Amalgamated Financial Corp.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Amalgamated Financial Corporation Third Quarter 2021 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, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jason Darby, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in our third quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today is Priscilla Sims Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder, a telephonic replay of this call will be available on the Investors section of our website for an extended period of time. Additionally, a slide deck to complement today's discussion is also available on the Investors 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 actual results may differ from the expectations indicated or implied by any such forward-looking statements or information. Investors should refer to slides 2 and 3 of our earnings slide deck, as well as our 2020 10-K filed on March 15, 2021, for a list of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. 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. Let me now turn the call over to Priscilla.

Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest today. This morning, I will share a few highlights of our third quarter 2021 results, but spend the majority of my time providing an update on our strategic plan development, including our recently announced acquisition of Amalgamated Bank of Chicago. Jason will then offer the financial benefits of our acquisition in more detail, along with a more in-depth review of our third quarter results. To start, I'm very pleased with our third quarter as we've delivered strong results across the dimensions of revenue, profitability, credit quality, and foundational growth drivers, such as PACE assessments and deposits. Our total net loans, including PACE assessments, grew modestly by $31.4 million, marking a linked quarter continuance of net positive growth. Without the effect of the runoff on our residential loan portfolio, which we have strategically decided to allow, growth was $83.7 million, or 3.2%. Also importantly, we had net positive growth of $9.4 million in commercial and industrial lending and $26.8 million in consumer lending, each driven by solid growth in our sustainability segment, where we believe we have a competitive advantage. While we acknowledge these results must improve, we are encouraged by both the reversal of net loan portfolio declines experienced during the past few quarters and the science momentum as we see returns generated from the earliest stages of our lending strategy implementation. Along these lines, I am very happy to report that during the quarter, we also hired a new chief credit risk officer who will report directly to me. He joins us with direct experience in the segments in which we do business and has demonstrated understanding the connection between production targets and prudent credit risk management. Now I'd like to update you on the strategic initiatives we've been working on to enhance our growth and better serve our customers. To accomplish this, we have established a four-pillar strategy that focuses on, number one, building our business through mission, two, and since we focus on customer segments that share our values, we are uniquely positioned to gather and leverage insights on these core customers, and that's an important second pillar. We're also developing and expanding relevant product offerings to grow our lending platform and our trust business. And fourthly, we're improving the management of our data and technology to drive improved efficiency and effectiveness. The first pillar on building our business through the mission as America's socially responsible bank is one that I'll spend a few minutes on next. Interests in the environment, social causes, and communities have never been greater, and we're committed to being a bold leader of policy and public affairs that impact our customers and employees. Our goal is to live the mission by building an authentic culture of social responsibility and impact. This will drive our existing customers' loyalty and attract many new prospects that share our mission and values. By way of example, I am proud to report that we have committed to being net zero by 2045, and we've established a science-based target system to achieve this goal. We have named the chief sustainability officer to support this process and deliver on our targets to the science-based targets initiative. We are promoting our team as thought leaders and are excited to participate in the UN Climate Change Conference being held in Glasgow next week. In addition to organic examples of mission, we certainly look for opportunistic expansion of our mission through partnerships, as well as to plan to fully leverage our mission to accelerate the pace of growth in the Midwest through our acquisition of the Amalgamated Bank of Chicago, which I will say more about in a few minutes. The second pillar is leveraging insights on core customers. Over the years, we have discussed our customers in the political, not-for-profit, and union sectors as being deposit customers with little demand for loans or other traditional banking services. I believe that within our core deposit-led customer segment, there's a significant opportunity to derive additional revenue streams. To accomplish this, we have begun building on our data infrastructure, examining customer information and behavior to identify demonstrated needs and interests, and related profit tracks. Our engineers are now organized around this objective, and we recently augmented their expertise with data science resources. The third pillar focuses on developing and expanding our product expertise. In the same way the bank gathered a team of deeply connected relationship managers to grow our successful low-cost deposit franchise, we're now focused on assembling talented leaders with the same level of unique specialization in our mission-driven lending segment, adding to our staff of bankers and underwriters with proven acumen and results in the commercial solar, PACE, and sustainability project finance markets. We've also repositioned some of our existing talent, allowing them to use their valuable expertise across our New York City, Boston, D.C., San Francisco, and soon-to-be Chicago offices. In tandem with our mission-driven lending segment, Staff Buildout, we're also revamping our traditional commercial real estate team by recruiting motivated and experienced leaders who have proven track records in this important marketplace. Commercial real estate lending remains our largest asset class on the balance sheet, and we intend to return to pre-pandemic origination levels and be more successful at protecting our existing book of business as we head into 2022. We are also connecting our consumer and trust business to our commercial banking business to better serve core customers across offerings. It is essential for Amalgamated to fully identify ourselves as a true ESG institution with a wide array of banking and financial services, moving us beyond the impression of some stakeholders that this is a deposit-only institution. We have added experienced talent in our ESG investments platform including a leader who will manage our responsive fund suite of ESG investments with a focus on transforming our relationship bankers into referral engines, while also ensuring clients are earning appropriate market returns that in turn drive marginal profitability to the bank. The fourth pillar is focused on our infrastructure and digital platform to support our growth. We are working to become a stronger digital bank, offering our customers, both commercial and consumer, the absolute best of banking experience through the use of enhanced user-friendly technology supported by exemplary in-person support. We offer our commercial customers a great digital experience now, but we want this interaction with all of our services to set us apart as we continue to evolve into becoming an even stronger digital bank. Smart, insight-driven investments here will ensure that our customers value their differentiated online experience. It's an exciting time for our bank on many fronts, and most certainly contributing to that is our recent announcement of the acquisition of Amalgamated Bank of Chicago, known as ABOC. One of the many strategic opportunities that the acquisition provides is an established entry into a market we have long desired. ABOC provides us entry into Chicago which is a far-reaching market that encompasses most of the Midwest. Additionally, we bring to ABOC and its customers and prospects the capability that a significantly larger bank can provide. What we have found is that ABOC has deep relationships with their customers and that their customers are rich referral sources for new prospects. Combined, we have a balance sheet to support ABOC's customers and prospects as they continue to grow and which will provide immediate revenue synergies. The acquisition also gives us a tremendous opportunity to export our multi-segment customer model to the Midwest to capitalize on the segments that exist well beyond ABOC's foundational union customers. We signaled last quarter that we would be exploring smart M&A opportunities, and we will continue to do so. As I also stated on our second quarter call, We will need to make investments into people, products and services, and technology to foster the growth that we are expecting and are actively planning a thoughtful roadmap that considers timing, prioritize investments, net neutral funding decisions, and profitability. Although we have much more work to do, we are evolving and exciting things are happening. I will now turn the call over to Jason, who will fill you in on some of the details of the ABOC deal, as well as the just completed quarter. Jason?