Lindsay Corby
Analyst · KBW
Thank you, Alberto. Good morning, everyone. Our third quarter performance represented further progress on the growth of our franchise and a continuation of several positive trends.
On Slide 4, I would like to highlight a few metrics in addition to what Alberto has previously covered. We continued to effectively leverage our balance sheet, which is positively impacting our level of profitability. Our loan and lease to deposit ratio increased to 88% at the end of the third quarter versus 85% last quarter and 77% from year ago. Our capital ratios remained very strong, with our tangible common equity ratio increasing to 11.73% at the end of the quarter. This provides us with ample capital to support our growth strategies.
I also want to provide a little more detail on the tax benefit we recorded in the third quarter that positively impacted our earnings. On July 6, the State of Illinois legislature increased the corporate income tax rate from 5.25% to 7%. As a result, the value of our deferred tax asset related to our Illinois net loss deductions has increased, and we reported a $4.6 million tax benefit during the quarter. Going forward and assuming no change in federal tax rate, we expect our effective tax rate to be 40% to 41%.
Turning to our balance sheet. We'll start with our loan and lease portfolio on Slide 5. Our total loans and leases were $2.2 billion at September 30, an increase of $67 million from the end of the prior quarter. Our originated loan portfolio increased $119 million, with all of our major lending areas increasing during the quarter. We saw the strongest growth in our commercial real estate portfolio, which was up $56 million or 13.7% from the end of the prior quarter; and our C&I portfolio, which increased $42 million or 12.1%.
Moving to Slide 6 to discuss our deposits. As Alberto mentioned, our deposits remained stable at $2.5 billion. We expected our noninterest-bearing demand balances to be lower due to the proceeds of the loan funding last quarter being used by one of our customers to finance a transaction. Outside of that, our noninterest-bearing accounts were relatively unchanged in the quarter, while our money market accounts increased $65 million. This offset the decline in TD balances due to the continued runoff of promotional and other time deposits added to the Ridgestone acquisition. Through this improvement in mix, our core deposit percentage increased to 86.2% in the third quarter.
Moving to Slide 7. I'll discuss our net interest income and the expansion of our margin. Our net interest income increased $1.6 million from the prior quarter to $31.4 million, resulting in a net interest margin of 4.18%. Higher average loan yields and loan balances added 23 basis points to the margin, which was offset primarily by lower accretion income of 4 basis points.
The expansion is a result of an increase in loan and lease yields and the improvement in our earning asset composition. Loan and lease yields increased 16 basis points during the quarter due to volume and new originations at higher rates than those paying off as well as the full quarter benefit related to the rate increase in June. This was partially offset by a 3 basis point increase in our total funding cost to 70 basis points. This was driven by a slight increase in the cost of our interest-bearing liabilities, offset by a decrease from the payoff of our line of credit. The increase in the deposit cost is attributable to the time deposits and the money market category.
As we discussed last quarter, the CDs acquired from Ridgestone resulted in an acquisition accounting benefit on the time deposits. Excluding the impact of these fair value adjustments, our cost of time deposits increased 4 basis points during the quarter. The acquisition accounting benefit on our time deposits has been substantially recognized and will not have a material impact on funding cost going forward.
Turning to Slide 8 on our noninterest income. Compared to the prior quarter, our noninterest income decreased by 9.7% to $11.9 million. The decrease was due to a decline in net gains and sales of loans of $946,000 or 11.2%. We sold $71 million of government-guaranteed loans during the quarter, which was 4% lower than the dollar amount sold in the prior quarter. Our mix of loans sold was different than last quarter, which impacted our premiums received. Our originations of government-guaranteed loans for the quarter remained relatively stable at $170 million -- pardon me, $107 million versus $110 million in the previous quarter. Outside of this category of income, our other major fee-generating areas were relatively consistent or slightly increased versus the prior quarter.
Moving to Slide 9. Let's look at our noninterest expense. At $31.1 million, our noninterest expense increased by 6.2% from last quarter. Excluding the asset impairment charge, our expenses were up 3%. Within our specific expense items, we had $518,000 increase in professional fees, primarily related to expenses associated with the company becoming a public registrar. We also had $424,000 in additional OREO-related expenses due to lower gain on sales of OREO properties. These increases were partially offset by a $903,000 decrease in salaries and benefit expense, which was primarily due to decreased equipment expense and increased deferred loan origination costs, mainly salary expense, due to loan and lease originations.
On a year-over-year basis, you can see the results of our efforts to better leverage our infrastructure. Our efficiency ratio improved to 69.9% versus 84.4% a year ago. Excluding the asset impairment, our adjusted efficiency ratio was 67.7% for the third quarter. Although our efficiency ratio increased slightly from the prior quarter, our long-term trend continues to improve as we add scale and leverage our infrastructure.
Turning to Slide 10. We'll take a look at asset quality. We had a modest increase in our nonperforming assets during the quarter. However, as a percentage of total loans and leases, our ratio of nonperforming loans and leases was unchanged from the prior quarter. Our net charge-offs were $1.9 million or 34 basis points of average loans and leases for the quarter. Charge-offs were primarily related to leases and SBA loans. Provision expense for the third quarter was $3.9 million. The increase compared to the previous quarter was primarily driven by the growth in our portfolio. The provision brought our allowance for loan and lease losses up to 72 basis points of the total loans and leases at September 30. In addition to the traditional allowance methodology, we also analyzed the allowance in conjunction with the acquisition accounting adjustments impacting the acquired portfolio.
With that, I'd like to pass the call back to Alberto for closing remarks.