Wintrust Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:WTFC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brody Preston: Got it. And then just one last one for me. Just on the loan sale within the commercial finance – premium finance portfolio. Who are the end buyers of these? You don’t even give a name, obviously, but just like a type. Is it private equity? Like, who are the end buyers of this loan – of this type of loan portfolio? And I think you mentioned that this kind of gives you the opportunity to explore other types of these transactions down the road. What would drive you to kind of look to lean into selling more of these loans versus keeping them on balance sheet?

David Alan Dykstra: Yes. So if we sold it in a special purpose vehicle that then sells it out asset conduits that are investing. So yes, we’re not going to give the name right now as we have an NDA. But it’s your standard financial institution conduit financing. So again, we didn’t have to do it. We didn’t sell it off to some of these firms that are buying distressed assets. Obviously, this is not a distressed portfolio. We have no reason to do that. This was more testing the plumbing and getting us set up to provide a lever to pull for liquidity if we need it. So I think the reason you would do it again is if you – if loan growth was very, very strong and you needed to fund it and deposit growth wasn’t quick, again, as Tim says, we must prefer to grow our franchise.

We’ve always done that to grow the franchise through deposits, which is the core business that we love. But to the extent that the asset growth would outstrip deposit growth, in any given quarter, we could pull a lever on this either as a distinct sale like we did this time or you could also set up a similar transaction where it’s a revolving securitization facility where you could just continue to feed into. We’re not as favorable as setting that because generally you’d want to set it a two or three-year time period at least. And your crystal ball isn’t always so clear as how strong loan demand will be three years out. So we’d rather do it discreetly in kind of bespoke sort of transactions as needed. But right now, we don’t anticipate doing it again in the future.

But if we did it again, it probably a good thing because that means we’re having really, really good loan growth.

Brody Preston: Got it. And I think I heard you right that you’re going to continue to service these loans for those borrowers, but they are pretty short-term. So is there much in the way of servicing income that will come from that?

David Alan Dykstra: No, no. It’s a very short-term and the servicing costs are pretty low in this portfolio.

Brody Preston: Got it. Thank you very much for taking my questions, everyone. I appreciate it.

Timothy Crane: You bet.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Race with Piper Sandler.

Nathan Race: Yes. Hi, guys, good morning.

Timothy Crane: Good morning, Nathan.

Nathan Race: Of course, not just the increase in the substandard loans in the quarter. It looks like they’re up 16% versus the first quarter. Any specific drivers there of note? And to what extent if any did that impact the provision in the quarter?

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