.
Q: Hi, thanks so much for the question. I thought maybe I would kick it off on the deposit side. Growth was quite strong, and the actual incremental increase in deposit costs actually wasn't that large. Just wondering if you could provide additional color and commentary around the business lines driving that, where you're seeing the greatest opportunities.
A: Sure. I think that some of the commercial lines of business are doing a good job on the cross-sell side, and we're continuing to gain traction there, which I think helps offset the deposit cost. The cap call business running at a good loan to deposit ratio, the regular C&I business doing a good job on the cross-sell side. We're having small levels of growth in a variety of different segments, small business on the consumer side. So it really is more a little bit of everything with a balance towards that commercial side continuing to add lower-cost deposits there. So we had an overshoot, I guess, if you were looking at the increase in deposits versus loans. I think we expected loan growth to be a little higher than it was, but ended up having some unexpected payoffs, which reduced it a little bit below where we expected it to be. But that just gives us the opportunity to be able to grow a little bit more this quarter.
Q: Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. If I could just follow-up first maybe on that line with regard to CRESL. Greg, as you're talking about there being opportunities there, albeit potentially at some tighter spreads, I'm wondering if within the markets that you traffic in CRESL, which I think is primarily larger metro areas, is there a particular geography that you're seeing more opportunity than others right now in that space?
A: I think that there's been a general shift, because a lot of those loans are with our partners. And I think our partners have de-emphasized certain markets and increased their activity in other markets. So I think that would be somewhat reflective of kind of population movement and those sort of things. So more Miami and Nashville and less New York, right, that kind of thing. But that doesn't mean New York still doesn't have opportunities. If I was going to just baseline it, I think you're seeing a little bit of movement there. And you're seeing the funds that we work with kind of change some of what they're doing as well, sometimes to be a little less concentrated, particularly in New York. So I think that's where I would just have it. I think generally that's what I'm seeing.
Q: I've got a couple of questions. Good. One, I've always noticed about how low your deposit fees are that you're charging your customers. Does that help you at all? I mean, or is that something that's really customers find important?
A: Yes. It's a good question. I think that our customers, we've generally focused on telling customers that we do provide them lower fees. We've never been much of an overdraft or NSF player, just with respect to our customer base. Our customer base generally tend to be a little more to the higher end, so they don't generally have those sorts of fees charged to them. I think on one side, it's reduced regulatory style risk. I think over time, our goal, and it is -- I have to admit -- you've been with us a long time, a longer-term goal, is to really try to bring that robo-advisor, and others into a much more integrated way of providing customers value. So I think a lot of the traditional types of deposit fees that make up a lot of traditional bank fee income on that deposit side, really aren't that conducive to growing deposits at the pace that we'd like to grow them. And so I think it is important to consumers when they're looking at their checking account, or their small business accounts, whether or not they're charged a lot of wire fees or things like that. And I think so a lot of our small business customers are attracted to that. So I think it's our job, and it's not an easy one to add value-added services there and to find ways of seeing if we can get fee income out of those value-added services. They're just a little bit different, I think, than a lot of the types of fees that other banks charge.
For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.
