Bill Dezellem: Thank you. A couple of questions. First of all, relative to the VC portfolio addition, would you walk us through the background of how we got there and how you all we’re the ones ultimately that the FDIC chose? And then secondarily, are there other opportunities that the dislocation that’s taken place this year in the industry creating other opportunities, whether VC or otherwise, it’s broader than just at just other opportunities that you may or may not see out there.
Sam Sidhu: Sure, absolutely, Bill. I’m happy – good morning, happy to take that question. So firstly, on the Venture Banking side, we saw this portfolio and this team and we had prior relationships with this team, frankly from a recruitment perspective for an extended period of time. And we had monitored and seen that it had not gone with the whole bank transaction. And there’s sort of a several week type FDIC-related diligence process and with the closing on June 15. So it was a very accelerated process really focused on credit from the loan portfolio side and strategic from a recruitment side. The real focus for us is making sure that we had a team that had the right cultural fit that was aligned with taking our approximately $0.5 billion portfolio of business and taking it to the nationwide goals that we would have normally had over a three- to five-year period, but we’re doing it on an accelerated basis.
And the discount provided extra cushion from the perspective of the accelerated credit diligence, which we’ve now obviously fully completed and feel incredibly comfortable with but also provided a little bit of headroom from the perspective of what if you couldn’t recruit the team, which the team has now been fully onboarded less of a consideration and look to roll off some portion of that portfolio, which is not plan at this point in time. So I think that we feel very fortunate that there was an opportunity to bring in that team, as I mentioned earlier, after the announcement, we saw outside of Venture Banking significant deposit momentum and customer interest and growth. None of those deposits that are related to this portfolio actually came in as a reminder, as of June 30th.
So they’re coming in the third quarter, so I think that’s sort of the way to think about the venture banking process. You also asked a second question about where else are we seeing opportunities. I think that being a service-oriented technology focused – best-in-class technology focused niche banking focused commercial bank. There’s been a tremendous amount of dislocation, whether it’s Tech & Venture, whether it’s Fund Finance, whether it’s Private Banking, whether it’s equipment finance, across the board in many of our niche verticals. So we’re seeing great opportunities both to lean in and remix customers to a lot more sort of franchise enhancing and a much less competitive environment. We’re also seeing opportunities to recruit. We’ve added half a dozen to a dozen new team members in some of those verticals.
We’ve added sort of a venture capital focus in our Fund Finance team from some of the dislocated institutions, and we continue to be at any given time at a minimum meeting at a maximum, discussing onboarding with a number of teams who are figuring out what does their business as usual mean for them in their current or new institution that they’re at?
Bill Dezellem: And congratulations on that purchase.
Sam Sidhu: Thanks Bill.
Operator: And this brings us to the end of our question-and-answer session. Mr. Sam Sidhu, I turn the call back over to you for some final closing remarks.
Sam Sidhu: Thanks so much, everyone. Really appreciate your focus and interest in Customers Bancorp. As I – as Jay and I mentioned earlier, we are very proud of our team’s efforts. We very much appreciate our customer support. And as we said, on a relative basis we feel this is one of our strongest quarters ever to date, and we think it’s an incredible foundation to build off of. So thank you so much, everyone. Have a great morning.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
