Welcome to the Wintrust Financial Corporation's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. A review of the results will be made by Edward Wehmer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tim Crane, President, David Dykstra, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, and Richard Murphy, Vice Chairman and Chief Lending Officer. As part of their reviews, the presenters may make reference to both the earnings press release and the earnings release presentation. Following their presentation, there'll be a formal question-and-answer session. During the course of today's call, Wintrust management may make statements that constitute projections, expectations, beliefs, or similar forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated or projected in any such forward-looking statement.
The company's forward-looking assumptions that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the information discussed during this call are detailed in our earnings press release and in the company's most recent Form 10-K and any subsequent filings on file with the SEC. Also, our remarks may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings press release and earnings release presentation include a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the nearest comparable GAAP financial measure. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Edward Wehmer. You may begin.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our first quarter earnings call. With me as usual are Dave Dykstra; Dave Stoehr, our Chief Financial Officer; Kate Boege, our General Counsel; Tim Crane, President; and Rich Murphy, who runs credit. The new year means a new and different format than we had in the past. I'm going to give some general comments regarding our results, go to Tim Crane, who's going to discuss the balance sheet. He will turn over to Dave Dykstra for more of an analysis of our income statement, and Rich Murphy's going to give us an overview on credit. Back to me for some summary comments to talk about the future. We'll have time for questions.
For the quarter overview, assisted by a strong mortgage quarter, good core loan growth in line with previous guidance, PPP loan production, legging into excess liquidity utilization, and sizable reserve release, we're able to put up a record quarter. [audio distortion] $153.1 million, or $2.54 per common diluted share, an ROA of 1.38%, an ROE of 15.8%, [audio distortion] in the previous quarter. Our net interest margin was constant at 2.54%, while net interest income was up $2.5 million from Q4, despite the fact that we had two fewer days in Q1 from Q4. Right about now, each day is worth approximately $3 million of earnings. Core growth and investment activity was done late in the quarter. This bodes well for Q2 of this year. Our loan growth was excellent.
PPP Round 3 totaled $1.4 billion and helped offset paydowns and forgiveness on PPP Rounds 1 and 2, $667 million. We stated previously that our strategy was to grow the current low-rate environment, relying on mortgage income to enhance earnings until net interest income could catch up. We've been successful on both fronts. Asset growth in the quarter, approximately $600 million over Q4, and $7 billion over the first quarter to 2020. This still remains our strategy today. We accomplished this through organic growth. I'm going to turn it over to Tim Crane, who's going to talk about our balance sheet.
Thanks, Ed. With respect to the quarter-end balance sheet, several items worth highlighting. Ed mentioned the asset growth of just over $600 million. Loans were up $1.1 billion, roughly half related to PPP loan balances. More importantly, the other half, or just over $500 million , represents core loan growth. Excluding PPP volumes, this represents approximately 7.1% annualized loan growth in line with the consistent loan growth target of mid to high single digits on a percentage basis. It's important to note that the loan growth was strongest at the end of the quarter, and that the period-end loan balances were over $500 million higher than the quarterly average loan balance, indicating strong momentum into the second quarter. Some of this detail is on page eight of the earnings release presentation.
The growth was spread nicely across all loan categories, and pipelines remain strong for all of our major businesses. We continue to benefit from the addition of clients from the halo effect of our PPP efforts, and we're starting to see more client activity as the pandemic impacts begin to recede. Deposit growth for the quarter was $780 million, a majority of the increase in non-interest-bearing deposits. Deposit costs continue to fall, primarily as we reprice term deposits. For the quarter, the rate paid on interest-bearing deposits fell 6 basis points to 45 basis points. This is a trend we expect will continue in the coming quarters. Like many institutions, we've seen very significant deposit growth and are managing the flows carefully. However, we view stable low-cost deposits as a strength of our company and will continue to grow those deposits related to client relationships.
Finally, on deposits, we've been opportunistic about securing some low-cost, longer-term funding for the bank. With respect to the securities portfolio, we remain very liquid. We did deploy some liquidity in the first quarter as investment securities increased by approximately $1 billion. As discussed on prior calls, we have done this on a measured basis, mindful of the possibility of rising rates and wary of locking in low long-term yields. Approximately half the securities were purchased toward the end of the quarter at a rate above 2% as yields moved up in March from lower levels earlier in the quarter. To get a sense of the timing and the impact of the securities addition, the period-end securities were $743 million higher than the average balance for the quarter, and had the securities been on the balance sheet for the entire quarter, the margin would've been approximately 3 basis points higher.
Despite the addition of $1 billion in securities during the quarter, our duration remains approximately flat from a year ago, and we remain well-positioned for rising rates. Lastly, as a result of the strong earnings, both the Tier 1 capital ratios and the CET1 ratio improved from the prior quarter end and remain appropriate given the conservative risk profile of the bank. Overall, from the standpoint of the balance sheet, we are watching deposit flows carefully, particularly those related to PPP loans. The main message is continued good growth, which accelerated into the end of the quarter and will help future periods. Dave?
All right. Thanks, Tim. As Ed mentioned, I will cover the notable changes throughout the entire income statement. I'll start with net interest income. For the first quarter of 2021, our net interest income totaled $261.9 million. That was an increase of $2.5 million compared to the fourth quarter of last year, and a slight increase of $452,000 as compared to the first quarter of 2020. The $2.5 million increase in net interest income, compared to the prior quarter, was primarily due to the earning asset growth and increased PPP fee accretion. As Ed mentioned, that's despite two less days in the first quarter, which are worth about $3 million per day. Earning good NII growth.
As far as margin goes, it was unchanged from the prior quarter as the rate on interest-bearing liabilities declined 7 basis points in the first quarter as compared to the prior quarter, which was effectively offsetting a 6 basis point decline in the yield on total earning assets. The 6 basis point decline on the yield on earning assets was primarily due to an 8 basis point decline in the loan yields, which were partially offset by a 3 basis point increase on the yield on liquidity management assets. The decrease in the rates paid on interest-bearing liabilities in the first quarter as compared to the prior quarter was primarily due to a 6 basis point decline in the interest-bearing deposits due to lower repricing of our time deposits. As Tim mentioned, we expect that to continue.
PPP loan fee accretion increased as the company recognized $19.2 million of PPP loan fee accretion in the first quarter. That compared to $16.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Additionally, as Tim Crane mentioned, the late quarter deployment of liquidity into investment securities and the back-end loaded loan growth during the quarter resulted in over $1.2 billion of period-end investment and loan balances exceeding the aggregate average balances of those categories, which we expect, again, to favorably impact net interest income in the second quarter. The margin is impacted still by excess liquidity on the balance sheet. We'll be cautious about deploying that and prudent as far as that deployment goes. There certainly is some upside there if we can deploy additional overnight liquidity into loans and longer-term investments.
Turning to the provision for credit losses, similar to many other banks that have reported this quarter, Wintrust recorded a negative provision for credit losses of $45.3 million, compared to a positive provision of $1.2 million and $53 million in the prior year-ago quarters respectively. The negative provision was driven by a reduction in the allowance for credit losses, primarily due to improvements in the macroeconomic forecast, including improvements in the commercial real estate price index and the BAA corporate credit spreads. Additionally, the company saw improvement in the loan portfolio characteristics during the quarter, including decreases in the COVID-19-related loan modifications and improving loan risk rating migration. Slides 13-1 8 of the presentation deck provided on our website provides additional details about the improvement in non-performing loans, the modified loans, and the macroeconomic forecasts that I referred to.
Rich Murphy will cover that in greater detail as far as specific credit quality metrics. Turning to the non-interest income, non-interest expense and income tax. In the non-interest income section, our wealth management revenue increased $2.5 million to a record $29.3 million, compared to $26.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. It was up 13% from the $25.9 million recorded in the year-ago quarter. This revenue source has been positively impacted by the higher equity valuations, which impact a portion of the managed asset accounts. Another great record quarter for our wealth management team. Mortgage banking was seasonally strong due to the continuing low rate environment. It actually increased 31%, or $26.7 million, to a record level of $113.5 million in the first quarter from $86.8 million posted in the prior quarter. It was up a very strong 135% from the first quarter of last year.
The company originated approximately $2.22 billion of mortgage loans for sale in the first quarter, down slightly from the $2.35 billion in the prior quarter and up $1 billion from the mortgages that we originated in the first quarter of last year. The increase in the mortgage revenue for the quarter resulted from an increase in the value of the mortgage servicing rights related to fair value assumptions equal to $18 million in the first quarter as compared to a decrease of $5.2 million in the prior quarter. We also had a slight increase in production revenues. Production margin expanded 20 basis points. We had an increase in the value of the capitalization of retained mortgage servicing rights, due primarily to higher valuations on newly originated loans.
The company also retained $322 million of mortgage loan production for investment during the first quarter and earmarked approximately $160 million of the quarter-end pipeline for future investments. Quarterly, during the first quarter, the company did not record gain on sale revenue associated with slightly over $480 million worth of loans retained or designated for future retention. Assuming a gain on sale margin of about 3.5% ±, the foregone production revenue for the first quarter would exceed $15 million. We, of course, will recognize the benefit of those loans by retaining them on the balance sheet through improved net interest income in future quarters. Obviously, mortgage production remained very strong during the current quarter due to the high refi activity. Looking forward, we expect originations in the second quarter to be another very strong quarter, but we do expect refinance activity to decline a bit.
Somewhat offsetting that anticipated slowdown in refinance activity will be an expected pickup in the mortgage volume related to home purchasing activity. Net, we believe origination volumes may be down somewhat from the first quarter, but we really need to see how the purchase market activity materializes. Recently, applications have increased in the purchase market, so we'll have to see how that plays out. Table 15 of our first quarter earnings press release provides a detailed compilation of the components of origination volumes by delivery channel and also the mortgage banking revenue. Turning to other non-interest income. It totaled $15.7 million in the first quarter, down approximately $4 million from the $19.7 million recorded in the prior quarter. There are two primary reasons for the decline.
One was we had $2.4 million of lower swap fee revenue and $1.7 million of lower BOLI income, primarily related to $1 million less of BOLI investment returns supporting deferred compensation benefits and $800,000 of death benefits that we had in the prior quarter that fortunately did not recur this quarter. I should note that the $1 million decrease in the BOLI earnings related to deferred compensation benefits resulted in a similar offsetting decrease in salaries expense during the quarter. Going to non-interest expense categories. Non-interest expenses totaled $286.9 million in the first quarter, up approximately $5 million, or 2%, from the $281.9 million recorded in the prior quarter. There are a handful of categories that account for the majority of the change from the prior quarter. The first being salaries and employee benefits, which increased $9.7 million as compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
That $9.7 million increase is comprised of $9 million in commissions and incentive compensation increases and $3.2 million in employee benefit expense increases, which was partially offset by a $2.5 million decline in salaries expense associated with higher deferred salary costs associated with strong loan originations, including PPP, and the aforementioned reduction in deferred compensation related to BOLI products. The increase in commissions and incentive compensation is primarily due to higher expenses associated with the company's long-term incentive program and higher commissions related to its wealth and mortgage management businesses. The increase in employee benefits is primarily related to higher payroll taxes, which tend to be elevated in the first quarter. Occupancy expenses totaled $20 million in the fourth quarter, increasing only $0.3 million from the $19.7 recorded in the prior quarter.
Although this increase is nominal, I wanted to note that the first quarter of 2021 included a $1.4 million impairment charge associated with the planned closure of an additional branch location, compared to a similar $1.4 million impairment charge associated with planned closures of branch locations that we discussed last quarter. Advertising and marketing expenses in the fourth quarter decreased by $1.3 million when compared to the prior quarter. The decrease relate primarily to a lower level of digital advertising campaigns and printing costs in the first quarter. Miscellaneous expenses in the first quarter declined by $5 million. The first quarter of 2021 included a $937,000 reversal of contingent purchase price consideration related to previous acquisition of mortgage operations. That compared to $6.6 million of additional expense in the fourth quarter.
We don't expect that to have any significant impact going forward as the time period for those earn-out payments are shortening up, and we would expect that to have very little impact going forward. There was a big swing from last quarter to this quarter. The company also recognized a $3.8 million expense related to the impairment of certain capitalized software costs as we evaluate the remaining useful lives of certain software systems that we have been replacing. Other than expense categories just discussed, no other category had any noteworthy changes from the prior amounts recorded in the fourth quarter. If we look at the net overhead ratio for the first quarter, it was down marginally to 0.90% from the 1.12% recorded in the fourth quarter, and from the full year 2020 net overhead ratio of 1.05%.
The first quarter's net overhead ratio benefited from a strong balance sheet growth and strong mortgage banking results. Moving on to income tax expense. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 25.97%, so roughly 26%, which is in the range that we normally would expect of 26%-27%. With that, I will turn it over to Rich Murphy to give some comments on credit.
Thanks, Dave. As Tim and Dave noted earlier, the first quarter was very solid from a number of perspectives. First, from a loan growth perspective, net of PPP, we saw core loan growth of $515 million or 7.1% on an annualized basis. This growth was seen across the portfolio, but we saw very solid performances from Wintrust Life Finance, which grew by $250 million or 18% annualized, and commercial loans, which grew by $175 million or 8% annualized, most of which closed, as Tim pointed out, at the very end of the quarter. A couple of additional notes on loan growth. Pipelines continue to look very strong. Total core pipeline of C&I and CRE loans was at $1.4 billion and the highest level we've seen in five months.
The core loan momentum that we have seen has been positively affected by our execution of our PPP program, which has been very strong, including this most recent round, which I'll address in a moment. Secondly, the granularity of the portfolio. One of our hallmarks in the credit portfolio has been the diversification across a number of products. Conceptually, we have always focused on a composition of 1/3 core commercial and industrial loans, 1/3 commercial real estate, 1/3 from our non-bank niche products. The largest niche category we have is also our oldest, which is premium finance. This includes FIRST Insurance Funding, which funds commercial insurance premiums and currently totals $4 billion, including our Canadian operations. Wintrust Life Finance, which funds life insurance premiums, currently totals $6 billion. Both of these portfolios have performed very well during the pandemic.
Wintrust Life Finance has grown 17% year-over-year. FIRST Insurance Funding is up 14% year-over-year. We have also seen solid growth from our leasing, mortgage warehouse, and franchise teams. Finally, we added a new slide, page 15 of the presentation, which details the geographic diversification in our portfolio. We will always have a Chicago-Milwaukee nexus. However, as this slide illustrates, our various business lines provide us with meaningful amount of credit outside of our primary markets. From a credit quality perspective, improvement was evidenced across the portfolio as the economy continues its post-pandemic growth. This can be seen in a number of ways. First, non-performing loans were reduced from $127 million at year-end to $99 million at quarter end. Even more striking is the 50% reduction in NPLs from nearly $200 million on June 30th, 2020.
We recorded $13 million of net charge-offs during the quarter, or 17 basis points, which is up slightly from the fourth quarter, but in line with the previous four quarters. We also saw a 26% reduction in COVID-19 modified loans from $345 million to $254 million during the quarter, as outlined on slide 16 of the presentation. The majority of these remaining modified loans are primarily in our select high-impact industries, which is detailed on slide 17. Finally, credit risk ratings continue to show a material positive migration, a trend which has accelerated since the third quarter of last year. Finally, on PPP, as outlined on page 12, we have now funded over 20,000 PPP loans to over 14,000 different borrowers totaling $4.8 billion. This includes over 7,700 PPP loans totaling over $1.3 billion during the first quarter.
Our median loan size through the PPP process was around $60,000, and we continue to focus our efforts on our existing customers, low to moderate income areas, non-profits, and identified prospects. During this most recent round of PPP, we heard from a number of customers that they could use additional help in the submission process. As a result, we established nine PPP resource centers in LMI areas to assist customers with the PPP process. This effort has been very successful, and the feedback from the community has been overwhelmingly positive. Regarding the PPP forgiveness process, we continue to make good progress as we have now processed forgiveness applications on over 60% of our 2020 PPP loans, compared to 46% for the rest of the industry. That concludes my comments, and I'll turn it back to Ed for a wrap-up.
Thanks, Murph. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, our strategy has been to grow the balance sheet during this period of low rates and use our structural hedges, the largest of which being our mortgage area. Above the loss net interest income, so such thing as balance sheet growth, offset the income loss due to the lower rates. PPP loans were an unexpected benefit to add to the strategy. All the above is to be accomplished by enhancing our asset sensitivity position in anticipation of eventual higher rates. The excellent balance sheet growth, asset growth of $7 billion year-over-year, and loan growth of $5.3 billion, $2 billion of which was organic and $3.3 billion of PPP year-over-year. We experienced, as Tim laid out, it has been done totally on an organic basis.
The acquisition market has been sleepy to date, but appears to be opening up a bit based on our inbound calls we have received lately. As always, we'll take what the market gives us. We hate to lose some money doing stupid, but it appears that other people are getting reality again. Loan pipelines, as mentioned, remain strong in all categories. Our asset sensitivity position is getting close to where we'd like it to be. We continue to leg into investment of our excess liquidity, taking advantage of market blips. We're in no rush to be totally invested, as locking into lousy long-term rates is not our plan.
Credit is remarkably good, as Rich said. Thanks to our consistently conservative credit underwriting standards, our diversified loan portfolio, the work of both our lending line and credit folks, NPAs and NPL dollars are lower than they were at the start of the pandemic. Wealth management area is delivering strong results with assets under administration growing $2 billion in the quarter to $32.1 billion, and fees growing $2.5 million in the quarter. Assets under administration was obviously helped by strong markets. Growth in strong new account totals in all distribution channels also aided this growth. Our treasury area was up $2 million, I think, Tim?
Which shows that the halo effect on PPP has worked very well for us. We probably have 40%, probably 50% of the halos in now. We got mostly start with deposits and the loans are coming. That aids to our pipeline and doing extremely well with that. To date, our plan is working. We continue to grow in order to bring this plan to fulfillment. Organic growth should remain strong. Take advantage of opening the acquisition market where it makes sense. In short, I'm proud of the group. I like where we stand. Continue to capitalize what the market is giving us, and maintain a laser focus on credit. As always, you can be sure our best efforts, and we appreciate your support. Now I'll answer some questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Our first question comes from Jon Arfstrom with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thanks. Morning, everyone.
Hi, Jon. How are you?
Hey, good. How about you?
Is it snowing in Minneapolis? It's snowing in Chicago.
It snowed here yesterday. Question, I don't know, maybe Rich or Tim, on the loan growth pipelines, can you talk a little bit about why you think you were so strong at period end? Excluding PPP, if you could touch on that core C&I and core commercial real estate, if you're starting to see loan demand broaden out.
Yeah. It's interesting. The timing is one that I don't have a real good answer for. We had a really strong end of quarter in the fourth quarter as well, as people closed on their financing right before year-end. I think there was a little bit of a hangover from that in the first part of the year. Clearly, as we saw good pipelines building, and we knew that it was coming. Through January and February, for whatever reason, there was a little bit of a hangover going forward.
Jon, that's been our modus operandi for probably the last eight quarters. We've always built it up at the end of the quarter and then started again and built it up. I think we've taken the whip to them. I'm not sure. The last eight quarters, we've had that phenomenon.
I'm just curious if this is all pulling through. I guess that's the question, because you guys seem a little bit ahead of your peers in terms of the growth that you put up. I guess that's kind of the genesis of the question, yeah.
Yeah. I think that's a broader answer to that. I think that we have seen, and you've seen this really over the course of the last year. We had always talked kind of this aspirational nature of being Chicago's bank. I think what the last year through the PPP execution, and some of the acquisitions that have gone on in the Chicago market, namely MB Fifth Third and CIBC, have really kind of seen us become the emerging C&I bank, mid-market bank. We have just seen a lot of new opportunities come over where customers were very frustrated by the inability of their existing bank to execute on their PPP, to get answers during the pandemic.
Maybe they were just kind of roughed up a little bit during a downturn, and they were trying to find maybe a different bank that might look at their company a little bit differently. There's just a host of reasons that we saw. The net effect is that we have just really had a much better time being able to get a seat at the table when a company is going out to the market, and that our ability to execute both on the treasury side and on the credit side. We have been able to pull through quite a lot of these opportunities. Finally, your question as it relates to do we see sort of an uptick in overall levels of funding?
I do think as the economy starts to open up and expand and people start to deploy all the liquidity, and we are seeing people starting to look for greater credit availability and expanding out lines. I think that as we go through the balance of the year here, you'll start to see some greater usage. Generally speaking, pretty positive.
We think we're going to roar out of this pandemic issue. I think the economy is, and e verybody thinks it's going to roar out. We're very well prepared for that. I think it's somewhat of a reputational issue for us. Reputation is wonderful, and people are looking to us to help them grow. There you have it.
Okay. That's helpful. Kind of the margin calculus. I think the message you're sending to us is that you have a little bit more room on funding costs. You're going to have a bit of a step up because of the quarter-end securities purchases. You've got some loan growth. I guess the question is, with the growth that you're expecting, are you sending the message that the margin erosion is really over for you, and we should see some margin expansion as the loan growth comes in?
Well, all things considered, yes.
Costs adjusted.
All things considered, yes. Who knows where rates are going to go, what's going to happen. If rates go up, we've got that beach ball ready to fly, man. If rates go down, we still have some vulnerabilities there. I saw a projection the other day that national debt is going to double GDP over the next five years. Just crazy. With all the cash that's out there, rates have got to go up. I don't care what anybody says. It just doesn't work any other way. We're very well- positioned in that regard as we continue to build and deploy. The plan has always been to grow through this, to use the mortgages and other means, some derivatives we put on early on in the pandemic, rates were really low, to get us through this.
As I said, to get the net interest income to make up the difference when mortgages fall off. We know they'll fall off. I think we're well- positioned to do that. PPP loans were a godsend in terms of additional revenue. That's just more we have to make up. We have to continue to grow through this, Jon. I think the margin is basically, in this environment, has bottomed out, and there's a good upside to it. We're able to execute on closing the loans, getting good pricing on the loans, and continue to grow through it. It won't be perfect. I'm sure we're not going to land when mortgages and the other things fall off and rates go up. It won't be a perfect analysis. It won't line up perfectly, I mean, but I think we'll get there as long as mortgages can stay high.
Do you agree, Dave?
Yeah. No, I think that's right. I think we said last time we thought it sort of bottomed out, and we thought we'd put some liquidity to work and grow through it. As Ed says, the key is to grow through it. Rich and Ed indicated why they think it's up as far as our loan growth, which I agree with. I also think we have a very diversified loan mix, so I think that that helps if some areas work when others aren't. I would think that the thoughts are that the margin is sort of stable to slightly up in the next quarter. A lot of it depends on how much liquidity flies in the door. We've got that $1.2 billion of period-end balance is greater than average balance. That just has to help.
We do have some repricing assets on the life, the premium finance side, that those are tied to one-year LIBORs. We also have the CD book really repricing now. Those kind of offset. I do think we've bottomed out, and I think that all things equal, that the margin should tick up just a bit.
Okay. Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.
It's like a ping pong ball underwater so far. We want to play with a beach ball, Jon.
Well, I'm waiting for it.
Been very patiently waiting for it.
Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Terry McEvoy with Stephens. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks. Good morning, everyone.
Hi, Terry. How are you?
Good. How you doing? Maybe first question, as we build out our mortgage projections and loan growth, should we think about, call it $200 million, $300 million of mortgages staying on the balance sheet? Is that the right way to think about that? Will that continue? What's the earn back on that? Is it roughly a year? Is my memory correct from the last call that you sacrificed the revenue this quarter, and it takes about a year to make that up?
On the earn back, Terry, if you look at our margins being right now 3%-3.5%, the loans are yielding sort of low 3%, the jumbo mortgages that we've kept. You give up the upfront gain on sale, and up 3% you earn it back over a year, basically. Four, five quarters sort of earn back period on loans. Obviously, if the loans stay out there, they keep paying dividends going forward. It's a little bit of a sacrifice of the current earnings for future earnings, which we think is prudent. We've sort of done 10% or so retention on the balance sheet, or a little bit more. We've done a couple of hundred million on average over the last couple of quarters. Probably a little less than that if volumes go down, $100 million or so going forward.
I think the 10% number actually, when we get up to close to $700 million-$800 million, we'll probably pull it back a little bit from an interest rate sensitivity standpoint. I would imagine $100 million would be a number we use going forward. It'd be a good one. The 10% was originally to get going and great yields on those, so it should help the margin. It'd help us long- term. I think you can count on maybe $100 million going forward at least next quarter, and we'll judge it after that where the market is. I think that's the plan.
Yeah. That $100 million is sort of the jumbo loans that we've kept on our books. We do have some that we originate for the portfolio that are variable rate, et cetera, that are just normal course of business. It may be just slightly more than that, but the extra $100 million is sort of what Ed's referring to as far as the jumbos, going forward.
Okay. As a follow-up question, Ed, last quarter, at an industry event, you talked about M&A and interest for potentially larger deals and maybe moving out of your core markets. I was hoping you could just update us on your thoughts there and maybe any feedback you heard since making those comments. Thank you.
It was funny. We always take what the market gives us, and it appeared that the market was giving people these no premium deals out there. When we felt our stock price going back, it was appropriate to kind of throw our hat in the ring and just basically chum the water, if you will, so like everybody else . It resulted in a couple of heres and theres conversations, but nothing really. Market's moved away from that, and it really doesn't make any sense right now even to consider it, given the premiums people want to pay. Not that we wouldn't sign anyone to do a market deal. We'll talk to them, but it appears that that opportunity may have come and gone, at least for now. We're still willing to do it if it makes sense.
We're going to continue to fill in here in Chicago, both organically and through acquisitions like you've seen us do in the past, if in fact they make sense. I would discount my chumming exercise didn't really come up with any fish. We're still available if anybody wants to talk. Our market here in Chicago, we have plenty of room to build and grow. Same for Milwaukee. We're going to concentrate on that. If here's the market still giving us organic growth, we'll concentrate on that, and we'll do opportunistic deals as they come along. Make sense?
It does. I appreciate that. Thanks, Ed, and thanks, everyone.
You're welcome.
Our next question comes from David Long with Raymond James. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone.
Hey, David.
Hi, David.
Looking at the expense side of the equation, revenue growth seems to be going pretty well and isn't usually an issue with you guys. Looking at the expense side, just curious what type of growth rate we should expect on your expenses, especially in a revenue environment where you still have some headwinds on the net interest margin. Are there any plans to try to rationalize any expenses given maybe some of the margin pressures? Just want to get a little bit of color on how you're thinking about operating expense growth here.
We always look at rationalizing expenses, but in that constant is it's hard. Branch closures. We're a growth company. You have to spend money to grow. Dave, you want to?
Yeah. We've had them. We've announced 10 branch closures and three sales of small branches last quarter and then another branch closure this quarter. We're constantly looking at that, where there might be overlap or underutilization of facilities. It's kind of an interesting question as far as doing the expense growth, because with a mortgage business as large as ours, as revenues go up and down there, so goes the expenses sometimes. You almost have to look at it, ex mortgages. Ex mortgages, we would expect the expense growth to stay relatively contained. We are looking at the branch network all the time and places where we can save money. As we had in prior quarters, we had some of these contingent purchase price payments that we had to expense. As I said on my comments, those should be subsiding and not material going forward.
That should help. We're watching our headcount and those sorts of things. I would think it would stay relatively contained. As you know, though, in the second and third quarters, the expenses tick up a little bit because of our sponsorships of Major League Baseball and some what has in the past been general outdoor festivals and community events that we sponsor as a community bank. I expect them to tick up a little bit in the second quarter. Payroll taxes will be less in the second and the third and the fourth quarter than they were in the first quarter, and there are some other offsets that go either way. I would expect that we can contain the expenses. If we have really good growth, I would expect them to go up, but not nearly as fast as the revenue side of the equation.
Maintaining the net overhead ratio at levels that we think are appropriate is what we focus on. Sometimes you got to spend money to make money, but we'd expect the revenue growth to be faster than the expense growth.
One of the things on the expense growth was before the pandemic is we went to what we call Deep Blue , which is our enhancement of our digital products. Ed mentioned this in the last call. We always had really good digital products, but we saw going forward, the overall base that we could build off of wasn't really going to support it going forward. We took it away from our core processor. Now they've spent a lot of money, and there's still more money to be spent on that to make sure that base is correct and we can build and always give better products and better delivery systems. We always had great products, and we always do have great products and great delivery systems, as indicated by the number of Greenwich awards we walked away with last year. Seven, I think, a number of them were national.
We're proud of that. We've got to invest for the future and to have a platform that's going to keep up with, I think there's going to continue to be a meteoric acceleration of digital availability of products out there with payment systems and things like that. We have to be there at the top of our game. Although the timing sucked, we did it anyhow. We're half pregnant. We're going to follow through, and that's part of it. I think if you remember, you had quoted that overhead ratio for us, David. We always said about 31.5% was pretty good. Probably lower that number to 130-135 on a regular basis for the margin. Hopefully it'll come back. In the meantime, that overhead ratio has dropped about as much as the margin, which helps. We're always looking. It's not linear.
That's one of the issues for you guys. You never know what we're doing or what we're coming up with. It's not linear for you in many ways. I know that's hard, but just how you go off of net overhead ratio and compare that to where the margin is with mortgages and car, and I think you can come up with the right number for us.
Right. No, I do appreciate the color and understand as a growth company, you do have to spend there. As a follow-up, Dave, you mentioned the mortgage business and you needing to kind of separate that out from your core. If you're looking at your mortgage and you say the production revenue comes down by $20 million in a given quarter, how would that immediately impact the expenses in that same quarter?
I'm not going to give a number per se, because it depends on how much-
Sure
production you've got to close. You've got some production in the pipeline, and you've got to close that. It also sort of depends on the outlook. If you really think rates are going up and staying there, and it's not just a seasonal thing, then you've got to adjust. We do have contract labor. We do have some overseas contracts out there that are variable. We do have overtime. All those things can go away immediately. You'll get some benefit immediately, and then it may take another month or two to let that production work its way through the pipeline before you get the full benefits. We sort of look at it, in today's environment, your efficiency ratio on that business may be in the 60% range because you're going in all cylinders.
If that volume falls, those efficiency and margins come in a little bit, those efficiency ratios are probably more in the 75%-80% range. I think if you think about the mortgage business, sort of between 60% and 80%, depending on high volumes and low volumes, that's maybe how to think of the business.
Excellent. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate that color.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.
Good morning.
Hi, Nathan.
Thinking about the overall balance sheet size going forward. With PPP forgiveness ongoing, are you guys expecting any downdrift with this excess liquidity that's been building over the last several quarters, or are you guys kind of planning around these balances pretty much sticking for the foreseeable future?
Well, that's kind of a $64,000 question. What's going to happen to liquidity? Is the money going to run out? Is this all PPP dough, or is it going to stay in the bank? Tim, do you want to respond to that?
I think what clients are telling us, Nathan, is that those balances are going to sort of stick until they get clarity on forgiveness, which is both at Wintrust and other banks has been slow in coming. We're getting good core growth from the halo effect with new clients. Clearly, some of that PPP money may be moving out of the bank as clients get more interested in investing it. If that happens, it should be followed by loan opportunities for us as well as that liquidity gets depleted. It's a little bit of a bad news, good news story if it happens.
I would've thought we were run off already, Nathan, but doesn't seem to be as indicated. We're making it up with the halo effect and the treasury numbers. Tim, do you have the treasury numbers here?
Yeah. One of the things when we've been asked about the halo effect is, how do you know it's real and where does it manifest itself? Just looking at gross treasury revenues over the last four months, we're up 15%, 16%, and we know our people are challenged to keep up with the new installations and new additions. We're very encouraged that not only are we getting these deposit balances, well, hopefully on a permanent basis, but that we're getting treasury business that will last and ultimately credit opportunities that will last. We feel pretty good about it.
Got it. Understood. Just changing gears and thinking about provisioning over the next quarter or two, I know it's difficult under a CECL framework to predict, but just given the loan growth outlook, still in that mid to high single-digit range, how should we think about providing for growth, if at all, over the next quarter or two from a provisioning standpoint?
Well, for growth, I think if you kind of went back to more humble, non-CECL times where charge-offs were fairly stable, our provision was probably in the $10 million-$12 million-$15 million range. I would think in normal times, if the macroeconomic scenarios and credit quality stayed stable, you'd probably be in that $10 million, $12 million range for the normal times. I can't predict what the macroeconomic scenarios are going to be. If they continue to improve, then obviously, the allowance goes down a little bit more. Right now, we think it's appropriate based upon what Moody's has, but we'll just have to see what those macroeconomic forecasts do. As far as growth goes, you can sort of look at our allowance to loan ratio and apply it to what you think the net growth is, and that should probably get you pretty close.
The portfolio appears I know that in April to date, the upgrade parade has continued, where when the pandemic started, a lot of downgrades, and that enters into the CECL calculation. There's a number of upgrades in the first quarter. Second quarter, we expect that trend to continue. If you look at that and you look at a better macroeconomic environment, you'd think that we may have another negative provision of year. I would always hope that we could have grown through it and not have to play the negative provision game, but just because it's like a yo-yo. You get sick of up, down, where it's going. I think credit overall is pretty good. It looks like the environment's getting better. When you think about provisioning going forward, that would tell you could have another release.
You never know. Anything can happen, and really, it goes in the big, bad black box and comes out. I think, if you look at our level of non-performers and just overall credit quality and understand the portfolio is actually even getting better, I think you have to take that into consideration. Hard to predict with CECL where you're going to end up. It's not like the old days when I could say where I want to end up. I can't do that anymore. I can't.
Got it. Makes sense. If I could just ask one more on capital. I apologize if it was in the release and I didn't catch it, but any share repurchases in the quarter? How do you guys think about buybacks over the next few quarters this year?
Yeah, no. We haven't been doing the buybacks with the stock price increased to where it's at. If the stock price stays in this range, we would not anticipate probably doing the buybacks now. We'll use that capital to support the loan growth and the like.
Okay, great. I appreciate you guys taking the questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris McGratty with KBW. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning. I think I know the answer to the question, but I'm going to ask anyway. Ed and Dave, the pace of securities buying, obviously yields have popped a bit. We've seen some peers be more aggressive in just deploying some of this. I apologize if I missed it, but any sense in terms of magnitude of whether $1 billion is the right purchase rate a quarter, or you would perhaps step it up?
Well, it really depends on the rates. I think that, I don't want to lock in the lousy rates. That's really the end of it. We can pulse into it as, I think rates are going to continue to move up, and we'll take advantage when they do. I think we've locked in probably after tax 1.5 on the deals we've done to date, all the way at 2.05 on assets after tax.
Yeah. When the rates popped up at the end of the quarter, the jumbo mortgage backs were yielding over 2%, and we thought that was an appropriate time to jump in. We did a little bit earlier in the quarter to replace runoff and add a little bit. Rates have kind of fallen back off a little bit, so we're being cautious, and that says at the lower rates, we probably aren't going to jump in. If you start to see the jumbos go north of 2% again, we may add to it some more.
Okay.
We don't have a specific number, Chris, that we're saying, we're going to do X. It really sort of depends on the rate environment.
It's a little worried too about what we talked about with one of the previous questions is, will liquidity actually stay? Every decision you make has to be tempered by that. We continue to grow every quarter, which gives us more ammo to deal with, and we'll deal with it as we go along based on loans, et cetera. We expect this to be opportunistic going forward and not be just programmatic and put it to work at any rate.
Longer term, your cash is roughly 10% of your earning assets. Where do you think that needs to be 12, 24 months out proportionally?
We've always sort of said 85%-90% loan-to-deposit, and then the liquidity sort of falls out of the equation there. I think if you go back to the first quarter of 2020, we were at 4%, and then we went and loaded up on liquidity, and it was like 8%, because we just didn't know what the heck was going to happen with the pandemic. I'd say if you were in the 4%, or 5%, 6% range, that's probably more normal, so to speak, if we can effectively lend out at that 85%-90% loan-to-deposit ratio.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press the star, then one key on your touch-tone telephone. Our next question comes from Brock Vandervliet with UBS. Your line is open.
Just tactically, in terms of expenses, obviously the last year didn't have the big seasonal ramp in ad spend. I'm assuming we should expect a lot of that to return here in the middle quarters, Q2, Q3.
I think it may not be to the full extent, depending on how many people are in the ballpark, et cetera, and how many of the outdoor community events happen that we historically have sponsored. We would expect the second and third quarters to increase this year, unlike last year.
Got it. Just going back to the prior question on how you're thinking on securities deployment, it sounds like that's more cautious given where rates are. You have this avenue open to you in terms of being able to just retain more on the jumbo resi side. Would you consider taking that up materially above the several hundred million a quarter if rates stay here just to use up some of that liquidity? Or you're happy where you're at?
I think we consider it. We're actually going to probably drop off a little now. Certainly, we consider rates going up a bit. We would consider deploying more into that avenue, that asset class. I think we need to kind of wean ourselves a little bit off of that, and just moderate our liquidity as well as we can, invest where we can, and leave some dry powder because I don't know about you guys, I just think we're going to come roaring out of this. You look at where the economy's expected to go, talk to your customers and all the pent-up demand they have. Supply chains have been so disrupted. You look what the government's spending.
It's just, you got to have higher rates, and maybe not where they should be, but I think you could pick up 40, 50 basis points on the tenure pretty quickly, in which case you'd want to do some investing there. Your margins will fall off a little bit and that'll help. Again, we're trying to land the plane here and get our margin back up at the same time as our other income kind of falls off from mortgages and other issues. It won't be perfect. Might be a little rocky on the way down because of the PPP loans have been wonderful now, but a year from now, we might go, "Oh, damn," we might be saying, "The stupid PPP." We're not because we don't have them.
We have to continue to go through this and be smart about it, invest where we can, and not do anything stupid just to try to, for the long- term, just to make up short-term earnings.
Yeah. Lastly, just in terms of the C&I growth that came in at the end of the quarter, I think that's very important. Is that all organic, so to speak, or is some of that from just share shifts from competitors?
Rich?
Well, it's both. I mean, we continue to win business and take share from our competitors, as well as seeing sort of existing customers grow. The answer would be both.
Okay. All right. Thanks for the color.
Yep.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Young with Truist Securities. Your line is open.
A lot of my questions have been asked and answered, but I wanted to just follow up on kind of coming out of the pandemic here and potentially reopening. Is there any more specific focus on hiring of lenders that we should expect a ramp of headed into kind of later this year? Or any new business lines that you would have a renewed focus on maybe at this point versus maybe where we were last year?
Yeah. I think there are still lenders out there in the marketplace that we have been. Last year, we brought in a couple of lenders from some of the acquired banks. We are looking at a couple of new niche opportunities that are there. That's really part of our whole story, is just trying to find those lenders who really bring a value add and can really try to continue our diversification of the portfolio. I think both of those are pretty important as we go into the rest of this year.
Okay, great. Then maybe just bigger picture. Ed, as you said, tried to chum the water on M&A for the bank side, but that didn't really materialize. Are you seeing any good opportunities maybe on the fee income side that could be a buffer to kind of a mortgage revenue falling off, maybe in trust or any new business lines?
Well, yeah. We're always looking. We added a couple last year. Murphy, you want to talk about the two new niches we added?
Yeah. Well, probably the one that gets to your question is the Money Services Group, which that was a big business for MB prior to the Fifth Third acquisition. Working the treasury side with the currency exchanges in Chicago, also in New York, and really gives us a nice opportunity to generate some fee income there. Not a lot of credit risk. I don't know if you'd add to that at all, Tim.
No, and we're a couple of quarters into that now with both good success and sort of a nice line of people waiting to do business with us, as there's a little bit of void in the market. We'll come with it, really nice treasury-related revenues that are significant, really by any measure.
We continue to look at a couple of interesting niches in the leasing area, and which we think are very opportunistic and have a really good opportunity for us to kind of expand that book as well. I think generally speaking, we're pretty positive right now.
On the wealth management business, it's kind of tough because as you know, in this market, everybody thinks they're the smartest guy in the world, and they want a lot of money. They not only want, they want to make what they've made every year, and you pay a lot of money for it. Doesn't make a lot of sense to do any of that. Our organic growth has been great. We have both institutionally and organically. We picked up, I think, over, I got the numbers here, but close to 1,000 accounts, new accounts in wealth management over the quarter from all streams, from all aspects of our distribution channels. I think our name recognition is helping in that regard, too. Half of it came through the branch networks, when people opened their new wealth management accounts.
Institutionally, we're getting much better, too, with the hiring of some very seasoned salespeople around the country. I would expect that to continue to grow organically, and we'll go from there. If you have any good ideas for niches, give us a call. We're all ears.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, and congrats on the quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I'd like to turn the call back to Ed Wehmer for closing remarks.
Thank you, everybody, for dialing in today. Have a great week, a great quarter, and we'll talk to you next quarter. If you have any other questions, please call Dave or me or Tim or Murph. We'll be happy to field them. Take care, and we'll talk to you soon.