Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Amalgamated Financial Corp. first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the pre-presentation, the conference will be opened for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jason Darby, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in our first quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today is Priscilla Sims Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder, a telephonic replay of this call will be available in the Investors section of our website for an extended period of time. Additionally, a slide deck to complement today's discussion is also available on the Investors section of our website. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call may contain certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution investors that actual results may differ from the expectations indicated or implied by any such forward-looking statements or information.
Investors should refer to slide two and three of our earnings slide deck as well as our 2021 10-K filed on March 11th, 2022 for a list of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures which we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release as well as on our website. Let me now turn the call over to Priscilla.
Thank you Jason, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest today. This morning, I will provide an update on our strategic plan to generate sustained and profitable organic loan growth. Jason will then provide a more in-depth review of our first quarter financial results. Our results are a clear indication of the fundamental earnings power of Amalgamated Bank as we execute on the four pillars of our growth for good strategy. Along these lines, there are four key performance measures that I'd like you to take away from this morning's call. The first is net loan growth. Excluding PACE assessments, we were up 4.8% compared to the linked quarter, reflecting a second consecutive quarter of growth due to the solid momentum of our core loan growth strategy established in the second half of 2021.
Including PACE assessments, we grew the lending activity by 6.5%. Over the course of 2022, we anticipate loans will meaningfully drive net interest income and earnings. Second, on the heels of successfully recruiting six new bankers in the fourth quarter of 2021, we've continued our talent acquisition efforts in the first quarter of 2022, also recruiting six new established bankers with relationships across our various focus regions, enabling our ability to tap more broadly into our existing footprint for opportunistic loan originations and to gain market share. We also completed the restructure of the organization to align to our strategic imperatives.
Third, our deposit growth was considerable, exceeding our expectations and increasing 9.7% to $7 billion from the linked quarter as our political deposit franchise rose to $1.1 billion while we held the cost of deposits steady at 9 basis points. Fourth, our net interest income rose by 2.8%, demonstrating the inherent earnings power of our asset-sensitive balance sheet paired with our industry-leading low-cost deposit franchise. As we achieve meaningful consecutive loan growth, we are confident that our team, our product platform, and our overall operations are well suited to achieve the high single-digit loan growth target we set in the fourth quarter call. The high-quality banking talent we acquired during the quarter, which includes subject matter experts in CDFI and climate finance, are incremental to our growth outlook.
As I previously discussed, we believe our existing footprint of New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. is ripe for both broadening and deepening, in taking lending expertise from one market to the others, as well as to expand beyond our traditional deposit gathering model. We saw this during the first quarter when our reconstructed CRE team successfully originated a sizable multifamily residential loan in Boston with a runway for additional loan volume to build upon this achievement. The four pillars of our growth for good strategy have been and will continue to be the fulcrum for our strategic decisions. So far, I've spoken mostly about our third pillar, which we call our offer. It is largely driven by growing our lending platform in order to grow franchise value and fund future expansion goals.
We've also been hard at work at our other three pillars of mission, customer insights, and efficiency. Our mission is evident by both the key customer segments we work in and also the mission-aligned products we engage in. Our customers, they're change makers, largely individuals, small businesses, or in six other key commercial segments. But what they all have in common is that they care about what their money does in the world. We are committed to environmental and social responsibility, and all of our customers care about our actions as much as they care about their own. During the quarter, we were the first bank in the United States to receive approval from Science Based Targets Initiative of our net zero carbon targets. Recently, we announced that 31% of our 2021 lending related activity went toward climate solutions.
In the coming quarters, I will have more to share on our customer insights pillar and related digital platform development, as that experience is core to our ability to grow with the demands of our mission-based customer segments. Before turning the call over to Jason, I'd like to just make one more comment centered on our fourth pillar of key effectiveness and efficiency. With the increased profitability we anticipate in 2021 and beyond due to the rising interest rates, our efforts to improve our valuation and performance measures are a top priority. You can expect continued focus on improving efficiency. I'll now turn the call over to Jason.
Thank you, Priscilla. Net income for the first quarter of 2022 was $14.2 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, compared to $15.9 million or $0.50 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2021, and $12.2 million or $0.39 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2021. The $1.7 million decrease for the first quarter of 2022 from the preceding quarter was primarily driven by a $5.0 million decrease in non-interest income which is due to the tax credits from solar equity investments recognized in the prior quarter, partially offset by a $1.3 million increase in net interest income, a $1.3 million decrease in the provision for loan loss, and a $0.6 million decrease in non-interest expense.
Beginning on slide five, our solar tax equity investments are presented in a manner to clarify and explain the volatility associated with the GAAP accounting. As of the fourth quarter of 2021, we have made three solar tax equity investments. Since these investments are mission-aligned and offer highly attractive returns over time, we expect to make more solar investments in the future. The accounting treatment of these investments generally results in a near immediate realization of investment tax benefits and a subsequent accelerated depreciation of the value of the investment, which creates volatility in our GAAP and core earnings presentations, specifically within non-interest income. We believe metrics excluding the impact of tax credits or accelerated depreciation is a meaningful way to evaluate our current and historical performance. Accordingly, we have begun presenting metrics excluding the tax credit or accelerated depreciation impact of our solar tax equity investments.
Exclusions related to solar tax equity investments were $0.1 million of tax credits recorded as equity method non-interest income for the first quarter of 2022, $5.3 million of tax credits in the fourth quarter of 2021, and $3.8 million of accelerated depreciation recorded as equity method non-interest contra income in the first quarter of 2021. Core net income excluding the effects of tax credits and accelerated depreciation from our solar investments, a non-GAAP measure for the first quarter of 2022 was $14.3 million or $0.45 per diluted share, compared to $12.7 million or $0.40 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2021, and $15.9 million or $0.50 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2021.
Turning to slide seven, deposits at March 31st, 2022 were $7.0 billion, an increase of $617.2 million from the fourth quarter of 2021, and an increase of $1.3 billion as compared to March 31st, 2021. Non-interest-bearing deposits represent 53% of average deposits and 54% of ending deposits for the quarter ended March 31st, 2022, contributing to an average cost of deposits of nine basis points in the first quarter of 2022, unchanged from the previous quarter, and a decrease of two basis points from the prior year.
Deposits held by politically active customers were $1.1 billion as of March 31st, 2022, an increase of $159.9 million as compared to $989.6 million as of December 31st, 2021. We expect political deposits to rise by another $400 million-$500 million over the second and third quarter, and then run off approximately $600 million-$700 million in the fourth quarter when the congressional elections conclude. Turning to slide 10. Including net deferred costs at March 31st, 2022, loans were $3.4 billion, an increase of $158 million compared to December 31st, 2021.
The increase in loans is primarily driven by a $79.5 million increase in residential loans, mainly from direct originations, and a $97.6 million increase in our consumer and other loans, primarily driven by solar loan originations from existing flow arrangements, offset by a combined $19.9 million decrease in the commercial portfolio as payoffs exceeded originations. The volume of payoffs is a result of our continued focus on credit quality improvement in the commercial portfolio with $20.3 million of payoffs from criticized loans in addition to certain other pass-grade loans . The yield on our total loans was 3.85% compared to 4.01% in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 3.83% in the prior year.
After adjusting for $1 million in interest repaid on a reinstated loan, the fourth quarter of 2021 loan yield was 3.89%. The 4 basis point decline in the linked quarter is primarily related to recognized deferred fees on PPP loans in the fourth quarter. After adjusting for prepayment penalty fees, our loan yield was essentially flat as compared to the previous quarter.
On slide 12, our net interest margin was 2.76% for the first quarter of 2022, a slight decrease from 2.77% in the fourth quarter of 2021, and a decrease of 9 basis points from 2.85% in the first quarter of 2021. Prepayment penalties earned as loan income added 3 basis points to our net interest margin in the first quarter of 2022, as compared to 2 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 4 basis points in the first quarter of 2021. We estimate that excess liquidity in the quarter from deposit growth suppressed our NIM by 13 basis points.
Non-interest income for the first quarter of 2022 was $7.4 million compared to $12.4 million in the linked quarter and $4.0 million for the first quarter in 2021. Core non-interest income, excluding the effect of tax credits and accelerated depreciation from our solar investments for the first quarter of 2022 was $7.4 million, compared to $7.0 million for the fourth quarter of 2021 and $7.8 million for the first quarter of 2021. Non-interest expense for the first quarter of 2022 was $34.4 million, a decrease of $0.6 million from the fourth quarter of 2021 and an increase of $1.6 million from the first quarter of 2021.
The decline from the preceding quarter includes $0.5 million of unwind costs related to the terminated ABOC deal. We do not anticipate material one-off expenses in the second quarter of 2022. The increase from the first quarter of 2021 is primarily driven by a $2.2 million increase in data processing related to the modernization of our trust department and higher overall contractual fees, offset by decreases in professional fees. Moving to slide 16, non-performing assets totaled $61.1 million or 0.80% of period-end total assets at March 31st, 2022, an increase of $6.5 million compared with $54.6 million or 0.77% of period-end total assets at December 31st, 2021.
The increase in non-performing assets at March 31st, 2022 compared to December 31st, 2021 was primarily driven by a multi-loan new troubled debt restructuring totaling $10.5 million from the same borrower relationship, offset by a $5.1 million decrease in residential non-accrual loans. While non-performing assets increased, overall credit quality improved, with criticized assets declining $51.6 million or 22.3% to $179.3 million on a linked quarter basis and by $155 million or 46.4% on a year-over-year basis. The allowance for loan losses increased $1.6 million to $37.5 million at March 31st, 2022 from $35.9 million at December 31st, 2021, primarily due to increases in loan balances.
At March 31st, 2022, we had $58.2 million of impaired loans for which a specific allowance of $4.6 million was made, compared to $53.2 million of impaired loans at December 31st, 2021, for which a specific allowance of $5.1 million was made. The ratio of allowance to total loans was 1.08% at March 31st, 2022, unchanged from December 31st, 2021. Provision for loan losses was an expense of $2.3 million for the first quarter of 2022 compared to an expense of $3.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a recovery of $3.3 million for the first quarter of 2021.
The expense in the first quarter of 2022 was primarily driven by higher loan balances and a $0.4 million charge-off related to a loan that was transferred to held for sale, partially offset by improved credit quality. Moving along to slide 17 and 18, our core return on average equity and core return on average tangible common equity, excluding the impact of solar tax equity, were 10.4% and 10.7% respectively for the first quarter of 2022. We repurchased $2.8 million of common stock under our $40 million share repurchase program that we announced during the quarter and maintained our dividend at $0.08 per share. Importantly, we remain well capitalized to support our future ongoing growth initiatives. Slide 19 shows a reconciliation of a change in tangible common equity and related tangible book value.
As expected, the Federal Reserve commenced its cycle of interest rate increases with a 25 basis point increase at the March meeting. Further, the committee messaged the increasing likelihood for more aggressive rate increases through the remainder of 2022 and likely into 2023. As a result of long-term interest rates rising significantly during the quarter, our tangible book value per share declined by 6.3%, primarily driven by a tax-affected mark-to-market adjustment to the fair value of our available-for-sale securities portfolio. While we are cognizant of our decline in tangible common equity, we are focused on driving earnings through prudent deployment of our liquidity. We believe our strong on-balance sheet liquidity position, borrowing capacity, and low-cost deposit gathering ability well protects us from requiring realization of these transitory market declines. Importantly, fluctuations from mark-to-market adjustments have no impact on our Tier One capital position.
As a reminder, the current rising rate environment provides a strong net interest income benefit to Amalgamated, which I will discuss further in a moment. Turning to slide 20, as previously mentioned, we are focused on our core loan growth strategy and deployment of liquidity to drive earnings power in the year ahead. We also have been resolute in building an asset-sensitive balance sheet structure to be well-positioned once the rising rate environment returned. As the forward curve suggests substantial rate increases through the remainder of 2022, we are updating our full year 2022 guidance as follows.
Excluding the effects of tax credits and accelerated depreciation from our solar investments, we estimate core pre-tax, pre-provision earnings of $97 million-$105 million, which includes only the effect of the 25 basis points Fed increase in March of this year for the remainder of 2022. Core pre-tax, pre-provision earnings of $110 million-$120 million, which considers the effect of forward rate curve for the remainder of 2022. Net interest income of $205 million-$250 million, which includes only the effect of the 25 basis points Fed increase in March of this year for the remainder of 2022.
Net interest income of $220 million-$230 million, which considers the effect of the forward rate curve for the remainder of 2022. Generally speaking, we estimate a range of $4.0 million-$4.5 million increase in annual net interest income for each 25 basis point increase in short-term forward curve rates for the remainder of the year. We're pleased with our first quarter results and are optimistic that our organic loan growth prospects paired with our reliable low-cost deposit franchise will deliver meaningful increases in earnings and shareholder value over the course of 2022. We look forward to updating you again at our second quarter call. With that, I'd like to ask the operator to open up the line for any questions. Operator?
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Twerdahl with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good morning.
Morning.
Morning, Alex.
First off, I was hoping you can give us a little bit more clarity on the loan growth outlook and the targets you said. If you can maybe help us understand sort of what the complexion of the loan growth that you expect over the rest of the year. I think this quarter was a lot stronger in the consumer than at least I was anticipating. If you think that, you know, we're gonna get sort of loan growth across different segments or if there's gonna be a hand off to commercial as some of these lenders that you've hired come online later this year.
Sure. Alex I'm happy to take that question for you. So I think the prospects overall for our loan growth are pretty strong. You know, it's a little bit of a mixed bag in the results for Q1 in the sense that you know the residential and the consumer, mainly our solar-driven business you know really was the key drivers. It appears there wasn't you know a lot of growth that's coming out of the commercial segment. I think the thing to think about there is you know when we look at the commercial business we actually had quite a bit of new commitment volume. You know as our new CRE team for example they came on you know in January of the first quarter.
You know, they were at about $80 million of new commitments during the year. Sorry, $70 million of new money for the year and $60 million of refinances. You know, we had a fair amount of payoffs that occurred, but you know, what we've been able to do as we've got the origination volumes going through is be sort of strategic in evaluating some of our past grade credits for additional refinance. You know, we've been doing a little bit of balance sheet management, you know, over the course of this quarter. I expect that in the commercial space, and I expect that'll continue into the second quarter as we sort of look at asset quality as an equally important metric for us in terms of our overall credit portfolio.
You can think of that portfolio as being able to churn in terms of asset quality and then hopefully start to reach, you know, a growth pattern as we get a little bit further into the year. You know, the things that we see in the pipeline look really strong. You know, I think that's one of the reasons why we've also stayed a little bit off of expanding our loan growth targets because we wanna make sure that, you know, we're growing, I guess cautiously but optimistically, in terms of making sure that we have our pipeline, but also making sure we have good, strong asset quality that's going to be sustained within the portfolio and sort of meeting new pricing and new underwrite standards.
Okay. Can you just remind me, sort of the differences between the PACE loans and the consumer solar loans?
Yeah. They're relatively the same in terms of the final product. It ultimately ends up in an energy-efficient improvement to consumer residences in a normal state. You know, on the PACE side, it's very much tethered to the tax position in terms of its repayment process and its position relative to the senior debt on a mortgage. On the consumer side, it's a little bit more of you know, kind of like a. I wouldn't say unsecured, but you know, a regular kind of unsecured loan, I guess is the best way to describe it, which with the same type of kind of asset improvement to the actual underlying property.
Okay. Just a final question for me. Priscilla, you alluded to the efficiency ratio as being kind of a top priority. Do you have some expense initiatives in mind, or is that just kind of a promise that as you earn more because rates are going higher, you're not gonna spend all the, you know, sort of the found money away?
Yeah, that's the latter. It's the latter, Alex. We're gonna stay disciplined. We certainly, as we said to you in prior quarters, intend to invest as we see the revenue coming through on the strat plan. We wanted to signal to you that we are not looking at this as all found money, you know, as we get the benefit of the rate increases.
Okay. I think last time we spoke, the target for efficiency was around 65%. If we get the forward curve, you know, follows through, that maybe can go a little bit lower than that as sort of a longer-term target?
That's right. Yeah. We could get tailwinds that help to enable us to get to a better ratio than that.
Yeah.
Perfect. Thank you for taking all my questions.
Sorry, Alex, we - you know, we came in at under 62% for the quarter, but I think when we think about the efficiency ratio, I think we're also thinking about just sort of the overall guidance we've given on total expenses. I think we've been out there with, I think, $138.5 million, you know, for the year. I would expect that we'd stay pretty close to, you know, to that target, maybe increase slightly on the margin. You can kind of think of that as a guardrail for, you know, what efficiency might look like in the rising rate scenario.
Yeah, that's a good point. We were probably about $500,000 better in the quarter than we would expect on that run rate.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you'd like to join the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Chris O'Connell with KBW. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Was hoping to start off with the, you know, the new banker hires that you added this quarter, and maybe what areas they're in, and then how you're thinking about, you know, expense growth for the year, you know, encompassing kind of, you know, the PPNR outlook.
Do you wanna take the expense growth one, and I'll speak to the.
Certainly, yeah. On the expense growth, Chris, I think we came in slightly under where we thought we'd be at, where did we come in? About $34 million on a core basis. You know, we've planned for about $34.5 million on a quarterly basis, and what I would expect is that we're gonna catch up that difference from this quarter over the course of the year. To Alex's question previously, you know, we're targeting $138.5 million for the entire year on an OpEx basis core.
You know, if there was a marginal uptick in that number as we make some additional investments in maybe some compliance infrastructure or other things that we need to kind of support the growth of the business, that number might increase on the margin. You know, our view on increases over that $138.5 million would be, you know, really funded by profitability from the growth initiatives that we have underway right now. Hopefully, that would be kind of a net neutral in terms of incremental expense increase if we had it over that budgeted number.
Great.
Alex, would that.
Just on the lender hires.
Yeah. The lenders are really pretty well across the board, Alex. We're looking to, as we've talked about in the past, take expertise we have in one area and export it to others. We're leveraging people that you know may be sitting in New York or D.C. to supplement the work in other markets. We're also hiring you know a CDFI experts, for example, continuing to build on the CRE team. Really pretty well distributed.
Chris
Great.
Chris, maybe to just crystallize that, I think right before the number was six bankers for this quarter.
Six. Six Last quarter.
Yeah. Six Yep. Then one was CDFI, one was climate related, and then, you know, filling out the real estate portion of our business. Now that means we're net four as we, you know, we're doing a little bit of, you know, talent management as well. You know, the people that we brought on in that basis were at four incremental from the end of last quarter.
Great. You mentioned, you know, some changes in the internal structure of the business to align with, you know, your strategic goals. Is that, you know, banker incentives or any expansion on kind of the details there?
Yeah. There are kind of two ways to look at that. One is, we have, you know, just moved org structure around to bring our revenue generating areas together and then to conversely bring our operations areas together. In the past, we'd had consumer and commercial completely separate. Today, we recognize that a lot of our consumer business will come through our commercial relationships. We brought the revenue in customer-facing parts of the consumer business together with the customer-facing parts of the commercial business. In the back office, we've also done the same with our operations there. That's probably the biggest part of the change that we saw in the quarter.
We also are, as we talked about with our pillars, we're focused on this sort of customer centricity, and we've added a role associated with developing customer insights. That's really a transfer of consultant expense to permanent hire once we're able to test the work and really think about how we want that to be focused. We're doing the same with digital, bringing some resources together where appropriate and also bringing in a leader there. It's the biggest part, what I described to you, the consumer and the commercial coming together both front and back.
There are some tweaks going on around the organization just to align to create centers of expertise where we think we could benefit from an efficiency or an effectiveness perspective.
Great. Appreciate the color. As far as the origination yields on the loans, where are they coming on in kind of, you know, the blended portfolio? What are the pace, or, like, origination yields coming out at now?
Yep. I'll grab that for you, Chris. I think you know, on average, the loan yields are coming on at, you know, in the low 4% right now. Our solar pools, which I was talking a little bit about before, those are more in the 5% range. Then in the PACE world, they're coming on now in the mid-4% range. I think also what's important is, you know, a lot of the loan growth that we reported in this particular quarter, we really didn't book a lot of that till the latter half of March.
When you look at the yield on the portfolio for the quarter, which didn't really move very much in the previous quarter, it's really not baking in any of the effect of the loan growth that we had in this particular quarter. You know, we're also expecting, you know, loan yield to, on a reported basis, to increase, you know, fairly dramatically as we move into the second quarter, and obviously that'll pull forward in our NIM as well.
Great. For the NII guide, all right, what's the - you know, you mentioned the 13 basis points of excess liquidity, kind of, hampering the margin this quarter. What's embedded in terms of excess liquidity deployment in the NII guide, and how are you seeing, you know, that come off over the course of the year in the guide?
Yeah. That's gonna be a little bit of a moving target throughout the year, mainly because of the political deposits that are probably going to ramp up over the course of the next two quarters heading into the congressional elections in November. I tend to think of it a little bit more as what we'll look like at the end of the year as opposed to what we'll look like over the next couple of quarters. You know, we're trying to manage to $100 million of cash.
You know in terms of how we think about our excess liquidity drag, you know, anything above $100 million starts to become the capital drag and the NIM drag. You know, I think that said, the NII guidance though, doesn't necessarily, you know, focus tremendously on the margin from a, you know, from a calculus point of view. It's much more focused on the fact that we have the higher loan volumes coming on, the fact that the spreads on the deposits that we're bringing on, you know, are much greater, and we have an ability to deploy that either through, hopefully our lending or through our securities portfolio.
You know, just the fact that the 25 basis points that's already been implemented by the Fed, you know, that's already flowing through on our resets on our floating rate assets. I don't know if I answered your question exactly the way you wanted, but that's kind of how we're bridging the difference from the previous guidance to current on NII.
Great. For the NII guide, what are you guys assuming in terms of deposit betas going forward?
We're actually fairly conservative on our deposit beta assumption. I think, and I'll get you the exact number, but I think we assumed a 20% deposit beta in our model. Clearly there's some room on the, you know, on the upside, I guess if, you know, our deposit betas hold to what they've been, you know, in the past rising rate cycle. I think as we've spoken before, you know, deposit betas for us in the last rising rate cycle for the first 100 basis points on a total cost to funds basis was about 3%. We think when we model out at 20%, you know, we're being very conservative in our full assumptions.
Okay. You know, you mentioned, you know, the regulatory capital and you know, the variance between that, you know, that you're focusing more on that versus, you know, the TCE. Is there an absolute level of TCE that, you know, does, you know, start to become, you know, a concern at all for you guys? How do you kind of balance, you know, that versus the regulatory capital in terms of, you know, the buyback utilization going forward?
That's a really good question. An absolute level of TCE, you know, I think where we are, you know, sub 7% right now, we're keeping our eye very closely on it. You know, I don't think we'd have an appetite to go much further below where we're at. At the same time, you know, we wanna be mindful of the fact that we have a tremendous amount of liquidity to be able to kind of hold these unrealized losses in a position of unrealized up until the point where eventually, you know, their value will turn when rates start to decline.
You know, I think a little bit more in terms of leverage, and I think the way we've modeled ourselves out, you know, 7% or even slightly below 7%, which kind of gets us to where we thought we might be when we closed ABOC, is sort of our floor, if you will. I mean it moves around a little bit, but that's generally the way I would think about it. As we've communicated before, you know, with this rising rate environment and some of the optionality that's due to the bank, you know, part of our plan is to really return capital to get us back to a more comfortable kind of green zone, 7.5% level by the end of the year.
Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of a sense for where we're trying to manage the balance sheet for this year.
Yeah, absolutely. For the single credit that went to NPL this quarter, the $10 million, any color you can provide there?
Yeah. You know, it's a credit that we'd had our eyes on for a little while. It's been moving in that direction. Well, it's a relationship. It's four different credits that are part of this relationship. It's a credit that we've been watching for a while. You know, it's been moving through our past-due credit into substandard, you know, over the course of the past four quarters. You know, we just got to a point where we found a way to negotiate terms with the borrower to, you know, to keep them in a position where they were able to pay and able to keep their business, you know, viable, I guess is the best way to describe it.
You know, that's ultimately where it ended up in terms of being an accruing, performing TDR. I mean, that's where it kind of fits in our NPL. Not loving it, but that was sort of the background. That's been a relationship we've worked on with for a while. You know, ultimately, that was the conclusion of how we got them back to paying status or to keep them in paying status, better way to describe it.
Great. Last question from me is just can you give us an update on, you know, kind of the progress of, you know, the ESG funds initiative and that rollout?
Do you want me to take that, Jason?
The responsible funds. You want to take an opening shot, and then I'll jump in.
Referring to the responsible funds. Yes, that's continuing to roll out. The activity that we have seen for most of the quarter has been really around getting consultants up to speed on the product and answering many of their questions. That's going very well, and we're starting to see a bit of traction. The pipeline looks decent on it. We do expect that we will have activity around just expanding the number of people focused internally on sales of that as we go forward now that the foundation has been laid with the consultants.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Oh, sorry. Chris I'll just add to that, you know, we did have a nice little uptick in the trust department income. That really was not the result of any increase in responsible funds. It's more on our base business. You know, as responsible funds moves along, like Priscilla's mentioned, you know, we hope that that's going to be incremental to the revenue opportunity there.
Great. Thanks for taking my question.
Great. Thank you, Chris.
Thanks, Chris.
Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Janet Lee with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Hello.
Hi, Janet.
Hi. I just want to clarify on your NII guidance, assuming the forward curve. You touched on it a little bit, but can you just tell us how much deposit growth and PACE securities growth is assumed in this guidance? I believe that 5% balance sheet growth guidance in the prior quarter was pulled from your slide. Is there any change to that as well?
Yeah. I'm sorry that we pulled that guidance. That was unintended. No, I think we're still planning on our balance sheet guidance, you know, as is with our 5% growth. It may be slightly higher as we came in a little bit better than expected in this particular quarter. You know, we still are expecting you know, the balance sheet to grow over Q2 and Q3 and then pull back down in Q4 as a result of the kind of the political deposit sway. Therefore, you know, when we think about the end of the year balance sheet, we're not seeing it as being tremendously different from what we had originally said at that 5% growth rate.
When we think about, you know, the forward guidance, we really haven't changed our assumptions on what we thought loan growth would be in total. That would be still in that high single digit range, although we feel really confident that that's a very hittable mark at this point. Then on the deposit side, again, we're not really expecting, you know, much more than what we talked about, maybe in the previous quarter, somewhere in the net range of $300 million-$400 million, maybe $450 million increase in deposits. On the PACE side I think we are a little bit ahead of our plan with PACE.
You know, we had an opportunity to put on a $75 million residential pool early in the quarter that we really hadn't thought of when we were originally contemplating budget. We were able to take that opportunity. Going forward, I think we would stay very much on our PACE target. I forget what the exact number is, but somewhere in the range of $150 million of total PACE activity for the year.
Okay. That's helpful. I think that it might be a sensitive subject, but I think many of us here are, you know, looking for any additional color you can give around the ABOC deal that was withdrawn and what this means to you in terms of whether having to potentially increase expenses to meet with regulatory standards. I would appreciate it if you could shed any light on these points. What happened, given there's still lots of question marks? Thanks.
Yeah. You know, Janet, there's just not much more that we can say about it. We think we were pretty straightforward. Your specific question about regulatory expense, well, we don't anticipate any additional expense outside of what's in our plan and what we would have anticipated doing anyway. I guess the additional color I will give is that, look, you saw in the quarter a construction loan, and you know we don't do much in that area. For us, it was about $9 million. That was a deal in Chicago that we did actually with ABOC post the withdrawal, when I say we did with it, that's not exactly accurate.
It was a participation where, you know, we obviously did our own underwriting, they did theirs, but it was a union customer that we both regard highly, a well-capitalized customer, cash secure. Exactly the kind of deal that we would love to continue to be doing with ABOC. This is what was one of the significant benefits if we had closed the transaction, and we are pleased that we're able to get it done even as two separate companies with, you know, our own individual process. We would look to continue to find opportunities, whether that's with ABOC or others, and we think that that's gonna continue, and we think our organic loan growth will continue.
And we, you know, we said to you in the quarter about ABOC is really still accurate and complete from our perspective, which is to say that we have demonstrated now over these two quarters that our organic progress is strong, and that when faced with the opportunity to continue building on our business organically, or to sort of wait through and go through a very long, elongated process distracting our employees, we chose the former. We did so because we really felt we had no choice in the immediate period. We certainly would look to work with ABOC in the future that if other opportunities come up.
Okay. That's really helpful. If you were to, you know, contemplate, I know that your focus is now on driving organic growth. If you were to contemplate any M&A deals in the long-term future, like, does that mean you have to, you know, spend more in order to satisfy whatever that the regulator was looking for? Or like, what do you have to do in order to get that benefit still?
As I said, there are two things we think about with respect to additional deals. The first and foremost, most important one is, as was the case when this deal was originally presented, it fit really nicely, we thought, in our plan to both expand and deepen our relationships. We would look for that. We would look to build on the strategic plan through any deal. While we are focused on organic growth for the time being, it's not a decision we make out of necessity only. We make this decision because there's so much opportunity in each of our markets, and I think we're demonstrating that.
Should we see something come across that looks attractive, I don't think we would wanna get off of our trend right now. We've just brought on a bunch of new bankers. We've got a lot of activity going. If in the, you know, near to intermediate future, we started to see something else coming along, we would not expect, as I said, that there would be an additional amount of expense above plan in order to satisfy regulators, before we could see a deal happening.
Okay. Great. Just going back to deposit growth, will you also see some. Besides the, you know, political deposits that work in its own way, will you also see some deposit growth normalization given the Fed's QT on the non-interest-bearing deposit size, excluding the political? Or do you expect Amalgamated to be sort of an outlier given your unique customer base?
Yeah. Janet, that's a great question. In fact, we were literally talking about that last night and the day before, you know, as we think about, you know, kind of the forward view on deposits. You know, look, we're never immune to anything, right? I mean, you know, customers are customers and you know, they make their choices same as anyone else would.
We feel like our deposit franchise as it's been built, you know, over the past seven or eight years in particular, and the types of bankers that we have that are running these deposit relationships and the diversification of the deposits that we have, even this quarter alone, you know, while we had $160 million of political deposit growth, we had another, you know, $350 million of commercial and almost $100 million of consumer growth. You know, we feel we are unique in this space, in that we're somewhat insulated from, you know, maybe some of the runoff risk that, you know, that other banks similar to our size might have.
We think that might be one of the real, you know, value plays that this bank can demonstrate over time, would be the stickiness of our deposits and the ability to sort of move through the rate environment cycle, in a manner with lower volatility than others. I hope that answered your question.
Yeah, that's helpful. My last question is just a follow-up on deposit beta. You said 3%, last rising rate cycle. I actually calculate around like 1% if you look at the total, you know, period of rising rates in the prior cycle. If you're assuming 20%, I know you're trying to be really conservative here, but like how does your NII guidance would change if you assume, you know, like mid- single digit deposit beta or maybe if you don't have that handy, like how does that NII benefit per 25 basis point rate hike change if you assume a much lower beta as you did in the prior rising cycle?
Thanks for asking that. I think I need to correct myself. I had said 20% on total. That was 20% on just our interest bearing. The number's gonna be substantially less when you mix in our DDA on total cost of funds on our estimate. It's probably more in the range of about 10% in total in terms of deposit beta. But that said, I think that's where we kind of come up with that $4.5 million-$4 million range when we factor in the rate sensitivity on the forward curve.
You know, I think if our deposit beta kind of looked a lot like our historical deposit beta, you'd be at that $4.5 million range, possibly even a little bit better than that.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Ms. Brown for any final comments.
Thank you Melissa and thank you for those really great questions on both my behalf and Jason's and the team. They reflect that you understand, I think, that our balance sheet is well-positioned to capture both the upside that we are anticipating with interest rates but also protect us against the eventual flattening or decline in rates. We have a lending team that we're very excited about, which is focused on asset quality and origination, and I think that's what a responsible investor would wanna see. We really appreciate your time today. We appreciate your continued interest. We really love the opportunity to discuss our optimism for the future of Amalgamated, and I know we'll be continuing some of these conversations in smaller conversations.
We're just thrilled with the growth we've delivered in this quarter and as our strategically designed team continues to build momentum. We will remain focused on the mission-based niche lending space that we occupy to continue to make an impact on the customers and communities we serve. We're excited about the depth of our banking team and the development of their customer relationships to build Amalgamated into a full-service banking franchise. Thank you again for your time, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.