FinWise Bancorp

Greetings. Welcome to FinWise Bancorp's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Thank you. You may begin the presentation.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for FinWise Bancorp's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Earlier today, we filed our earnings release and investor deck and posted them to our investor website at investors.finwisebankorp.com. Today's conference call is being recorded and webcast on the company's website, investors.finwisebankorp.com. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates, expectations, and beliefs, and FinWise Bancorp assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements contained in the company's earnings press release and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Posting the call today are Kent Landvatter, Chairman and CEO, Jim Noon, Bank CEO, and Bob Wallman, CFO. Kent, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. The Finwines business model remained resilient in its first quarter, even amidst a more uncertain macro environment. Loans originated totaled approximately $1.3 billion. and we also posted solid asset growth and encouraging credit quality performance as both NPL balances and net charge-offs declined versus the prior quarter. Furthermore, we continue to migrate our loan portfolio to a lower risk profile while still growing profitably and increasing tangible book value. Specifically, our tangible book value per common share end of the quarter at 1342 versus 1315 in the prior quarter. We also remain well capitalized significantly above regulatory guidelines with a tangible shareholders equity to assets ratio of 22% down from 23.3% at year end 2024. As we have discussed in the past, we expect our capital ratios to decline due to the planned growth in assets. We also remain focused on executing our business strategy, including announcing a new strategic program agreement with FinTech BACT, subsequent to the end of Q1. As part of our relationship with BACT, FinWISE will provide business installment loans to small and medium-sized businesses, and we will also provide access to our low-risk credit enhanced balance sheet program. While we will continue to closely monitor the economic environment, we remain very excited about the long-term outlook for our business, particularly as our existing and potential strategic partners are enthusiastic about the benefits that our broader banking and payments platform provides them. For 2025, we continue to look for gradual progression and growth as we move through the year, driven by originations from existing programs as well as incremental growth from programs that were signed late last year and more recently. We also continue to expect our credit enhanced balance sheet program, including a similar extended held for sale product, to be a meaningful contributor to our earnings in 2025, with most of the growth coming in the second half of the year, as we had discussed on our prior earnings call. With that, let me turn the call over to Jim Noon, our bank CEO.