It may be similar to what we had in the last quarter. Hard to read out into next year, but I do see it stabilizing, because eventually, right, the Fed, we don’t know, there might be one more raise, but that could be it and it is going to stabilize. And eventually when we get to a period of stable margin, we’re going to be in a very — ConnectOne is going to be in a very good position to widen margin as short-term rates come down. I hope that answers your question, Matt, on that.
Matthew Breese: Great. It’s about as good as it can be given the information you have. I do want to ask you whether or not, beneath the hood, you had mentioned you’re starting to see some stabilization in noninterest-bearing. What are the indications of that? What are the measures you’re using? And do you have any sort of best estimate at this point of where we might see peak deposit costs?
Bill Burns: Well, I almost — I answered a little bit before. So right now, the balances in noninterest-bearing are slightly higher than they were in the last 60 days. So I’m hopeful, once again that that’s going to level out. And in terms of total deposit costs, as I said, if noninterest-bearing remains where it is, if the CDs stay where they are, which I expect that to be, the only thing moving the number is the non-maturity interest-bearing. It depends on the money supply and total deposits in the system, but that’s the one lever that could continue to increase deposit costs. Obviously, as the Fed pricing — interest rate levels out, that’s going to put pressure on stabilizing deposit costs as well.
Matthew Breese: And then on loan yield, what is the roll on versus roll off dynamic currently? And what…
Bill Burns: Right now, it’s about between 850 to 550.
Matthew Breese: 850 roll on, 550 roll off?
Bill Burns: Right. And that’s great, right? But it’s a small portion of the portfolio because there’s such small growth and there’s such small amount of prepayments.
Matthew Breese: Can you just talk about the strategy on securities portfolio? It’s been a one-off mode for a while, but I was curious, at what percentage of total assets would you like to keep it at?
Bill Burns: Well, I’d like to see it a little bit higher for the long run. It’s a good question. It’s part of — for us, the securities portfolio is not about profitability, but it’s about liquidity. And what we’ve learned, over this year and the crisis is that, having securities on portfolio isn’t the type of liquidity that you really need, you really need readily accessible liquidity. So, in my mind, the securities on the portfolio — unencumbered securities on your balance sheet are less important, because you can’t get the cash for those in a few hours, whereas you can get cash for the Federal Home Loan Bank or the Fed, on a moment’s notice. So, I’d like, my goal has been to a little bit higher than it is right now, but I don’t moving that up significantly over the next couple of quarters.
Matthew Breese: Okay. And then, Frank, one, you had mentioned in your opening comments just some of the quality of talent you’ve been able to bring in and hire. I’d be curious what the current pipeline looks like in terms of resumes on your desk, how qualified these people are and you’re impressed by them, and can this continue? And then secondly, on the tech stuff, just give us an update on MANTL, Nymbus, and BoeFly, and how are all those efforts going?
Frank Sorrentino: So, I would tell you that the phones keep ringing. Now, it’s pretty much all inbound calls. You can well imagine with all the disruption in the marketplace, there’s just been a lot of people who either were cut loose or found that the new place that they’re at or the reformulated place that they’re at is not meeting their expectations. And they want to work from a place that’s exciting and a place that’s innovative and a place where they’re not stuck in a particular lane. So, ConnectOne has definitely built a reputation in the marketplace as a place that’s moving and shaking and lots of stuff going on. And so, the phone keeps ringing. We certainly have lots of folks to pick from across all the various specialties, whether it’s in operations, technology, revenue producers, it doesn’t matter, in various markets, new markets potentially, whatever.
So, we’re getting to pick and choose from the best of the best. And I have to tell you, I think we’ve made some really exciting hires over the last few months that are going to help to propel the Company forward. As I mentioned in my comments, I’m incredibly optimistic and confident in the direction we’re going in. Certainly, we’d like to see some of the financial metrics and stock valuation would be better. But the business itself, the core business and what we’re doing with it and how we’re positioning ourselves for the coming challenges in a more normalized interest environment are really exciting. When you start to talk about things like the digital onboarding platform through MANTL, I mean, that’s making serious change throughout the organization.
It’s giving team members that either ones that we’ve had with us for years or newer team members that come on board the ability to really close transactions with potential clients in record speed. It’s given us the opportunity to go back to existing clients and be able to move additional deposits over to the bank with just a lot of ease. It’s taken some pressure off the back office. The operations areas are being reoptimized, because we don’t have as many manual processes, including in compliance and BSA and other areas that are incredibly critical to the organization. But now, we have much better operations that also provide data for us to look at and be able to make future decisions about how we want to do things. So, those platforms are all working really well.
We’re still working together with Nymbus in our VentureOn unit and certainly because of the events that have occurred recently, we’re reevaluating how we can be effective in that space and we’ll have more to talk about that in the future. And BoeFly just keeps chugging along. I mean, BoeFly, as you know, has been one of the primers for a lot of the technology initiatives here at the bank and has really forced us to focus on the ability to write commercial type loans, to be able to do SBA at scale, to be able to rebuild or have technology platforms that function differently than banks normally function. And so, BoeFly has been a great catalyst for the entire organization. That being said, if you look at the top of the funnel at BoeFly and number of franchisors that now utilize that platform for all of their data gathering, it’s gone up some 300%.
When we purchased the company, they had about 35 or 40 brands on the platform. Today, it’s over 130. So, we’re really happy about the growth that that company is providing and the opportunities that it’s building for us. On a standalone basis, I wouldn’t tell you it’s doing a whole lot to the bottom line, although it keeps getting better quarter after quarter. But the contributions that it’s making to other aspects of the business, which are really hard to get down onto a piece of paper, you’d have to be inside the management team to understand it, I think are just genuinely really great. I don’t know if I answered your entire question. So, if I forgot something, let me know.
