Daniel Tamayo: Okay, that’s all I had. Thanks for the color guys.
Christopher Maher: All right. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you for your question. The next question comes from the line of David Bishop with Hovde Group. Your line is now open.
David Bishop: Hey. Good morning, gentlemen.
Christopher Maher: Good morning, Dave.
David Bishop: Hey. Joe, quick question in terms of maybe the outlook for low-to-mid-single-digit growth mostly in the back half. Is it obviously the pipeline numbers have come under pressure here. Do you have sort of line of sight in terms of maybe what’s beyond the published numbers in terms of the greater than 90-day pipeline that gives you confidence that you may hit those bogeys in the second half of the year?
Joe Lebel: Yeah, Dave, I think the easier answer is this. We’ve added eight C&I lenders last year. It takes them some time to ramp up. We’ve added two more in the first quarter. We have a couple more scheduled to start pretty much any day here in Q2. So we’re absolutely seeing an increase in pipe subsequent to the end of Q1. I think you’re going to see that start to filter through closings in Q2 into Q3. And I expect the folks that have finally gotten to that point where they’re ramping up to continue to bring that kind of business to us. So, I think that’s the measure of what we’re seeing so far and what our expectations are.
David Bishop: Got it. And then I saw in the slide deck some narratives regarding the high-yield savings products, it sounds like you moved down pricing, it looks like the spot rate was down 30 basis points from the quarterly average. Am I reading it right that overall balances have remained stable? And is there more opportunity to move those rates down, maybe either there or even money market or interest-bearing checking?
Christopher Maher: Yeah. I think we’re in the — the good news is we’re in the fine-tuning stage of this rate cycle. Meaning we’re kind of deciding which money we want to keep at what prices and money that may not be economical for us to keep it, we can kind of pull back off it. So, that stability is a welcome change. We saw that in the fourth quarter coming into the first quarter, and let’s be clear, when we reduced those rates, we lost some deposits. That’s why you saw some of the deposit contraction in Q1, but that was planned. We knew — and we actually hit pretty much what we expected to in terms of attrition in the high-yield book. So, I would expect us to be fine-tuning deposit pricing over the course of the year.
One of the questions we get off and when it goes back to Fed rate policy and people trying to predict they’re going to be cuts in all that. Obviously, we care a lot about what the Fed does, but I would not assume that there is any linkage between Fed rate policy and depositor rate expectations. Depositors are going want what they’re going to want. They’re going to shop where they shop. And that’s what makes it a little bit difficult at this point in the cycle to kind of get a beat on things. We certainly feel the pressure is easing, but it is way too early to make a longer-term blanket statement about that.
David Bishop: Got it. And then in the same vein, is there — give any sort of outlook in terms of brokered deposits may be maturing this quarter?
Christopher Maher: Over time, we generally want to just continue to reduce that brokered segment. Traditionally, we have not relied on brokered funding. We saw it as a really good option to kind of bolster liquidity at a time when it made a lot of sense to do so. And it is a great option to manage interest rate risk. So what we did with our brokered book is, we went out right after rates first started to rise, and we immediately kind of pulled down funding that we knew we would have a very certain interest rate characteristic to it for a duration. Now that we’re somewhere near the top end of the cycle, extending the duration through brokered CDs doesn’t make sense. So rolling them off also takes not just volatility out, but allows us to maybe become a little bit more liability sensitive over time.
David Bishop: Got it. And one final question, looks like maybe a modest pickup in the special mention loan category maybe looks to be off the theory. Just curious, but maybe some commentary on what drove the change in risk rating? Thanks.
Joe Lebel: Yeah, Dave, I’ll give you a little feedback. It’s primarily three loans. One just a little color. One was a construction build-to-suit. There’s a little delay getting the tenant in. The tenant is in and paying and the two other loans. One was as an office loan in Philadelphia, which is fully occupied, just a — sounds a little bump in the road with the principal. I think two of the three, if not all three are cleaned up by the end of Q2. But it’s just prudent to put them in the category where they belong, if you have some concerns.
David Bishop: Got it. Appreciate the color.
Operator: Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Marinac with JMS. Your line is now open.
Christopher Marinac: Hey, thanks. Good morning. I’m just going to continue where Dave left off on his last question. So if we look at the level of criticized loans, did you see that driving at all your reserve levels going forward? Or is the reserve still build on kind of across the cycle and the low charge-offs that continue to kind of speak for itself?
