Operator
And next we have Tim Coffey from FIG Partners
Tim Coffey, FIG Partners
Good morning gentlemen. Mind you, if we can look at Slide 5 on the presentation deck, you have done a pretty good job of improving the leverage of the earning asset mix. Do you see that improvement continuing to 2015?
Robert Sarver, Chairman and CEO, Western Alliance Bancorporation
Well there are still some more opportunity there. We still have substantial — more than half of our securities portfolio is free and not pledged for anything so there is room there. I do not think there is a lot more room on the cash side, in terms of what can be done. But, part of the reason that it is mitigated — while others have had margin compression generally and we have avoided it, it is because of we have been doing in the mix. Mix within the loans categories as well as within the balance sheet more broadly. So there is still more that could be done there if we wanted to.
Tim Coffey, FIG Partners
Okay. So when it comes to talking about spread income, we are talking about balance sheet growth and improving the mix, right?
Robert Sarver, Chairman and CEO, Western Alliance Bancorporation
Well both of those have been a factor in terms of our margin stability, yes.
Tim Coffey, FIG Partners
Okay. And then the expectations on non-interest expense into 2015, does that include new opportunities to pick up teams from Southern California that start to emerge yesterday?
Robert Sarver, Chairman and CEO, Western Alliance Bancorporation
So, I mean, within our projections that we talk about for our run rate for this year for non-interest expense, it includes that we are going to continue to target and recruit business development officers that can bring in quality relationships and augment our growth. So whether that relates to anything or any transactions or something like this, does not necessarily matters. We intend to continue pursue that strategy, that has been successful for us and it is been an important component of the momentum that we have established. But a number of our expenses are tied to how the company is doing. So if we get a growth in some of the expenses like we have this year in ’14, it is going to be because we are outperforming kind of what we budgeted to do, and so that is kind of closely tied together, so you see our expenses going up at a higher rate it is going to be because our revenue is going up at a higher rate.
Tim Coffey, FIG Partners
Right, I guess my question alluded to more of the people-related expenses not necessarily variable expenses.
Robert Sarver, Chairman and CEO, Western Alliance Bancorporation
Well a lot of the people is tied to performance. We got about $30 million of — $30 to $35 million of compensation last year that was all performance driven.
Tim Coffey, FIG Partners
Okay. Thanks. Those are my questions.
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Robert Sarver for any closing remarks.
Robert Sarver, Chairman and CEO, Western Alliance Bancorporation
Yes nothing really else to add. Appreciate your calling in and participating on our call and we will talk to you here in three months. Thanks.
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
