Operator
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the First Quarter 2020 Customers Bancorp, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Bob Ramsey. Please go ahead, sir.
Customers Bancorp, Inc. (CUBI)
Q1 2020 Earnings Call· Mon, May 4, 2020
$76.85
—
Same-Day
-1.78%
1 Week
-10.41%
1 Month
+5.67%
vs S&P
-4.13%
Operator
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the First Quarter 2020 Customers Bancorp, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Bob Ramsey. Please go ahead, sir.
Robert Ramsey
Management
Thank you, Travis, and good morning, everyone. Customer Bancorp's first quarter 2020 earnings release was issued yesterday afternoon along with our investor presentation. Both are posted on the Investor Relations page of the Company's website at www.customersbank.com. Our investor presentation includes important details that we will be discussing this morning and I'd now encourage everyone to pull up a copy. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements we make today may be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual performance results to differ materially from what is currently anticipated. Please note that these forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. Copies may be obtained from the SEC or by visiting the Investor Relations section of our website. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Customer Bancorp's CEO, Jay Sidhu. Jay, the floor is yours.
Jay Sidhu
Management
Thank you very much, Bob, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for this call. Hope you all are safe and healthy. And as you can imagine, we are all speaking from several different locations today. I thought, it would be a good idea to have several members of our management team present to be able to answer any kind of questions you have, because this is an important time for everybody to understand that customers Bancorp well. So, we encourage you to please look at our deck, investor deck that we have posted on our website and please follow the deck. Joining me today besides Dick Ehst, who is our President of Customers Bank; and Carla Leibold, who is the Chief Financial Officer of Customers Bancorp; and Sam Sidhu, the Chief Operating Officer of Customers Bank are also several members of our, what we call them, very important executives, the Management Board of Customers Bank. Those are Andy Bowman is our Chief Credit Officer, Steve Issa, our Chief Lending Officer as well as President of New England market, as well as he has the Commercial Finance Group or the equipment leasing reporting to him. Also joining us is Lyle Cunningham. Lyle is our Market President of Metro New York, our private banking teams there as well as he's Head of our Specialty Lending, as well as the Chicago market. And then Tim Romig is also with us today. Tim is the President of our Pennsylvania New Jersey markets, as well as he heads our small business administration group, which has been very, very active the last couple of weeks and has contributed immensely, very significantly different numbers than what you've seen from our peer groups. And then joining us also is Glenn Hedde. Glenn is…
Andy Bowman
Management
Absolutely, Jay, and thank you, and good morning everyone. I'd like to take a few moments and share with you, why we feel the bank is well positioned to continue to post strong credit quality metrics throughout as we move forward through this very challenging economic period. First and foremost, I just want to make everyone aware we possess a highly experienced and well seasoned 49 member credit team. Our team of credit officers, who are regionally dispersed throughout our footprint, on average have an excess of 20 plus years of credit management experience. The majority having 20 to, sorry, 25 to 30 years, and that experience pertains to front end credit structuring, portfolio management, and workout experience. Personally, I've been, in the credit industry for 32 years I've been working with Dick and Jay for the past 10 years here at Customers Bank. Additionally, as evidenced by our strong historical credit metrics, our credit culture is one that is conservative in nature with a high degree of emphasis placed in safe, sound, underwriting practices and highly interactive portfolio management framework, driven through our single point of contact customer facing model. I'd also like to point out the beginning in the middle of 2019 an initiative was undertaken within the organization to begin operating our various credit lines of business as if in a pre-recessionary environment. With each line of business challenges that time to assess their respective portfolios as to how he would perform in a recessionary environment. And then work in unison with the credit administration team and implementing a strategy to address any areas of concern. Some of the key initiatives that came out of this undertaking were the scaling back or complete replacement of a moratorium of lending into industries with highly susceptible to recessionary pressures…
Dick Ehst
Management
Thank you very much, Andy, and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to listen to our story today. When I'm listening to Jay, it just reminds me of the passion that has been driving our company, our young company, which we started a little over 10 years ago. And that passion has been the creation of jobs and the retention of jobs. That's what has been driving Customers Bank for all of these years. The opportunity to be the conduit to provide financing for the 77,000 customers, potential customers that and applications that we have gone through totaling $5 billion, as Jay mentioned, just speaks to the heart of who we are as a company. So, we are privileged to be able to fill that role. And it's been a remarkable process as Jay mentioned over the last five weeks to be able to achieve that result. In keeping with program today, let me refer you to Page 11 of the deck. And basically what the left side will share is the behavior of various portfolios within the Company, over the last several years. You can see a constant and consistent increase in our C&I loans. You can see a stabilization of our investment CRE loans. You can witness a reduction in our multifamily loans as well as an increase in our backing from mortgage companies which are commercial loans as well. But what drives the business bank is a business model, and that business model is a single point of contact. And what does means is that every commercial or business customer has a team dedicated to delivering the services of the entire bank to that customer, so basically one call does it all. The experience of our teams is exceptional. When you look at the…
Sam Sidhu
Management
Thanks, Derek. Good morning everyone. Appreciate you taking the time on today's call we recognize it's running a little longer than we would normally anticipate but there's obviously a lot to cover given the environment that we're in. So if you flip to Slide 15, before I jump into the numbers, let me take a step back and walk you through the business model of our consumer business. Our total consumer portfolio is approximately 1.7 billion including mortgages, and it provides a tremendous amount of diversification to our balance sheet. We provide home equity and residential mortgage loans to customers, in addition to originating and purchasing unsecured consumer loans through arrangements with third-party fintechs. Over the past several years, online consumer lenders have jumped from being a small fraction of the market to what we expect to be the dominant market share. Today, it's been more efficient for Customers Bank to target and service these loans outside of the traditional bank infrastructure, given the high volume as well as large amounts of marketing dollars that fintechs have been spending to compete. What we've done at the bank is taken a hybrid approach with our other consumer book, which is currently at approximately $1.3 billion. Phase 1 of our approach was to originate direct as well as enter into purchase and flow arrangements with top online lenders in the country. Phase 2 is we supplemented our internal credit box and modeling with industry partner and internal data in an effort to drive superior asset quality and risk management. In the portfolio and over time, you will see our purchases be a smaller percentage of our overall portfolio. We're currently already slightly below 50% purchased. We're now entering Phase 3, which is where we are matching the assets and liabilities on our…
Carla Leibold
Management
Thanks, Sam and good morning, everyone. The next couple of slides focus on our CECL adoption on January 1st and the reserve bill that occurred during the first quarter 2020. Starting at the end of last year, we had a total allowance for loan and lease losses of 56 million, or about 80 basis points of total loans and leases held for investment. Our day one adoption impact was 80 million. As Jay and Andy mentioned earlier, our economic outlook on January 1st, considered that we were operating and actively managing our portfolio since the middle of 2019, under the assumption that we were in a pre recessionary period. As a result, we probability weighted a moderate recession scenario, using Moody's S3 scenario available at 12/31/19 and the consensus forecast to best reflect management's economic outlook as of January 1st. We then applied qualitative adjustments as deemed appropriate. That resulted in a total allowance for credit losses of 136 million or an increase of 141% over our December 31st 2019, allowance for loan losses. We then adjusted for first quarter 2020 net charge off of about 6 million and portfolio balance changes that occurred during the quarter, which increased the allowance balance by about 10 million. At March 31, 2020, we use Moody's March 27 baseline scenario as a basis for economic outlook. We then went through a very similar discipline process as we did on day one. And which we calibrated model outputs to be more reflective of our portfolio and layered in other qualitative factors. That resulted in allowance for credit losses on loans of leases of 152.6 million at March 31, 2020. a coverage ratio of 2.10% and provision expense of 22.3 million for Q1 2020. Slide 20 provides an overview of our healthcare investment portfolio as…
Jay Sidhu
Management
Thank you. Thank you so much, Carla. And you are to apologize that we have taken a long time, but I think it's very important that we go through a lot of details with you. So, I'm on the last slide key takeaways and I'd like to emphasize four things. Number one, the Company is very well positioned to execute on our 2020 as well as our long-term strategies. NIM should be remained above 3%, I shared with you should expect about 3.10 by the end of the year. Operating expenses as Carla mentioned, should moderate over the next few quarters. Our tax rate would be 22% to 23% for 2020. And excluding the PPP loans, our balance sheet at year end 2020 is expected to be about the same as where it was it 12/31/2019. And when you add all the capital that we would have added from PPP loans, as well as our retained earnings because we are not buying back any stock and we are not giving any cash dividends on our equity, so that you should see significant growth in our equity to asset ratios at the end of 2020. Once again, I want to emphasize the SBA PPP program, which was a major, major, major initiative. I want to acknowledge the hundreds of our team members who work around the clock and we are so proud of them to make this all happen. And we didn't just go after the large customers, we did everything possible. And like I shared with you, just from origination fees alone, it's about $85 million is our number. But then you got to add the net interest income on top of it. So it's about $95 million to $100 million dollar number. And we're not done because PPP is…
Operator
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We do have our first question.
Steve Moss
Analyst
Good morning. It's Steve Moss with B. Riley FBR.
Jay Sidhu
Management
Hi, Steve, how are you?
Steve Moss
Analyst
Good, thanks Jay.
Jay Sidhu
Management
Great, thank you, Steve.
Steve Moss
Analyst
I want to start with the PPP originations here, a really big number of partnership with others. I take it the $5 billion you guys are retaining pledging. Just kind of wondering, how you structured this partnership with the fintech partners and perhaps any lender liability or any other color you could share there?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Steve, I'll ask any my colleagues, please jump in there if I didn't answer the question completely, but there is no lender liability because we are an approved SBA lender. We know how to do this business. This is a business that we've done in accordance and working with SBA. We've looked at outsourcing many of the servicing functions with some of it SBA approved agreement for that. And so, that we can service these clients approximately a little over $1 billion was done directly by our relationship managers and the rest of it was done in partnerships with the various business oriented higher quality fintechs. And this is turned out to be a beautiful business opportunity for us to be really -- and we are so gratified, when you get and you should look at our social media contact is very rare that you see the kind of reaction from small businesses and from not-for-profits that we've seen. Sam or Tim, you want to add anything else?
Sam Sidhu
Management
No, I think that was a good a good summary Steve, I think that liquidity is very important. And as you heard there, Jay and Carla mentioned, we intend to pledge all to the PPP lending facility. And if there is a chance that some portion of this are not forgiven, they will remain in our balance sheet, but we will still enjoy the benefits of the PPP lending facility, as the fed is essentially sharing the risk with us and that would just create more income over up to two year period for the portion that is not forgiving.
Jay Sidhu
Management
So the bottom line is, there is no credit risk, there is no operating risk. There's servicing issues we are working over there and this gives us an opportunity to work these clients to become primary banking customers of ours.
Steve Moss
Analyst
Great. That's helpful. And then in terms of CECL here, a big day 1 build and obviously big provision here. It sounds like you guys used the late March Moody's numbers. Kind of wondering, given that the economic scenario deteriorated after March 31, how you all are thinking about the provision for the second quarter?
Jay Sidhu
Management
That's a very good question because as Carla shared with you. We use a lot of qualitative analysis and are the fact that intense middle of 2019. We were working together in 2020. There would be an economic recession. That was our strategy. We were started functioning in that fashion. We did not rely just on Moody's in 2019. But just for the discipline for the proper process. We relied on an approach, so that it's not just management's judgment, but it's a very, very strong process, which can be audited by our independent accountants. And so, that's why we use the Moody's process with, on top of it as a layered in. And we assume, they're assuming somewhere between a V shape to a U shaped recessionary environment and our qualitative analysis. And so, we stressed all our different portfolios in the severely adverse type of our environment. We stretch car tested our entire loan portfolio, we are going to a process and we have done it. Actually that we are implementing a portfolio management, extremely automated system. And we cannot guide you as to what will happen to our provisions in the next couple of quarters as you understand, but it's a process, a very disciplined auditable process that we follow. And we think, it would be prudent to be conservative in this environment, it makes no sense to find a way to reverse some of our reserving till we are sure that we are out of this economic recession. But arguments can be made, that maybe some of this could be up for potential reversal. Our consumer loans are performing better than all the assumptions that we've used in setting up the reserves. All our loan categories are performing better than what assumptions that we've used in a very stressed environment. So, we will just be very disciplined in following this process.
Steve Moss
Analyst
Okay. That's fair. And then in terms of the -- just wondering what the total restaurant and hotel exposure you guys have at the current time and what load to values are there?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Sorry, that we kind of jumped over there a little bit. But our exposure is minimal, and Andy, maybe you have those numbers.
Andy Bowman
Management
Yes, absolutely. Our total exposure in the restaurant industry is very minimal and in aggregate right now, it stands at only about $64 million in aggregate total exposure. And that's spread across approximately 120 customers. So there's not a lot of aggregation and density in that portfolio. As far as the LTV is on those portfolios, it varies, A lot of them are, some of them are in leased facilities, some of them are known facilities. If they're known facilities and their owner occupied based upon our standard underwriting criteria, they'll come in somewhere between 70% to 75% on an LTV basis.
Jay Sidhu
Management
And Andy what percentage of them are national chains franchisees like McDonald's or Arby's or Taco Bell's, et cetera compared to independent restaurants?
Andy Bowman
Management
Yes, I would say out of that 64 million I'm going to say somewhere in the ballpark of 20 million is in some form of a franchise restaurant before chain, whether it be a potential Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell, et cetera.
Steve Moss
Analyst
Okay, great.
Jay Sidhu
Management
Hotels, I'm sorry. What was that?
Andy Bowman
Management
Steve, go ahead.
Steve Moss
Analyst
The hotel exposures, I was just asking them? Thanks.
Andy Bowman
Management
I can share with you. Our total exposures in hotels right now is 395 million total. So it's not a significant portion of portfolio. The profit hotels are flagged hotels, meaning along the lines of your Marriott, you're Hyatt, et cetera. That's probably about 60% of the portfolio. And then there's probably about another 25% portfolio that's what we've classified more as your seasonal resort hotels that have been long-established for a period of time. And then obviously, there's the gap is the difference in between. Some of that is obviously SBA exposure as well.
Steve Moss
Analyst
And I think Andy, if you can comment on what percentage of our hotels are the strong borrowers and what percentage of them are still left out right now?
Andy Bowman
Management
Yes, right now, I'd say we've got about $211 million of the $395 million as per the one slide is out there on deferral right now. The other hotels are paying as agreed. The other thing I would like to note that about 15% of our hotel portfolio is actually supported by contracts with government authorities for use of facilities for either displaced persons, or individuals that are just trying to get back on their feet. And a lot of those are those that are up in the North Jersey and are in our New York market. And that's about 50% of that total $395 million.
Steve Moss
Analyst
Okay, great. And do you have the Oakland values on those value-chain from the hotels?
Andy Bowman
Management
Sure, our loan to values typically a very entrenched from an underwriting perspective. We lend basically out of the gate at 65% loan to value. That's based upon the real estate only value. We do not give any value to FF&E. So our standard underwriting would be 65% loan to value on just the real estate component of the collateral.
Steve Moss
Analyst
Okay, great. And then my last question here, just in terms of the margin. Does the margin guidance include or exclude the PPP loans?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Well, we mentioned to you that the margin excludes the 3.1 margin by end of the year excludes any impact of PPP loans.
Robert Ramsey
Management
Any other questions?
Operator
Operator
Next question.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
Hi, good afternoon everyone's Michael Schiavone from KBW. Thanks for taking my question. On the day one CECL adjustment, it was a bit more than we expected. Can you talk about what drove that because I think it's correct to assume that the COVID-19 should not impact that figure, right?
Jay Sidhu
Management
That is correct.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
So are there assume…
Jay Sidhu
Management
What impacted that is or what impacted that is that since middle of last year, we were working with what without assumption that in 2020, there would be a recession. And that's why like you heard from my colleagues, we were in a strategy I think Andy outlined for you in detail what that strategy was. We were started to take out, we've started to tighten our underwriting, we've started to empty emphasize certain sectors, we've moved out certain credits. We focused on certain risk based pricing initiatives. We looked at our portfolio management strategies as such, and we were sitting on with that we are going to be in a recession. And that is why what we're assumed in our qualitative analysis, now obviously, we did the Moody's quantitative and our qualitative analysis showed to us that we need to be conservative in reserving and appropriate based upon the analysis where management was operating at that time. And management was clearly in a well-documented way. We had a risk summit on this middle of last year talking about how do, we manage our credit risk in this kind of a pre-recessionary environment. And that was our conclusion. And we took that approach to come up with a qualitative adjustment to the quantitative Moody's analysis to build up our reserves appropriately.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
That's helpful Thank you. And on expenses, how much of the build was due to some of the COVID-19 actions you guys laid out in the earnings release? And for the rest, what were the big drivers, and If you can maybe discuss what you think the run-rate from here will be?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Carla, you want to take that on please?
Carla Leibold
Management
Yes, sure. So, year-over-year, there were a couple of drivers. First of all, we had $1 million legal settlement for our partial settlement for the DOE. We also had an increase in the reserve for unfunded commitments, if you the $22 million that we were talking about focused on our loan and lease portfolio. There was also an additional $800,000 for unfunded commitments that went through that other non-interest expense line. We had increased other non-cash related items in particular some depreciation expense related to capitalize development costs for technology that was placed in the service in 2019 as well as some other technology related costs that weren't capitalizable, and some increases in our digital transformation efforts. And as we said that, we do expect our operating expenses to moderate over the next couple of quarters.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
Great, thanks. And for the PPP program, is it reasonable to assume that should help boost capital levels later this year when the revenue start to be realized? And then we're wondering, at that point will you reconsider start thinking about redeeming the preferred?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Let me get on, it's in the next two months that 70 -- 65% to 75% of all the $85 million plus minus and revenues that I've shared with you will be realized by us in the next 60 to 75 days. Maybe you can add another factor to that and few more days here and there. That's how much impact you will see on our capital, equity tangible common equity capital in the next couple of weeks. So, that's basically the impact on capital. What was the second part of the question?
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
By what point do you guys expect to start rethinking about redeeming the preferred?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Yes. I think it's more important than this environment to have a stronger balance sheet and to be maximizing earnings. And we are going to have very strong earnings this year because of PPP and accretiveness from that. And we think it will be -- we'll take it at a time from a capital allocation point of view. And we wouldn't want to commit to anything but we would. First our priority is to have strong capital ratios and we are not going to be ever in looking at any kind of a common equity issue until we are trading above book. So that's how the question for us and we will look at appropriately building a strong balance sheet and continuing to function in this kind of an environment in a cautionary state.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
Okay. And lastly, if the COVID-19 environment impacts your ability to divest BankMobile, do you have any sort of contingency plan moving forward for BankMobile?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Our contingency plan and our definitive plan is called divestiture. And we will stay with that.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
Okay. Thank you very much.
Jay Sidhu
Management
We do have a contingency plan. In another words, I'm telling you with some pretty good certainty that it's going to happen.
Michael Schiavone
Analyst
Thank you very much. Thanks for taking my questions. And good day.
Jay Sidhu
Management
Thank you.
Operator
Operator
We'd like to….
Jay Sidhu
Management
Any other question?
Operator
Operator
Yes, sir. Next question
Russell Gunther
Analyst
It's Russell Gunther from D.A. Davidson., I just have two follow ups at this point. The first just jumping back to the preferred conversation, just a reminder please of what does in fact come due in 2020 and then what the slug that's would be available in 2021? And then if you guys could put a finer point around what capital hurdles you'd need to achieve before you start thinking about that?
Jay Sidhu
Management
I'll just mention in the capital hurdles and Carla will get you some of the details. I think like I just mentioned over here that we are looking at building a fortress balance sheet and with strong capital ratios and not make the deeming are preferred as a priority. We are out of a recessionary environment. That is our philosophy on capital. It is more capital is better than less capital. And in fact, with the rates where they are right now as Carla will probably give you the details so that. We're in fact, keeping the preferred on our books this year is going to reduce the rate on those preferred based upon the current rate. So Carla, you can give some details, please.
Carla Leibold
Management
So Russell, we have about 57.5 million that first becomes callable in June 2020. It's at about a 7% rate, it will re-price to a three month LIBOR rate that will reset quarterly and it's at a spread, I would say close to 600 basis points. So given where rates are currently would actually be a benefit, when it does reset at a lower cost than what it was on the books previously. But as Jay mentioned, we are not considering redeeming that in 2020 and we have a total of about 225 that will become redeemable in 2021.
Russell Gunther
Analyst
And then just the last one is a bit of a tricky tacky question, but I appreciated the granularity in the deck, as well as in response to Steve's questions on hotels and restaurants. Just wondering, if you could provide the same for your retail exposure, and what that is an aggregate and then any of the portfolio characteristics from an LTV perspective?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Yes, Dick or Andy, dp you want to take that on please? So, we have a very little exposure and retail overall.
Andy Bowman
Management
Go ahead Dick.
Dicl Ehst
Analyst
As of the 24th of April, as you'll see on page 14 of the deck, we have a total of 12 loans right now, totaling about $4.7 million. So the retail exposure is almost nil. Andy?
Andy Bowman
Management
We have very little in direct retail exposure at this time. And I think, I wrote down as much to add to that statement there, it's negligible.
Russell Gunther
Analyst
Dick, you referencing the total number of deferrals and I'm just trying to get a sense for what the outstandings are?
Richard Ehst
Analyst
Well, if it's the standings are 0.12% of the total portfolio. So do the math reverse, I guess.
Russell Gunther
Analyst
Andy, do you have a number on that?
Andy Bowman
Management
Our total overall exposure in the retail side is probably in that ballpark of no more than 10 million.
Russell Gunther
Analyst
I appreciate you guys clarifying that slide. Thank you very much.
Andy Bowman
Management
And also just add real quick what that exposure is predominantly also a component that is probably SBA as well.
Operator
Operator
Next question.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Hi. This is [Tony Astazio] with [Anthony Astazio Consulting]. And you've sort of answered this question, but I just want to ask one quick about the prefer. The one coming due in June is LIBOR and 90 day LIBOR plus 5.30. And of course LIBOR is a discontinued rate. A year ago course it was 2.58, which would have put that over 8% right at eight, it's way lower now. But have you actually formally determined what rate you intend to use for the variable rated preferred or as a proxy for the 90-day LIBOR?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Carla, do you want to take that on. Did you lose Carla? Sorry, guys a little bit, we are all in different locations. So, we our LIBOR is going to stick around with us where at least 2021 and so we are using the LIBOR.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Okay, all right. You're going to use some block in LIBOR even though it's kind of become another, it's been just continued.
Jay Sidhu
Management
That is correct. Hopefully, discontinue, who knows. Yes, who knows, like as you know the Federal Reserve on the main street lending program had suggested so far first as a rate and then they move to LIBOR, and those are four year loans.
Robert Ramsey
Management
Any other questions at all?
Operator
Operator
Yes, we do have a few.
Frank Schiraldi
Analyst
Hi everyone, it's Frank Schiraldi from Piper Sandler. Just quickly, Jay I wonder if you, as you get back to the 7% TCE ratio by year-end I know the PPP program should help significantly. Just wondered, if you could talk a little bit more about the puts and takes and the rest of the balance sheet? It sounds like multifamily will continue to shrink, but wondering about the rest of the loan portfolio. And then, as you've seen, good growth seems like in the digital deposit space, wondering, if that's accelerating and where you think long to deposit ratio will shake out later this year?
Jay Sidhu
Management
No, we think Frank -- thank you. We think the loan to deposit ratio is going to be between 85% to 90%. We are not focused on building our loan book to any costs since we don't have any targets for that. Our targets are for return on assets and return on capital and as well as improving our capital ratios and preserving our credit quality and preserving our margins and having the appropriate liquidity. I think that's what we shared with you as our priority as such. And so, to us is that equity is going to be very critical in these uncertain times. And so we are looking at always continuing to build that as such and we are very comfortable with our equity position especially we put a tremendous amount of time and effort and building our equity by somewhere between $85 million to $100 million in the last three weeks by doing the stuff that we are expected to do. And we are proud of our teams to have done that. So, the balance sheet is stronger, we just transferred $100 million from equity capital to reserves, and then we found a way to replace that $100 million back into equity. It is very, very significant. And our reserves, as you know, so well, Frank, that are now assuming a lifetime charge-offs and lifetime write-downs. And nobody knows for sure, in our assessment as to what will happen from a COVID-19 environment. Everybody's talking about their own research and own economics. We do extract loan by loan stress testing. That is the only way in our opinion that you can figures out whether it's COVID-19 related or non-COVID-19 related economic stress. And what if 2008 environment comes in how much do we need in reserves? So, another way of looking at it is, you assume no growth in loans and in that case, if all our qualitative and quantitative assumptions are there, you should see in material changes, or additions or subtractions from our lounge over the next couple of years. And that because it's 1, 2, 3 years is the average life of our loan portfolio. And that is the way we are looking at it. We will evaluate the adequacy of our reserves on a quarterly basis using a very disciplined process and on top of it layering our qualitative conservative standards, and that will determine our eventual capital allocation process. But right now, we are very, very comfortable. And we don't envision our capital ratios to be below 7% this year at all. I'm talking about TCE, but you got to add another $215 million of preferred equity on top of that, which is another 2% on top of that. So we are really looking at 9% equity capital. Shareholder equity capital is common shareholders is seven and preferred shareholders will be 2, so it's a 9% equity capital.
Frank Schiraldi
Analyst
Got you. Yes. Okay. And then just finally on, I wondered if you could share trends in loan delinquencies through the end of the quarter. And then, even if you could hear through the end of April. Are those elevated or did those just get captured by deferrals at this point? Thanks.
Jay Sidhu
Management
That's a very good question again, Frank, thanks for asking good questions when you see only under 5% of their consumer loans to be deferred, very smart question is. What's happening with the other 95 plus question plus and how is the delinquency? So it's a very good question that you asked. I am pleased to share with you we are seeing no material change in our delinquencies from fourth quarter to now. Among the ones which are in a non-deferral basis. And we disclose to you different by income deferrals by FICA scores, deferral. And in all those ways that you can see that, and in fact, we've seen in our portfolios, whereby there has been an increase in payments coming in from those who had elected to defer and then decided, for whatever reason after they got their check from the government to make the payment. So as of right now, we are seeing no material change in delinquencies at all and we have zero delinquencies in our multifamily.
Frank Schiraldi
Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Operator
Next question?
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
My question was just answer. I was going to ask about borrower behavior specifically in April. If you have anything you want to add, that's fine. Otherwise we can go to the next question?
Jay Sidhu
Management
Thank you. That's why we decided to give you have a slightly later call. So, we can give you the April buyer behavior and a borrower behavior rather than being the rush to give you the first quarter earnings.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Thank you, Jay.
Operator
Operator
There are no further questions in the queue.
Jay Sidhu
Management
Okay. Thank you very much for dialing in. We really appreciate your interest in Customers, and we are hopeful if you have any other questions, please give us a call. Thank you and have a good day.
Operator
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.