Tony Labozzetta: Sure. I might give it a long-winded answer on the two-part question. So with regards to our lending, we think we — the pacing that I mentioned during the call at around 6.7% is something that is in the wheelhouse. We still guide to that 5% to 6% growth rate. Pipeline is strong. The activity is strong. Our underwriting is strong. So we feel pretty good about that sector. One of the things that to point out that in the first half of the year, we’ve seen a substantive growth on the C&I side of the book as well. So there’s not that — which is consistent with our plans. So not to rely so heavily on CRE lending. So if you — just to give you a quick metric on that, we did about 40% of our production was in C&I versus 27% last year at the same time.
So the teams are doing a good job executing on that, and I’m feeling really good. In terms of funding, I guess our expectation, if I were to just throw it out there on a macro basis is that our aim is to probably try to keep deposits stable for the rest of the year. There are — I don’t think it’s prudent to have strategies that — to attract because it’s very expensive to do that. That being said, we still grow a lot of our deposits through our business banking program. So we still expect some good activity there and growth. On the municipal side, I think that we had new norms and a lot of the excess money that was in municipalities through stimulus has gone out. So therefore, that — we don’t expect a lot of growth in that sector. And we’re aiming to maintain consumer deposits on a level basis.
And I think if we can do that, it’s a good achievement. That being said, how do you funnel the growth? We’re going to fund it through our business banking growth in terms of deposits. We’re going to probably go to the wholesale market if needed, given that it’s a better pricing play than trying to incrementally price your deposits through some campaign. And lastly, we’ll use some securities cash flows that come in to divert those into the lending sector. I think that we’re cognizant of loan-to-deposit ratios not going out of bounds, but our estimates show that they’re still within the bands that we want to operate in. So we’re comfortable pushing for that 5%, 6% as long as it’s good, responsible growth because it will also come with some self-funding in that category.
Tom Lyons: I was just going to add with some of our peers stepping back a bit in the lending arena, it affords us the ability to continue to be selective, both with regard to pricing and structure. So we’re getting looks at some quality loans.
Tony Labozzetta: Exactly. Long-winded answer, Bill. Hopefully, I gave you what you needed.
Billy Young: You did. And it wasn’t long winded at all. Thank. And this, I guess, second question, to kind of follow up on Mark’s questioning on the margin. It sounds like — does it kind of feel like some of the deposit pressures that we saw in the second quarter are — or normalizing or getting better so far in the third quarter? It sounds like we’re pretty close to the margin bottoming here. And if the Fed’s hike earlier this week was the last month for this year, do you guys feel better about your ability to kind of incrementally see margin expansion as we get further out from this?
