Columbia Banking System, Inc. (NASDAQ:COLB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

David Feaster: Yes, absolutely. And if you do see some more of those surge deposits outflow, is FHLB advances the primary way of funding those versus security sales or CDs or anything like that?

Aaron Deer: Yes, at this point that would be our preferred source of funding.

David Feaster: Okay. And maybe a question on the growth side. And somewhat of a seasonal slowdown in originations. Just curious how much of that is your appetite for credit diminishing somewhat just given the economic backdrop versus demand for credit in the market slowing or competitive dynamics maybe even fewer attractive deals coming across the desk. And just curious where — what segments are still attracted to you and still coming up — bringing good risk adjusted returns at this point in the cycle.

Clint Stein: Well, David, as always, you pack a lot into a question. So, feel free to circle back if we don’t fully address each aspect of that. I guess, I’ll start off and then hand it over to Chris. From an appetite standpoint, we’re very comfortable with all the different verticals that we’ve historically been in. We’re committed to remaining throughout the cycles to our clients and to our bankers within those verticals. And then, when we look at our pending merger with Umpqua, there’s not any portfolio concentration issues that get created as a result of that. In fact, it actually gives — on a combined basis, gives us more room to run within those verticals that we do have expertise in. I think the key part of your question though is — I’ll paraphrase, can we quantify what we stepped away from because of either underwriting, I don’t really call — I guess you could say it’s competitive dynamics.

I think I just call it people that are still very much focused on putting up loan growth number as opposed to really looking at where we might be heading from an economy or economic standpoint, and then, realizing that, all right, the risk return isn’t there. And so, from our perspective, we would rather pass and protect shareholder value and let somebody else take that deal. And there was quite a bit of that during the quarter. And I’ll let Chris give you the specifics.

Chris Merrywell: Okay. Thanks. Yes, David, the dynamics during the quarter of what we were tracking as we saw rates coming in and what the requests were, it approaches a couple hundred million in deals that we simply looked at and said that it is not in the shareholders’ best interest to put that on the books. And we were seeing rates that frankly were below the 10-year treasury and it just doesn’t seem prudent to put that type of business on at this time. Now, if there was something that was a relationship or something like that, as we’ve mentioned in the past, we certainly would be flexible with that type of pricing. But when you look at some of the new business that we would normally attract throughout the year, that’s where we chose to walk away from those types of deals.

David Feaster: That makes sense. And then, last one maybe for me. You guys talked about having the first mock conversion and a readiness review with the upcoming systems conversion. Just curious how that went, and maybe what you learned from that? And then, as we think about this whole conversion process, it’s kind of unique opportunity. From the integration management office standpoint, they’ve been looking at this for a long time. Is there any anything while we’re going through these opportunities or other investments or upgrades as we go through the conversion and integration that maybe we can accelerate? Just curious from the conversion standpoint, your thoughts around that.