And as we also talked about in my comments, the commercial premium finance group where we’re seeing fairly robust growth through the rest of the year. So earlier on, somebody may have said that our guidance has changed and it hasn’t changed. We just had indicated that with a slower first quarter and just where the economy is, in general, we would anticipate that it’s going to be to the mid or bottom end of that range of mid- to high single digits, so just a point of clarification there.Jeff Rulis Okay. Right. That’s helpful, those last comments. You sound optimistic. I think you kind of maybe hedging that a bit, just macro and a slow start. But — so again, the guidance is mid to high, and maybe you’re going to hug the mid for now, but kind of continue to update us.
Helpful. Just to…Tim Crane Rich mentioned this. One of the wildcards obviously, is what our competitors are doing, and that’s been a little bit harder to determine over the last month than it typically is. So just another factor.Jeff Rulis Yes. Fair enough. And just on a related front, my other question, just it sounds like you’re getting some opportunities organically, but I wanted to check back in on the M&A side and your thoughts, obviously beautiful environment, but also opportunity potentially. So any thoughts on looking at whole bank or you look at more of the — like you’ve done on the wealth management side, any thoughts on the acquisition front?Tim Crane Right. Yes, as you recall, the last two have been non-bank, the wealth management acquisition as well as about a little over a year ago, the Allstate Agent Finance.
We talked about a fair amount of sort of exploratory activity that really hasn’t turned into much, because it’s been tough to come to agreement with sellers. But we think that may be opening up a little bit here. We’re getting a few more inbound phone calls and some more exploration. We’ll continue to be opportunistic if they make sense, but we’re also disciplined. And so we’ll see what happens. But probably activity kind of picking up a little bit.Edward Wehmer I would expect to continue to pick up as this whole cycle hits those $1 billion to $5 billion banks, and they have lots of problems and issues and probably through the wat of talent and as Tim said, the activity has picked up.Jeff Rulis Got it. And congrats Ed, and look forward to the future.Edward Wehmer Thank you.Tim Crane Yes, thanks.Operator Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Ben Gerlinger of Hovde Group. Your line is open, Ben.Ben Gerlinger Hi, thanks guys. Most of the questions have been asked and answered, so I appreciate all the color, but I was curious if we can just think like kind of 10,000-foot view here. Wintrust has really never had a long-term growth. You guys are in perpetual growth mode, which is good. The audits have been pretty tight to get across the industry, especially if the positive level is going down, in a point to tightening, the cost has gone up. So just in general, do you have any internal red lines in terms of loan-to-deposit ratio. I mean, if growth kind of reaccelerates, which is kind of alluded to here, where would kind of be the internal red line that we — yes, we need to get more deposits regardless of cost?Tim Crane Well, I don’t know about the regardless of cost, but we think there’s deposit opportunities out there.
We’ve tried to be pretty disciplined through this cycle as rates have moved up. And we’ve not gotten ahead of what we believe to be the loan growth opportunities. But we’re going to be working pretty hard on deposits. And we’ve said before, we don’t want to be 100% loan to deposit. We probably don’t want to be 95%. So I think you’ll see us working very hard to grow deposits to try and match the loan growth.Ben Gerlinger Got you. Okay. And then when you just think, kind of, economically speaking, I know you guys were a bit ahead of the curve in terms of kind of saying that inflation is not transitory. When you guys position today, it seems like economically we’re slowing down, and the Fed is likely to probably cut sometime in the next 18-months or so.
Is there any area that you’re intentionally rate capping in terms of growth — or excuse me, loan growth or new areas you’re kind of avoiding?Tim Crane No, I don’t — I mean, Rich can chime in here, too. I don’t think categorically, there’s anything that we’re saying we either will or won’t do, but we’re obviously monitoring the rate impacts on our clients. And for many of them down is good. But we’ll see.Richard Murphy Yes. No, I agree with what Tim just said. One of the lines that we use a lot around here with our lenders is we never want to be the bank that jerks the wheel. We think that ultimately, that does a lot of institutional harm by saying we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to do this, because it just makes it that much more difficult to get back into it when you want to.
And our general thought is just be really thoughtful about who your sponsor is, who your customer is, what the structure of the deal is how the deal is priced. It’s just — we’ve been at this for a long time, and we just really want to focus in on that. There’s — office is a great example. Would we do another office deal?Absolutely, if it’s structured the right way. We’ve got the right tenant mix, and we’ve got the right borrower, and we’ve got the right collateral structure. So it’s just — we are trying to be very thoughtful, I think, as we talked about here, the granularity of our portfolio and the way it’s structured allows us that flexibility. If I had a portfolio that was 50% CRE and most of that office, I’d feel a lot different. But right now, we are just trying to be opportunistic and also be really thoughtful about keeping dry powder for our customers.Ben Gerlinger Got you.
Appreciate the color. Ed, congratulations. You’ve build a great franchise.Edward Wehmer Thank you.Operator Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Tim Crane for closing remarks. Sir?Tim Crane Yes. Thank you very much. As I hope you can tell, we continue to think we’re very well positioned coming off sort of atypical March time frame here. And we’re going to be working hard to grow deposits and take advantage of the opportunities available to us. Ed’s going to get mad at me, but I do want to take one second just to remind everybody that coming off a record quarter and well positioned to the future is really a function of Ed’s leadership.And many of you on the call know Ed personally. And I hope as he transitions into a different role that you’ll have a chance to catch up with him.
But in 32-years, he’s turned Wintrust into Chicago and Milwaukee’s bank with several market-leading national businesses. And he’s done it in a way that’s been fun for employees, good for our communities, appreciated by our customers and we hope rewarding for those that have invested in our banks. So Ed, on behalf of the whole team, I just want to say thank you and wish you well.Edward Wehmer Thanks, Tim. I’ll be around [Multiple Speakers]Tim Crane I know.Edward Wehmer Don’t screw it up.Tim Crane So with that, obviously, if there are more questions, feel free to reach out to us off-line. And as Ed always says, we appreciate your support, and we’ll be working hard to make sure we’re moving forward here. Thanks very much.Edward Wehmer Thanks, everybody.Operator This concludes today’s conference call.
Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
