Welcome to Wintrust Financial Corporation's second quarter and year-to-date 2021 earnings conference call. A review of the results will be made by Edward Wehmer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tim Crane, President, Dave Dykstra, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, and Richard Murphy, Vice Chairman and Chief Lending Officer. As part of the reviews, the presenters may make reference to both the earnings press release and the earnings release presentation. Following the presentations, there will be a formal question-and-answer session. During the course of today's call, Wintrust management may make statements that constitute projections, expectations, beliefs, or similar forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated or projected in any such forward-looking statements.
The company's forward-looking assumptions that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the information discussed 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 its non-GAAP financial measures to the nearest comparable GAAP financial measure. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference call over to Mr. Edward Wehmer.
Morning, everybody, welcome to our second quarter earnings call. As mentioned, with me are Dave Dykstra, our Chief Operating Officer, Dave Stoehr, our CFO, Kate Boege, our General Counsel, Tim Crane, President, and Rich Murphy, Vice Chairman of Credit. We're going to stick with the format we started in first quarter. You don't have to listen to me as much. You can listen to Dave is going to talk more. I'm going to give some general comments about our results. Dave Dykstra will give us a detailed analysis of the income statement. Tim Crane will talk about the balance sheet. Rich Murphy will provide an overview of credit. Back to me for some summary comments and thoughts about the future, and of course, time for questions.
Last April, at the start of the pandemic and the government massive response to it, including an elongated zero interest rate environment, I indicated Wintrust's approach would be to try to grow through it. Today, we've accomplished this goal, so far so good. Second quarter shows the strategy is working. All our growth to date has been organic since that period of time. Second quarter was all around billion-dollar quarter, I like to say. Assets, deposits, and core loans out of PPP loans grew by approximately $1 billion ± . Our growth prospects remain very good. The income for the quarter totaled $105 million, or $1.70 per common share. Year-to-date income was $258.3 million, or $4.24 per common share. Our reported net interest margin grew nine basis points to 2.63%, while net interest income was up $17.7 million in Q1.
If we back out the PPP loan income, the NIM grew 3 basis points, 2.49%. Core loan growth and investment activity was at the end of the quarter. This bodes well for quarter three. Period-end loans exceeded average loans in the quarter by over $800 million. We start Q3 with that in our back pocket. Asset loan growth was excellent. The pipelines in all our businesses remain very good. It's important to line usage is at an all-time low, about 39%. Normal average is closer to 50%, so we ought to go back there. We have another $1 billion of growth built in there. Credit quality got even better with net charge-offs totaling 2 basis points. NPLs and NPAs reached down. NPLs fell $11.3 million to $87.7 million, or 27 basis points, while NPAs fell $11.6 million to stand at 22 basis points total assets.
This resulted in a reserve release of about $15.3 million. Keep saying credit can't get better, it keeps getting better. It's hard to believe. The mortgage experienced an inevitable decline in the quarter. Dave will discuss this in detail. It should be known the wealth management has been immune to this growth story. Assets under administration grew $2 billion, or 5.3%, or 25% annualized in the quarter through both the overall market and new business. Our wealth management assets now total $34.2 billion as compared to $32.2 billion at the end of quarter one, $30 billion at the end of the prior year. Now I'll turn it over to Dave to review the income statement. I'm sorry.
This is Tim. I'll do the balance sheet maybe just for a second, and then turn it over to Dave. As Ed mentioned, in the quarter, assets grew $1.1 billion to $46.7 billion. A couple of items worth highlighting here. First, we experienced very strong core loan growth. Loans excluding PPP were up $1.2 billion in the quarter. Growth was spread nicely across loan categories, commercial real estate, and our niche businesses. Rich will share a little more detail in a few minutes. On a percentage basis, this $1.2 billion equates to 15% annualized growth. On a year-to-date basis, our loan growth, excluding PPP, is just over 11% annualized. As Ed mentioned, we believe these growth numbers are solid, and as during the quarter, we continued to see a decline in utilization.
The trend that in the coming quarters we hope will reverse and will help rather than hurt our loan growth activity. In addition, the pipelines remain strong as we see evidence of accelerating economic activity in our markets. With respect to PPP loans, we saw a reduction of $1.4 billion as the forgiveness activity accelerated materially during the quarter. Total PPP loans at the end of the quarter were $1.9 billion, down from a peak of $3.3 billion at the end of the first quarter. For the remainder of the year, we remain comfortable with our loan growth target of mid to high single digits on a percentage basis, but could see upside with either improved line of credit utilization or continued strong market conditions. Deposit growth for the quarter was $932 million, a majority of the growth in non-interest-bearing DDA. This represents annualized growth of nearly 10%.
Deposit costs continued to fall as we primarily reprice term deposits. For the quarter, the cost of interest-bearing deposits fell an additional 7 basis points to 38 basis points, a trend we expect to continue in the coming quarters. Notably, the non-interest-bearing DDA deposits now comprise a third of our total deposits. As we've noted in prior quarters, we're monitoring the significant deposit growth carefully. We view stable low-cost deposits as a strength of our company, and we'll continue to grow those deposits related to client relationships. Obviously, like many institutions, we also remain very liquid. With rates falling and at low levels for most of the quarter, we held our securities position essentially stable during the quarter. We remain cautious in our deployment of the excess liquidity, wary of locking in low long-term yields.
We continue to evaluate our options and view the appropriate deployment of this liquidity as an opportunity in future periods. Given where we think volumes will land going forward, we expect generally steady to improving net interest income in the coming quarters, despite lower levels of PPP accretion. Excluding PPP, expect a generally steady net interest margin. Capital levels essentially held steady during the quarter with strong growth and remain appropriate given the conservative risk profile of the bank. Overall, we remain well-positioned to benefit from either stronger economic activity or higher rates or both as we enter the second half of the year. Dave?
Hi. Thanks, Tim. As Ed indicated, I'll cover the noteworthy income statement categories, starting first with the net interest income. For the second quarter of 2021, net interest income totaled $279.6 million. That was an increase of $17.7 million as compared to the first quarter of 2021, and an increase of $16.5 million as compared to the second quarter of last year. The $17.7 million increase in net interest income, compared to the first quarter, was primarily due to earning asset growth, which was up 9% over the prior quarter, net interest margin expansion, and one additional day in the second quarter. For your reference, one additional day approximates $3 million of net interest income for Wintrust.
The net interest margin improved 9 basis points from the prior quarter to 2.63%, as the rate on interest-bearing liabilities declined 7 basis points in the second quarter as compared to the prior quarter. A 4 basis point increase on the yield on earning assets was partially offset by a 2 basis point decline in our net free funds contribution. The 4 basis point improvement in the yield on earning assets was comprised of a 3 basis point increase on the yield on loans and a 13 basis point increase in the yield on liquidity and management assets due to the deployment of a portion of our liquidity into investment securities late in the first quarter.
The decrease in the rate paid on interest-bearing liabilities was primarily due to a 7 basis point decrease in the rate paid on interest-bearing deposits, primarily due to the lower repricing of time deposits. PPP accretion, as we noted in the press release, was $25.2 million of recognition in the second quarter compared to $19.2 million in the first quarter of 2021 as forgiveness activity accelerated during the quarter. Additionally, as Tim noted, the margin was again affected by excess liquidity on the balance sheet, and we believe that the deployment of such liquidity when market conditions improve will be a tailwind to our net interest margin. 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 $15.3 million, compared to a directionally similar negative provision of $45.3 million in the prior quarter and $135.1 million provision expense recorded in the year-ago quarter. The negative provision was driven by a reduction in the allowance for credit losses, primarily due to improvements in macroeconomic forecasts, including improvements in the commercial real estate price index and the Baa corporate credit spreads. Additionally, the company saw improvement in loan portfolio characteristics during the quarter, including decreases in COVID-19 related loan modifications and improving loan risk rating migration. Slide 13 through 20 of the presentation deck that we provide on our website will give you additional details about the improvement in the non-performing loans, the COVID-19 modified loans, and the macroeconomic factors impacting the allowance for credit losses.
Rich will cover credit quality in a lot more detail in just a few minutes. Turning to non-interest income and the non-interest expense on the income tax sections. In the non-interest income portion of the income statement, our wealth management revenue increased $1.4 million to another record level of $30.7 million in the second quarter compared to $29.3 million in the first quarter. That revenue source was up 36% from the $22.6 million recorded in the year-ago quarter. This revenue source has been positively impacted by higher equity valuations, which impact the pricing on our managed asset accounts. Turning to mortgage banking revenue, we saw reasonably solid loan origination volume during the second quarter, but that origination volume was off the record high levels seen in the past few quarters due to lower refinance activity in the marketplace.
To that end, the company originated approximately $1.7 billion of mortgage loans for sale in second quarter of 2021, down 22% from the approximately $2.2 billion in each of the prior quarter and the second quarter of last year. Mortgage banking revenue decreased to $50.6 million in the second quarter as compared to $113.5 million in the first quarter of 2021. Contributing to the $62.9 million reduction in revenue were the following items. A $29 million decline in revenue related to the impact of the MSR valuation and the MSR capitalization net of payoffs and pay downs.
The $29 million negative impact of the value of the mortgage servicing rights primarily related to a positive fair value adjustment of $18 million in the first quarter of the year as compared to a decrease of $5.5 million in the current quarter, as well as the decrease in the value of capitalization of retained mortgage servicing rights due to a decline in loans sold with servicing retained. Another $21 million reduction was due to reduced gain on sale, primarily associated with the aforementioned lower production volume, and a $13 million decline due to secondary marketing gains and mark-to-market impact of declining interest rate lock commitment pipeline. Our pipeline was smaller at the end of the second quarter than the first quarter.
First quarter of 2021 also benefited from atypical elevated levels of secondary marketing gains related to the market environment in the first quarter, where we had strong investor demand, general margin enhancement due to historically strong consumer demand, and the timing associated with recognizing gains on hedging trades in the prior quarter. The normalization of that market drove a quarterly swing to a more typical range of secondary gains in the second quarter. Looking forward, based on the current pipeline activity, we expect mortgage originations for sale in the third quarter to be very similar to slightly less than the origination volumes we experienced in the second quarter. In the mortgage revenue, excluding any MSR valuation adjustments, to be roughly in line with the second quarter or in the mid $50 million range.
However, I should note that although the aforementioned revenue estimate for the third quarter is expected to be in line with the second quarter, the operating expenses should trend lower in the third quarter. As many of you know, we essentially record the net mortgage revenue when we lock the interest rate commitment on the majority of loans that we expect to originate and sell. Accordingly, expense reductions lag the revenue recognition as we still need to underwrite, process, and close those loans that are in the pipeline, as well as pay commissions once the loans close. Since the mortgage loans in the pipeline were substantially higher at the end of the first quarter, the expenses associated with processing and closing that pipeline naturally lagged into the second quarter and lagged the drop-off in revenue.
As the pipeline of loans has decreased during the second quarter, we would expect to see a corresponding decrease in mortgage-related expenses in the third quarter. Currently, assuming the mid $50 million range of revenue, excluding any MSR valuation, we anticipate mortgage-related non-interest expenses to decline further in the third quarter in the $8 million range. I should note that when you evaluate the mortgage expenses relative to the mortgage revenue decline, you should consider that $29 million of the MSR valuation decline and $13 million related to the secondary marketing gains and the decline in the pipeline, or $42 million in aggregate of revenue decline would not have any associated expense reductions, as those amounts are simply valuation measurements. The expense reductions really follow through with the production decline of $21 million.
Our mortgage expense reductions in the first quarter were generally $7 million-$8 million of commission reductions, $2 million of other expense reductions, and we expect an additional $8 million of expense reductions in the third quarter. With that being said, I have to caveat that in the last few days, the interest rates have dropped considerably, and the pipeline of new applications has increased. If that continues, we would expect the mortgage revenue to be higher than what I just guided, and the expenses associated with that revenue would also guide a little higher than what I just said. We should be able to lock in that net $8 million of additional profitability on that production decline in revenue that we saw.
I should note that a wild card always is the MSR valuation adjustment and the tight interest rates, we're not going to speculate on where rates will be at the end of the third quarter. Those amounts that I just talked about would be exclusive of the MSRs. Other non-interest income totaled $20.4 million in the second quarter. It was up $4.7 million from the $15.7 million recorded in the prior quarter. The primary reason for that increase was a $4 million gain on the sale of a few branch locations in southwestern Wisconsin. That previously disclosed transaction closed during the second quarter. In the non-interest expense categories, non-interest expenses totaled $280.1 million, down approximately $6.8 million, or 2%, from the $286.9 million recorded in the prior quarter.
There are a handful of categories that account for the majority of the change from the prior quarter that I'll focus on. First, salaries and employee benefits expense decreased by $8 million in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. The $8 million decline is primarily related to $7.6 million of lower commissions and incentive comp, primarily related to the decline in commissions related to the lower mortgage originations that I just talked about. Occupancy expense totaled $17.7 million in the first quarter, decreasing $2.3 million from the $20 million recorded in the prior quarter. That decrease was primarily the result of the first quarter of the year, including a $1.4 million impairment charge associated with the planned closure of a branch location and the current quarter having a lower level of maintenance and repairs expense.
Similar to recent years, other than 2020, which was impacted by the pandemic, marketing expenses increased by approximately $2.8 million from the first quarter to $11.3 million. As we've discussed on previous calls, this category of expenses increased as our corporate sponsorships tend to be higher in the second and third quarter of the year, due primarily to our marketing efforts related to various major and minor league baseball sponsorships, as well as sponsorship of summertime events held in the communities that we serve. Other than those expense categories that I discussed, all other expense categories in the aggregate were up by less than $1 million compared to the first quarter, and nothing noteworthy to discuss. Moving on to the income tax expense.
The expected tax rate in the first quarter was approximately 27%, which is in the 26%-27% range that we would normally expect, so nothing significant there to talk about. In summary, other than the nuance associated with the normalizing mortgage market and the undesirable swing in the MSR valuation, the core fundamentals were strong with robust loan and deposit growth, increased net interest margin, improved credit quality, record wealth management revenue, and lower expenses. With that, I will conclude my comments and turn it over to Rich Murphy.
Thanks, Dave. As noted earlier, credit performance for the quarter was very solid from a number of perspectives. Loan growth net of PPP was $1.2 billion, and this growth was across the portfolio, but a couple of areas really stood out. First, FIRST Insurance Funding, where we finance commercial insurance premiums, grew by $563 million, an outstanding quarter, which was the result of a number of new larger relationships, a hardening market which took our average premium up to $39,000 from $34,000 in the first quarter, and the continued popularity of financing insurance premiums due to lower interest rates. Wintrust Life Finance grew by $248 million or 16% annualized.
As we have seen this product grow by over $1 billion over the past year as more people are looking at life insurance as a key part of their estate plan and the market allows them to finance the product at historically low rates. From a core loan perspective, commercial loans excluding PPP grew by $148 million or 6.3% annualized, most of which closed at the very end of the quarter. Commercial real estate loans grew by $134 million or 6.3% annualized as well. A couple of additional notes on loan growth. Pipeline levels continue to look very strong. The total core pipeline is approximately $1.3 billion and consistent with what we saw in Q1.
As Ed and Tim pointed out, while we are pleased with the overall level of core loan growth, we think that this number is muted by the level of line utilization, which fell to 38% in Q2 compared to pre-pandemic levels in the upper 40% range. This lower utilization resulted in funded balances being reduced by approximately $1 billion. I'd also like to point out the granularity within the portfolio. As we have talked about in prior quarters, one of the keys to our credit portfolio has been diversification across a number of product lines. This quarter was a great example of that strategy. While we continue to have good, consistent growth from our core portfolio, our niche products have allowed us to grow the overall portfolio well ahead of projections. In addition, slide 12 details the geographic diversification in our portfolio.
As we have stated before, Wintrust will always have a Chicago-Milwaukee nexus. However, as this slide illustrates, our various product lines provide us with a meaningful amount of credit opportunities outside of our primary markets. From a credit quality perspective, as detailed on slide 13, we continue to see meaningful improvement in credit performance across the portfolio as the economy continues to recover from the pandemic. This can be seen in a number of metrics. Non-performing loans were reduced from $99 million at the end of Q1 to $88 million at the end of the second quarter. This is roughly half the level of NPLs we saw at the end of the third quarter of 2020. We recorded $2 million of net charge-offs during the quarter, which was down from $13 million in the previous quarter.
This is a very good quarter from a charge-off perspective and helped by a number of recoveries, primarily out of the FIRST Insurance Funding portfolio. We also saw a reduction of over 40% in COVID-19 modified loans from $254 million to $146 million during the quarter, as outlined on slide 19. The majority of these remaining modified loans are primarily in our select high-risk impact industries. Credit ratings continue to show meaningful positive migration as our customers continue to recover. Finally, on PPP, as outlined on slide 14, we funded $4.9 billion to more than 15,000 different businesses through the PPP program. We could not be happier with the results from this program and the positive effects on our customers and community. It was an enormous team effort, and we are so proud of the employees of Wintrust who made it possible.
We are now focused on working with our customers to process their applications for forgiveness. This is proceeding very well as we have now processed forgiveness applications on over 90% of our 2020 PPP loans. Over 85% of those loans have received their final forgiveness decision. That concludes my comments, and I'll turn it back to Ed to wrap up.
Thanks, Rich. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, our strategy throughout this has been to grow the balance sheet during this period of low rates, use our structural hedges like mortgages to buffer the loss of net interest income until such time as the balance sheet growth can offset the income loss due to the lower rates. PPP loans we expect to benefit, add on to the strategy. All of the above is to be accomplished while enhancing our asset sensitivity position in anticipation of eventual higher rates. Balance sheet growth for the year, asset growth of $1.7 billion and core loan growth of $1.7 billion, excluding loans held for sale and PPP. We've experienced all this, as Tim laid out, has been done on a totally organic basis.
The acquisition market, which has been sleeping today, appears to be picking up based upon the amount of inbound calls we've received lately. Sellers still have rather high expectations. We're going to see where all this ends up. As Rich said, loan pipelines remain extremely strong in all our major categories. Our asset-sensitive position is where we want it. We continue to leg into our investment of our excess liquidity, taking advantage of market blips. There's no reason to be totally invested as lock-in to lousy long-term rates. Doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to us. Credit is remarkably good. Thanks to our consistently conservative credit standards and diversified loan portfolio, both the work of both our lending line and credit folks, NPAs, NPLs are lower than they were before the start of the pandemic.
Both venture areas delivering strong results and the assets under administration continue to grow. To date, the plan is working. We need to continue in order to bring this plan to total fulfillment. Organic growth should remain strong. We'll take advantage of the opening of the acquisition market if it actually makes some sense. Our goal at the beginning of this was to have core growth that would offset any of the reduction in PPP loans. We seem to be doing that. I think that at the end of the day, if we get another billion-dollar loan growth quarter, and by the end of the year, we should have made up for the PPP loans, which should actually help our margin to some extent, our net interest income. Basically, we feel very good about where we are right now.
The plan is achieving what we'd set out to achieve, and we're going to continue to take what the market gives us. With that, I turn over some questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen to ask a question, you will need to press the star and the one key on your touch-tone telephone. To withdraw your question press the pound key. Please stand by we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question coming from the lineup, Jon Arfstrom with RBC Capital Markets, your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning.
Morning, Jon.
Hey. Thanks for the help on some of the expectations here and on mortgage and NII and expenses. I did want to ask on loan growth. Tim Crane, you talked about accelerating economic activity, and then Richard Murphy, you talked about a little bit higher commercial at the end of the quarter. Curious what you guys are seeing outside of the premium finance businesses in terms of some of the growth potential there. Is it starting to broaden out? Just the sustainability of the premium finance growth as well.
Yeah, I'll take the core question first. I think that we are seeing our customers feeling much better about the prospects going into the back half of the year. I think confidence has really improved dramatically. I think there are obviously some headwinds that are making people nervous. I think labor availability is an issue, and obviously the uptick in COVID-19 cases has people a little bit anxious. Overall, I think we're feeling pretty good about where our existing customers are, and I think you will see line utilization increase as we go into the back half of the year. As we've talked about in the past, Jon, the concept of becoming Chicago's bank has really started to happen. We really feel like at this point in time, we are a go-to bank in terms of new opportunities.
The pipelines are very good, and I think we'll continue to bring more customers on as a result of the disruption that's been in the market. The most recent announcement as it relates to First Midwest helps us as well. We're pretty confident about where core loan growth might be going into the back half of the year. As it relates to First Insurance, I think the hard market is not going away anytime soon. I think that as you see the team on the P&C side has done a very good job of bringing in new relationships. You got the hard market. You really have a lot of good, strong momentum there. On the life side, similarly we had anticipated that things were going to begin slowing down in the back half of the year.
In talking with that team as recently as yesterday, they're also feeling very good about where the back half of the year could go. Again, we're not changing our guidance, but we're feeling pretty comfortable right now that momentum will continue at least through year-end.
Okay.
We have to thank Mr. Biden, President Biden for talking about estate planning and estate taxes in that regard. At least he's doing something right for us.
That's good. Question for you, Dave. This is a more difficult question, but when you think about the mortgage line, and I know there's a lot that goes into it, but the business really took off when the pandemic hit. When you look at some of the numbers prior to the pandemic, it was in this $50 million a quarter range. I'm just wondering if there's anything materially different about your business today than where it was pre-pandemic other than rates. Obviously, what I'm trying to get at is just longer term expectations for the business. Anything you can do to help us out on that, I'd appreciate it.
Yeah. Well, I think, the mix between Veterans First and the retail has been fairly stable. The refi volume has obviously dropped off a little bit. Although with this recent drop, I think that it looks like that may be picking up a little bit where people are bouncing back in. Longer term, I think we have better technology, and we have better tools to reach people than just guys hitting the street physically. Those tools help those guys that are hitting the street physically too, serve their customers better and do more deals. I think our technology is better. At the end of the day, it's still good old-fashioned service, with improved technology. I don't see anything substantially different between that mix of business or our ability to serve the customers.
Obviously, we continue to expand our footprint a little bit into some different areas of our market. We hopefully can pick up some additional customers. But I wouldn't say it's dramatically different, just an improved product, improved service model.
All right. Thanks for the help.
Thank you.
Our next question coming from the line of David Long with Raymond James. Your line is open.
Hi, David. Good morning, everyone. Just as it relates to deposits, you've had some very good deposit growth, a lot of liquidity created. Is your sense that these deposits are sticky? Are these new relationships, are they going to remain on your balance sheet for quite some time, or do, as things improve and customers start to spend again, do you see a drop-off in those deposits?
Well, judging by the activity in our treasury area, these are all new relationships for the most part. A lot of it's the leftover from the PPP loans. We picked up close to 500 new customers as we bring them in. Those are pretty sticky. Those are all full relationships. Tim, your thoughts?
Yeah. David, we're watching it carefully, but we feel pretty good. We're continuing to add households. We don't disclose numbers here, but we get the digital lift that everybody else is reporting on their calls, and folks have good tools. We've added two branches, which we'll continue to bring a few more online between now and end of year. Again, we'll watch it carefully, but so far it's pretty sticky.
Got it. On the lending side, the commercial side, your core C&I stuff, as far as the competitive backdrop, we talked a little bit about that. Internally, are you guys doing anything differently? Are you able to loosen anything in your, I don't know if standards is the right word, but how have you changed internally your willingness to lend on the commercial side over the last few quarters?
David, I've said this often. We do not change our loan policy or our pricing decisions readily. Those are sacrosanct. We're not seeing any more exceptions or deviations from our profitability models. To say we're doing anything differently, I would say no, we're not changing our credit stance at all. We never do that. Murph, your thoughts?
Yeah, no, I would agree with that. It's something we talk about on a regular basis in our credit meetings, just where the market's at, because the market is very competitive. I'm sure you hear that through as you talk to other banks, that price competition is very hot. Structural competition is also pretty aggressive. We're very mindful of that topic, and we just have to know where the lines are. I think we have really good communication between the lines and our credit people there just to make sure that we're all on the same page, and I think that we've done a pretty good job so far in that regard. The one maybe note to that is just as we continue to grow, we look at different niches all the time, and we want to be able to continue to broaden out our product suite.
That would probably be the only sort of thing that we would maybe look to as we grow forward, is just different areas. We've talked about a part of our leasing group to be in aviation finance, and we've talked about the money services group. Those are the things that we want to continue to evolve as the opportunities start to present themselves.
Got it. Just a final follow-up. With the PPP and the additional relationships that you talked about, maybe you're seeing on the deposit side, are you seeing that in your loan numbers today? Are your former PPP customers out of PPP and borrowing yet? Are you seeing any loan growth attributed to these new relationships yet?
David, it's Tim. We are. There's sort of two sides to that. It's obviously been a little bit of a substitution and part of the reason you're seeing the utilization down. We've also added new relationships, and we track the larger ones, and there's over a half a billion dollars in commitments that are already on the books with more to come. The utilization there is better than our utilization overall. We still feel good about that. We've got more activity, but we're probably half to three-quarters of the way through the PPP prospect pipeline.
Yeah. Unfortunately, it just takes longer to bring the lending side of the relationship over. There's just a lot of work that needs to get done in terms of getting that loan structured, getting it approved, and getting it documented, working through the payoff. It's definitely coming. On a weekly basis, we see new opportunities that are coming as a result of our work with PPP.
The market disruption's been very helpful. Still with MB, there's still some hangover from that. It's a benefit to us. With private, same thing. We're starting to see more of that now as Canada gets more involved down there, and they're changing some of the things that they do. We're seeing opportunities we never saw out of there. Obviously, First Midwest move is, we have to see what happens. Any sort of market disruption's good for us. When it comes to a decision point, we want to be there, and we want to have a seat at the table if people are going to change, and we've been very successful at that.
Got it. Thanks for the color, guys. Appreciate it.
Our next question coming from the line of Terry McEvoy with Stephens. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Maybe, Dave, a question for you on your mortgage outlook. What type of production margins are you thinking about over the near term? That top left graph on page 10 shows a pretty steep decline down to 2.2% last quarter.
It's impacted a little bit the way we present it by the decline in the pipe inventory and the pipeline. We also had a little bit of volatility in the secondary marketing. Last quarter, we had gains, and this quarter we had some small losses. I think we're thinking about it more in the 3% plus or minus range, excluding any changes in the pipeline.
Thanks. As a follow-up question, I'm not sure, Ed, maybe you're just not as creative as you typically are each quarter, or maybe you're trying to tell us something? The last two press releases, your final quote has been the exact same. Something along the lines of evaluate expenses on an ongoing basis to enhance profitability. Should we read into that same statement two quarters in a row, and is there some sort of expense plan coming, or is it more of a kind of a big picture view that you're consciously are always aware of expenses?
The latter. We're always looking at expenses and working them through. At the same time, we still are a growth company, and we're going to invest in the company. We have a number of branches opening up in markets we haven't been in yet. Bolingbrook being one that's coming on board. That's a great market for us. We've never been there. That'll do very well, but it costs money to get them up and running. Contrary to maybe what some of you believe, we watch our expenses very closely. With a net overhead ratio in the mid-130s this quarter, that's about where we think we'll normalize, but I think it could be up or down depending on some of the other things that we do.
I think that mortgages just kind of skews everything up for you guys, and we wish we could find a better way to show you how it all works. Dave explains it. There's so many moving parts, and the timing is so screwed up that you record the income in one quarter, no expense in the next quarter. It doesn't look right. All in all, with a 135 net overhead ratio, and our goal is to be in the mid-130s right now. In a normalized basis, I'm comfortable. Doesn't mean we don't always look at expenses and try to run them down.
Great. Thank you.
I'll change it next time for you.
Appreciate that. Thank you, guys.
Our next question coming from the line of Brock Vandervliet with UBS. Your line is open.
Oh, thanks. Dave, I just wanted to follow up on your mortgage commentary. Was there anything to call out regarding Veterans First? That volume dropped by a third or so. It seemed to drop harder than the rest of the business.
Yeah. I think their business is more heavily generally weighted towards the refinance activity, and that part of the market got hit harder. In our footprint, we've got customers just walking into the bank and have a relationship with the bank. The purchase activity tends to be a heavier piece of it. I think it's just more the mix of purchase and refinance in the given marketplace.
Okay. Just kind of combining securities growth and what you may retain from the mortgage bank, I think you've given guidance around 10% of production you're going to shunt on balance sheet. How should we look at that versus how you may grow the investment securities?
Brock in this environment. It sounds like you're pretty cautious in growing that securities book, given the rate environment. If you could just unpack that a little bit. Yeah. The thought was to keep about $100 million of the jumbo mortgage production on our books. We also generally have maybe $100 or so of other product that we originate in the bank, some non-standard or variable rate products that we typically keep on the books out of the bank. Which is normal. Keep $100 million of the production that we would normally sell. A couple of hundred million in total that we would add to the balance sheet per quarter, I would say would be a good rough number. On the liquidity side, you're right.
As we noted earlier, we're essentially flat quarter end to quarter end because the mortgage-backed rates sort of backed off a little bit, and we're just being cautious on investing that liquidity. As Ed and Ken noted, taking 175 or 180 sort of rates for a long-term instrument just doesn't seem that appealing right now. We're going to be patient with that, hope to grow the loan portfolio, eat up some of that liquidity, and we look at that as an opportunity. It may suppress earnings in the quarter a little bit by not investing it. Long term, we look at that as an opportunity to grow the NII and grow the margin, but we're just trying to be patient and not invest at really low rates right now. Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, to ask a question, please press the star then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. Our next question coming from the line of Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.
Yep. Hi, guys. Good morning.
Morning.
Couple questions on capital. The stock's come in a little bit along with the rest of the group, trade around 1.2, 1.0 tangible books these days. Just curious to get some updated thoughts on the appetite around returning to buybacks.
We've got money left under our previous authorization. If the timing's right, we will utilize that and go from there. Yeah, we look at it all the time vis-a-vis where do we return that capital? Where do we want to invest the money? At certain levels, it makes sense to buy the stock back. Like yesterday would've been a good day, but we were in a blackout period. We'll see. We also compare it to acquisition opportunities out there too. Just where are you going to invest your capital? We look at it constantly, but I think we have about $33 million, plus or minus, availability under the prior authorization. If market conditions are there, we can look at what we do going forward. As I said, evaluate it all the time.
Got it. Along those lines, in terms of acquisitions, other Dave, just curious, I think in the past that you've spoken to an appetite to do a larger acquisition. I'm not sure in terms of if you had that range that you guys would be willing to go up to, just curious kind of how that appetite stands today with the currency where it's at. Obviously, your capital levels are stable sequentially and at a comfortable level, I'd imagine. Along those lines, just curious to kind of get your updated thoughts on what you're seeing from an acquisition standpoint, how large of a deal potentially you'd want to do. Historically, you guys have been strong stewards of defending and growing tangible book value, I imagine that'll continue to be the case going forward as you guys entertain potential acquisition opportunities.
Just curious to get some updated thoughts on all those dynamics.
Yeah. We always say what the market gives us. For years, it gave us deals under $1 billion at reasonable prices. You know how much I don't like dilution.
We still have anywhere from under $1 billion to $2 billion or $3 billion are out there. We're not going to do anything stupid. We don't like giving up years' worth of earnings to grow when we can grow organically. Market is still giving us good organic growth. We'll stick with that unless a deal comes along that makes strategic sense and what have you. I think that as to size, the market is kind of limited now when you think of that and you think of geography. I said earlier, I did a couple of earnings calls ago, threw out the concept that we'd be willing to look out of our traditional market area. I was chumming the water to see if I'd get anybody up, it was a bad fishing day, I guess. I haven't seen anybody.
We'll look at anything basically that enhances shareholder value, franchise value, earnings, and we don't give away the house to get it. We'll always be very disciplined in that regard, and we'll see where it goes. Right now, they're across the board between $3 billion-$4 billion down to $300 million. The inbound calls have picked up a lot. However, price expectations for the first ones we've kind of reviewed are
Don't fit that criteria I talked about earlier. If the local guys sell to somebody else, that's good for us. The disruption's good. Especially if they sell to somebody out of state or I think it's harder and harder for banks now with $2 billion-$3 billion to stay competitive. Just the amount you have to spend on technology with the additional regulatory things that are coming down the pipe from new administration people and loans. Just getting good loans. We all dig deeper. We're all in there trying to get those deals. It's just harder for those guys to compete. I think it's going to take some time for them to understand the magnitude of that, what it's going to do to their margins, their costs, and when it does, it'll bring their price expectations back in line.
Got it. I suppose along those lines, just given the organic growth trajectory in front of you guys that's likely going to accelerate with some of the recent disruption that was announced in Chicago from an M&A perspective. I imagine, acquisitions in that asset range that you described are probably less of a focus these days, just given that organic growth runway that's in front of you guys today that's only gotten stronger within the last couple of months here.
Yeah. That doesn't mean that if a good deal came along, we wouldn't do it.
We can obviously do both. Organic growth is really good now, like you said, but doesn't foreclose us doing an acquisition if market prices and strategically work.
I kind of think we'll be 30 years old in December. We have a good chance of hitting $50 billion just through organic growth. It's not bad from a card table to $50 in 30 years. People always ask, how big do you want to be? I say, Well, I don't care. Where are you going to be five years from now? I have no idea. We'll take what the market gives us and what makes sense. If it makes sense, we'll continue to grow and grow profitably and keep our shareholder, keep our returns up and we operate on asset growth, profitability, and growth in our tangible book value. If anything that fits those lines and advances those that are reaching those goals is anything's available.
Got it. Not bad, to say the least. I appreciate all the color. Thanks, guys.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Our next question coming from the line of Julien Brush with Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Hey, this is Michael Young. I'm on for Truist Securities. Thanks. Just wanted to ask, as the loan growth kind of broadens out, maybe out of some of the premium finance categories, would you expect those loan yields to be accretive to the overall loan yield? Would that mix shift or what are you seeing in the pricing environment that would cause that to happen or not?
Again, as Ed pointed out before, we have a very strict pricing model. If something's not really accretive to where we want to be, we're just not going to do it. I think overall, yeah. We monitor that very closely and confident that we can do that.
Okay. Maybe just a follow-up on the expense commentary related to mortgage. Obviously, you guys are seeing quite strong loan production, so I would assume there's some natural inflation to the expense run rate. With the offset of that $8 million potential reduction depending on production levels, is that kind of the right way to think about it, those two pieces?
I'm not sure if I followed this. You're just saying in the past, you think that the expenses are inflated a little bit because of the extraordinarily high volume? Is that what you're trying to get to?
I guess. Is it more of a net $8 million reduction that you kind of expect in expenses quarter-over-quarter, assuming the production levels you discussed? Are there some core expense inflation factors from strong loan production that would offset that?
What I was trying to get at is I think net $8 million savings, assuming that the revenue level is in line with the prior quarter. Let's say production revenues go up to $5 million. Let's say they go up $5 million. I would expect the expenses to go up a little bit, too. You should be able to maintain that delta of roughly $8 million profit improvement on the business.
Okay, perfect. Thanks.
Our next question coming from the line of Chris McGratty with KBW. Your line is open.
On asset quality, you guys have historically been kind of quick to move any problems. It's served you well over cycles. Given the amount of, I guess, thirst for assets across the industry, are there any portfolios that you guys are effectively looking to reduce exposure to given the bid for assets is high today? Thanks.
Chris, we've done asset sales in the past, and we're always culling through the portfolio to try to find where weak spots exist and just to go to see the market out there. I would say we're open to that concept. We've done pretty well getting sort of a maximum value on the asset that we do work through. In the past when we've looked at some of those prices, we just weren't willing to accept the discount. If that gap starts to narrow even more going forward, we might take a look at some of the portfolios where maybe we see some distress. Generally speaking, we just kind of take a deal at a time and work it through. No plans as of this point.
Great. Thanks, Chris.
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference call back over to Mr. Edward Wehmer for closing remarks.
Thanks, everybody, for listening in. Our goal is to continue to increase all the important things in the right way and not have a decreases. With that, thanks very much, and we'll talk to you again in a month or three months. Any further questions or follow-up questions, please feel free to call anybody who's on the call. Thank you.