Financial Institutions, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Financial Institutions, Inc. second quarter earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Shelley Doran, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us for today's call. Providing prepared comments will be President and CEO Marty Birmingham and CFO Justin Bigham. Director of Financial Planning and Analysis Mike Grover will participate in the Q&A portion of the call. Today's prepared comments and Q&A will include forward-looking statements. Action results may differ materially from forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors. We refer you to yesterday's earnings release and historical SEC filings available on our website for a safe harbor description and a detailed discussion of the risk factors relating to forward-looking statements. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures intended to supplement and not substitute for comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP financial measures were provided in the earnings release which was filed as an exhibit to a Form 8-K. Please note that this call includes information accurate only as of today's date, July 30, 2020. I'll now turn the call over to Marty.

Thank you, Shelly. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. The past few months have been very challenging and eventful for our organization. We responded swiftly to the COVID pandemic in March. taking action to protect our associates and our customers by creating less dense work environments. Work from home and alternative work locations were implemented for as many associates as possible, as well as non-essential business travel and visitor restrictions. Most branch lobbies were closed and by appointment only protocols were implemented for those transactions requiring face-to-face interaction. In our new normal of working together yet apart, We implemented an array of actions to support consumers and businesses, including waiving certain fees, not reporting payment deferrals to credit bureaus, and the granting of up to 90-day grace periods for consumer mortgage and auto loan payments. 4.3 million of consumer loan payments were extended, on average, for 60 days, and forbearance was granted on approximately $633,000 in residential mortgages and monthly line payments, on average, for 90 days. Credit was thoughtfully extended to small business and commercial customers for working capital and operating purposes. And loan relief was provided to 135 small business customers representing 19 million of loans and 227 commercial clients representing 383 million in loans. We were able to help approximately 1,700 small businesses obtain 270 million of SBA Payroll Protection Program loans helping to preserve an estimated 18,000 jobs in our market. And we continue to work with customers on one-to-one to address unique needs during this time. We are staying in close contact with our commercial customers, making sure we understand their operating environments and business challenges, and offering assistance or solutions where possible. We completed a thorough credit analysis of our commercial loan portfolio, designed to uncover potential portfolio risks and help us navigate the credit cycle. We developed a watch list of higher risk industries to monitor on a go-forward basis. We review key credit relationships every week up to the executive level of the bank, tracking how businesses are performing. This is a joint effort completed by our lending, credit, risk, and finance teams. All of these accomplishments were achieved with 65% of our associates working remotely. Our organization transitioned very quickly from business as usual operations to a new standard of working together from multiple locations across our footprint. I am so proud of the Five Star Family's collective resiliency and adaptation to so many changes. To provide enhanced digital capabilities during a time when at-home access was critical, We move forward in the second quarter with the multi-phase launch of our new online and mobile platform, Five Star Bank Digital Banking. Now more than ever, consumers and businesses need the ability to do their banking anywhere and anytime, and we leverage the latest technology to provide new features and tools to improve the digital banking experience for our customers. The Five Star Bank Digital Banking platform provides a single dashboard to make payments and deposits, Transfer and Send Money, Create Budgets, Set Financial Goals, and Easily Integrate External Investment, Loan, and Other Transactional Accounts. Customer response to the platform has been very favorable and we will continue to roll out enhancements over time. For example, over the summer, we will be launching a new digital account opening platform that will allow consumers and businesses to open most kinds of deposit accounts on any device. During the quarter, we also developed our reentry plan. We will be working differently as we reopen and the approaches for reentry will vary by location. We have completed significant preparation incorporating local directives with practical consideration for each location so that when associates come back and customers come in, they feel safe. Our protocols have been and will continue to be based on science and data. We have the infrastructure and operations in place to meet public health obligations and are putting in place additional layers of safeguards in all locations that can be monitored and revised as appropriate. We have brought back a portion of associates into two of our administrative offices, and so far it has gone very well. We remain committed to maintaining a less dense workplace through the continued use of remote access and alternative work sites. By keeping at least 50% of our workforce remote, it will ensure resiliency and flexibility should there be an uptick in community spread. Also critical to this next phase is maintaining our culture. If we envision staying in this operating state or even a modified version for an extended period, we must ensure that our organizational and cultural values stay intact. That means maintaining regular communication and making sure that our associates don't feel isolated or siloed. We all benefit from being an impactful and collaborative organization. That's part of our success, and we need to maintain and even strengthen that. Despite all the headwinds, we delivered strong results in the quarter. Net income was just slightly lower than the year earlier period, and we generated the second highest quarterly pre-tax, pre-provision income in our history. It was a good quarter for core fundamentals, and the benefits of a diversified revenue stream were evident. As I stated last quarter, we entered the crisis in a position of strength based on our diversified business model, strong levels of capital and liquidity, historically strong asset metrics, and a disciplined risk management and underwriting process. We remain focused on taking good care of our customers, our associates, and our capital, and I believe we are well positioned to navigate the complexities of our current operating environment. Now my pleasure to turn the call over to Justin for a discussion of results for the quarter. Justin?