Did it in 2014, and we had the opportunity to acquire a bank. We did it, and I am very pleased with the acquisition, with our operational results, and most importantly, the position in the market. Many times I'm asked, "Why did you buy a bank?" Well, when you ask that question to most professionals or executives, they say, "Gee, I wanted to get the inexpensive deposits." That's a byproduct. The reason why we acquired an OCC chartered bank that was at the time 59 years old, now it's 62 years old, was that many of you realize that you go to your banking institution, or where you hold your securities, multiple times a week, three to five times a week, some of you do it three to five times a minute or an hour, 12 to 20 times a month. Those are eyeballs.
The banking system does not do a good job in monetizing. When I say the banking system, depositories where someone would go to look at their bank balance to make sure it didn't disappear in the middle of the night in a hack, or they're doing transactions, seeing money coming in and out. When you look at Newtek and you look at the Newtek Advantage, and we'll talk about that a little bit in this presentation, we have a tremendous opportunity to communicate with what exists within our walls: 80,000 paying customers that we've accumulated over two decades and 2.5 million clients that are all small and medium business size clients in the database that we've got from our referral partners over the course of time.
To just quickly highlight some of these metrics, and these are at Newtek Bank, N.A., the OCC-chartered bank. Return on average assets for the recent quarter in Q2 is 6.4%. A high ROA for a bank is 1.25%. Return on tangible common equity of 48%. That's unheard of. JPMorgan's in the high teens-low 20s%, quarter to quarter. We're going to be able to continue to maintain these numbers. By the way, we've been in these businesses for 15-20 years. This is not a new phenomenon. When we report, I must say, this is not a simple company. It's a little complicated. You got to do the work, but I believe you get paid for the work. Efficiency ratio of 42.3%. That's extraordinarily low for a bank. Why is it so low? No bankers, no branches, no brokers, no BDOs.
We acquire clients through a referral system that we've developed over two decades from UBS, Morgan Stanley, Raymond James. They give us referrals every single day, 600-900 individual, unique business referrals, and we're able to take deposits, make loans, provide health insurance, manage their IT in two of our data centers. We manage 17,000 technological solutions for clients, moving payments, $5.5 billion worth of payments. So obviously, if I spend a lot of time going through each and any one of these segments, it might take 25 hours, not 25 minutes. So I'm kind of speeding through this.
I've done these presentations in a variety of different ways, but today what I wanted to do is familiarize yourself with looking to invest in stock symbol NEWT because, A, we pay a very high dividend, B, we're very well capitalized, C, the earnings are growing, and some might consider a five and a half to six times multiple fair, and I say that's just because we are misunderstood, I should say. My job and the company's job is to do a better job of this. We report earnings on November 6th. We're going to talk about some new and interesting things on that call, but if people want to do the work, go to the website, look at the presentations, look at the audios. We had an investor analyst day meeting. That's in there. A lot of real good, important information. Now, this is the data for the bank.
The holding company, I use this expression, hopefully not offending anybody. It's like three Bloombergs, two individuals, and a dog. Bank holding companies typically do not have a lot of assets in them. We have a merchant processing business in them that'll generate forecasted $16 million of pre-tax income. We have our tech business. We've got our insurance agents. We've got our payroll business. So there's a lot of assets there. And we also do loans in the bank holding company that are done out of joint ventures. Going forward, you might find that we start to put these loans out of joint ventures. So we'll put the leverage on our books, which we're okay with.
So the same amount of loans, we get twice as much profits. I think that's something that you'll hear us talk about in the upcoming call on November the 6th. Some common questions about NewtekOne.
We're focused on returns. So we're not an assets under management play. The banking industry is all based upon. Really, I look at it as assets under management. It's spread income. You look at the majority of our income, I think it's about 65%-70%, is non-interest income. It's valuable. It's payment processing. It's making loans, selling them, gain on sale. It's tech solutions. It's a lot of different streams. We believe in diversification. In my opinion, the bank of the future is going to look more like us without the branches, without the bankers, without the brokers, without the BDOs. The big disintermediator is what I have on the floor, the cell phone. The cell phone enables you to move money easily and quickly within five or 10 minutes.
Therefore, the industry that's feasted on low, non-interest-bearing deposits at a discount to the government-guaranteed money market funds, and those discounts are 3%, is going to narrow over time. That is not a Newtek issue. That is not a Newtek problem. Because of the assets that we put on our books, they're risk-adjusted. They are viewed as higher-risk assets. They're loans to small and medium-sized businesses. Now, that's a term of art in the banking industry. It's a term of art amongst regulators. But we have done a very good job of expressing and explaining in our business plan that we will have higher charge-offs. But I go back to the slide previously, the returns. So that risk-adjusted return, net of the charge-offs, and we have 20 years of experience doing this. So this is not our first rodeo. We've been through 2008/2009. We've been through the pandemic.
We know how to do this. That's why we are the number one small business government-guaranteed lender in the United States. Our risk-adjusted returns dwarf other participants in the industry. This is a company you need to take a look at and follow over the course of time. Alternative loan programs, these are loans we do not do in the bank. We do them at the holding company. We exit through securitization. Another high-return business. Go right down here to the bottom bullet, 31.7% gross yield at inception. That's based upon the spread, the securitization cost, and the leverage that we get. It's a very attractive business for us. From a tracking perspective, we've been growing our deposits sequentially. Obviously, we take a look at the March 31 to 2024 growth through June, 17.4%. The business deposit growth also.
So now that we've been in the bank, we've hired the executives. We've developed a team to open up accounts and do so with the right amount of BSA, KYC, and AML support so we don't have a problem like TD Bank had. This is a business segment that's going to grow. And the business deposits come in at a much lower rate than the consumer high-yield deposits. When we took over National Bank of New York City, that $120-140 million of deposits, the deposit growth is somewhere near $700 million. The total size of the bank is about $800 million. We have about 350 to 370 employees in the bank. There aren't any $800 million banks that have that many employees. I'm just telling you.
We have put the staff in the bank and at the bank holding company to support growth three, four, five, 10 times where we are today. Very, very talented team. Follow the press releases. Take a look. You'll see the types of talent that we're being able to bring in here. I want to point out our solutions. One example of it is deposits. Okay, what's the big deal about a deposit? You give it to a bank, they take your money. Well, most of the big banks are paying you 10 or 20 basis points if you're a business owner. And they're charging you for an ACH, a wire, monthly statement, etc. We have a real zero-fee business bank account. No fee for a wire, no fee for an ACH, no monthly statement. Plus, we pay higher interest. You go to our website, you look at the calculator.
Any business owner can simply calculate how much they're going to save in cost reduction and interest income, A, versus the national average, and B, we'll work with them to take their own banking statement and pull it out. So we could save this universe of customers hundreds or thousands of dollars annually from banking with us. And you don't have to go into a branch. You can get a professional on a camera 24/7, 365 to help you through that. This is the financial institution of the future. The competitors are going to have to get rid of all those bankers, all those branches, etc., to be able to technologically do this. By the way, this didn't happen overnight. I like to say we're an overnight success. It just took us 20 years to get there. Pipeline growth. You could see the extraordinary growth we have in lending.
This is not based on cutting credit. That's really important. When people see growth in a lender, 95% say, "Oh my God, they're growing too fast. They're going to blow up. They're cutting credit." Done this for 20 years. I don't need to blow up. I don't need anything except to do my job, do it honestly, do it with integrity, and grow the business. So why do our loans grow? Because we offer 10-25-year fully amortizing loans, no balloons. We have the audacity to ask borrowers to personally guarantee the loan, which we trade off versus a covenant. So we do what bankers don't want to do. We say, "No, you must personally guarantee the loan." Isn't for everybody, but we charge a very high rate for it. We're compensated.
For the customer that wants a lower payment because of the reamortization of the principal and is willing to personally pledge assets and guarantee it, this works. This is what we've learned in being an SBA lender for 20 years. Newtek Advantage. Why should people do business with us? If you are an SMB, an SME, a small and medium-sized business, an independent business owner, when you do business with us, you get the Newtek Advantage. What is it? You get free unlimited document storage. You get free web traffic analytics updated on a real-time basis. You could do payroll from the business portal. You get your payment processing data in the portal. So if you're a business owner, why do you want to go to three or four different solutions? You could see your debit, your credit, your batches, your refunds.
You could see what bills you paid that day. You could see invoices with wiring money coming back in. You can get your bank balances, and most importantly, you can communicate with somebody at Newtek, either in your place of business or in the comfort of your home, when you want, on demand. This is the future of how this business is going to roll out, and when you look at what we do, deposits, great solution for business loans. I explained the lower payment with respect to the Am schedule. Our insurance agency licensed in all 50 states, life, accident, and health. All we want to do is validate to the customer what they have is great, and we turn the quotes quickly. That's unique. We turn the quotes quickly. Payroll, health, and benefits, tech solutions. We manage people's IT, 24/7 help desk, disaster recovery.
We can manage their website. Safety, security. You don't need a CIO. You don't need a CTO. You outsource it to us. In the payments space, been in the business since 2002, processed $5.5 billion worth of payments. Currently, that money's going to other banks because we didn't own a bank historically. If I move 10% of those customers into our bank, that's $550 million of deposits at a low cost, and I could put the money in same day from the payment side. Same thing on payroll. I could put the money in the account same day, lock the account down, pay the employees. We can do what others can't do. This is part of our plan. It's already approved. I don't have to go through approvals. All this stuff is set in motion.
The Newtek Advantage will become a market-recognized tool and solution that our clients ultimately will not want to be without. Loan loss reserves, 470 basis points at the last quarter. That's like six to seven times what an average bank would be. Merchant business, $16 million of pre-tax income. Keep your eye on this for the call. I think you're going to see some nice growth here. Analysts don't even talk about this. I have no idea why, but they just don't. We're going to talk about this. Important, diversified earnings. You get diversified earnings streams across the board. It is not just coupon and deposits, and when you look at a typical bank, the analysts look at the charge-offs and deposits and nothing else. They're like finished for the day, and the way banks grow is they buy other banks and they cut the cost.
I just think that trade, I think that ship might have primarily sailed. We have a totally different model, and frankly, we just keep doing what we're going to do, keep delivering results. Slide number 20 talks about additional hires, particularly for deposits. We feel very good about our ability to open up deposits remotely, particularly business customers. I got to tell you, you may not realize this, but a lot of banks will not open a business account unless you go into a branch physically. We'll have some projections at our upcoming call on November the 6th for 2025 and the remainder of the year. We're currently forecasting a $1.95 midpoint for this year, range $1.85-$2.05. You know, that's on a $13.5 stock price. Growing investor interest, doing conferences like this. I'll be at KBW in two weeks. I'll be at Piper. We're out there.
We're educating people. We are on the radar screen. Our closest comp, stock symbol LOB, Live Oak Bank, technology-enabled bank, great story. But I strongly suggest look at the ROAs, look at the ROTCEs, look at the efficiency ratios, and importantly, look at the asset size. I lost that. Live Oak Bank is in excess of $10 billion. Look at our earnings that we announced this quarter versus theirs. They had to do $1.6 billion of assets in the quarter to get to that number. There's just a totally different business model. You know, and they're obviously P/E ratio is, I think it's about 17. I'm going to open this up to Q&A. I've got a little under five minutes. Some of you know us, maybe some of you don't. You can always get to me, bslone@newtekone.com. I appreciate the attendance this morning.
For 8 o'clock, it's a pretty full room. Anybody have any questions?
This is a great presentation, so I'm going to share all of this. We've done an enormous number of changes over the last several years: the BDC event, holding, the acquisition, the R&D, the cost systems in place. Is everything now put together and working, or do you still need to kind of, you know, get everything up and running with all the changes you made? You know, when are you going to be operating at peak?
I hope this doesn't scare you. We're in the second inning. The best is yet to come. This is early, and the nice thing is, you know, we've been in these businesses for a long period of time. You know, as the founder CEO, I have a passion for this. I still work 70-80 hours a week. I love it.
It's all about building something that's useful and relevant and is going to be a market example. So we have a lot more work to do. But the things I told you today are functional and they work. We just got to get really better at it. We don't want to be good. We want to be great. And that's where we're going. So everything I'm telling you about, it exists. Better integration, better training of staff, getting staff used to the model, getting the story out there with a customer base. Like we really haven't outbounded to the existing customer base yet. There's a lot of rules and regs in banking, so we got to make sure that that's tight. I will sit here and tell you very comfortably that our business plan and model is intact.
I've had people question, "Oh, they're never going to let you do this." No, that's not true. First of all, they're letting us do it. We are doing it. It is happening. Trust me, if they didn't like it, we wouldn't be growing loans and we'd be shut down. We have a duty to report that. Now, why do the regulatory authorities look at Newtek? We are serving all communities in 50 states in the lending area, 30% of our loans in a minority and women-owned business. Not because we're trying. They just happen to be qualified and they're good borrowers and we accept them. That's useful. And we're doing what others aren't set up to do, won't do, or can't do. It's a very valuable infrastructure. Thank you. Yes.
Are you looking at future acquisitions or what's your right now you're just trying to kind of, like you suggested, basically got going and put together and never have?
I can't match those returns buying somebody else's garbage unless it's really cheap. And we're not at really cheap. In addition to that, 98% of the industry, the only trade they've got in their bag is to buy. So we're not there. And I'm not even sure we're going to get there. So we're going to do this organically, but we have things built that would take an institution five years from a dead start to put in place and have to train people to do it.
So I understand that you just said you will run on acquired. So how are you going to cut the old tax? I got some emails this morning about all this acquisition.
How are you going to cut the cost?
Well, I'm doing it now. And I've had analysts say to my face, "I don't believe you." Right to my face. And I was fine. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to prove you wrong." So this is the only way to do it. And by the way, it's quarter to quarter. It's day to day. And just keep putting up the numbers. And this is something that, you know, I've done publicly for 24 years. I'm comfortable with it. We build businesses. We don't build stock price. The market takes care of that. But you can't ignore the dividend and you can't ignore the earnings. It's just going to happen. That's just my two cents. But I appreciate the comment. Right now, the bet is don't pass. I got six analysts.
They all think five and a half to six is fine. They all have a neutral rating. They're all at 13. Usually, that's kind of an interesting signal, but, you know, I don't know what to tell you. And I love them all. I talk to them like I talk to you. Thank you. Hi, I'm so sorry. Our next presentation starts in four minutes, so. Okay. If you have any additional questions, if you could take those outside. Thank you so much. I'll be outside. Thanks.