So, we get that two ways. Then, another business that we are very pleased with was the one we started in early January, January 4th of 2023, which is our Consumer Digital Platform. This quarter alone, that brought in nearly $800 million. And that’s been a real home run for us and that’s where we see deposits more in $53,000 to $57,000 range for each client. Now for — going forward in ’24 into ’25, we’re going to try to shift the platform from an outside vendor to an internal platform. And so, we’re going to probably run two platforms for a while as we come up to speed with our own platform. But that will help us also longer-term and it will reduce, not in ’24, but going forward ’25 and ’26, it will reduce some of our maintenance expenses. And then, last but not least, let’s not forget what we are in our traditional ball game here and that is the regions, and we’ve been rethinking and redesigning the regions, that was the reason why we moved Tim out of his Chief Credit Officer role into the Chief Banking Officer for the regions.
That’s why we brought in Lynne Herndon to take over the Chief Credit Officer role and Tim’s charge is to rethink and re-imagine the regions and how to be more C&I-focused. And with that focus in C&I, of course, there’ll be more deposits. And I should mention that $600 million came in this quarter from the regions as well in deposits. But it will also help us grow our fee income. And so, we’re going to get a two for there over the long term. It will be easier to bring in the deposits first and then that fee income as we continue to sell or cross-sell our Treasury Management Services, will help us towards the back-end of ’24, but again pick up some steam into the new year of 2025. So, I hope that kind of gives you a sense of what we’ve been doing, and we’re looking at some other deposit verticals that are just early, early stages and we’ll probably work on them this year and hope to have them ready to go either in the back-end of ’24 or early ’25.
Ebrahim Poonawala: So, that is helpful. Thanks for the rundown, Ken. And what I didn’t hear was, does this change at all your view around doing any Bank M&A where you pick up a retail franchise, bring in another deposit sort of generating engine or is that not kind of part of the equation today?
Ken Vecchione: So, today, it’s not part of the equation. We’re not talking about M&A at all. You know, again, we’re talking about 11% CET1, kind of move that upward. But it will at some point — the M&A question or conversation will come into play as we continue to get bigger and bigger. We kind of do what we think we’re going to do with deposits, then, where that will be brought into play as we approach a $100 billion. But frankly, that’s a premature conversation at this point. I think we still have a couple of years before we get to a $100 billion.
Ebrahim Poonawala: Perfect. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Clark of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Matthew Clark: Hey, good morning, everyone. Just the first one on the loan growth guide, $2 billion of — $500 million a quarter, is that — we had previously talked about maybe some acceleration in loan growth in the second half, is that just you all being a little conservative and then again either to start the year or should we not necessarily expect a step-up in loan growth in the second-half?
Ken Vecchione: So, you know, the further we take, Q4, we thought loan growth was going to be doing zero on the $300 million, and so, we were a little surprised that it came in at $850 million. I’d rather be surprised on the upside as a general trend, but we’re still going to be a little cautious about economic activity going forward. And so, we’re going to be mindful of this recession or slowdown that only at least advertised to come but has not shown up yet. And then, we have sort of deemphasized certain asset classes for now, those being obviously CRE office and residential just to name the two, some construction areas as well. And so, we’re just going to stay with the guide of $500 million a quarter. We think that’s reasonable. And if the liquidity comes in faster than we think, then we’ll look to deploy it in loan growth. As a general rule, we’ve never had problem deploying our liquidity and getting good, safe, sound, and thoughtful loan growth.
Matthew Clark: Okay. And then, on the fee income guide, if you look at the fourth quarter run rate, I think would you make the fair-value adjustments, that exclude the Securities losses. I’m coming up with a run rate closer to a $124 million, correct me if I’m wrong. And you annualize that, you’re talking about call it $492 million and your guide at the mid-point is roughly $457 off the last year’s base. So, maybe correct me if I’m wrong on that $124 million, and if it is — but if that is correct, it only implies — it implies you’re down 7% this year and obviously, you talked about not assuming any uptick in Mortgage, but just want to get the puts and takes there of what we might not be thinking about.
Dale Gibbons: Well, so we have a few things going on in the — on the non-interest income side, some of which we’re kind of implementing now. We’ve got a kind of a service charge revision that we’re going to be undertaking. We think as rates decline and ECRs come down, that that puts more clients into a position where their earnings credit rate does not necessarily cover all of their consumption of internal services. And that could also kind of push that up. So, we think that, again, we’re looking for growth in that category certainly kind of going forward and kind of expect to see that.
Matthew Clark: Okay. And then just last one for me, on the interest-bearing deposits. Can you update us on the spot rate at the end of the year? And it seems like the pressure there is subsiding and kind of how you think about the beta on the way down on interest-bearing specifically?
Dale Gibbons: Yes. Interest-bearing deposit spot rate was 3.63% at year-end. In terms of the beta coming down, we think it’s going to be very strong. We expect betas to be certainly no slower on the way down than they were on the way up. You may recall that our betas have been faster than industry norms, kind of, this entire time, and our clients are expecting that, that is that we’re watching that closely, and so are they. So I expect that we’re going to be able to pull down the interest-bearing costs. And for those that are ECR-related, pull those down as well on the imputed yields that some of them have, which might be tied to effective Fed funds.
Matthew Clark: Got it. Okay, great. Thank you.
