Good day, and welcome to the NRAS Bank Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicole Stokes.
Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you, Vaish, and thank you to all who have joined our call today. During the call, we will be referencing the press release and the financial highlights that are available on the Investor Relations section of our website atamerisbank.com. I'm joined today by Palmer Proctor, our CEO and John Edwards, our Chief Credit Officer. Palmer will begin with some opening general comments, and then I will discuss the details of our financial results before we open it up for Q and A.
But before we begin, I'll remind you that our comments may include forward looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. The actual results could vary materially. We will list some of the factors that might cause results to differ in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of new information, early developments or otherwise, except as required by law.
Also during the call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures in reference to the company's performance. You can see our reconciliation of these measures and GAAP financial measures in our appendix to our presentation. And with that, I'll turn it over to Palmer for opening comments.
Thank you, Nicole, and thank you to everyone who's joined our call today. I'm excited to share with you our 2nd quarter results. In fact, I was actually more impressed with our team's results this quarter than the record earnings we posted in the Q1 and here's why. One of the big questions and a very legitimate question for many of our ABCD stockholders and stakeholders was what happens when mortgage revenue normalizes for the bank. And this quarter shows you exactly what happens when mortgage revenue moderates.
This quarter reflects the purposeful and deliberate actions Ameris teammates have taken to reduce expenses associated with the decline in mortgage revenue. It's also very reflective of the investments we made in top talent in many of our other core lending areas of the company and also reflects the meaningful pipeline and relationships we continue to build, which results in really strong second quarter results as we're reporting net income of $88,000,000 or $1.25 per diluted share on an adjusted basis. And this represents a 1.63 return on average assets and a 19.46 return on tangible equity. Our adjusted efficiency ratio actually improved from the Q1 to 54.62% before in the Q1 to this quarter of 54.07%. As you may recall, we reversed $28,600,000 of provision for loan loss expense last quarter.
In this quarter, we had just a minimal provision expense due to the positive loan growth we'll talk about. And speaking of loan growth, it was an incredible quarter that we had. When you look at our annualized net loan growth, it was right at 5% for the quarter, net of PPP and our indirect runoff. And we still expect to deliver on mid to upper single digit loan growth for the year as we look at our pipelines and the opportunities in all of our growth markets. The area I was most excited about was the $100,000,000 of growth we had in C and I.
And you'll be able to see this on our slide deck on Page 16. And Nicole is going to discuss the excess liquidity and the impact to our margin in more details in a few minutes, but I did want to mention the continued deposit growth for this quarter too. Our growth in non interest bearing deposits continued to outpace the growth of total deposits and they're now approaching 40% of total deposits, which is very impressive. And I emphasize this because when rates start moving back up and some of the excess liquidity runs off, I think that's the time you're going to find out from the real leaders or who the real leaders are in our industry in terms of who took the opportunity to grow core funding during this time and we'll certainly be a standout there. On the capital side of the balance sheet, our capital position remains strong.
We consistently said we're focused on growing tangible book and that's exactly what we did this quarter. We saw growth in both TCE and tangible book value. We grew tangible book value by $1.18 per share or 4.7% during the Q2. We've also grown tangible book value by $2.76 or over 11% for the year so far. And this equates to over 20% annualized growth for tangible book value.
Our TTE ratio increased to 8.83%, which is very close to our 9% goal. If you exclude the $2,500,000,000 of excess liquidity on our balance sheet, the TCE ratio would have been over 10%. We clearly have the capital to support our growth initiatives and to consider opportunistic transactions as we go forward. John Edwards, our Chief Credit Officer is with us today and he's available to take any questions after our prepared remarks, but I did want to hit a few highlights in terms of credit. Our non performing assets as a percent of total assets improved to 32 basis points compared to 40 basis points last quarter and 59 basis points last year.
Loans that remain on deferral at the end of the quarter were approximately 1.2% of total loans, which is down from approximately 19% of total loans this time last year. Our allowance coverage ratio excluding unfunded commitments was 1.23% net of our PPP loans at the end of the quarter. In terms of COVID, a quick update here. July 6 was our official back to the office date. All of our branches are open and all of our staff, including support administrative staff are back to the office.
Some of that's in a new hybrid approach, but we're adapting well and our teams are really excited to have a new sense of normalcy. As I mentioned last quarter, most businesses are back open. Traffic jams are back to normal and restaurants and wait times and new restaurants are actually opening. So things are definitely getting back to normal in the Southeast, and we certainly expect to benefit and capitalize from that. A quick update on PPP.
We continue to see forgiveness in round 1 during the quarter and we started receiving forgiveness funds on round 2 in June. We've got approximately $126,000,000 left of the $1,100,000,000 that we loaned out in round 1, and we have about $362,000,000 left of the $409,000,000 from round 2. There's about $22,000,000 of deferred revenue remaining on PTP for us. And one last comment I wanted to make. I'm very proud to announce that we published our 1st corporate social responsibility report in May, which was in accordance with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the task force on climate related financial disclosures.
And a shout out to our entire team, there's a lot of thought and a lot of actions and hard work that went into this report. And I'm really pleased and proud with the way it came out. And I hope you'll all take a minute to look at it. But I'll stop there now and turn it over to Nicole to discuss our financial results in more detail.
Great. Thank you, Palmer. As we stated, for the Q2, we're reporting net income of $88,300,000 or $1.27 per diluted share. On an adjusted basis, we earned $87,500,000 or $1.25 per diluted share, and that's really excluding the small recovery on the servicing asset impairment and a gain on sale of premises this quarter. We're pleased with our operating ratios.
Our adjusted ROA in the Q2 was $163,000,000 and for the year it's 194. Our adjusted return on tangible common equity was $19.46 for the quarter $23.41 for the year to date. As Palmer mentioned, our tangible book value increased by $1.18 or 4.7 percent from $25.27 to $26.45 during the quarter. For the year over year, tangible book value has increased $5.55 or 26.6 percent from 20.90 this time last year. In addition, our tangible common equity ratio increased 21 basis points this quarter to 8.83 from 8.62 at the end of the Q1, and it's increased 113 basis points over the past year from 7.70 this time last year.
The approximate $2,500,000,000 of excess liquidity in our balance sheet negatively impacted this ratio by 120 basis points. So excluding that cash from total assets, our TCE ratio would have been approximately 10.03 at quarter end, which is well above our stated target of 9%. So we continue to be well capitalized and we feel comfortable with our capital and our dividend levels. Talking a little bit on margin, our net interest margin declined 23 basis points from 3.57 to 3.34 during the quarter. Our yield on earning assets declined by 27 basis points, while our total funding costs decreased 4 basis points.
We did a description of this on Slide 8. You can see the 27 basis point decline was attributable to several unusual factors. We had 8 basis points of compression from the $4,000,000 decline in PTP income. We had 5 basis points from the almost $2,000,000 or $1,700,000 of accretion income decline. We had 5 basis points kind of a bump last quarter that was a non recurring revenue related to the sale of our consumer portfolio.
We had 4 basis points due to the continued growth in excess liquidity. And then we really came down to 5 final basis points due to true loan yield compression. That was 2 basis points in mortgage, 1 basis point in held for sale and 2 basis points of true commercial loan yield compression. So my point here is that true loan yield compression was really 5 basis points and we had 4 basis points of funding costs during the quarter. Also added to Slide 8, you can see the impact of that $2,500,000,000 of excess liquidity had on our margin and how it accounts for 36 basis points from the of the total negative margin compression from 1 year ago.
We're focused on our deposit costs and we continue to grind them down. We still have some room for improvement in CD portfolio, but the real driver to an improving margin going forward is putting that excess liquidity to work, which we anticipate occurring over the next three quarters. As Palmer mentioned as well, we had a small provision for loan loss expense of about 142,000 compared to that $28,600,000 reversal last quarter. The continued economic conditions, specifically unemployment, GDP and CRE Index and our own improved credit quality this quarter helped offset the need for additional provisions on our loan growth. Our ending allowance for loan loss was $175,100,000 compared to just $178,600,000 at the end of last quarter and $208,800,000 at the end of Q2 last year, which was in the middle of the pandemic and our heightened deferrals.
So including the unfunded commitment reserve and allowance for credit loss for other credit losses, our total allowance was $197,800,000 at quarter end compared with $200,200,000 at the end of last quarter. Moving on to non interest income. So as expected, our non interest income declined this quarter and it really was due to the decreases in mortgage banking. Excluding the $9,700,000 recovery last quarter and the $749,000 recovery this quarter, our mortgage income declined about $19,300,000 And there's really two factors contributing to the decline in revenue. It was both production and gain on sale margins.
As you can see on we put in a new Slide 11, which really has some information on mortgage. But as you can see on that slide, production in the retail mortgage group declined 9% to $2,400,000,000 this quarter from $2,600,000,000 last quarter. And it's important to note here that total non interest expense also declined 9% or $5,600,000 in the retail mortgage division. In addition to that production that's going to drive those reductions in variable costs, we also saw the average gain on sale decrease back to normal levels. It decreased to 2.77% compared to elevated 3.95% last quarter.
We really don't anticipate further decline in the gain on sale margin. The open pipeline at the end of the Q2 was $1,700,000,000 compared to $2,300,000,000 at the end of last quarter, and we do believe that there's further reductions in non interest expense if production continues to decline. As we previously stated, we have a large amount of our expenses, our variable costs and we designed that in our mortgage group. Total non interest expense for the company declined by $13,000,000 from $148,800,000 last quarter to $135,800,000 this quarter. As I just mentioned, mortgage expenses declined almost $6,000,000 during the quarter and an additional $6,500,000 reduction was seen in the banking division, which includes the enterprise wide service and support staff.
We continue to look for ways to become more efficient and we continuously monitor the efficiency ratio by division. On that note, our adjusted efficiency ratio improved slightly this quarter to 54.07 from 54.62 last quarter. I previously guided for the efficiency ratio to stabilize in the 53% to 55% range because we did not anticipate that previous level of mortgage revenue and efficiency to be sustainable. So I think a 54.07 is right in the middle of that range as we saw mortgage stabilize. And then also a reminder this quarter we saw the gain on sale margin, which doesn't affect the variable cost fell back to normal levels and we still saw that improvement in our efficiency ratio.
On the balance sheet side, we ended the quarter with assets of $21,900,000,000 compared to $21,400,000,000 at the end of last quarter. We were pleased with our organic loan growth of $181,000,000 or 5 percent annualized for the Q2. As you can see on Slide 16, we had about we had $473,000,000 of headwind against the $655,000,000 growth in CRE, C and I, premium finance and residential. PPP loans declined $304,000,000 and indirect loans declined $85,000,000 We have approximately 488,000,000 dollars of PPP loans left and we have $397,000,000 of indirect loans on the left. We anticipate the headwinds from runoff in both of these portfolios to really subside early next year.
And a few extra details on PPP. We've received payments and forgiveness of approximately $975,000,000 on round 1, leaving the outstanding balance at $126,000,000 And we now have the new round 2 balance at $362,000,000 The average balance of PPP loans in the 2nd quarter was $780,500,000 compared to an average balance in the Q1 of $764,900,000 We have about $22,300,000 left of deferred income on the PPP loan. That's $2,200,000 on round 1 $20,100,000 on round 2. And again, we anticipate amortizing that into income over the next year, if not sooner. We already discussed the excess liquidity you can see in other earning assets on the balance sheet due to our tremendous deposit growth that we've seen over the past few quarters.
But again, this quarter, we grew $382,000,000 this quarter in deposits and 46% of that growth was in non interest bearing. I sound like a broken record, but we really do anticipate some deposit runoff as life gets back to normal post pandemic and as rates potentially rise. We continue to anticipate net loan growth, net of PPP activity for the year in the mid single digits, which is about $1,000,000,000 of loan growth. That leaves about $1,500,000,000 of excess cash to prepare for deposit runoff if rates start to increase and to begin buying investments in the bond portfolio. We did purchase $100,000,000 of BOLI during the Q2 with a non taxable yield of approximately 3.5% and we are considering other investment purchases, although we would like the curve to steepen just a little bit before we really start doing that.
And with that, I will wrap it up. I appreciate everyone's time today, and I'll turn the call over to Vaish for any questions from the group.
We will now begin the question and answer session. First question comes from Brady Gailey with KBW. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys.
Good morning, Brady.
So when I look at what happened on the expense side, basically your ability to reduce expenses to help offset the pressure of down revenue and mostly down mortgage, I mean, that was pretty impressive in the second quarter. I mean, should that dynamic continue to play out like it did in 2Q going forward as mortgage continues to normalize?
So, Brady, I'm going to take that question and split it into 2, if that's okay, and then talk about the mortgage side and then talk about the banking side, because I think there's 2 different dynamics there. On the mortgage side, we do anticipate and again kind of looking at mortgage revenue, there's 2 components. 1 is driven by gain sale and the other component is production. And the gain on sale margin really doesn't affect those variable costs. And we feel like we've absorbed all of that into the Q2.
Then when you turn to the production side, the production side is where the variable costs really are affected. We have about an 80% structure there. So as production comes down, we expect additional cost saves on the expense side. That's mostly in salaries, benefits, basically commissions, incentives. And then also on the IT side, because as production comes down, your data processing per account comes down.
So those are the 2 main categories that build that kind of 80% decline in expenses as the production revenue comes down. So I do anticipate on the mortgage side. On the banking side, part of the decrease this quarter had to do with deferred cost because of our very strong production. So I think some of that could come back. I don't think that we'll go back to the 83, 85 that we were running.
But I think the 76 could easily bump up a little bit as that as production again, we have very robust and we think about 3rd, 4th quarters if it is not quite as robust production, those deferred fees could impact that. So I think the 76 could easily go up closer to the 79 to 80. But I don't anticipate it going as high as it was in that 85 range a few quarters ago.
Okay. And then when I look at your capital base, I mean, Nicole, you mentioned that adjusted TCE is 10%. That's 100 basis points above your percent target. And your stock has pulled back a little bit here. It's at 11 times earnings and only 1.7 times tangible, which is pretty attractive.
Any thoughts on reengaging in the share buyback?
Yes. Brady, this is Palmer. As you know, we've got the plan out there and authorized and we've got opportunities to do that. And if we continue to see the pullback that we're seeing now because the stock is at a very attractive price, that's certainly a consideration we'll take into consideration.
Okay. And then finally for me, maybe just an update on M and A. We saw South State enter your market in a big way this morning with the acquisition of Atlantic Capital. Would a target like that possibly have been of interest to you? And then just generally speaking, maybe an update on how you guys are thinking about M and A now Palmer?
Yes. No, I think that's a nice transaction for South State. I think it's a good bolt on for them. I think that it's whenever you can garner market share in a market like Atlanta, I think it's a good opportunity. I think that the opportunity for a lot of folks looking in Atlanta is as they realize continue to capitalize on.
And when you look at where we stand in the market in terms of market share and the existing platform we had in place, we'll be able to lever that in a meaningful way. In terms of our outlook, we're pretty consistent in terms of what we're looking for. We've got we're very disciplined and obviously very principled in what we want to do. So we take a lot of the social considerations into account in addition to pricing. And so we're going to remain opportunistic, which is where we are, and it's nice to be in a position to be able to think that way.
But aside from M and A, as you know, we've got incredible growth organic growth opportunities, and we'll continue to pursue those either way.
Okay, great. Thanks for the color guys. You bet.
Thanks, Brady.
The next question comes from Casey Whitman with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Good morning, Casey. Nicole, maybe can you walk us through how you were thinking about your core margin over the back half of the year without PPP and accretion and obviously how liquidity is going to play into that? Absolutely. So I'm going to say excluding kind of just assuming flat PPP, flat accretion and flat liquidity, we're guiding for another quarter of mid single digit compression.
That's a couple of basis points on the asset side offset. We do think we have a couple more basis points to squeeze out on the deposit side, mostly in that CD portfolio. So again, kind of mid single digit compression for the next quarter until we start to stabilize. Again, that we have that $2,500,000,000 of excess liquidity. So as we can start deploying that, every $100,000,000,000 is about 2 basis points on our margin.
So as soon as we start deploying that, we will definitely see the pick up on I have that added back in. But assuming the liquidity stays flat, accretion and PPP stay flat, we're mid single digit compression for 1 more quarter. Okay, makes sense. That's all I had. Nice quarter.
Great. Thank you, Casey.
The next question comes from Jennifer Demble with Chuyves Securities. Please go ahead. Jennifer, is the line muted? We can't hear you. Hi.
Can you hear me now?
Yes. Good morning, Jennifer.
Hi. How are you? My question is on the mortgage business. Can you just talk about what kind of production trends you think you're going to see over the next couple of quarters and how much of an issue is the inventory shortage right now?
Yes, I'll take that. I think when you look at our current production and you saw this quarter, it's still very meaningful. Obviously, we're impacted by the margin. But in terms of the impact from a supply situation, what we're finding is that while supply is in short order, the demand is still there. And typically in this business, you've got a lot of seasonality for the second half of the year.
And I don't think you're going to see that. So I think what's going to happen is it's actually going to be when you look at the run rate going forward over the next probably be when you look at the run rate going forward over the next probably 2 to 4 quarters, I think it's going to be actually much more stable than what we've historically seen, just because that constant demand for inventory and for absorption, which we normally see a pullback as we get into later end of the year. So I'm kind of contrarian in that view and think that in certain markets, as we all know, there is a very high shortage of supply, but the absorption is there. And so I think it's going to continue to be a steady performer for those that are heavily focused on purchase type activity, which we are with builder and realtors. So I think that's going to serve us well.
We certainly all saw a little pickup in the refi activity just due to the drop in rates over the last quarter. But going forward, I think it's going to be a much more stable type of environment for mortgage, quite frankly, for those that are heavy purchase oriented.
Okay. And back on the merger interest topic, Palmer, could you just give us a little more detail on what types of transactions Ameris might be interested in, if they make sense?
Yes. I would tell you those are the kind of transactions. We're looking at anything that makes sense to us. We're big on culture, as you know, here. So it's got to be a very good cultural fit and alignment there, and it's got to be accretive.
We're very disciplined in our pricing. We're not going to do anything that's overly dilutive to this company or to our shareholders. But 1st and foremost, it's got to be a good cultural fit. And so we will remain, like I said, opportunistic and open to other opportunities that are out there, both bank and non bank type of transactions.
Okay. Thank you.
You bet.
The next question comes from Grady Preston with Stephens Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Grady.
Hey, Nicole, could you just help me around the core expenses? So I hear you think you're going to bump back up to 79 or 80 with the production. But just when I look at the year over year sort of decline, understanding that 1Q is a seasonally high, a seasonal high for you guys because of the payroll, but you you're down from $83,000,000 year over year to $76,000,000 right? So you've effectively taken out $7,000,000 out of the quarterly run rate on a year over year basis. And so just help me understand how you like what specifically has driven that level of the decline in the core bank expenses over the last year while you've been actively hiring people?
Sure. That's a great question. I appreciate it. And so this really comes back to what we've been saying for several quarters is that we feel like we've been ahead of the curve on
a few things. We did
our branch rationalization and then closed branches there. We were looking at lease opportunities as leases were expiring to move out of those and kind of consolidate spaces. And so that's it's been exactly what we had planned. And then we have been able to do hiring. I will say that we have certainly used and I know people have had me saying there's reallocation of resources, but finding ways to pay for things.
And so even though we have had new hires, we've also had some attrition or some retirements, and maybe we've reallocated those funds to be able to move into some other growth markets and not fill those positions in some of our other markets. And then we've also started using technology to help as well. And so when you look at the expense down the line, it's just about every bucket. I mean, you'll see data processing and telecommunications is about the only one that's been flat there. But some of the expenses that we spent there have been able to help us and some of the other non interest expenses that are down.
Occupancy is down as well as salaries and employee benefits. And you're exactly right, we had about $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 payroll tax in the Q1 that we didn't have again. And then we also had those deferred costs that could come back up into that salary category.
But Bernie, this is Palmer. One thing in all companies, obviously, the largest expense item is the teammates and the overhead. And I think what I've been very pleased with the Ameris team here is the discipline in terms of accountability and expectations and being realistic about it obviously. But what you'll find a good example is even in our commercial banking group. Year to date, we've hired 11 new individuals.
But net, that way we were only up 3 FTEs. And I think what that's reflective of is just holding people accountable for their roles and their performance. And if you can do that throughout an entire company, whether it's on the operational side, on the production side, what you end up with is a very meaningful group of high performing individuals instead of just layering in additional expense to mask a deficiency. And so I think that's one of the things that we've been very consequential about this year and last year and it's certainly paid dividends for us currently and going forward.
Do you have any more questions? We can't hear you.
Yes. Sorry about that. So I guess on the mortgage side, Nicole, just one last question there. If 80% of the expense there is tied to variable comp, if production were down, say, 5% again next quarter, that mean expenses in that business line should be down 4%. Is that how I should be thinking about that?
Exactly, yes.
Okay, great. Great. Thanks for that. And I guess maybe just on that, for the mortgage banking, is that tied to total production? Or is that or are those expenses tied to sold production?
Total production.
Okay. All right, great. Thanks for that clarification. Maybe just switching to core loan yields. I think backing out PPP and sort of calculating a core loan yield right around 4.25 this quarter, which is down about 10 basis points from last quarter.
Just given that new production yields continue to head down by 5 to 6 bps per quarter here, should we expect a similar kind of decrease in that core loan yields over the next couple of quarters? Or I guess when do you sort of expect that to subside?
No, you're exactly right. So with our current come on rate, it is pushing our loan yields down. And so we really need about a 50 basis point upswing for that to stabilize. So if rates stay where they are for a long period, we could continue to see some of that compression. Again, we have the deposit side to help some of that for sure.
But again, we kind of need a 50 basis point point to really stop that margin decline and anything above that would start to be accretive.
Okay. And in the HFS portfolio, is this 2.77 yield, is that a good normalized yield to use them for? I know it can be pretty variable.
It is pretty variable. I hate to say this, but I don't anticipate it going down. So I think you could probably use that and that would be conservative.
Okay. And on that HFS portfolio, Nicole, the pipeline is being down this quarter and NDA forecast being what they are, I guess we should expect this HFS portfolio continue to lag down from here. And so would you kind of expect it to get back to that $800,000,000 range by some point next year?
I would say that, that we've kind of guided to $900,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 is kind of the kind of what we think will be the new norm. So it still has a couple of $100,000,000 to come down, yes.
Okay. And then just on the mortgage banking division again, just could you understand some of the variability that you see on a quarter to quarter basis in the provision line item there? Sort of what drives that? Is it related to the average loans that you like are in the HFS portfolio? Or what are the specific components there that drive that?
Sure. Some of that is related to how we allocate the provision. And so when we start looking at some internal credit metrics similar to such as deferrals or delinquencies, and then also just when we look at overall general economic factors, we could have some shift between buckets. So you'll see, I think, what you're looking at is a 6 and again, look at last quarter that $4,500,000 we had a $28,000,000 release for the whole company. So some of that was allocated to mortgage.
And then this quarter, you'll see kind of the banking division got the credit and then retail mortgage got had the expense, but it all kind of net out. So some of the modeling economic factors as well as some individual internal credit metrics.
Okay. And then just on the C and I portfolio, it was nice to see some strength there in the core C and I portfolio. I think it was up about 12.5% linked quarter. Could you maybe help me understand is that new kind of commitments? Is that increase on utilization?
Is that some of the folks that you hire over the last year starting to hit their stride? So let me kind of understand what happened there.
Yes. It's a bit of all of the above, which is exciting to see and a lot of it already come out of some of our investments we've made in many of the growth markets, including the Charlotte area. North Florida had a great quarter as did Atlantis has been very consistent and the pipeline has remained full. And most of this was incremental new business. And the other part of it is some of it's incremental from new markets, which I like seeing.
So the investments we made last year are paying off and we are very excited about the outlook there.
Okay, great. And then just one last one, if I may. Nicole, do you happen to know what the servicing income was this quarter? I think it was $10,100,000 last quarter for the mortgage?
Yes, it was pretty consistent with that.
All right, okay. Thank you very much.
And that's a good point you bring up there and for everybody that's listening today. And when you look at mortgage and you look at potential volatility in mortgage, one thing that's not as volatile in mortgage is servicing income, and we've got a meaningful servicing asset there. And I think it's important for people to remember that in terms of it's certainly helpful for us in terms of our forecasting and budgeting and the income coming from mortgage because it's a nice stabilizer for what can sometimes be a volatile line of business.
Great. Thank you all for taking my questions. I really appreciate it.
Great. Thanks, Pauline.
The next question comes from Christopher Marinac with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Palmer and Nicole, you've been able to gain business from other bank mergers for a long, long time. So today's news locally is not any surprise. I'm just curious kind of what makes customers move or existing customers do more business with Ameris and kind of how that gets applied as the sort of deck chairs get shuffled once again?
Well, I think it's fairly typical of all disruption. Some of it is when an account officer leaves their bank and moves to another bank. Obviously, a lot of people bank with people. But then there's the execution side too and the commitment to the market. I do think that we've benefited from that because we've got a lot of meaningful presence in a lot of key growth markets.
But when you start having changes in reporting lines, you start having changes in credit approvals, that can be disruptive to the lenders and it can also be disruptive as an end result to the customer, which is what we're all about. So I think with all the movement out there in terms of M and A and furthermore just changes in reporting lines, that's presented a lot of disruption that we've been able to capitalize on. I think we'll continue to going forward.
Is it fair to say, Palmer, that there's more hires coming just from your core lenders on all sides of the bank?
There are new opportunities and we've got several folks right now and I'm excited to say a lot of them are coming from some of our new initiatives in the new markets, especially in the Carolinas and in Florida. But that being said, the thing that gives me comfort in terms of our projections for growth, we have all the folks we need to deliver on the forecast that we've set out for the remainder this year. So anything beyond that will be incremental lift for us, which we'll continue to capitalize on as we move forward.
Okay, great. And last question for me is just about how FinTech is evolving for you at Ameris. And what are the priorities and the initiatives there that we should expect the next couple of quarters?
Yes. I think for us, we like to stay not on the bleeding edge, but on the cutting edge of that. We're obviously heavily involved in a lot of the FinTech initiatives that are out there with between Canopy and FinTop and just staying on the forefront of that. But at the same time, it gives us an opportunity to be exposed to that new technology. We've embraced a lot of it.
As we've talked about before, the robotics continue to be a major focus for us in some of our higher volume areas like mortgage. And then we'll continue to roll that out in areas like premium finance. And you've gone through a lot of efficiencies there. We have an aggressive sales force initiative underway right now throughout the entire company. We were utilizing sales force and in Zeno in many areas of the company.
But going forward, we'll have an we've got an active rollout of sales force over the next 2 or 3 quarters. And I think the important thing, there's so many things that you want to do, but you've got to prioritize in terms of where you're going to see the largest gain in efficiencies. And so right now, we see that on the robotics front and on the sales force front. A lot of that has to do with workflow, not just managing pipelines. And that's where we will continue to make meaningful investments.
And then obviously down the road, as we all talk about is what opportunities we might have in terms of our core processors going forward and getting into more open architecture type of environment, which is really exciting to me. And I don't think for the industry we're quite there yet. We've certainly got some prototypes or experimental activity going on, but until that's a little bit more secure and we've got the comfort of our regulators and everyone else, I think that's probably a couple of years out. But in the meantime, there's a lot that banks can be doing now to position themselves to become more efficient. That's what we've prided ourselves on over the last year.
Great. And that ties all back to the core expense improvements that Nicole was elaborating on earlier, so there's more there in general.
Absolutely. Yes. We've always talked about mortgage and how it's a scalable business. The question is, do you execute on that? And with the robotics that we had in place, that allowed us quite frankly to make some expense reduction immediately without creating havoc or some sort of concern in a back office environment.
And so that's where you start really appreciating the efficiency garnered from technology.
Great. Thanks for the background.
Thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Palmer Proctor for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much. And once again, I'd like to thank everyone for listening to our Q2 2021 earnings result call. We're excited about the momentum, as you can tell, throughout the entire footprint, and we feel like we're extremely well positioned for the second half of twenty twenty one and into the future. And as I've always said before, we're going to continue to deliver on top quartile financial results and remain focused on our disciplined growth and our operating efficiencies and growing our franchise value. But thank you all again for your time and your interest in Ameris Bank.