United Community Banks, Inc. (NASDAQ:UCBI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: And our next question is coming from Brad Milsaps from Piper Sandler. Brad, please go ahead.

Brad Milsaps: Thank you. Good morning.

Lynn Harton: Good morning to you.

Brad Milsaps: Maybe just to follow-up on Catherine’s question. If Rich is right, you guys grow your loan book maybe a billion dollars or so. Jefferson, if I recall is still about $200 million per quarter coming out of the bond portfolio? Is that the right number? And I guess, what would be the plan, to sort of maybe bridge the rest of loan growth, would you kind of lean into the FHLB a little bit more or in your mind, you think it’s an environment where you can kind of stop some of the deposit runoff and maybe stabilizes or even grow deposits a bit?

Jefferson Harralson: Right, so I’ll start with that, Rich can jump in, especially on our deposit thoughts. But yes, maybe it’s a little less than $200 million a quarter. But we do plan on funding a lot of our loan growth with a securities shrinkage. I think this quarter, you’ll actually see the FHLB come in a little bit. We’ve done a lot to try to stoke our deposit growth. We’ve been doing it all year, but given the environment we’re also doing a lot of energizing the footprint in the geography as well. We have some higher rates out there to help spur deposit growth. I might pass it to Rich on some of the things that we’re doing on the deposit side. I can also step in there too.

Richard Bradshaw: Yes, just to give you some specifics. Like we’re — we generally pick a certain time period for a CD in this case happens to be 11 months that are special and 415 range and then we have empowered the field so that’s going to be the State Presidents to Presidents and the retail management in terms of a product, the Special index based off Fed funds. So we put that authorities out in the market so they can make those decisions real time. And that’s in the mid-3s. And that’s been really geared towards our best relationships.

Jefferson Harralson: So that’s our main lever that we want to pull is the really press on the deposit growth engine that we have some confidence in at the bank. And the — if it’s not there, what do we do to define that, our FHLB is there we want to, we don’t want to lien on it too hard, we have a broker CD lever we can pull on, we also could sell some available for sale securities at small losses that create some liquidity if we wanted to. So we’re looking at really all things but the main, we’re happy where we are because of the securities funding most of the loan growth and we have a lot of options beyond that if the deposit growth isn’t there.

Brad Milsaps: Got it. Thank you. And maybe just switching gears to Rob, curious if you could maybe give us a little color, maybe on the movement within the non-performing list and then maybe some of the key drivers, underlying your provision this quarter and obviously, we’re in a dynamic environment where the assumptions can change rather quickly. But as best as your crystal ball can tell us, do you think you sort of built the reserve to a level where maybe you feel more comfortable now all else equal, or do you think, as we think about next year, there’s more of a bill to come is, maybe you guys close the gap to peers a little bit? No, you hold a little bit more capital, but just any additional color around credit would be helpful.