Vince Delie: Yes, I mean, there’s seasonality within the originations depending on the portfolio. If you look at the commercial book, it tends to grow more in the second into the third quarter. If you look at mortgage banking, I mean, move that up a little bit, maybe a quarter. Really first and second quarter is when it starts to take off. So there are differences in the portfolios. I just use those two as an example. But I think when we build our plan to give consensus, we look at both macro and micro scenarios. So basically we build our plan from the ground up. We survey our business units, we look at our production capability historically in the markets we’re in, and then we look at the macroeconomic environment, say, is this achievable?
And what’s happening? And we basically use — that’s why Vince said, we use consensus estimates by economists. We don’t forecast ourselves somebody else’s forecast, and then we apply that to our model. So it’s all kind of baked in to what we give you. So we’re building it from inside of our own company, and then we’re looking at the macroeconomic factors that could influence that. That goes for provision expense, loan growth, commercial consumer mortgage, kind of break it down by segment, and then build it from the ground up. So I think given where we are in the cycle and what we’re seeing, kind of hard to predict, but we’re a little more optimistic than we were a quarter ago going into next year. And I think that’s reflected in the guide on the loan growth.
I’m hoping we can do better. If you look at our pipelines, we did pretty well commercially in the last quarter, and it’s reflected in the loan growth and the surge in the fourth quarter, that can change from year to year commercially. But we did well last quarter. So when you look at our pipelines moving forward, we’re relatively flat. So we don’t have this big pipeline that we’re looking at that says, hey, yes, we’re going to achieve 3% or 4% or 5% or whatever the mid-single-digit in that portfolio equates to. So I would say that — I feel pretty confident about what we’re putting forward, given what we know about the economy today. I don’t know if it’s helpful.
Manuel Navas: That’s great. No, no, that’s really helpful. No, no, that’s great. Can I add, there any kind of regional takeaways from your eStore performance? You have a lot of activity, you have a lot of non-account holders using the e-store. Can you break it down regionally at all? Or is it just great trends in general?
Vince Delie: Yes. That’s an interesting question. And I just asked our people that question. So I ask the same question internally. It’s still relatively new we’re trying to figure out how to devise that gets us as granular. Gets as granular as we need to be from an origination perspective. But when they initially looked at it, it’s pretty much across the board. Which is interesting. It wasn’t in one particular geography. It was spread across a pretty broad geography. So I think anywhere where we have name recognition, branch locations, right? We tend to get more action. Once you move outside of that, we don’t advertise a lot so you don’t see as much activity. Which is part of the reason why we decided to go with branded ATMs and do the ATM deployment, because our theory was that the more frequently consumers see us, the more likely they are to engage us digitally.
That was part of the strategy. So it seems to be working. If you look at where our geographic locations are where we have signage and some recognition, there’s more activity digital.
Manuel Navas: Great.
Vince Delie: And then obviously we’re going to — now that we’ve added the deposit products, in December, we are going to start advertising. So we will try to grow that through some advertising, bring some awareness to the consumer about the capability. And I know locally I saw during the Super Bowl week, we managed a couple of badge, right, or not the Super Bowl, but the national championship for the college football side of me to say Super Bowl, I don’t know what I was thinking. Steelers are already out, so I’m lost. But we did some sport, let’s put it this way. We were in the playoff game. We ran during the Steeler Buffalo Bills game. We ran during the national championship, probably locally, right? Because we have customers that are in tune with those events.
So we ran some advertising and some people commented on it. And then the branding of the buildings in certain markets has helped us with visibility, particularly Pittsburgh. I think we’ve seen more activity from a prospecting perspective because of the signage on our headquarters building and that activity that’s brought some people in. And then the sponsorships with the Penguins, the away jersey, the patch. You’ve got a lot of play on that as well. Anyway, that’s how we’re trying to build awareness.
Manuel Navas: That’s great. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Brian Martin from Janney. Please go ahead with your question.
Brian Martin: Hey, good morning, guys. Most of my questions have been answered. Just one question. Vince, you answered it. I think the last question was just on the cadence of the commercial growth or the commercial pipeline. It sounds like it’s a little bit slower to start here, given what fourth quarter looked like, but it probably builds from there. That’s just in general what I heard. Is that fair?
Vince Delie: I mean, we had a really strong third quarter, so it kind of cleared out the 90 day bucket on the pipeline and that has to rebuild. So it’s relatively flat. We had good production out of the Carolinas. There’s double-digit growth in some of the Carolina portfolios, which is pretty positive without CRE, without a big contribution from CRE. So we’re pretty excited about that. And I think there’ll be opportunity in the Mid-West and in the northeast as well from a C&I perspective as we move into next year, the latter half of next year.
Brian Martin: Got you. Okay. And then just one for Gary. Gary, the credit just, it sounds very mean. I guess if you point to one area today that you’re maybe a bit more watchful of — the criticize, sounds like they were down this quarter. But just in general, is there any area that you’re paying a bit more attention to as you kind of head into ’24 given the strength of the portfolio?
