Financial Institutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Alexander Twerdahl: Okay. And then you talked a bunch about this, the 5% money market campaign. Does that — I mean is there a point where that 5% clips down to a different rate? Or like how should we be thinking about that kind of money from a modeling standpoint in terms of how it could impact deposit betas?

Jack Plants: Alex, that 5% rate was guaranteed for a 12-month time frame, which we thought was reasonable given the Fed’s outlook on where they expect to maintain rates over the next year. And afterwards, we have the ability to adjust that to market levels.

Alexander Twerdahl: Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Jack Plants: Thanks Alex.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We now turn to Matthew Breese with Stephens. Your line is open.

Matthew Breese: Hey, good morning everybody.

Martin Birmingham: Hi, Matt.

Jack Plants: Good morning, Matt.

Matthew Breese: I was hoping, along with your NIM comments, if you could provide the monthly NIM throughout the quarter, specifically the September NIM? And you made a comment that if we come in at 280 for the fourth quarter, then we’d be at the low end of the full-year range. I just wanted to get a sense for whether or not you thought that was a realistic outcome?

Jack Plants: Yes, I do think that 280 is on the downside or realistic outcome. So that was what guided to our 295 range. September came in at 288. So I think that’s a good proxy for outlook for the remainder of the quarter.

Matthew Breese: And as you look out into 2024, I guess where do you see the point at which deposit costs stabilize? And where do you see a point at which the NIM begins to stabilize.

Jack Plants: So we haven’t completed the 2024 budget yet, but anecdotally, I feel like we’re approaching the bottom from a margin perspective. There continues to be pressure in our deposit space for commercial accounts and public deposits through what’s offered by NYCLASS and Local Government Investment Pools. But when we think about our balance sheet positioning overall, we have $1 billion of cash flow that comes off the portfolio and is repricing at current market rates. And given the Fed outlook that we maintain this current level, to me, that feels like we have stability in our margin over the next 12 months.

Matthew Breese: Great. Okay. Maybe moving on to the indirect auto book. Could you just remind us of the underlying FICO scores within that book? And maybe what the lower kind of quartile FICO scores are? And then what caused the pick up each charge-offs? 92 bps is higher than historical averages. I also wanted to get a sense for what kind of early stage delinquencies for this book look like today versus prior quarters?

Martin Birmingham: So, Matt, you’ve watched our company for a while and seen several cycles. So our underwriting of the — remains consistent, 65-or-so percent. 60% to 65% is what we call Tier 1, 700 above FICO score. 680 and above gets us to 92% of our originations. We’re not a subprime lender. I’ll have to ask for some assistance on the lower quartile, but it’s not really material. We’ve been focused on credit fundamentally. We — in terms of the delinquency in the uptick, some of that deals with the pressure consumers are feeling. Some of it deals with the timing of liquidation of collateral in underlying collateral values in terms of our charge-offs. But Jack, do you have anything further that you could add to the response?

Jack Plants: Yes. When we look at the credit metrics of the portfolio, as far as FICO is concerned, about 86% of our portfolio is 670 and above and 65% of our portfolio is over 700. Does that answer your question, Matt?