Jose Fernandez: A couple of factors here that I want you to consider and that are, I think, different than in the U.S. market. Number one, the Puerto Rico market comes from a significantly lower rate per hour in terms of the employee compensation on the hourly versus the U.S. So as you’ve seen from us, we’ve been gradually increasing the hourly rate for hourly employees simply because we need to make sure that we serve our customers well and that we reduce the attrition or the turnover that we were seeing. I think that goes across the entire market in Puerto Rico. So the level of hourly pay in Puerto Rico starts in this cycle at a significantly lower level than in the U.S. and it’s catching up. So that’s one component of why you’re seeing higher non-interest expenses on the compensation side.
Number two, we’ve also realized that we need to recruit a talent that has skills that we need to compete and we need to help us continue our transformation and our investments in our digital first division. So we need people with analytical skills. We need more talent with technology background so that we can leverage the technology and the investments that we’re making. So that is another component of a increases in non-interest expenses. And lastly, for making investments in technology, we’ve been doing this. And if you look back for the last five years, we are being very methodical on how we look at the branch network, how do we look at transactionality in those branch networks and how do we leverage technology to provide self service digital solutions for our customers and we certainly come in Puerto Rico market that is significantly behind the curve as opposed to the U.S. market.
So that’s kind of the reason why you’ve seen us making these investments and making sure that we’re thoughtful about them, vis-Ã -vis our strategy and that’s the rationale behind us making these investments. Having said that, we’re very cognizant about mid range 50s efficiency ratio and we would like to leverage the higher interest rates and the higher better economy in Puerto Rico to maintain a positive operating leverage as we’ve had for the last several years.
Kelly Motta: Thank you. Thank you so much for all the color there. I’ll step back.
Jose Fernandez: Thank you, Kelly. I hope that was helpful.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Alex Twerdahl with Piper Sandler.
Alex Twerdahl: Hi guys. I just have a follow up. I know you guys mentioned the technology investments and efforts you have in 2023. Just wondering if you could reveal like what direction like other technology efforts it is and specifically what the whether there the technology initiatives and investments you’re making for the year are?
Jose Fernandez: So we’re making investments as we’ve mentioned in interactive teller machines. We’re making investments in digital solutions and upgrading our digital platforms for customers. We should be launching some of those in 2023. We’ve been looking at process improvement and how do we leverage technology to simplify processes. So we should see also efficiencies there. We look at underwriting and we’re looking at how do we become more efficient in terms of our consumer underwriting processes. So all those things are being looked at and investing in for the last couple of years. And we continue to look at them. And again, we feel that all this is done for two main reasons. One is to deepen the relationships with our customers.
