William Kessel: Thanks, Matt.
Operator: Thank you. We now have Brendan Nosal of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.
Brendan Nosal: Hey. Good morning, guys. Hope you doing well. Maybe just to start off on kind of the equation between loan growth and funding it in the year ahead. Thanks for the comments on the securities book. I think you said $170 million of cash flow there. I guess that kind of funded about half of roughly 10% loan growth for the year. Just kind of thinking about the balance of that growth, how much would come from core funding ideally versus the need for more wholesale funding?
Gavin Mohr: Yeah. Well, we want to grow deposits, and we’re still low-single digit deposit growth for next year and then the balance would come through wholesale or potentially, I guess, I would say wholesale. Yeah.
Brendan Nosal: Got it. Okay. And then maybe one more for me. You may have kind of addressed this in a prior question already. But just conceptually, I’m wondering what would be a better outcome for the margin at this point, whether it’s stability after the Fed wraps up its tightening program or a more rapid pivot to rate cuts?
Gavin Mohr: Yeah. So it’s the more rapid cuts — rate cuts, but the caveat I’d give you there, Brendan, is that assumes that we’re able to achieve the betas going down that we’ve seen historically. And so that — you get a less inverted curve, which we do benefit from.
Brendan Nosal: Okay. Understood. With the prospect for rate cuts, I mean do you think like the first couple of cuts allows to start pushing back on deposit pricing or maybe not so much given that Fed funds will still be so far ahead of the industry’s cost of funds at that point, most likely?
William Kessel: I think that’s a great question. I think what it does is, we’re — then you could sort of stop the catch up. right? And so it — then you don’t have the large gap between your deposit base and maybe alternative money market and U.S. treasuries. And so I think that’s where the benefit comes in.
Brendan Nosal: All right. Fantastic. Thanks for your thoughts.
Operator: We have had no further questions on the line. I’d like to hand it back to Brad for any closing remarks.
William Kessel: Very good. In closing, I would like to thank our Board of Directors and our senior management for their support and leadership. I want to thank all our associates. I continue to be so proud of the job being done by each member of our team. Each team member in his or her own way continues to do their part toward our common goal of guiding our customers to be independent. Finally, I would like to thank each of you for your interest in Independent Bank Corporation and for joining us on today’s call. We wish all of you a great day.
Operator: Thank you all for joining. That does conclude today’s call. Please have a lovely day, and you may now disconnect your lines.
