Amalgamated Financial Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Amalgamated Bank First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, the conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Drew Levin, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in our first quarter 2020 earnings call. With me today is Keith Mestrich, President and Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder, a telephonic replay of this call will be available on the investor section of our website for an extended period of time. Additionally, a slide deck to complement today's discussion is also available on the investor section of our website. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call may contain certain statements that constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution investors that a number of factors, some of which are beyond our control, could cause actual results to differ from the expectations indicated or implied by any such forward looking information or statement. Investors should refer to Slide 2 of our earnings slide deck, as well as our 2019 10-K filed on March 13, 2020, and our other periodic reports that we file from time to time with the FDIC, typically under a cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors. For further description or explanation of those items that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by any forward-looking statements that we make. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures which we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release as well as on our website. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Keith.

Thank you, Drew, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and attention today. On today's call, I will start with an overview of our operations given the rapid spread of COVID-19 and its impact on New York City before reviewing our results and accomplishments in the first quarter. I will then turn the call over to Drew to discuss our first quarter financial results in more detail. I'd like to start by thanking our employees for their extraordinary efforts during this challenging time. They have worked tirelessly to ensure that the bank's operations have run smoothly and our support to our customers and communities remains uninterrupted. The safety of our employees and customers is our top priority. I want to share with you all a brief story of how we found ourselves at the door to the COVID crisis. I had been attending a bank conference in Switzerland in February as the pandemic was beginning to flare uncontrollably in Italy, where I was also scheduled to travel for meetings. Needless to say, I canceled my trip to Rome and headed back to New York. as my proximity to the pandemic opened my eyes to the risk that it held not only to the US but New York City in particular. This was truly a case of being in the wrong place at the right time and I knew that our crisis management team needed to put our pandemic plan into place as I believe the shut-in of New York was imminent. Our crisis team implemented plans to move to almost 100% of our employees to a work-from-home environment by the middle of March and we have quickly adapted to this new normal. Our managers are checking with their direct reports daily to ensure that our operations continue to run smoothly and I am very pleased to report that our staff is seamlessly handling transactions and making new loans. I'm very proud of their efforts and we have not missed a beat. Since our founding almost 100 years ago, we have had a commitment to the greater good which has shaped the business model and our values. We believe that a financial institution's mission should include using its resources, money, and influence to help move its customers, its community, and society forward. While we find ourselves in an unprecedented environment, our mission and values are unchanged, and they continue to guide our senior leadership team in the decisions that we make as we navigate these uncharted waters. First and foremost, we remain committed to our employees having repositioned branch staff to other areas of the bank's operations that have seen an increase in activity. We are committed to the physical, emotional, and financial health of our team and have no plans to lay off our employees during this uncertain time. We also remain committed to our communities and those in need. I am amazed and thankful for the efforts of those that are battling this crisis on the frontlines, and I'm very pleased that we were able to create the Frontline Workers Fund, which offers direct assistance to nurses and healthcare workers, grocery workers, cleaning service workers, food service workers, laundry workers in our hospitals, and retail workers, to name just a few. We also launched the Families and Workers Fund in partnership with the Consortium of Foundations, whose goal is to provide financial resources to vulnerable working families across the country. This fund has initial commitment of $7.1 million and the goal is to raise $20 million in order to provide flexible funding to organizations striving to prevent workers and families from sinking deeper into levels of poverty during the initial months of this pandemic. All of this would not be possible without the strategic transformation that Amalgamated has undergone in the last six years. When I was appointed CEO in 2014, our team undertook a broad plan designed to unlock the profit potential of the bank, which included recruiting talented executives from across the banking industry, growing our customer base, instilling a disciplined expense culture, and improving the quality of both our assets and sources of funding. This has led to a stable low-cost deposit base. We have also closed unprofitable business lines and significantly reduced our branch footprint.