Earnings Call Transcript - VLY Q1 2021

Operator, Operator

Welcome to the Valley National Bancorp First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Operator provided instructions. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Travis Lan, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Travis Lan, Investor Relations

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Valley's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Presenting on behalf of Valley today are President and CEO, Ira Robbins; Chief Financial Officer, Mike Hagedorn; and Chief Banking Officer, Tom Iadanza. Before we begin, I would like to make everyone aware that our quarterly earnings release and supporting documents can be found on our company website at valley.com. When discussing our results we refer to non-GAAP measures, which exclude certain items from reported results. Please refer to today's earnings release for reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures. Additionally, I would like to highlight Slide 2 of our earnings presentation and remind you that comments made during this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to Valley National Bancorp and the banking industry. Valley encourages all participants to refer to our SEC filings, including those found on Form 8-K, 10-Q and 10-K for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ira Robbins.

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

Thank you, Travis, and welcome to all the participants on the call. This morning, I will provide detailed thoughts on the unique growth opportunities available to us at Valley, and update you on our corporate social responsibility efforts. Mike will then provide additional details on the financial results before opening the call to your questions. In the first quarter of 2021, we reported net income of $116 million and earnings per share of $0.28. For the third consecutive quarter, this represents the highest level of quarterly earnings in Valley's entire history. Return on average assets was 1.14%, reflecting net interest margin expansion, stable expenses and a lower provision for loan losses. Looking forward, we expect fee income to rebound, continued net-interest margin strength and strong loan growth. This should drive further positive operating leverage, strong financial performance and shareholder value over time. On last quarter's call, I mentioned our expectation for mid-single digit non-PPP loan growth in 2021. In the first quarter, we generated 3.4% annualized growth in non-PPP loans. This growth was well diversified from an asset class and geographic perspective. On the commercial side, non-multifamily CRE and C&I were strong contributors, and auto loans increased nicely in the consumer portfolio. However, the net growth numbers don't tell the whole story. In the first quarter of 2021, Valley originated over $1.6 billion of non-PPP loans. This represents the single highest quarter for loan originations in our history. Our commercial loan pipeline now stands above $3 billion, which is also the highest level in our history. These statistics represent what we can control. We can build commercial and retail relationships and drive meaningful activity by providing premier service. We have less control over the pace of pay-offs, which remain elevated and have weighed on our net loan growth. Still, we feel very well positioned to achieve our loan growth goals through the course of the year. We mentioned in the fourth quarter call, that we're increasing our C&I lending staff in Florida by 25% or approximately 15 individuals. 12 of those 15 lenders are now on board, with half focused on middle market and the other half on business banking. We have also added eight new C&I lenders in the Northeast, spread across our middle market, business banking, and healthcare segments. We will continue to selectively augment our lending team to ensure we are positioned to capitalize on growth opportunities throughout all of our markets. Our talent is supported by the technology tools that enable nimble responsiveness and premier service. From a balance sheet perspective, we have the capital and deposit funding to support the loan growth that we expect to achieve as the economy continues to rebound. Geographically, we saw more than 50% of our commercial loan growth come out of Florida during the quarter. Activity has been particularly strong in Palm Beach, Broward County, Jacksonville and Orlando, where previous hires attracted from larger competitors are paying dividends. There is a real momentum here that will continue to be supplemented by the additional hires I referenced earlier. We have strategically built a loan portfolio and lending team that is well diversified across asset classes and geographies. Our significant market presence in stable Northeast markets is supplemented by a robust commercial lending operation in more growth-oriented Florida markets. Future growth is expected to remain well balanced between these markets. We believe this differentiated approach sets us apart from many of our regional peers and will ensure a consistent pool of growth opportunities remains available to us. With that said, I also want to mention some important strides we have made as corporate citizens. During 2020 we continued to promote social and economic justice. We emphasized inclusion among our associates and communities by expanding our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and partnering with local justice focused organizations. Our communities remain at the heart of what we do. In 2020 our employees volunteered over 7,000 hours of their time, and as an organization we gave nearly $4 million to local charities. We've also developed a new community lending group that will focus on serving the unique needs of underrepresented firms across all of our markets. We are proud to have received an Outstanding Community Reinvestment Act rating from the OCC. In 2020, we also established an ESG council to further our approach to environmental, social and governance issues. Our ESG Council will guide our efforts to practice sound ESG stewardship with respect to our employees, shareholders, customers and overall society. We will also use ESG best practices to mitigate the risks presented by these issues as we pursue our long-term strategic initiatives. For more details on these efforts and our recent successes, I welcome you to view our 2020 Corporate Social Responsibility Report on our website. We understand the importance of these issues and will continue to devote time and resources to ensuring we fulfill our potential as a well-respected and leading corporate citizen. As you can tell, there is plenty going on at Valley. We are constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of our markets and our diverse constituents. We continue to generate strong net interest margin performance and diverse loan growth opportunities. We are very excited for the rest of the year, and confident we will continue to drive strong financial performance and shareholder value. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike Hagedorn for some additional financial highlights.

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you Ira. Turning to Slide 4, you can see that Valley's reported net interest margin increased to 3.14% from 3.06% in the fourth quarter of 2020. The majority of this increase was related to accelerated PPP loan forgiveness. However, net interest margin would have still increased 1 basis point sequentially, absent the effects of PPP. This stability reflects continued earning asset-mix shift as average cash balances declined and average loans increased modestly. Importantly, much of the quarter's loan growth occurred in March. The impact on average balances and earnings will begin to emerge in the second quarter. We continue to actively manage the funding side of the balance sheet and drove another 9 basis point reduction in our interest-bearing liability costs during the quarter. This reflects lower deposit rates and a full quarter's benefit from the FHLB borrowings prepayment that we executed in the fourth quarter. As is typical, the first quarter's day count also had a modest negative impact on the reported margin. During the quarter, we utilized excess liquidity to fund the run-off of higher cost brokered deposits. This trend continued into April and our average cash balance continues to decline. With strong loan originations and select liability repricing opportunities, our net interest income should grow as the year progresses, absent the impact of PPP forgiveness volatility. You can see more detail regarding the impacts of PPP income on Slide 5. We estimate that PPP contributed 8 basis points to the margin versus 1 basis point in the fourth quarter. As you can see on the bottom left, we have an additional $600 million forgiveness request pending approval by the SBA. All in, approximately 57% of our Round 1 and 2 originations have now received or requested forgiveness. Through March 31, 2021, we have recognized approximately $49 million of PPP loan fee income since the inception of the program. I will speak to the results of our Round 3 PPP origination shortly. From an income perspective, however, as of March 31, an additional $57 million of PPP loan fees will be recognized as outstanding loans are forgiven or repaid. Slide 6 outlines our interest rate positioning and the remaining opportunity to reprice liabilities over the next four quarters. We have over $3 billion of retail CDs set to mature in the next two quarters, at an average rate of around 57 basis points. We expect the majority of these funds will be retained in lower cost CDs or transaction accounts at rates closer to 25 basis points. We also have additional opportunities on the borrowing side, including the pending maturity of $500 million of higher cost borrowings early in the third quarter of 2021. As a result of active balance sheet management and significant deposit growth, our net interest margin has been extremely resilient over the last few years. We remain modestly asset sensitive and expect to continue to outperform peers from a net interest margin perspective going forward. Slide 7 illustrates the ongoing improvement in our funding profile. Total deposits increased another 2% during the quarter, fueled by a 9% increase in non-interest bearing balances and a 7% increase in other transaction balances. Continuing our recent experience, CD balances declined 19% during the quarter. A portion of this runoff was in brokered balances. These dynamics contributed to the sequential 5 basis point reduction in deposit costs. From a total deposit growth perspective, we have benefited from successful cross-sell of deposit products into our commercial customer base. Our exceptional deposit growth positions us to fund the future loan originations that will result from our strong pipeline. We continue to build out deposits as a products and services to further diversify our growth channels. To this end, we recently revamped our online account opening process, and expect to add new digital deposit products in the coming months. Page 8 provides an overview of the recent acceleration of online and mobile banking adoption among our customer base. We continue to assess the performance of our physical delivery channels and look for opportunities to further enhance efficiency and our physical delivery. As a reminder, in 2020, we rolled out a pilot program to provide banking services to businesses and multistate operators in the cannabis space. We took a differentiated approach of combining industry leading risk management with a value enhancing offering for our commercial customers. As we exit our pilot phase, we are positioned to capitalize on growth in the cannabis space as legislative support continues to build momentum. We will update you on our progress as this business becomes material. Slide 9 details our loan portfolio and origination trends over the last few quarters. Average loan yields were effectively flat during the quarter benefiting from elevated income from PPP fee forgiveness. As Ira mentioned, we originated a record $1.6 billion of non-PPP loans during the quarter. While origination activity has been robust in recent months, elevated pay-offs continue to weigh on net loan growth. The pace of future loan payoffs is uncertain but we remain encouraged by our strong and diverse lending pipeline. The right side of Page 10 lays out the details of our Round 3 PPP activity. We originated over $850 million of new PPP loans over the last few months. The average loan size in Round 3 is lower than our previous experience. This contributed to a higher average processing fee of 4%. In Round 3, we continue to focus on minority and women owned businesses. In total, the PPP experience has been extremely rewarding for Valley. We filled the needs in our local communities and executed at a very high level. Our NPS scores related to PPP have been extremely high and the level of differentiated service that we were able to provide has increased demand for our other products and services. Moving to Slide 11, we generated non-interest income of $31 million for the quarter. The reduction was driven by lower swap and residential mortgage gain on sale income. We expect swap income to rebound to high-single digits in the second quarter of 2021 with steady improvement from those levels for the remainder of the year. Gain on sale income should also improve to a high single-digit level, but could decline from that point, given the expectation of slowing refinance activity as the year progresses. As we said on our previous call, we do recognize that certain fee lines will ebb and flow with market conditions. However, enhancing fee income remains a strategic focus of our company. We continue to explore less cyclical opportunities to develop business lines that will contribute to greater consistency and revenue diversity. On Slide 12, you can see that our adjusted expenses were stable in the first quarter at $157 million. The quarter included over $700,000 of expenses associated with seasonal snow removal. Our adjusted efficiency ratio ticked up to 48.6% from 47% in the fourth quarter with the increase reflecting the reduction in fee income during the quarter. We remain focused on relative expense control and positive operating leverage. Since the first quarter of 2020, our revenue has grown at nearly two times the pace of expenses. This trend is consistent over a longer horizon as well. Over the last five years, our quarterly revenue has increased at an annual rate of 14% which is more than two times the pace of annual expense growth in the same period. Looking forward, we continue to explore opportunities to generate positive operating leverage and are building the talent and infrastructure to leverage our strong balance sheet with a focus on organic loan growth. As this growth is realized, we will continue to drive towards industry-leading efficiency levels. Turning to Slide 13, you can see our credit trends for the past five quarters. During the quarter, we maintained our allowance for credit losses at 1.17% of non-PPP loans. We recognize that renewed economic optimism has driven negative provision and reserve releases across the industry. While we share this optimism, our first quarter CECL model remained partially weighted to recessionary scenarios. We revisit our model each quarter, and given the economic tailwinds beginning to emerge as well as the successful pace of vaccine rollout, it is possible that we increase the Moody's baseline weighting going forward. All else equal, this could lower our future reserve levels. Our non-accrual loan balances continue to hover around 60 basis points of loans, give or take. Accruing past dues declined to $53 million from $99 million in the prior quarter. This represents the lowest absolute level of accruing past dues since the second quarter of 2018. While we remain conservative by nature, our borrowers have been extraordinarily resilient throughout the pandemic. During the quarter, our active deferrals declined to $284 million or 0.9% of total loans versus 1.1% in the fourth quarter. Additional detail on deferrals can be found in the appendix. As we have reiterated throughout the crisis, Valley's historical credit strength remains a distinguishing characteristic of our organization. As a result, we expect to outperform the industry on credit loss experience in any economic environment. Slide 14 illustrates the consistent growth in our tangible book value and the continued improvement in our capital ratios. Tangible book value has increased 8% in the last 12 months, driven by our increased earnings power. Our tangible common equity ratio increased to 7.55% from 7.47% in the fourth quarter. Adjusting for our $2.4 billion of PPP loans, tangible common equity would have been above 8%. On a year-over-year basis, we have also seen a significant improvement in our regulatory capital ratios, which gave us the flexibility to redeem $60 million of subordinated debt on April 1. This tranche had been acquired from USAB and carried a 6.25% cost. All else equal, this would lower our total risk-based capital ratio by approximately 20 basis points. We expect to offset the majority of this impact with retained earnings during the second quarter. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Ira for some closing commentary.

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

Thanks, Mike. This quarter was highlighted by the continuation of our strong performance trends. Our net interest margin has been extremely resilient, reflecting our active balance sheet management and loan and deposit tailwinds. We continue to control expenses and drive positive operating leverage. Our capital levels are robust and we are positioned to drive significant organic growth on both sides of the balance sheet across our entire franchise. This strong and consistent performance is the result of the performance-oriented culture that we have developed over the last few years. There is a real momentum here at Valley. While we continue to evolve and refine our approach, we are committed to remaining a high performing institution for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. With that, I'd now like to turn the call back over to the operator to begin Q&A. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Operator provided instructions and our first question is coming from the line of Steven Alexopoulos with JP Morgan.

Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst (JP Morgan)

Ira, I wanted to start on online competition, because we've been told for years that with customers now being able to move money more easily, they could go online, check rates, that banks like yourself would have to pay closer to market rates for deposits. And you're telling us that your 57 basis points CDs are going to be retained somewhere in the 25 basis point range, which is well below what online players such as Chime are paying. So my question is, as you move those rates down, are you seeing customers move balances out of the banks to Chime and other players that are just paying more or are your customers staying with you?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

We're definitely seeing customer retention, Steve. We're actually seeing customer growth. When we look at units of accounts, I know there's been a surge in deposits across the entire industry, and we're focused on growth in households, growth on what our customer experience looks like. But on individual units, we're up 7.5% linked quarter on an annualized basis in units of personal accounts, we're at 8.5% on an annualized basis in business accounts, and year-over-year we're up 8% as well. So we've seen a real positive trend continue across both business and consumer accounts. Our NPS scores within the online banking channel are actually better than what we get within the branch. So I think it's a combination of having a terrific online banking experience as well as that relationship focus with the branches. We tend to see a lot of our customers want the ability to bank online, but want the safety and security to know that there is somebody they have the ability to connect with. So I think it's a combination of a comprehensive strategy, not an individual one. And we're seeing real core growth in our organization and it's a focus on that customer experience.

Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst (JP Morgan)

That's helpful. And Ira, on customer sentiment, you guys are in a very unique position, because you have exposure to the Northeast and Florida. We know Florida's much more open than New York and New Jersey today. Can you contrast for us business sentiment amongst your customers in the Northeast versus Florida? And maybe talk about what difference you're seeing in terms of them building loan pipelines here?

Tom Iadanza, Chief Banking Officer

Hey, Steven, it's Tom Iadanza. I think as Ira pointed out early in the presentation, about 40% of our production on the commercial side is coming out of Florida, and about 50% of our growth is coming out of Florida. We still exhibit very stable growth in production in the Northeast, again, our business is more suburban than Manhattan based here. We are seeing higher C&I growth today in the Northeast because that's been our focus for the last four years here. And we're starting to see that C&I growth in the South in the smaller Alabama markets as we add staff down there. Pipelines are now for the most part, I would say it's about 40% of the pipeline is Florida based on the commercial side. 60% is still New York-New Jersey. More importantly or equally important is on the consumer. We're now 50-50 refinance to purchase. But we have seen about a 30% increase in the purchase portion down in Florida over the last quarter. So we're starting to take advantage of that migration down on both a business and consumer side.

Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst (JP Morgan)

Okay. But, Tom, I'm trying to understand, are you seeing a big difference in customer behaviors in Florida today versus the Northeast?

Tom Iadanza, Chief Banking Officer

From the standpoint of customers building inventory, customers building whether it's a real estate project, very similar, you're seeing a bit more activity in Florida in different product categories. It's still retail, you're still doing office down there, you're still doing a lot of multifamily. It is slower up here on that build than it is in Florida, and it's slow up here on C&I inventory build than it is in Florida. So there is more activity in Florida.

Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst (JP Morgan)

Okay. And then final question for you, Ira. It's clear M&A in the Northeast is certainly percolated. Do you think that you can be competitive in your markets with roughly $40 billion of assets, or do you think you need to join many other banks that are jumping up to that $60 billion, $70 billion, $80 billion asset threshold?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

Thanks for the question. Look, I think there are varying reasons as to why each organization looks at M&A. We have real strong organic growth that's taking place in our organization. We're focused on a relationship banking model, leveraged by technology, and not the other way around. And as a result, I think being focused from a strategic perspective, we do have the ability with where we are today to continue to deliver outsized performance on an organic perspective. That said, I think there are always opportunities when we look at M&A, and there are institutions both bank and non-bank that potentially would be accretive and help us accelerate some of the individual strategic objectives that we've outlined. So to answer your question directly, I think we are of an opportunistic size definitely to continue to grow the organization. But that said, I think if there's an opportunity to continue to grow via layering in some M&A, it's something that we would be open to as well.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Frank Schiraldi with Piper Sandler.

Frank Schiraldi, Analyst (Piper Sandler)

Ira, I think you reiterated mid single-digit loan growth. But I just wanted to make sure that was the messaging. And then, any bias one way or the other in terms of that growth rate for the full year, just given how strong originations are even to start the year.

Tom Iadanza, Chief Banking Officer

Hey, Frank, it's Tom again. I think the single-digit growth given where our pipeline is today in that $3 billion range, which is probably 25% above the pre-pandemic levels, gives us confidence that we'll meet that level. The only caution is the pull-through will be lower. There's much more competition, much more loosening of terms. One of the important components of us hitting our growth number is not to compromise our credit standards and our underwriting standards, which we did not. We're still very diverse growing in all regions, all product type C&I, real estate, still very granular. Average real estate loans still in that $4 million range, average C&I loan is still in the $1 million range. We're going to maintain those standards. The impact of every bank being very hungry for loans might prevent us from pulling through that full $3 billion that we're talking about. Additionally, we've taken advantage of the aggressiveness in the markets. We exited about $150 million of New York City multifamily loans we acquired through the Oritani acquisition, non-relationship lower-yielding, and moved out of that and still replaced and grew at 3.4%.

Frank Schiraldi, Analyst (Piper Sandler)

And then just lastly from me on it seems like you're getting as much deposits in the doors as you want. How do you think about the Alabama portion of the footprint? How could that change over time? Do you retain that? How does the strategy there change over the near term?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

Let me address the question first. I would disagree a bit that it's easy to get the type of deposits that we want today. I think anyone can grow deposits based on surge deposits and based on non-relationship transaction-type deposits. Our growth in households, our growth in relationships is something that we focused on. I think even from a PPP perspective, we could have absolutely done more PPP, we could have absolutely been on every single leaderboard when it came to PPP. But it would have been inconsistent with our strategic focus on being relationship-first and how we looked at growing the overall franchise. So from our perspective, it's the individual liability side of the balance sheet, the growth in households, the growth in profitability, those individual relationships, that drives franchise value. Putting up unbelievable deposit numbers when they are transactional and don't drive franchise value is not our focus. As that layers into Alabama, we look at it from a holistic perspective: is it added into the organization such that we have a stable funding base and franchise value? Today, the answer is yes. We continuously reassess every geography and every product we have within the organization to ask, is this the best use of our capital, is this the best use of our resources and is it providing the best franchise value to the overall organization?

Operator, Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Zach Westerlind with Stephens.

Zach Westerlind, Analyst (Stephens)

I just have two quick model cleanup questions. The first on the NIM. From the trajectory for the rest of the year, do you guys see the NIM having room to run higher?

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

This is Mike. I'll take a stab at that one. When you look at the sequential change from fourth quarter to first quarter of 8 basis points, the two largest increases that drove that were the impact of PPP and the impact of our interest-bearing liability cost reduction. Both of which we think are going to be robust going into the second quarter. And I would say that the latter, the interest-bearing liabilities, will continue into the third and fourth quarter. You can see that in our interest rate positioning. The other thing is the number of days was a negative drag on that sequential comparison, and that's obviously going to improve in the second quarter. So margin could actually be better than 3.14% in the second quarter. And then, once the majority of those PPP fees that are enhancing margin are taken through the income statement, you'll see a reduction in margin for that reason alone. But we still have other positive movers that we're working on, not the least of which is our interest-bearing deposit costs, where we still have more room.

Zach Westerlind, Analyst (Stephens)

And then on expenses. Is $157 million a good quarterly run rate?

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

Yes. We feel pretty good that the adjusted expenses that we've put out, $157 million, is a fairly decent ongoing run rate.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Ken Zerbe with Morgan Stanley.

Ken Zerbe, Analyst (Morgan Stanley)

I was hoping just in terms of the ACL ratio, in the press release you guys mentioned that it looks like you boosted reserves related to certain commercial real estate loans. Can you just talk a little bit about that specifically? How meaningful was that?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

Yes. It was a single loan that we moved into our non-accrual category. It's pretty small relative to the size of the portfolio.

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, the biggest mover on our CECL reserve was clearly the weightings that we put on the Moody's estimate. So just to quickly summarize: we used a 60% baseline scenario, 30% on S3 which is a recessionary scenario (previously it had been 50% baseline and 10% S4), and 10% on S4 which is a prolonged slump. Within those Moody's estimates, the output is more sensitive to unemployment (U3) than GDP because of how their model maps different unemployment paths to credit outcomes. What our comments meant was that we felt that approach was prudent going into the quarter given uncertainty around the pace of vaccine rollout and whether the rebound is fundamentally driven or largely driven by government stimulus. Taking everything into totality, we thought that was the best approach, and that resulted in us taking about $9 million of provisioning in the first quarter. So, all things being equal, we would expect that number to be somewhat reduced going forward, though it's not guaranteed. If loan growth is higher than we're projecting, that could drive a higher level of provisioning.

Ken Zerbe, Analyst (Morgan Stanley)

That makes sense. And then in terms of mortgage banking, obviously is this how it looks like you expect a rebound in that next quarter. Can you just explain exactly what did happen with mortgage banking this quarter to drive the lower revenues?

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

Think of it this way: we're a fair-value shop on mortgage production. Our balance sheet accounting records fair-value adjustments based on what we estimate next quarter's production will be, and that's a function of interest rates and current pipeline. Production has been challenged by longer closing times—what used to be roughly 60 days stretched toward 90 days because of staffing and volume in the system—and there was a reduction in rates from the fourth quarter to the first quarter which resulted in net fair-value adjustments going down. That production is still there and it'll be delivered, and that's what's going to drive the second quarter upside. So over the full period of time, the revenue will largely be the same; it's a timing matter across quarters.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of David Chiaverini with Wedbush Securities.

David Chiaverini, Analyst (Wedbush Securities)

A follow-up on fee income similar to your discussion around the gain on sale and the dynamics around that on swap income. You also guided to a rebound in the second quarter and then kind of stabilizing. I was just curious, what drives the variability in swap income from quarter to quarter? Is it a certain type of loan that you originate or is it based on the level of interest rates and interest rate movements that drives customers to hedge that movement?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

It's essentially both. We produced more C&I in the first quarter and those tend to be shorter-term floating. When we do fixed rate, the fixed terms have shortened closer to a five-year horizon. Typically five years and under, customers are less likely to swap because they have an exit strategy on the asset. So it really depends on the mix of the asset and what's in our pipeline, which is why we believe swap income will come back to slightly higher levels in the upcoming quarter.

David Chiaverini, Analyst (Wedbush Securities)

That's helpful. And then shifting gears. You spoke a little bit about the cannabis business. Can you frame the opportunity, how big it is and discuss how much of it is on the lending side versus the deposit side?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

The opportunity is potentially tremendous, but its pace depends on legislative developments. For us, it was more of a risk management decision: we wanted to be proactive rather than reactive. We spent well over a year putting together risk management practices to ensure we could manage the risk and grow the business responsibly. We've been very selective about the companies we've targeted to do business with. Right now, it's primarily on the deposit side; we are just beginning to target some lending opportunities. Overall, we believe the industry has the potential to drive performance at Valley above peers, and we aim to be an early entrant from a size and capability perspective.

David Chiaverini, Analyst (Wedbush Securities)

Great, and geographically, is that more in the Florida market?

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

No. Right now, it's largely in our New Jersey footprint. We are looking to grow it into the other geographies where we currently have physical locations.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is coming from the line of Michael Perito with KBW.

Michael Perito, Analyst (KBW)

A couple of questions. On Slide 8 regarding the revamp of the deposit account online opening process: can you give more color in terms of how much of your deposit accounts or incremental deposit accounts are being opened online today and where that could trend with this new platform? Also expand on the economic impact and the efficiencies if more account opening moves online versus in-branch.

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

We'll provide more detail in future releases, but we are seeing monumental growth within the digital channel on a linked-quarter basis versus where we were before, both in volume and in units of accounts. Tom and his team, along with Stuart Cook, have built a new online account opening platform that I would rival against anyone in the industry.

Tom Iadanza, Chief Banking Officer

It's a three-minute account opening experience, which includes all compliance checks to apply online, open and fund within two days, so it will appear in accounts quickly. We're using it now for single online accounts, but it will expand into several account types and ultimately be the account opening process used across our footprint. It will drive more mobile and online users and reduce branch transaction volumes, allowing our branches to focus more on guidance and consulting services, especially with the activity we're seeing in our residential mortgage product.

Travis Lan, Investor Relations

When we said in the prepared remarks that it was recently revamped, we meant that very honestly—over the last couple of weeks—which is why we didn't put specific statistics in the deck. Going forward, we'll put more clarity around numbers.

Michael Perito, Analyst (KBW)

Is it fair to assume that this is just on the consumer account online opening side at this point, with plans to expand to business accounts in the future, or is it both consumer and business online at this point?

Tom Iadanza, Chief Banking Officer

At this point it's consumer. It will be fully activated for consumer accounts probably over the next two quarters, and then by the end of the year it will support both consumer and commercial account openings.

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

The way we've structured this enables us to leverage it as a platform across different product types and across the organization. It's not dependent upon a third party to make changes; we have the ability in-house to drive the customer experience. We think this is a differentiated model compared with peers who rely on third parties. It will contribute to growth and improve efficiency by shaping physical branch roles.

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

From Q1 of 2020 to Q1 of 2021, business checking accounts increased 8.2% and personal checking accounts increased 4.1%. That includes both online and in-person openings. We will provide breakout details in the future because that is the type of data you're asking for. This shows that we're net positive on account growth, which is notable in the current environment.

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

On a unit basis and online, we were up 56% on a linked-quarter basis versus the prior quarter. We'll give more detail next quarter. This is a significant driver for us.

Michael Perito, Analyst (KBW)

That's helpful. And then just lastly on credit and provision expense specifically: it seems like record pipeline loan growth will accelerate as the year progresses, but hopefully credit conditions continue to improve. Any thoughts on how that dynamic could balance out in your provision line going forward?

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

The biggest driver in the first quarter was our choice of Moody's scenarios: 60% baseline, 30% S3 recessionary, and 10% S4 prolonged slump. Given uncertainty about the pace of vaccine rollouts and the nature of the rebound, we tilted a bit more conservatively. Because CECL is sensitive to scenario weightings, all else equal we would expect a bias toward lower provisioning going forward as economic clarity improves, but if loan growth outpaces our projections that could offset any reduction.

Michael Perito, Analyst (KBW)

So you're not targeting any dramatic economic-related reserve release at this particular point in time, given how you're balancing the Moody's forecast?

Mike Hagedorn, Chief Financial Officer

Yes. It's driven by the Moody's scenarios and how their inputs for GDP and U3 evolve. We would expect some reduction in reserve levels if the baseline improves and downside risks diminish, but nothing dramatic is being signaled at this moment.

Operator, Operator

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Ira Robbins for closing remarks.

Ira Robbins, President and CEO

I just want to thank everyone for taking the time to think about Valley today, and we look forward to delivering another quarter of outstanding performance in the second quarter. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.