David Feaster: I’d like to follow-up kind of on that deposit question side. I mean given the prospects of rate cuts, I’m curious how you think about your ability to reprice deposits if we do get Fed cuts this year? Or just given liquidity challenges in the industry competitive landscape and all that, would you expect this maybe to be a bit more challenging on the way down and betas are slower than they were — than on the way up? I’m just curious how you think about your ability to reprice deposits lower if we do get cuts this year?
Nicole Stokes: Yes. So, we think that deposit betas are going to be faster on the way down. And then from a tactical perspective, we’ve got 95% of our retail CDs that mature in 2024. And then all of our brokered CDs are short and they mature by June. And then we’ve got very short FHLB and very minimal FHLB advances. So, we definitely have some positive movement on the deposit side, where we feel like we’ll be able to reprice those. And then you add in just the interest-bearing money market that they will reprice fairly quickly. So, we feel like we could be aggressive, and then the 31% non-interest-bearing will certainly help that as well.
David Feaster: Okay, that’s helpful. And maybe touching on again staying on with potential cuts. I’m curious, high level, how do you think about mortgage at this point and some of the trends you’re seeing? And maybe how much activity, would you — I mean, again, mortgage rates have started to come down a bit, could come down even more with rate cuts. I’m curious how you think about, A, mortgage volumes in the coming year? And any expectations for that gain on sale margin to start improving?
Palmer Proctor: Yes, I think with the Fed cuts or potential Fed cuts, obviously, we’ll see improvement in that margin. But I would tell you, as we mentioned last time, so many times in environments like this, we all have a tendency to look at headwinds and not focus on tailwinds. But this would certainly be a big tailwind for our operation just because of how well we’re positioned. And what we’ve done and what we’ve been able to do in terms of garnering efficiencies and keeping the costs in line with the revenue decline, that seem is true on the flip side. So, when the when the opportunity is there and the refis and the purchase activity picks back up, we are extremely well-positioned there. So, I would tell you that as we look out and if we end up getting as many rate cuts as everyone thinks we are, that could be a tremendous lift for our organization, just knowing how we performed in the past and how we can perform in the future.
And more importantly, how we’re already positioned in terms of our bankers and also our operations. So, that could be a real bright spot. But a lot of that, as we touched on, is going to be predicated by the — what the Fed does. Because that’s the big driver, as you know of that consumer behavior.
David Feaster: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And maybe just last one from me. I’m curious how you think about — you guys have done a great job on the deposit — managing deposits. And we talked about where we can cut — how quickly we can cut betas or betas are going to be on the way down. I’m curious how you think about deposit growth going forward? And maybe just — it seems like we’ve seen some more seasonality from some folks on the deposit front. Curious how you think about your ability to drive core deposit growth in this coming year and some initiatives that you put in place to maybe support that?
Palmer Proctor: Yes, I would tell you that’s probably something that we’re very bullish on in the sense that if you look at the momentum that we created even during the liquidity this year, which was a very difficult year. If you can grow deposits in an environment like we’ve been in over the last 12 months and more importantly, retained deposits and maintain your deposit mix, which we’ve done a very good job of doing, net of the pandemic deposits. But I think part of the value there is, a lot of that came from a lot of our organic growth and long relationships, and we’ve always been focused more on relationships and transactions and that has served us well, and that’s what we continue to do. And if you look at investments that we’ve made this year, a lot of those — we kept saying throughout the entire year from an expense standpoint that we did not have to load up on any more bankers out there to bring in volume and thank goodness we didn’t because the volume was intentionally pulled back.
But what we did invest in as treasury. So, our treasury platform has had a tremendous year, and a lot of that comes from our C&I initiatives and also from the hard work of a lot of the treasury offers we have. So, that momentum is really what helped move a lot of the needle in fourth quarter and I think that same momentum will be there throughout the year. So, we’ve got a lot of initiatives in place there that are delivering now and we’ll continue to deliver. So, I probably feel a little more optimistic than most in terms of our ability to keep growing core funding.
David Feaster: I mean, so would you expect core funding to maybe outpace loan growth? Or would you expect maybe that remixing of the balance sheet to kind of keep deposits stable and just, again, improve the mix? Curious kind of how you think about growth prospects and overall balance sheet growth?
