Financial Institutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Twerdahl: Hi. I wanted to go back to your comment Marty on reserving balance sheet capacity for the best customers and just sort of figure out exactly what you mean by that. Is it is sort of the constraining factor on loan growth a function of liquidity, is it a function of capital, is it a function of concentrations in specific segments? And just get a little bit more color on how you think about the sort of a capacity issue so that we can sort of incorporate that into some of the longer-term balance sheet complexion and growth projections that we have.

Marty Birmingham: So the first half of the year loan growth has been driven by our pipeline cycling in our commercial real estate book and inherently those loans do not come with a lot of deposits. And as a result of that, that’s where we’re also seeing the temper growth on our borrower side and as well actions we’re taking driving our spreads up and encouraging our lenders to pursue and drive full relationships.

Alex Twerdahl: Okay. So it’s really about trying to target more customers that have deposit relationships than specific constraints on the balance sheet today.

Jack Plants: Yes Alex, this is Jack. That’s exactly right. So the focus is to step away from transaction-only type opportunities and those that come with deposits that partially fund the outstanding balance, take a little bit of pressure off of wholesale funding and then look for opportunities to build full relationships with our wealth management and insurance businesses.

Alex Twerdahl: Okay. And then, that’s a reason to my next question, which is the merger of the two investment managers and you kind of alluded to a little bit in your prepared remarks Marty, but I’m just curious if there’s a way to sort of define the opportunity that may be in front of the larger company now just given more capacity I think that you mentioned and just how to think about some of the other potential efficiencies, both on the revenue and expense side that could be associated with the completion of that merger?

Jack Plants: Yes Alex, this is Jack. I’ll take that. So day one of that merger was effectively May 1. So we’re early stages of that merger, but really the opportunity there was to rightsize the business of a function by creating more of a focus on high net worth managed accounts and lesser focus on the retail broker-dealer type relationships that are traditionally offered in the branch network. And from a revenue standpoint you can see that that impacted transaction fee income by about $104,000 during the quarter. However, we did observe a greater reduction in expenses which resulted in a higher EBITDA margin for that business, which is now trending above 25%. So we do have some operational opportunities down the road but we’re in early stages.

Alex Twerdahl: Great. And one question on the Auto. I think you mentioned that new — the new weighted coupon is around 930, which sounds pretty enticing in terms of actually growing that as sort of a mix of the balance sheet just to kind of improve margins. But has the structure of those loans changed to allow for the larger coupon like is the amortization period extended out just to kind keep the sort of the normal payments lower, or just kind of help me understand how customers are reacting to that rate and whether or not it could actually wind up being a better asset class and one that you maybe want to have a little bit more of on the balance sheet?

Marty Birmingham: Consistent kind of with our comments relative to commercial, we’ve been focused on spread in that business as well, and maintaining our approach to credit and the focus on 700 and above credit scores in our Tier 1 bucket. That’s again taking advantage of the market’s resetting and driving wider spreads there. And we agree. It’s an asset class that we’ve been comfortable with that has served us well, is performing very well right now, which gives us some options relative to trying to defend the NIM.