WSFS Financial Corporation Q2 2026 Earnings Call - WSFS Raises Full-Year Outlook on Fee Momentum and Credit Gains, Flags Deposit Pricing Pressure
Summary
WSFS Financial delivered a commanding second quarter, with core earnings per share surging 31% year-over-year to $1.66 and net interest margin expanding to 3.87%. The bank raised its full-year guidance across the board, lifting the return on assets target to 1.50% and shifting fee and deposit growth projections from mid- to high-single digits. This optimism is fueled by a 5% year-over-year increase in core fee revenue, driven by a wealth and trust business up 17% and a capital markets franchise that captured significant market share. Asset quality also improved sharply, with problem assets down 31% year-over-year and net charge-offs contained at 21 basis points, reinforcing the strength of a franchise compounding value at a 20.2% core return on tangible equity.
The outlook carries a clear warning on liabilities. Management flagged intensifying deposit competition, noting that pricing on certificates of deposit has spiked, with 12-month rates now easily exceeding 4%. While non-interest-bearing deposits surged to 37% of the portfolio, executives cautioned that much of this growth stems from transactional flows in institutional services and may not be sustainable. Despite the competitive headwinds on deposit costs, WSFS maintained a disciplined capital return framework, returning 100% of net income to shareholders through buybacks, and signaled a multi-year trajectory toward a CET1 ratio of 12% while prioritizing accretive organic investment.
Key Takeaways
- Core EPS of $1.66 rose 31% year-over-year, supported by a core return on tangible equity of 20.2% and a return on assets of 1.55%, demonstrating a franchise that continues to generate returns well above the cost of capital.
- Management raised the 2026 full-year outlook across multiple metrics, increasing the ROA target to 1.50% with potential upside, and shifting fee and deposit growth expectations from mid- to high-single digits.
- Core fee revenue grew 5% year-over-year, led by wealth and trust up 17% and global capital markets surging 58%, as the bank leveraged its service model to win mandates and capture market share.
- WSFS ranked as the third most active ABS and MBS trustee based on deal count in the first half of 2026, increasing its market share to 14% from 11.7% in 2025, highlighting the momentum in institutional services.
- Client deposits rose 11% year-over-year, with non-interest-bearing deposits hitting 37% of the total, up from 31% a year ago, though executives warned that 80% of recent NIB growth came from transactional flows that may not persist.
- Net interest margin expanded 4 basis points linked quarter to 3.87%, driven by a 46% interest-bearing deposit beta and lower client deposit costs, though the bank cautioned that deposit competition is escalating.
- Asset quality showed marked improvement, with problem assets down 31% year-over-year and delinquencies down nearly 40%, while net charge-offs were contained at 21 basispoints, down significantly when excluding a prior quarter recovery.
- Gross loans grew 5% annualized, fueled by a resilient commercial C&I book up 8% annualized and a consumer rebound where residential mortgage and home equity loans jumped 23% year-over-year.
- The bank returned 100% of net income to shareholders year-to-date, including over 4% of shares repurchased, while targeting a CET1 ratio of 12% over a multi-year horizon and prioritizing accretive internal investment.
- Operating expense efficiency held steady around 58%, with a full-year target in the high 50s, though management noted that revenue-driven variable costs and potential pressures from medical expenses and fraud could cause quarterly variance.
Full Transcript
: Nothing to do. This is the last time.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to WSFS Financial Corporation second quarter earnings call. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I’d now like to turn the call over to your host for today, Mr. David Burg, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please go ahead.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Our earnings release and earnings release supplement, which we’ll refer to on today’s call, can be found in the investor relations section of our company website. With me on this call is Rodger Levenson, Chairman, President, and CEO. Prior to reviewing our financial results, I would like to read our safe harbor statement. Our discussion today will include information of our management’s view of our future expectations, plans, and prospects that constitute forward-looking statements.
Actual results may differ materially from historical results or those indicated by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the risk factors in an annual report on Form 10-K and our most recent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, as well as other documents we may periodically file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All comments made during today’s call are subject to the safe harbor statement. I will now turn to our financial results. During the second quarter, WSFS’s performance continued to demonstrate the strength of our franchise and diverse business model. Results included a core earnings per share of $1.66, core ROA of 1.55%, and core return on tangible common equity of 20.2%, which are all above the first quarter levels when you exclude the previously disclosed loan recovery.
On a year-over-year basis, core net income increased 19% and core PPNR increased 10%, resulting in core EPS growth of 31% and tangible book value per share growth of 13%. Core results for the quarter exclude a $1.8 million decrease to net income and a $0.03 reduction to EPS, primarily related to the write-down of an equity investment, as well as the previously disclosed gain from the sale of our credit card portfolio. Net interest margin expanded four basis points linked quarter to 3.87%, driven by a four basis point reduction in our client deposit costs, as well as higher investment securities and yields. Our interest-bearing deposit beta remained at 46%. Core fee revenue, which represents nearly a third of total revenue, grew 2% linked quarter and 5% year-over-year.
The growth across our fee businesses was led by wealth and trust, which grew 17% year-over-year. Within Institutional Services, corporate trust and global capital markets were up 28% and 58% year-over-year respectively as we continued to win new mandates and capture market share. For the first half of 2026, WSFS was ranked as the third most active ABS and MBS trustee based on deal count, increasing our market share to 14% from 11.7% in 2025. Our personal trust business, the Bryn Mawr Trust Company of Delaware, also delivered strong year-over-year growth of 20%, driven by continued new account growth. Outside of wealth, our capital markets business within the commercial division also delivered strong double-digit growth both linked quarter and year-over-year.
Cash Connect fees declined year-over-year due to the impact of interest rate cuts and lower volumes, but the business delivered a higher profit margin of 15% for the second quarter in a row. Client deposits increased 3% linked quarter, driven by growth in Institutional Services and commercial. On a year-over-year basis, our client deposits are up 11%. Importantly, non-interest deposits were up 10% linked quarter and now represent 37% of total client deposits, up from 31% a year ago. While we continue to see some elevated quarter-end activity by clients, we are seeing strong deposit growth momentum as evidenced by increases in both end-of-period and average deposits, which also grew 3% linked quarter and 8% year-over-year. Gross loans were up 1% linked quarter or 5% annualized. In commercial, we continued to see strong momentum in C&I, which grew 2% linked quarter or 8% annualized.
In consumer, home lending generated strong growth with residential mortgage and WSFS home equity loans up 10% linked quarter and 23% year-over-year. Turning to asset quality, we continued the recent trend of improvements across our key metrics, including leading indicators. Problem assets decreased 6% linked quarter due to several commercial payoffs and are now down 31% year-over-year. Delinquencies are down 5% linked quarter and nearly 40% year-over-year with accruing delinquencies of $26 million as of quarter end. Non-performing assets are down 8% linked quarter and nearly 25% year-over-year. In addition, net charge-offs were $7.1 million or 21 basis points of average loans for the quarter. When you exclude the impact of the prior quarter loan recovery, net charge-offs decreased $5.1 million quarter-over-quarter, driven by lower commercial charge-offs.
During the quarter, we continued to execute on our capital return framework, returning $77 million of capital, including $66 million of buybacks. Year to date, we repurchased over 4% of our outstanding shares and returned approximately 100% of net income to shareholders. On the last page of the earnings supplement, we provided our updated 2026 outlook, which now assumes no Fed funds rate changes for the rest of the year. Our updated full-year outlook reflects improvements across most metrics. Notably, we’re increasing our ROA outlook for the year to 1.50%, with potential upside from there as we continue to drive high performance and growth. We also raised our deposit growth rate from mid to high single digits. While our results reflect some elevated quarter-end transactional activity, we continue to see strong deposit growth momentum across Institutional Services and commercial.
Our NIM outlook has improved to approximately 3.85%, reflecting the updated rate forecast and momentum across deposits and loans. We continue to see elevated deposit competition, which may impact deposit pricing going forward. We raised our outlook for fee revenue, excluding Cash Connect, from mid to high single digits as we continue to see strong momentum and future growth opportunities in our fee businesses, and particularly Wealth and Trusts, where we continue to capture market share within Institutional Services and BMC of Delaware. Net charge-offs are now expected to be between 15 to 25 basis points of average loans for the year, a decrease from our previous outlook, which reflects the strong asset quality results we saw in the quarter and recent momentum across key leading indicators. Consistent with our first quarter update, this outlook includes the previously disclosed recovery in 1Q.
Our commercial portfolio continues to perform well, but losses may be uneven. Our outlook for efficiency remains unchanged. We plan to maintain strong expense discipline, but we’ll continue to leverage opportunities to invest in the franchise, which, coupled with normal seasonality, may result in some variances quarter to quarter. We’re pleased with these results and remain committed to delivering high performance. We’ll now open the line for questions.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Russell Gunther with Stephens. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Russell Gunther, Analyst, Stephens: Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: All right.
Russell Gunther, Analyst, Stephens: Afternoon, guys. I wanted to begin on the revised margin guide. It looks like it implies relative stability in the back half of the year. We’re getting towards the end of earnings this week, and a lot of the commentary so far is focused on margin headwinds for the industry. Tighter spreads, higher deposit costs. When I look at your guys’ liquidity profile in terms of the below peer loan-to-deposit ratio, a lot of securities cash flow you can get reinvested better than peer non-interest-bearing mix that’s growing. I’d think you guys would be better able to defend against competitive pressures, at least on the liability side. David, how are you guys thinking about the trajectory of deposit costs from here as what’s reflected in the margin guide and as we think about 2027?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. Happy to address that. I think you’re right. I think we’ve obviously had success in bringing down our deposit costs so far. We have a good liquidity profile. In fact, we’ve let some of our higher cost deposits run off in the first half of the year, as you can see in some of our CD run-offs. Because of our liquidity position, we were able to do that. At the same time, I think there are two factors to consider. One is we are, and we’ve been seeing it really throughout the first half of the year, there’s definitely more deposit competition out in the market. We’ve seen that really build up over the last six months. To give you one example, our largest CD product was a six-month 3% CD, and we found ourselves to be really on the low end of market pricing.
If you go out, it’s very easy to get over 4% for 12 months. We want to make sure that we remain competitive. Even though we don’t necessarily need the liquidity today, we obviously want to continue to grow our clients. We want to defend our market share and capture more share. We want to remain competitive. I think we may need to increase in order to grow in some areas and be competitive, and that does put some pressure on our deposit costs going out. Expect the NIM to be stable. We expect to be able to manage that. There could be some upward pressure on deposit costs.
Russell Gunther, Analyst, Stephens: Got it. Okay. Thank you for your thoughts there. Switching gears to expenses. Appreciate the reiterated high 50s efficiency guide. As it relates to just kind of dollar non-interest expense, you referenced seasonal dynamics. Could you level set us in terms of how 2Q may compare to where 3Q is headed? Within that kind of high 50s target, what does that mean to you? Is there a plus or minus to that? You guys were at like 59.3% I think last year. Is that a result you might be able to outperform?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: In terms of expenses, this quarter when you look at our expenses year-over-year up about 4%, I think it’s a reasonable growth rate. When you look at this particular quarter, the majority of our quarter-over-quarter expense was really driven by variable and revenue-driven expenses. It’s really a direct result of the outperformance on the top line. Although we did have some non-recurring items hit like we’ve outlined in our press release. Generally, I think our expenses could be at this level, around this level, maybe a little bit lower going forward. The important thing is a big part of that is revenue driven. To the extent that we continue to outperform on the fee side, on the top line side, that will drive additional expenses. We do think of it as a result. You can’t disassociate the revenue from the expenses.
We do think of it in terms of efficiency. As you said, we were over 59% last year. We want to continue to tick that down. We’ve been 58% for the last two quarters. We’re comfortable in the range that we’re at. Over time, our goal is to continue to tick that down. We’ve got a number of expense initiatives that are ongoing. We think about it a lot. Part of our strategy, by the way, around expenses is, as you know, we’ve been exiting some non-businesses that are not central to our strategy, and that’s been an important driver as well. Overall, I think we’ll continue to invest in the business. That’s really the number one priority while maintaining discipline. I think around this efficiency level is where we would expect to be.
Russell Gunther, Analyst, Stephens: Okay. Nope, that makes a ton of sense. Thank you, David. I guess just last one for me. The 150 plus, that plus sign there in the ROA target, what are the biggest deltas to achieving that?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. I think we put the plus there because we’d like to come in a little bit better than that, not materially better. Obviously continued outperformance in fees if we continue to get some of the deposit growth. Again, it’s a competitive environment. The deposit growth we’ve seen, I think is hard to continue at this level. That’s where some of the pluses and minuses come in.
Russell Gunther, Analyst, Stephens: Okay. Wonderful. Thank you guys for taking all my questions.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Thanks, Russell.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: Your next question from the line of Kelly Motta with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Megan Lynch, Analyst, KBW: Hi, this is Megan Lynch on for Kelly Motta. Thanks for taking my question. Loan growth was very solid this quarter, and you’re expecting this growth to sort of continue. Can you speak a bit to how pricing is coming in, especially with competition, and if this competition is pressuring your prices at all?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Sure. Happy to talk about that. I’ll maybe split the discussion between commercial and consumer. On the commercial side, as you know, really our core strategy is to grow our C&I business. That’s the business that drives our relationship. It’s a very important contributor to our deposits and our non-interest-bearing deposits. That’s really kind of our flagship product. C&I has always been very competitive, and continues to get very competitive as others try to penetrate the space. We’re not the low-cost provider in the market. We really separate ourselves based on our service model. Obviously, we need to be competitive, but we separate ourselves based on service, based on our responsiveness, and our relationships. We want to make sure we grow in a reasonable, accretive way, and that’s what we’ve been doing.
Expect our goal is to continue to grow at mid-single digits through the cycle. On the consumer side, our loan strategy, what we’ve really done is try to focus on areas where we have a differentiated value proposition. You’ve seen us, we sold our Upstart portfolio last year. We sold our credit card portfolio this year, and really focused on residential lending. In residential lending, we really have a differentiated product there with our service model and our ability to work with different types of clients. The pricing there because of the move in rates that we’ve seen, the pricing obviously on the residential real estate side has gotten more challenging. I think that’s a market dynamic overall.
Megan Lynch, Analyst, KBW: Thank you. That was very helpful. Just switching sort of to credit. You saw some improvement this quarter and the trends seem very solid. What are you seeing more broadly, and is there any place that you’re watching in your portfolio?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. As you mentioned, we’ve had good credit performance. We take a very proactive approach to credit. We spend a lot of time on it where we try to get out early in front of any issues that may appear, and work with our clients to resolve any potential issues. If you look at the portfolio, there are always individual challenges with particular clients and particular situations, but there’s not a kind of a big red flag when we look across or a theme or pattern. Office continues to be a challenging market and challenging prices, and we try to be very selective there. Generally nothing new in terms of any red flags where we can connect the dots across different types of asset classes.
Megan Lynch, Analyst, KBW: Awesome. Thank you. That’s it from me.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Thank you.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: Your next question from the line of Manuel Navas with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Hey, good afternoon. Could you add a little bit more color on the OpEx discussion? You said there could be some potential variability. In the prior conversation, it sounded like there could be a downward trajectory. What are some of the projects and things that add that kind of variability within OpEx? Is it just variable comp supporting revenues?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Part of our cost base, Manuel, is variable. Whenever we have revenue outperformance, we’re going to see some additional expenses. Some of that is IC, and that was a meaningful part this quarter. We also have transaction expenses, for example, in Cash Connect. We have transaction expenses in our trust businesses. A portion of that revenue is definitely going to result in higher expenses. At the same time, we continue to, if you look at our core expense base and our base expense level, we continue to try to work that down and continue to try to have initiatives to offset general rising costs, inflation and medical expenses and those type of things. We have a number of ongoing initiatives.
Like I mentioned, some of that has been getting out of businesses that were not central to our strategy, that had expenses associated with them, that were not highly profitable businesses. We’ve really optimized our real estate portfolio. We have a successful initiative going on around vendor costs. We’ve got a number of different initiatives that are offsetting some of the natural increases, which is how we get to a 4% year-over-year growth. The revenue is going to drive some expense with it.
Rodger Levenson, Chairman, President, and CEO, WSFS Financial Corporation: Manuel, I just would add to what David said. I think where the variability could come into play is, as David said, medical costs, healthcare costs are a big topic. I think will continue to be a big topic, although we’re doing, I think, a very good job of managing that. Like many others we continue to periodically see fraud spike from different events. I think while we’re in a good place, there’s always some opportunity that we may see a little bit elevated costs in those two areas. To me, that’s really where some of the pressure on driving it down that we can’t point a finger on right now could occur.
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: I appreciate that. Shifting over to loan growth. A little bit more set guide here in the back half of the year, mid-single digits. Can you just talk about the main drivers there and what you’re seeing in the marketplace from your borrowers from a sentiment pipelines and things like that?
Rodger Levenson, Chairman, President, and CEO, WSFS Financial Corporation: I’ll talk about sentiment. I’ve been out a fair bit over the last several weeks. I would characterize client sentiment as very good. I think they’re definitely dealing with some headwinds on the cost side. All of the, what I would say, the uncertainty, geopolitical events, energy volatility, those kinds of things. I think they’ve kind of either come to accept there’s going to be a certain amount of uncertainty or an ability to adjust their businesses based on what they dealt with last year if there’s a sudden spike in one cost here or there. I think that’s translating into businesses feeling pretty good and investing which should be really good for us on the C&I side. People are seeing the benefits of an overall stable economy.
That’s the environment where businesses like to grow and invest, and we should benefit from that. That’s a big driver of our pipeline and where we’re seeing opportunities. As you know very well in our marketplace, particularly as you move up the curve in terms of medium-sized businesses, lower end of middle market really competing against much larger competition. We find that, as David has said, our service proposition plays very well into those kinds of clients. Growing with our clients as well as taking market share are really the two drivers of where we see loan growth for the rest of the year.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Manuel, I would just add that on the consumer side, a large part of our growth this quarter came from our home lending business. We had really a strong pipeline at the end of the first quarter into the spring selling season, also some of the lower rates that happened earlier. Now we’re reaching a little bit of a slower part of the season, and rates have ticked up. The pipeline has come down a bit. Wouldn’t expect the kind of growth that we’ve seen in home lending necessarily to continue, but still expect to be able to do well there.
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: I appreciate that. Switching over to deposits. Really strong first half of the year. I think that’s a big part of the higher guide. Is some of the discussion points around NIM and around competitive pressures on deposits, is it because some of the non-interest bearing could flow out? Could you kind of talk about the non-interest bearing growth? Which is great. Institutional Services has kicking butt. I’m just wondering how much of that is sticky? How much of that are you kind of preparing for it to flow out, if any? Just talk about the non-interest bearing side a little bit and how it impacts your deposit costs.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Sure. Happy to do that, Manuel. I think when you think about our non-interest bearing, really the important thing to understand is that those deposits are really spread across a few businesses. They’re spread across commercial, consumer, and Institutional Services. Within Institutional Services, there are actually two businesses that are important contributors there. Our corporate trust business which focuses on the ABS and MBS markets, as well as our global capital markets business, which focuses on bankruptcy, distressed debt, high yield debt, corporate issuance. All four of those businesses are important drivers. When we think about this quarter, probably about 80% of the NIB growth was within Institutional Services, split across both of those businesses, and 20% was in commercial. All of them are important drivers.
The competition that we’re seeing is there are different drivers for each of those businesses in terms of deposit expectations. The competition that we talked about, that we’re seeing is really in the consumer space and in the commercial space. We’re definitely seeing more deposit competition in the market, and that may impact both NIB growth as well as pricing going forward. On the trust side, we’ve benefited from a very strong market, and we’ve been able to capture share. Again, those are transactional activities and we would not expect the kind of growth that we’ve seen to necessarily continue.
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: I appreciate that. Let me just add one more on kind of capital return. Really strong buyback activity. Is there a point where you become more price sensitive or you still have so much capital to return? Where does buyback stack up with other opportunities you have to deploy across organic growth, M&A? Just kind of some updated thoughts here.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. Generally, as you’ve heard us say before, our first priority is always to invest in the business. We think that that’s the best return for shareholders. Investing at the right return level in the business is our first priority. We’ve obviously given you a capital target. We think we have excess capital at the moment. We look at a number of different metrics there, since we’ve rolled out the enhanced capital return framework kind of the beginning of last year, we’ve been returning about 100% net income, and we’ve bought back about 14% of our shares going back to the beginning of last year. I generally expect that trend to continue. In any given quarter, we may deviate from that depending on what the opportunities are that we have internally, depending on the environment. We look at interest rate volatility.
We look at our securities portfolio. We look at it from multiple different perspectives, and that’s why in any given quarter, we may deviate from that. When you think about it over a multi-quarter period, we’d like to be in that 100% capital return. I’m not necessarily going to throw out a price target at which we stop or go. I think it depends on all of those factors and what else we have as opportunities internally.
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Outside opportunities?
Rodger Levenson, Chairman, President, and CEO, WSFS Financial Corporation: Are you referring to like M&A and those kinds of things, Manuel?
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Yes.
Rodger Levenson, Chairman, President, and CEO, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. I think as we’ve said, I think if anything that we find could be additive and accretive to our current strategic plan, we would absolutely look at those opportunities across the franchise. Whether it’s in the fee businesses, particularly the wealth side, would absolutely look at those kinds of opportunities. I’d say the same thing on the banking side. I think the challenge on the banking side, as we look at our footprint and our region, we feel like there’s a lot of opportunity here. The bar would be pretty high for us to take some portion of our organizational bandwidth and pivot away from the organic opportunity that’s right in front of us. If it’s there, we will absolutely go for it, and as David said, we always want to take the opportunity to accretively invest in the business.
I think it’s important that it’s accretive to what we’ve already got going from an organic standpoint.
Manuel Navas, Analyst, Piper Sandler: I really appreciate the commentary. Thank you so much.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Thanks, Manuel.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: Your next question from the line of Christopher Marinac with Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Christopher Marinac, Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott: Good afternoon. I wanted to ask about the percentage of fee income to the overall business. Would you see this rising further into 2027 and 2028? Does that give you even more flexibility on loan growth in terms of being even more selective than you have been?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Generally, we’ve been able to grow both. That’s why that ratio has been generally consistent because we’ve been able to grow both. Our wealth and trust business, as you know, has been a fast grower, but that’s been offset a bit by our Cash Connect business because of the interest rate impact on the top line there. In a steady state environment, generally would expect that our fees will probably go slightly faster, all else being equal. We don’t necessarily manage to a particular number there. We’re trying to grow both, and so we have a positive growth in the top line altogether.
Christopher Marinac, Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott: Got it. Then I guess back to the concept of being selective in terms of who you’re doing business with, particularly not having to grow extremely fast on loans. Is that helping you on deposits, and is the deposit gathering that you are seeing that success kind of a function of just really being focused in on the best customers who have funding?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. I think certainly when we look at lending opportunities, the relationship is really important to us. The deposits that those clients bring in are really important to us. We try to invest our management bandwidth into those types of opportunities. It’s not the only thing we do. As you know, for example, the commercial real estate business tends to be a bit more transactional, and we have great clients there, and we continue to invest and continue to grow that business. Ideally we have those opportunities that bring a broader relationship which is not just deposits but also across wealth, across treasury services. That’s what we think one of our big value propositions is, to bring the full firm.
Rodger Levenson, Chairman, President, and CEO, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah, Chris, I don’t think we look at it as sort of managing to find where there’s the highest level of deposits in a C&I relationship. We take a relationship return view on all commercial relationships. We look at all the business we can get. As David said, typically in the C&I business, you’re getting all the operating accounts, which could bring significant deposits, and the other business that we do. As long as it crosses our threshold with the loan pricing that we have, that’s accretive to what we’re doing. That’s really the way we’re selective on clients. We can be super aggressive on credit pricing for the right opportunity as long as we get the full relationship. We really look at it much more that way than trying to think about how much in deposits we may or may not get from a client.
Christopher Marinac, Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott: Okay. That’s great. Thank you for clarifying that. I appreciate it. Back to the capital goals. Is there a timeframe on when you want to get that towards 12, or are we still, it’s just going to be multi quarters ahead?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. No particular timeframe, Christopher Marinac. For example, when you look at this quarter, if you just look at this quarter, I think we’re down 15 basis points. If you just do the math on CET1, if you just do the math on that, you’re talking about kind of two and a half to three years. I think it’s a multi-year trajectory. We also look at TCE is really important. Our security portfolio is really important in the impact on capital. We look at a number of different factors there. No particular timeline. We want to continue with a measured approach at about 100%, again, we may deviate from that quarter to quarter.
Christopher Marinac, Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott: Okay. I guess to that point, does the AOCI return, is any of that lumpy in the next year or two in terms of some preplanned return?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: I wouldn’t say so. I think it’s been pretty consistent. Probably 95% of our portfolio’s invested in MBS. There’s no credit risk there. It’s been pretty consistent with the way that AOCI has been coming off. We’ve had it move the other way in the last couple of quarters, that’s really been a function of rate. It’s down materially from where we were post-COVID, will continue to tick down kind of gradually.
Christopher Marinac, Analyst, Janney Montgomery Scott: Got it. Okay. Very well. Thank you for taking the questions today.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: Your next question from the line of Janet Lee with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Janet Lee, Analyst, TD Cowen: Good afternoon.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Hi, Janet.
Janet Lee, Analyst, TD Cowen: On Institutional Services, I know that there’s a big portion of that growth is coming from the market share gains, specifically on the Corporate Trust side. You’ve also been benefiting from the secular tailwinds from the private capital securitization. I just want to see if you could provide some context around whether the strength there industry-wide is persisting or if there’s any change there, and whether that’s an important factor when we forecast your investment management or wealth and trust revenues?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. Janet, let me back up a little bit and just talk about, I think it’s important when you think about Institutional Services to consider both businesses there, both Corporate Trust and Global Capital Markets. When you look at, for example, our NIB growth this quarter, both were important contributors. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, both were also important contributors on the fee side. To your direct question around the growth of that ABS and MBS market, it has continued to grow, and the first half of 2026 rankings just came out. We increased share, but the market also grew, and that market’s been growing 20%-30%, and we’ve been growing on top of that. I think generally, whenever you can obviously take share in a market that’s growing that quickly, it’s very accretive to results, and that’s what’s been happening.
I think it’s important to also recognize what the differentiating factors are for us. There are a number of them. In general, I can summarize it by saying that we have the balance sheet strength of some of the larger players, but are much more nimble, and have a much better service model. When you think about our ability to move quickly, our ability to innovate with clients, that has allowed us to take share. That market is a market where reputation matters a lot, and the better we do, the more we win. Those have been some of the dynamics that have been at play here and what has allowed us to take share on top of the strong growth. I think that market has been a good growing market for a number of years.
I don’t think this pace of growth is something I would necessarily extrapolate, but we continue to believe in our ability to win share and play in different asset classes and play different roles there.
Janet Lee, Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you. Going back to non-interest-bearing deposits, obviously very impressive growth again this quarter, I appreciate the comment around how sustaining this level of growth may not be an easy feat. In terms of your 3.85% net interest margin guidance, are you contemplating any further growth in non-interest-bearing deposits? Or maybe what level of NIB as a percentage of total deposits is assumed in your guidance?
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Yeah. I think if we keep it at this level, it would be really great. I’m not sure we can sustain it at this level of 37%. Historically, we’ve kind of run in the low 30s, but I think low to mid 30s will be a good level to maintain. In general, as we grow deposits, we want to maintain that level. I think this has been real outperformance. But Jana, I think the other thing to consider is when you have non-interest-bearing deposit growth based on where rates are today, if those deposits are invested in cash, it’s not necessarily accretive to net interest margin. It’s really a push, I would say, generally to where net interest margin is.
The upside to net interest margin is really going to be driven by loan growth, our ability to invest those non-interest-bearing deposits at something that’s higher than cash, because otherwise it would just be a push.
Janet Lee, Analyst, TD Cowen: Makes sense. All right. Thank you.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Thank you.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: With no further questions in the queue, I would like to turn the call back over to David Burg.
David Burg, Chief Financial Officer, WSFS Financial Corporation: Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate you joining the call today. If you have any specific follow-up questions, please reach out to Andrew in Investor Relations or me. Have a great day and a great weekend, everyone.
Call Operator, WSFS Financial Corporation: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.