Welcome to Wintrust Financial Corporation's second quarter and year-to-date 2023 earnings conference call. A review of the results will be made by Tim Crane, President and Chief Executive Officer, David Dykstra, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, and Richard Murphy, Vice Chairman and Chief Lending Officer. As part of their reviews, the presenters may make reference to both the earnings press release and the earnings release presentation. Following their presentations, there will be a formal question-and-answer session. During the course of today's call, Wintrust management may make statements that constitute projections, expectations, beliefs, or similar forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated or projected in any such forward-looking statements. The company's forward-looking assumptions that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the information discussed in this call are detailed in our earnings press release and in the company's most recent Form 10-K and any subsequent filings with the SEC. Also, our remarks may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings press release and earnings release presentation include a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the nearest comparable GAAP financial measure. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference call over to Mr. Tim Crane. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. We appreciate you joining us for our second quarter earnings call. In addition to Dave Dykstra and Rich Murphy, who the operator introduced, David Stoehr, our Chief Financial Officer, and Kate Boege, our General Counsel, are with me in the room today. In terms of an agenda, I'll share some high-level highlights. Dave will speak to the financial results, and Rich will add some additional information and color on credit performance. I'll wrap up with some summary thoughts, and as we always do, we'll do our best to answer some questions. On our last call in mid-April, we were still in a period of volatility and to a degree, uncertainty for the banks. At the time, we talked about several objectives: continuing to focus on our customers, capitalizing on our strength and stability, once again, being opportunistic when there is disruption in the market. We talked about managing the balance sheet in a conservative fashion, growing deposits to fund loan growth, and continuing to enhance liquidity. We talked about continuing to take advantage of higher rates, specifically to demonstrate our ability, despite rising deposit costs, to stabilize the net interest margin. We feel like our performance on these objectives has been very solid. In addition to reporting record income for the first half of the year, for the second quarter, we had strong and balanced loan and deposit growth, adding clients and building the franchise through the volatile period when others were distracted. We improved liquidity, reducing Federal Home Loan Bank borrowings, and as you will hear shortly, have demonstrated through the sale of a portfolio of loans that occurred after the quarter end, the flexibility to continue to manage our balance sheet effectively. While as expected, deposit costs are up, we are originating very high-quality loans with attractive both yields and terms, and continue to benefit from loan repricing, which we believe differentiates us from many of our peers. Just to give you some detail, you'll recall our margin was 3.83% for the first quarter, and specifically 3.70% at the end of March. Our margin for the second quarter, despite the very good growth, was 3.66%, and importantly, was stable throughout the quarter. Lastly, our credit performance remains strong with no evidence of systemic issues. Rich will discuss this in some detail, including proactive steps that illustrate our ability to address any softening that may occur. Again, I'll come back at the end, but with that, I'll turn this over to Dave to provide some additional detail. Okay, thanks, Tim. First, with respect to the balance sheet growth, we're very pleased to see deposits for the quarter grow by $1.3 billion or 12.4% on an annualized basis. This deposit growth was aided by the popularity of our suite of MaxSafe products that provide enhanced FDIC coverage, and we did not rely upon additional wholesale deposits during the quarter for that growth. This growth was also despite our wealth deposits declining by just under $400 million, owing in large part to less deposits from our 1031 exchange business due to a slowdown in tax-free commercial real estate exchanges in the marketplace. As to the deposit composition, we again saw some additional movement from non-interest bearing deposits to interest-bearing accounts. The non-interest bearing deposits at the end of the quarter represented 24% of our total deposits, compared to 26% at the end of the first quarter. These movements do not appear to be unique to us, but they obviously increase the cost of deposits for the quarter. Although I would note that the mix shift out of non-interest bearing deposits seems to have subsided thus far this quarter, as the percentage is relatively stable now that it was at the end of the second quarter. This strong deposit growth helped fund similarly strong loan growth of $1.5 billion during the second quarter. The growth was predominantly fueled by exceptionally strong production from our commercial premium finance operations, and to a lesser extent, from commercial real estate growth, including draws on previously existing credit lines. Rich Murphy will discuss the loan portfolio growth in more detail in just a bit. The investment portfolio declined slightly as we only reinvested about a third of the $940 million of securities that were called away at the end of the prior quarter. The additional liquidity provided by not reinvesting the entire amount of those called securities also helped to fund the quarter's loan growth. The company was able to reduce its non-deposit funding, primarily Federal Home Loan Bank advances, during the quarter by $208 million. The result of these balance sheet movements was a growth in total assets of approximately $1.4 billion, a slightly elevated ending loan-to-deposit ratio of 93.2%, and relatively stable capital ratios. All in all, it was a very successful quarter in growing our franchise. Our differentiated business model, exceptional service, and unique position in the Chicago and Milwaukee markets continued to serve us well. As Tim mentioned, the exceptionally strong growth in our commercial premium finance portfolio and the outlook for continued loan growth provided us with an opportunity to structure a loan sale transaction of approximately $500 million of our U.S. commercial premium finance portfolio. This loan sale occurred earlier this week and provided multiple benefits to us, including that it demonstrates that our premium finance portfolio is a strong source of additional liquidity if needed. Actually, provided us with liquidity this quarter to aid in funding anticipated loan growth, reduces our loan-to-deposit ratio to a desired operating level that is closer to 90%, reduces some of the concentration in the premium finance space as we've had strong growth over the last quarter and, quite frankly, over the last year, and would provide a small gain in the third quarter from the sale of those loans. As you know, these loans are very short-term loans that make monthly payments, and they'll likely be replaced substantially by new volume by the end of the year. Next, I'll cover noteworthy income statement categories, starting with the net interest income. For the second quarter of 2023, net interest income totaled $447.5 million. That was a decrease of $10.5 million as compared to the prior quarter, an increase of $109.7 million compared to the same quarter of 2022. The decrease in net interest income as compared to the prior quarter, was primarily due to compression in the net interest margin, influenced by the higher funding cost. The net interest margin was 3.66% in the second quarter, which was just slightly less than the 3.7% margin that we discussed on our first quarter earnings call, which was the approximate run rate at the end of March. The margin was 17 basis points less than the prior quarter level of 3.83%. Importantly, the net interest margin was stable for each of the months in the second quarter, and, as I'll discuss later, we expect the margin to continue to remain relatively stable for the remainder of 2023. As to the details of the component changes impacting the margin in the second quarter, relative to the first quarter, the company saw a beneficial increase of 42 basis points on the yield on earning assets, excluding the impact of our interest rate swap positions, a 15 basis point increase in the net free funds contribution, and offsetting that was an increase of 66 basis points in the rate paid on liabilities. It's important to note that roughly half of the margin decline during the quarter was associated with an additional 8 basis points of margin drag from a full quarter impact of the interest rate swap positions that we have in place. Those swaps were generally put on in the first quarter, and the first quarter only had a portion of the impact. This quarter was fully baked and was accounted for about half of the margin decline. We continue to believe that our balance sheet structure can provide for margin stability as our premium finance portfolios, which comprise roughly a third of our loan portfolio, should continue to reprice upward over the course of this year, and that should substantially mitigate the rise in deposit pricing. Based on the current interest rate environment, which includes an expected 25 basis point increase by the Fed later this month, we expect our margin to remain relatively steady in the 3.60%-3.70% range during the remainder of 2023. Turning to the provision for credit losses, the company recorded a provision for credit losses of $28.5 million in the second quarter. This compared to a provision of $23 million in the prior quarter, and $20.4 million of provision expense recorded in the year ago quarter. The higher provision expense in the second quarter relative to the prior quarter, was primarily a result of higher loan growth, changes in macroeconomic outlooks, including projected credit spreads and projected commercial real estate price index, and slightly higher net charge-offs. Again, Rich Murphy will talk about credit and the loan portfolio characteristics in just a bit. As to other non-interest income and other non-interest expense, total non-interest income totaled $113 million in the second quarter, and was up approximately $5.2 million compared to the prior quarter of total of $107.8 million. The primary reason for the increase were due to an $11 million increase in mortgage banking revenue. The mortgage banking operation saw a slight increase in volume of loans originated during the second quarter with relatively stable production margins. Roughly 84% of the application volume is still related to purchased home activity. Loan activity, application activity continues to be subdued due to the lack of housing inventory and higher rates, but, you know, we would expect right now, similar to slightly elevated production, but nothing dramatic in the third quarter. Wealth management revenues improved by $3.9 million in the second quarter relative to the first quarter. This was bolstered by revenue from the acquisition that we closed at the beginning of the quarter, offset somewhat by continued headwinds relative to the slowdown in the commercial real estate transactions and the resulting impact on the 1031 exchange business revenue. However, these increases were offset by a $1.4 million reduction on gains and losses related to the company's securities portfolio. The company recorded a $1.4 million gain in the first quarter on securities sales and really nothing in the second quarter of this year. $7.8 million decrease in covered call options also impacted this revenue category. As I discussed earlier, we did not reinvest much of our securities that were called, and this created less opportunity to write covered call transactions during the quarter. Turning to the non-interest expense categories. The non-interest expenses totaled $320.6 million in the second quarter, and we're up approximately $21.4 million when compared to the prior quarter total of $299.2 million. The primary reasons for the increases were related to a few general areas. First, the acquisition of the wealth management companies at the beginning of the quarter added roughly $4 million of additional expense sprinkled throughout the various expense categories. Excluding that impact, salaries and employee benefits expense increased by approximately $8.1 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the first quarter. Relative to the prior quarter, there was $4.7 million increase, largely related to higher mortgage commissions and, to a lesser extent, incentive compensation accruals. You know, most of that was commissions related to the increased mortgage operation. This category fluctuates depending upon the mortgage volume. The category also saw approximately $4.1 million of higher employee benefit expenses due to an increased level of health insurance claims during the quarter. Health insurance claims can fluctuate on a monthly basis, as we're self-insured. The first quarter was a little low, the second quarter was a little high, it can fluctuate, but the change between quarters was really more probably a timing of when the employees took advantage of our health insurance program. Next, advertising and marketing expenses increased by $5.8 million in the second quarter when compared to the prior quarter. As we have discussed on previous calls, this category of expense tends to be higher in the second and third quarters of the year due to expenditures related to various Major and Minor League Baseball sponsorships, other summertime sponsorship events that we hold in the communities that we serve, and marketing of our brand and deposit products. Also, in the second quarter, lending expenses increased approximately $4.8 million due to the strong and higher overall loan origination activity in the second quarter. Other than that, the expense categories just discussed, other than the expense categories just discussed above, all the other expense categories were relatively consistent. The efficiency ratio increased to 57% for the second quarter, from 53% in the first quarter of the year, and this was primarily due to the impact of lower net interest margins, the reduced level of covered call income, and the slightly elevated expenses. Net overhead ratio was 1.58% in the second quarter, an increase from 1.49% in the prior quarter, due to the slightly higher expenses. In summary, we think this was a very solid quarter. We had strong loan and deposit growth, improved liquidity position, stabilized net interest margin with a steady outlook, net revenues that were within 1% of the prior quarter's record level, despite funding cost pressures, continued low levels of non-performing assets, and the second highest quarterly net income result in the company's history. We feel like we've managed through a turbulent first half of 2023, delivering net income that was a record for the first half of any fiscal year in the company's history, and we have a positive outlook for continued growth in assets, revenues, and earnings. With that, I will conclude my comments and turn it over to Rich Murphy to discuss credit. Thanks, Dave. As noted earlier, credit performance continued to be very solid in the second quarter from a number of perspectives. As detailed on slide 6 of the deck, loan growth for the quarter was $1.5 billion. The loan growth was largely attributable to over $1 billion of growth in the commercial premium finance category. This growth is due to a number of factors. The second quarter is historically when we see our highest funding volume, and as we have noted in past several quarters, we have seen a significantly harder market for insurance premiums, particularly for commercial properties. As a result, we have seen the average loan size increase. Finally, we continue to see new opportunities as a result of consolidation within the premium finance industry. We also saw good growth in commercial real estate, largely resulting from draws on existing construction loans and portfolio residential real estate loans. This rate of loan growth is significantly higher than the first quarter and well above our guidance of mid-to-high single digits. We believe that loan growth for the second half of the year will be more in line with our guidance, as we anticipate the premium finance loan growth will moderate and be more in line with historic norms. We also anticipate that higher borrowing costs will continue to affect borrowers to reconsider the economics of new projects, business expansion, and equipment purchases. However, we continue to see solid momentum in our core C&I and CRE pipelines. Disruptions in the banking landscape continue to work to our benefit, and we have seen numerous quality opportunities from other regional banks. In summary, we continue to be optimistic about loan growth for the balance of 2023, and we believe that our diversified portfolio and position within the competitive landscape will allow us to grow within our guidance of mid to high single digits and maintain our credit discipline. From a credit quality perspective, as detailed on slide 14, we continue to see strong credit performance across the portfolio. This can be seen in a number of metrics. Non-performing loans remain stable at 26 basis points, or $109 million, up slightly from what we saw in the first quarter. Overall, NPLs continue to be at historically low levels, and we are still confident about the solid credit performance of the portfolio. Charge-offs for the quarter were $17 million, or 17 basis points, which was up from the prior quarter, but still at a relatively low level. This higher level was primarily attributable to a charge of $8 million, which resulted from the sale of a portfolio of co-working office loans totaling $17 million. As we have noted in previous calls, we are constantly looking for signs of stress in our portfolios and are very focused on our non-owner occupied office portfolio. The common denominator of the loans we sold was the co-working nature of the tenants. We believe that this subsegment of the market will continue to experience significant stress from weak tenant demand and rising costs of debt, and we took this opportunity to meaningfully reduce our exposure. This sale made up close to half of our exposure in this subcategory. We have always looked at strategic options to reduce exposures to areas of concern within our portfolio, and we will continue to do so. As detailed on Slide 14, we saw stable levels in our special mention and substandard loans, with no meaningful signs of additional economic stress at the customer level. As noted in our last earnings call, we continue to be highly focused on our exposure to commercial real estate loans, which compose roughly one quarter of our total loan portfolio. Higher borrowing costs and pressure on occupancy and lease rates are cause for concern, particularly in the office category. On Page 18, we've updated a number of important characteristics of our office portfolio. Currently, this portfolio remains steady at $1.4 billion or 13.2% of our total CRE portfolio and only 3.4% of our total loan portfolio. Of the $1.4 billion of office exposure, over 40% is medical office or owner-occupied. The average size of a loan in the office portfolio is only $1.3 million. We only have 5 loans above $20 million. There has been significant concern about office properties located within central business districts. Our CBD exposure is limited to $350 million, or approximately one quarter of the office portfolio. Half of this is in Chicago and half is in other cities. The bulk of the portfolio is located in suburban areas and areas outside CBDs. Portfolio performance to date has been very good, with no loans currently over 90 days past due. We continue to perform portfolio reviews regularly on this portfolio, and we stay very engaged with our borrowers. We are not immune from the macro effects that challenge this product type, but we believe that our portfolio is well-constructed, very granular, and should perform well moving forward. As noted earlier, higher borrowing costs and pressure on lease renewals are cause for concern across the CRE space. To better understand how these issues could impact our portfolio, our CRE team updated their deep dive analysis on every loan over $2.5 million, which will be renewing between now through the 1st quarter of 2024. This analysis, which covered 79% of all CRE loans maturing during this period, resulted in the following: More than 52% of the loans will clearly qualify for renewal at the prevailing rates. Roughly 32% of these loans are anticipated to be paid off or will require a short-term extension at prevailing rates, and approximately 16% of the loans will require some additional attention, which could include a pay down or pledge of additional collateral. We have tentative agreement on renewal terms with many of the borrowers in this final group. Our overall CRE portfolio is not immune from the effects of rising rates or the market forces behind lease rates, but we have been diligently identifying weaknesses in the portfolio and working with our borrowers to identify the best possible outcomes. We believe that our portfolio is in reasonably good shape and situated to weather the challenges ahead. That concludes my comments on credit, and I'll turn it back to Tim. Thanks, Rich. To wrap up, for the last several months, we've had the opportunity, and in some cases, I would say the responsibility, to explain to our customers why Wintrust continues to be a better alternative than the larger, you know, too big to fail banks. Not only have we successfully done that with almost no attrition, but we continue to win business and as you can see, grow deposits and build our franchise. We continue to think we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of the current environment with our diverse businesses that limit the potential impact of economic softness in any individual area, and we remain positioned to benefit from higher rates. As Dave noted, and we noted in the press release, we expect that our margin will be relatively stable for the remainder of the year, and our net interest income will increase in the coming quarters. I would say that the current market is a little bit choppy, and we remain incredibly focused to pursue opportunities that we see, and we'll do that aggressively in the coming months. At this point, I'll pause, and we can take some questions. Elizabeth, back to you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our first question comes from the line of Jon Arfstrom with RBC Capital Markets. Good morning. Hi, Jon. Hey. I'm going to start out, the first question, I guess, you used the word, choppy, Tim, and you guys talked about a little bit slower loan growth in the second half of the year, but you put up a pretty good quarter. I guess, like, my question is: what do the pipelines look like? What's the quality of what you're seeing? Very early, Tim, you alluded to, like, pricing and structure being better, but, you know, touch a little bit on that in terms of how that may have changed. Yeah. Look, I'll take the first part, and Rich can add to that. You know, with respect to choppy, you know, companies are obviously reacting to higher rates and, you know, certainly real estate projects in some cases are on hold, and there's folks still wrestling with labor issues, which we think are generally better, but not universally better. Then obviously, there are some competitors that are pulling back in terms of credit and their participation in the market. We're seeing opportunities. I think a lot of people are seeing opportunities, and we just have to be selective and disciplined. I think our team's doing a nice job in that regard, which is driving both higher yields and, better terms, in some cases, more equity in real estate deals. Rich, why don't please add to that? Yeah, no, I think you said it well. I, every week that goes by, we see new opportunities, really across the portfolio in terms of customers who aren't getting, you know, their existing banks to work with them in a productive way. We're also seeing a tremendous amount of opportunities on large capital market-type opportunities where there's multiple banks involved. You know, there's almost more than you could possibly want, frankly, you know, because there's just so much that's out there right now. So it does give us the opportunity to pick and choose, price accordingly, structure accordingly. You know, we've always had a history of being pretty disciplined in this space, and, you know, that's not gonna change. It's a great opportunity for us. Disruption always has worked to our benefit. Post-pandemic, post-PPP, we saw a very similar kind of environment, where a lot of banks were kind of struggling getting their footing. We're seeing that right now as well. We're pretty optimistic, but most importantly, we just wanna stay disciplined. Okay, fair enough. premium finance size limits on your balance sheet, we, you know, we expect to see more of these sales, and I'm just curious if you guys continue to service it. I know they're very short term in nature, but help us understand the outlook for that in terms of on your balance sheet. Yeah. The $500 we sold is an off-balance sheet transaction, that'll come off the books in the third quarter. Jon Arfstrom, as you know, and probably most people on this call know, is that those loans make monthly payments and have an average life of 9-10 months. By the end of the year, they'll substantially have been paid off anyway. We if you recall, we did a securitization of premium finance loans a decade ago or so, I think it was about a $300 million-$600 million facility that we did for a few years, it's not a new transaction for us. We thought it was important to get the plumbing in place. We had a billion-dollar quarter, you know, a great growth quarter. The market's still hard. The disruptions helped us. The outlook is good there. We thought getting the plumbing in place, sort of testing it out, having another source of liquidity was a good thing to do. We have the opportunity to do it in the future. Right now we don't have any plans to do another loan sale. If we were to have outside loan growth going forward, we might be able to pull the trigger and do it, and do it quickly, and now that we've demonstrated that, we can do it again. Jon, yes, we continue to service those loans, I think was part of your question? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Just last one. mortgage, obviously, was a decent quarter for you. Dave, you said slightly elevated production in the third quarter. Is that, is that what you mean? Just give us an idea of what you're seeing there. You know, can- Yeah, well... $30 million type quarter. Yeah, I mean, we're just a few weeks into the third quarter, but application volumes have ticked up just slightly, so I would expect it to be up a little bit. You know, as part of it depends on what happens to the valuations of your MSRs, too. From a production perspective, I would expect it to be, you know, you know, up just a little bit. We'll just have to see how the production flows through, but nothing substantial. I mean, if it's up a couple million dollars, that might be in the right neighborhood, but we'll have to just see how it plays through. Okay. All right, fair enough. Thanks a lot, guys. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, John. Our next question comes from the line of David Long with Raymond James. Morning, David. Good morning. I was kind of blanked out there. I didn't hear if that was my name or not, but good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. A couple things. On the funding side, you seem to still have good growth. Obviously, you've got a vehicle now where you can reduce or securitize or sell some of those loans. On the funding side, going forward, how are you thinking about incremental FHLB advances versus deposits, whether it's CDs or brokered CDs? What's the most attractive source on the funding side right now, and how do the costs compare right now? Sure, David. I mean, generally, we'd like to grow deposits to match any loan growth, and we think deposits are the core of our franchise. Obviously, the MaxSafe product suite was very helpful to us in the quarter. Clients didn't have to go elsewhere, even at competitors where there were reciprocal products, you know, we don't have to pay the additional fee that might be involved with that. You know, that worked out very, very well. The MaxSafe product in general is, you know, in total, a little less than 4% in terms of the deposit cost, and we're putting loans on it, you know, 7.5 to 8 at this point, so the spread's good. We continue to add business. Everybody's asking for deposits. It's a, you know, a focus. We're gonna try to grow deposits before we use other liquidity sources. Got it. Thanks, Tim. Then for the competitive dynamics for deposits right now, are you seeing more pressure from the larger regional banks? Are you seeing more pressure from the community banks? Where is the competition more intense on the deposit side? Well, all over would be my blanket answer, certainly the regional banks. You know, Rich mentioned that, you know, some companies are finding it more difficult to get, you know, what I would call transactional-type work done. For folks that just don't have a relationship with their bank, the relationship can be, you know, either uncertain or strained at this point. You know, we're very focused on having relationships and taking good care of our clients. One, it hasn't been difficult for us for our existing base, and two, it's created an opportunity in certain places to see new clients that, you know, frankly, we're very happy to be doing business with. Great. Thanks, Tim. Appreciate it. Yeah. You bet. Our next question comes from the line of Terry McEvoy with Stephens. Hi, Terry. Good morning, everyone. Hi, good morning. Maybe a question on expenses. Some other banks are facing some NII pressure and prospects of rising credit costs. Could you just talk about maybe expense management plans and your thoughts on expenses over the next 2-4 quarters? Sure. I mean, we're always looking out for expenses. Our, you know, our approach has generally been to grow the balance sheet and try to grow the revenues at a quicker pace than the expenses. Like we've talked, we're pretty optimistic about balance sheet growth and pretty optimistic about maintaining the margin, which would translate into increased NII. From that perspective, we're very optimistic. On the expense side, this quarter had, as I said, a few increases in the seasonal marketing, the addition of the expenses from the acquisitions, and slightly elevated lending expenses due to the, you know, double-digit loan growth and increased mortgage production. Those were the primary reasons for the increase this quarter. We're always looking at expenses. We're very focused on them, right now to keep them in check and try to keep them less than the revenue growth going forward. We don't want to cut to the bone here and not take advantage of the growth opportunities in the marketplace. We've always done that. We've always taken advantage of the disruption, and we think we're in great position to do that again. Thanks, Dave. Then as a follow-up, it sounds like next week we're going to get updated regulation for banks over $100 billion of assets. You know, what's the risk that that kind of dribbles down into banks, maybe $50 billion and above? How are you thinking about any changes in regulation for a bank that's, what, $54 billion-$55 billion of assets today? Well, you know, I guess we'll watch with great interest what they come out with. I think you're right, I think most of it's focused at $100 billion. We're really not there yet. I think most of the focus will be on interest rate risk and liquidity management at the supervisory level right now, and making sure that the risk management in place there. We think we do a great job at that, we're not that concerned about it. We'll watch with interest what they come up with. You know, we don't have any plans of hitting $100 billion in the next year or so here. I think we have some time to plan for it. Definitely. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Terry. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Gerlinger with Hovde Group. Hi, good morning, guys. Morning. I was curious if we could talk through deposit pricing just a little bit. I know I touched on it in a couple different ways. First, I wanted to confirm that the guidance of 3.6%-3.7% on margin incorporates any sort of mix shift that might happen. Yes. Gotcha. Okay, just confirming that one. When you think about the incremental dollar at this point, without giving away too much of your playbook, how are you guys approaching the new, the next dollar? Are you looking for relationships that automatically have to bring over deposits from day 1 on the new loans? Are you looking for any different niche avenues of deposit pricing or deposit gathering at a lower price and then kind of juxtapose against that? How has the flows or mix shift changed over the last, call it, 60 days? Well, we're always looking to gather deposits at lower costs, and with the commercial relationships we win, come the treasury businesses and the operating accounts that are generally at the most favorable price. The MaxSafe product for us is mostly interest-bearing. There's several flavors of it, some that are for municipalities, for example, and some that are for our corporate customers. You know, at the margin, that's, you know, call it 4%, and then we've been offering some promotional-type CD activity that we really use to kind of balance the remainder of the activity. We've got a lot of levers to pull. We're certainly asking for deposits with our customers, frankly, that's not anything new for us. I mean, we want the relationships, we want the operating accounts from these companies. We think we can gather deposits at an appropriate level that allow us to operate, you know, as we have. We talked about the loan yields and structures being attractive to us, and so, we don't think at the moment we're giving up a lot in terms of spread. Yeah, we also, this is Dave, right? We also think we have a great position in the Chicago market. You know, we've got the fourth largest deposit market share behind three big guys, Chase, Bank of America, and BMO. Then it really falls off, at least for banks headquartered in Chicago and Illinois. We actually have the largest market share, and we're less than 10% in Chicago and in Illinois, quite frankly. The big banks, really, as we talked earlier, aren't the ones putting the pressure on. Some of the regional banks that have presence here are offering higher rates, and the community banks are pretty disciplined. If someone wants to do business with a larger bank that's located in Illinois, you know, we're sort of the go-to bank, and we give great service. We think we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of this, offer good products, give good service, and cement in the customer relationship. We're kind of excited about the opportunities here. Gotcha. That's helpful. If we could switch gears a little bit towards credit. I know the guidance here was a little bit softer loan growth in the back half of the year to get more in line with previous guidance. When you think about the provision, I know that CECL's a large component, and frankly, the first half of this year feels like the first half of the decade. It's a bit unknown, economically speaking, but how do you guys think about the provision going forward? If loan growth slows a little, do you think the provision could come down from here, or how do you guys approach it? Well, you know, CECL is a life of loan concept as far as forecasting out what the losses are in your existing portfolio. Yeah, if there's a loan growth, that's higher or lower, that's gonna impact it. Obviously, there's a mix issue. If, you know, if we grow a lot in the life or commercial premium finance portfolios, those are less provision than, you know, a CRE loan or a commercial loan. Generally speaking, if you have higher growth, you'll have a higher provision. The things that impact the provision, you know, substantially are some of the economic factors. You know, if the forecast from the economists that are that are out there get less recession-focused and more soft landing or mild recession-focused, then I think some of those economic forecast factors will get better, and that would have a positive impact on the provision. I'm not an economist. I don't make economic predictions, but we follow Moody's, we follow some other economic forecasts as we model out our CECL. I would suspect, unless there's a big change in the economic forecast, that growth would be the item that would impact the provision. Gotcha. Okay, that's helpful. Appreciate the call, guys. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Our next question comes from the line of Chris McGratty with KBW. Great morning. Dave, just a question on the kind of a nuance on the capital, the covered call strategy. How do we think about, I guess, broadly, you reinvesting going forward, that line item, and obviously, it'll play into the size of the overall earning asset base? Well, I mean, generally, we like to run in the roughly 90% loan-to-deposit ratio, and then the remaining liquidity is either overnight money or securities. Our securities have generally been, you know, 12%, 13% of the asset base. We would expect to sort of keep it in that range and use our liquidity to fund what we expect to be good loan growth. The reinvestment of the cash flows off the securities, we would put back into, you know, some sort of asset class, and we've generally done Ginnie Maes. If you do Ginnies or Fannies, you can write covered calls against them. Where you generally get higher covered calls is when rates go down and the securities get called away, and then you reinvest those securities and then you write calls against them again. In a flat rate environment, where you can continue to write calls on them quarter after quarter. You know, I would suspect that given demand we have for loan, and given that we are sort of at a decent spot, could the investment portfolio go up another $500 or $1 billion or something over time as we grow here? Probably, but that's not gonna create a tremendous amount of covered calls. I would probably say, you know, in this environment, if you're thinking, you know, $2 million-$5 million of covered calls may be a normal range, given the interest rate environment and our investments right now, that's probably not a bad way to look at it. Okay, that's helpful. Then just two small ones. The, maybe a comment on gain on sale margins for mortgage, and then I wanna make sure I heard you. The $8 million loss on the... Was that a $17 million sale? Roughly a little under 50% loss rate on the office loans. Is that what I heard? That's correct. Okay. The gain on sale. The gain on sales, for us, it's been holding around 2% the last couple of quarters, so pretty stable. Great. Thanks, Dave. Our next question comes from the line of Brody Preston with UBS. ... Hey, good morning, everyone. How are you? Great. Hey, I just wanted to ask on the fixed rate loan portfolio, excuse me, it's about $17.5 billion. I just wanted to make sure that the 7.8-7.9 that reprices or matures over the next year or so, do you happen to know what the existing yield is on that portfolio? What the, what new origination rates look like right now? If you look at that $7.8 billion, $6.6 billion of it is fixed rate commercial premium finance loans. The vast majority of that is the commercial premium finance portfolio, which, you know, 1/9 of that basically turns over every month. Those loans generally are pricing at, you know, just, you know, net, sort of prime plus 1 range, plus or minus, depending on the mix of large loans versus small loans. That portfolio will be turning over. You can go back and look. We put in our press release, we sort of show what the indices are. You can go back and look at what prime was nine months ago and what it is now, and that should be roughly the pickup you'd get in the yield on those. Got it. Thank you very much. I did want to ask, just within the available for sale portfolio, you give the effective duration, 6.5. I wanted to ask you if you knew what the conditional prepayment rate you're assuming within that duration calculation is? You know, I don't have it handy right now. The majority of those are Ginnie Mae's. I'd have to... I don't know I don't have it handy with me right now. We can get back to you on that, Brody. Okay, great. I did just want to ask, just on the CRE deep dive that you talked about, where I think it was 32% would, you know, need some service, type of short-term extension, 16%, a little additional attention, 50% or 52% qualifying for a renewal. I guess, is that the way it works down? You kind of look at, you say, you qualify, you might need a short-term extension, you know, you probably need some more equity. You know, I guess, like, what drives the delineation between just needing a short-term extension and maybe needing to bring more equity to the table? If you could, just on the ones that need a short-term extension, like, what happens after they get the short-term extension? Like, how long is the extension for? Do those loans, you know, move off the balance sheet, you know, and go somewhere else? Just trying to understand the moving parts there. Yeah, the ones for short-term extensions generally are, we're transitioning out to, you know, end financing that's probably going to be off our balance sheet. You know, that's pretty typical. Our history of payoffs is, you know, pretty substantial in terms of what we see every quarter just rolling off. There's a lot of, you know, construction financing that we do, where we're not going to be the best scenario for them in the long term. That's kind of how that works. We still see lots of liquidity out in that end market. As it relates to your, the other part of the question, which is: What are we looking for? Typically, what triggers that conversation is really going to be performance of the underlying property, which is really our primary focus. You have, you know, a lease, you know, income that you're matching up against your expenses and your debt service, and if there's a mismatch there, we're going to have a conversation. You know, generally speaking, I think most of our borrowers, you know, will still tell you that they believe strongly in their project and property, and they want to support it. I mean, generally, those conversations at this point are still very productive. You know, that we do have situations where, in this loan sale, where we, you know, had conversations, and you could see that, you know, it probably was not going to get better. At that point in time, you know, we have to make a decision as to, you know, do we, you know, because of there's so much liquidity still in the market, you know, this was an opportune time to just say, you know, "This situation's probably not going to get any better, and we need to probably think about some alternatives. Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you for that. You did mention that there, you're still seeing a lot of liquidity in that end market. Is that for a wide range of projects, or is it, you know, more tailored to specific asset classes within construction where, you know, there's available liquidity? Yeah, it's. That's a good point. You know, if it's multifamily, if it's industrial, you know, there's just, there's a lot of appetite still out there for that type of product. You know, obviously, in some of these more, you know, distressed areas like CRE and retail, you know, that's a different story altogether. We don't do a lot of the construction financing in those segments. Generally speaking, where we're looking to transition loans out to, you know, for end financing, you know, those, you know, we've been really focused heavily on more multifamily and industrial over the past, you know, three, four years. Got it. I know it was a smaller amount of loans, and it was in the grand scheme of things, it was a relatively small charge. Did I hear you right, and I, and read right, I guess, that it, the $8 million charge that you took against $17 million of co-working office loans? Was that right? It was an $8 million charge on a $17 million loan portfolio? ... That's correct. It was a, you know, small group of properties, no one market in particular, but, they were all, you know, as I said, the common denominator is that co-working space, which we think is, you know, probably gonna be the last piece to recover in office, and, you know, probably the hardest to kind of re-tenant at this point. You know, where, as we have said in the past, you know, we try to be really strategic in terms of taking advantage of the liquidity, and albeit there's probably less liquidity for this type of product out there, and that's why the discount. You know, it's better off just to, you know, get the runway clear 'cause we're not sure what's coming down the road, but we wanna be prepared. Yeah. No, I understand that. You don't think that that level of charge is indicative of what you might see if, you know, if you or other banks maybe had to sell what I would call a more regular way, kind of normal office property? No, no, not at all. I mean, you know, again, in the co-working space, which we have, you know, very little of, and this was almost half of that total that we have. You know, it's a much more distressed subsegment of this, you know, office category. We think that, you know, you're probably gonna see a little more stress in that subcategory. You know, you know, in general, no, we're still pretty confident about where valuations are. Got it. Just one last one for me, just on the loan sale within the commercial finance, premium finance portfolio. Who are the end buyers of these? You know, you don't need to give a name, obviously, but just like a type. Is it private equity? Like, who are the end buyers of this type of loan portfolio? I think you mentioned that this kind of gives you the opportunity to explore, you know, other types of these transactions down the road. You know, what would drive you to kind of look to lean into, you know, selling more of these loans versus keeping them on balance sheet? Yeah. you know, we sold in a special purpose vehicle that then sells it out to asset conduits that are investing. Yeah, we're not gonna give the name right now as we have an NDA, but it's your standard financial institution conduit financing. Okay. We didn't have to do it, and we didn't sell it off to some of these firms that are buying distressed assets. Obviously, this is not a distressed portfolio. We have no reason to do that. This was more testing the plumbing and getting it set up to provide a lever to pull for liquidity if we need it. You know, I think the reason you would do it again is if loan growth was very, very strong and you needed to fund it, and deposit growth wasn't as quick. We, again, as Tim says, we much prefer to grow our franchise. We've always done that, to grow the franchise through deposits, which is the core business that we love. To the extent that the asset growth without strip the deposit growth, in any given quarter, we could pull the lever on this, either as a distinct sale like we did this time, or you could also set up a similar transaction where it's a revolving securitization facility, where you could just continue to feed it into. We're not as favorable as setting that up, because generally you'd want to set it up for a two or three-year time period at least. You know, your crystal ball isn't always so clear as how strong loan demand will be, you know, three years out. We'd rather do it discreetly, in kind of bespoke sort of transactions, as needed. You know, right now, we don't anticipate doing it again in the future, but if we did it again, it'd probably be a good thing because that means we're having really good loan growth. Got it. I think I heard you right, that you're gonna continue to service these loans. Yeah ... borrowers, but they are pretty-. Yep short term, is there much in the way of servicing income that will come from that? No, no, it's a very short term. The servicing costs are pretty low in this portfolio. Got it. Thank you very much for taking my questions, everyone. I appreciate it. You bet. Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. Yep. Hi, guys. Good morning. Morning, Nate. First, on just the increase in the substandard loans in the quarter, looks like they're up 16% versus the first quarter. Any specific drivers there of note? To what extent, if any, did that impact the provision in the quarter? No, I don't think there's necessarily any color that I could give you on that. I mean, it's, you know, the levels are still, you know, very subdued in terms of overall. You know, in terms of driving changes in the CECL, you know, I don't know if it really had a whole lot of. I'm just gonna take a look at it. We're at 1% still. I mean, as it relates to, you know, overall levels, I think we're still in pretty good shape. Kind of looking at my list of additions to it, you know, not a lot of common denominators here. You know, we try to be incredibly proactive in our portfolio reviews of identifying any type of loan that might be, you know, in the CRE sub-segment, for instance, where you have a decline in debt service coverage that gets a little bit closer to 1 to 1 or at 1 to 1, you know, that's gonna be something. We see some of that. You know, there's also, you know, as a commercial customer is, you know, compressed a little bit on cash flow, we might, you know, make that as substandard, and typically we're going to, you know, anticipate that that's gonna turn around. You know, there's no one thing I can point to, but just, you know, certainly higher borrowing costs probably would be the primary driver of that. as it puts a little more strain on cash flow, both in the CNI and CRE segment. As it relates to CECL, I mean, I think as Dave pointed out earlier, I think the bigger drivers on CECL is really going to be some of these economic factors. Yeah, I think it's more a function of just our very proactive approach to reviewing these credits and making sure we understand where everything is. Again, Rich, they remain at a very low level. Got it. That's helpful. Just going back to Terry's question around expenses. I think last quarter, Dave, we were talking about kind of a high single digit outlook for this year. Does that still kind of hold? Yeah, I think, you know, I think it does. I mean, if you factor out the impact of the acquisitions, we've always said that it's excluding acquisitions. Yeah, I think that still holds. This quarter, I've talked about the reasons for this quarter, yeah, I think we still look at that as being appropriate. Okay. Just one last housekeeping question. With the sale of some MSRs in the quarter, did that impact mortgage revenue in any way materially in 2Q? No. We took an opportunity. You always mark the MSRs to market. You know, the market value of them, at the end of last quarter when we started to look at this transaction, when we actually sold them this quarter, were roughly the same. There wasn't a big impact. That was really just reducing risk again. MSRs have run up nicely. You know, to take a little bit of that asset off of our books at sort of the top of the MSR valuation, as we look at it, seemed to be prudent. The servicing rights that we sold were generally those loans that were outside of the Chicago-Milwaukee market area, so they weren't our, you know, banking customers. They were loans that we'd made, you know, in other regions of the United States. Got it. That makes sense. If I could just ask one more on capital. Total risk-based dipped down to 11.9%. I know you guys tend to want to stay above 11.5%, but I imagine with the insurance premium finance securitization that's upcoming, and just given, you know, perhaps higher for longer interest rate environment, that, you know, you guys have plenty of capital to just kind of continue to support the growth opportunities that exist organically in front of you today. Is that the right way to think about it? Yeah. We think so, Nate. I mean, obviously, this was a big growth quarter, and the sale occurred after the quarter end. We feel comfortable and, you know, if loan growth normalizes into the range Rich discussed, we should be adding capital. The other thing that happened, the other capital ratio stayed relatively flat. Total risk base was down a little bit because, as you know, we had a sub-debt offering out there that sub-debt, you lose 20% of it each year as it matured, and the last 20% of that sub-debt capital ran off on June 30th. That impacted the total risk-based capital just a little bit. Clearly, we expect the capital ratios to grow going forward based upon our projected earnings and balance sheet growth. Got it. It sounds like the priorities for excess capital deployment are still organic growth first, perhaps buybacks are lower down on the spectrum, just given the organic growth opportunities today? Yeah, I think that's fair, Nate. I mean, obviously, we look at all the alternatives, but, again, we anticipate good growth. We like where we are in the market. Okay, great. I appreciate all the color and taking the questions. You bet. Thank you. Have a good day. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Rulis with D.A. Davidson. Thanks, good morning. Morning, Jeff. Just wanted to check back in on the hedging strategy on margin. Appreciate the guidance of 3.60%-3.70% for the back half of the year. I guess, what's the duration of those hedges? You know, I think early parts of the year, you talked about maybe taking the top end off of 4%+ but also protecting much below 3.50%. I guess, does that extend into 2024, basically what you've hedged? I guess, how does that range get affected further out, kind of with another hike, no hikes or kind of a cut? I'm just trying to think if that duration of those hedges, does that get into 2024 or any early expectations of how margin behaves into 2024? Yeah. No, yeah, when we did those hedges, they were generally longer term transactions. On slide 22 of our earnings deck, or you can look in the last 10-Q that we had, you know, the maturity dates range from September of 2025 all the way out into 2028. They're longer-term hedges, and we've, if you look at that slide, it's got the swap rates in them, which are generally, you know, from the mid-3s into the low 4% range as far as where the swap rates are at. We, the market, given the slope of the curve, just hasn't been that favorable from our perspective to enter into more, we didn't enter into any in the second quarter. We'll still look at that, but they're there for downside protection. Quite frankly, as I said in my comments, had it not been for this portfolio, our margin, you know, if we didn't put the swaps in, our margin would be 15 basis points higher overall, because that's the impact this quarter. Last quarter, the impact was 7, so the differential this quarter was 8. First quarter, the impact was 7, this quarter was 15, so the differential was 8. We think that's a fair price to pay if we can keep the margin relatively stable, like we think it is, to protect from the downside risk of substantial rate reduction. Just a risk mitigation again. Yeah, they're longer term. All right. not to sort of extend that, guidance range into 2024, but you feel pretty good about kind of maintaining that level even beyond into next year? Well, it depends. I mean, I, you know, everybody's view is different. If you take the higher for longer, then I think that bodes well for us. If you look at the curve and rates drop precipitously, then we probably would have some pressure on our margin. That's why we have these hedges in place, to help mitigate some of that impact. That's helpful, just to see where, you lean into that. Just the last one would be, just checking in on wealth management. You know, I think the acquisition sort of juiced that number a bit, but looking forward to the outlook, would you expect that, the growth to level off? Linked-quarter was strong, but maybe acquisition-driven, outlook. That was acquisition-driven, we would expect to continue to grow it, but it would just be slow, steady growth. Some of that is obviously dependent on the market because you earn your fees based on the underlying asset value. If the market continues to rally, that would be beneficial for us. Okay, thank you. Elizabeth, we can do one more if you want. We have a question from the line of Brody Preston with UBS. Hey, guys. Sorry about that. I just wanted to clarify something on the co-working space. Is that like a WeWork? I just wanted to make sure I totally understood what the property was. Yeah, kind of WeWork light. You know, it's just where, I think there was a move for a while there, where people thought they could get a, you know, a significantly higher lease rate by going short term on their leases. You know, that works when the market is hot, but doesn't work when the market's cold. Yeah, you have it right, Brody. Yeah, great. Thank you very much, guys. I appreciate it. That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Tim Crane for closing remarks. Thanks, Elizabeth, for everybody still on the phone, thank you for your interest and support. I think you can tell we remain optimistic about our position and the opportunities we're seeing in the market. If you, per chance, didn't get your question answered, please feel free to call any of us, and as we've always said, we'll work hard. Thanks very much. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.