We continue to think about that. One of the things that we’re doing is, there’s always going to be loans at the margin. When you look at the return on them, they are truly marginal, right? And in this kind of environment, we’re absolutely being disciplined. And what that means is that some of that marginal growth is not going to happen, right? But for us, it creates opportunity. And I think the other thing Barry will talk about too is probably relationship continuity. In this environment where we have existing relationships or prospective relationships where they have their current bank or banks that they work with are pulling back, creates opportunity for us. So, I’ll just let Barry kind of pick up from there.
Barry Harvey: Yes, and Kevin, I’ll just echo some of the thoughts that Tom referenced. Every day, when we’re looking at deals, we are scrutinizing those deals, not only from a credit standpoint, but probably more closely than ever from the standpoint of from a return on investment and from an ROE perspective. We are passing on deals that are lower on the pricing spectrum that were maybe acceptable 12 months ago, that in our environment today for what we’re challenged with trying to raise deposits and a little bit of uncertainty, by knowing what it’s going to take to get there and how quickly the deposit growth can keep up with loan growth, we’re trying to be very selective in terms of the, from a profitability of the transaction standpoint.
Obviously, always the credit aspect of it is first and foremost. We don’t expect to grow as we’ve been, and Duane indicated, we don’t expect to grow as fast loan growth wise in 2023 as we did in 2022 for a variety of reasons. Being more selective on prices is definitely one of those. We do have categories that we’ve been avoiding. Those are the same categories that we’ve been avoiding for quite a few years, just because of some uncertainty around those. They’re – on the flip side of those situations, there’s the little bit lessening of competition in some categories of lending. Pricing is getting better. Structure has definitely gotten better. Those things are all positive. And we view this somewhat similar to what we saw in the middle of 2020, where there was lessening of competition.
And because of that, the deal structure itself improved greatly and the pricing improved, and we see that going on today. And we want – for the right customers, we want to make sure we take full advantage of that. Also, as has been alluded to, we do have a new line of business equipment finance out of our Atlanta office, along with some additional CRE and C&I lending staff that we’ve added there that are doing a great job. And with that in mind, there’s going to be some additional opportunity coming our way that we’ll need to manage. So, there’s a combination of things. One, we’re trying to be more selective from a ROE or return on investment standpoint, with every deal we look at. And we do expect there to be a little less growth, but we do have a little less competition.
We do have relationships to manage, as Tom alluded to, and we do have a new line of business and some additional resources and existing lines, both CRE and C&I. So, there’s, as Tom said, a convoluence of all those things at one time. So, we do expect to have good solid loan growth as we’ve guided, and then – but we’re trying to be as selective as we can be, making sure that the pricing is in line with what we’re paying for those deposits to fund it with.
