John Corbett
Analyst · Piper Sandler
Thank you, Will. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. As you've seen in our earnings release, SouthState delivered a solid and steady quarter that was consistent with our guidance. At a high level, it was another quarter of positive but modest growth for both loans and deposits. Asset quality continues to be good with past dues, non-accruals and charge-offs, all declining in the quarter. Net interest margin dipped to the low end of our guidance but should be at or near bottom. And capital ratios are on the higher end of our peer group and have grown every quarter over the last year.
Like every other banker and investor, we're trying to understand the broader macro picture, the risk of recession and what the yield curve is going to look like. At the same time, we believe the dynamics will be different in every region of the country. As we study our bank in our markets, commercial loan pipelines took a sharp drop of about 25% following the banking turmoil last spring, and they stayed low through the summer and early fall. But by November, pipeline started growing again, and the last few months have now returned to the same level they were before the banking turmoil, and the momentum seems to be building, which is encouraging. But with rates where they are, CRE activity, not surprising, is much slower.
So nearly all the pipeline growth and momentum has been in the C&I portfolio. In fact, as it relates to commercial real estate, our concentration ratios for both CRE and construction are at the lowest levels they've been in 3 years. Dan Bockhorst and our credit team are doing a great job servicing and analyzing our loan portfolio. And while rising interest rates are putting pressure on debt service coverage ratios, the South is disproportionately benefiting from net migration, and we clearly see that in the rental rate trends on all types of commercial real estate.
In the last 3 years, rental rates in our markets have increased 16% for office compared to 3% outside our markets. Rental rates are up 21% in multifamily versus 14% outside our markets and rents are up 38% in industrial compared to 24% outside our markets.
On fee income, we were up for the quarter. We saw some improvement in mortgage as the gain on sale margin opened up. Wealth management continues to be a reliable and growing contributor and we now have assets under management over $8 billion. And our correspondent division recently expanded with the addition of a new team that specializes in the packaging and sale of the government guaranteed portion of SBA loans. This is a long-standing and experienced team based in Houston, and Steve can give you more information.
And finally, as we think about capital management, over the last year, we've maintained a level balance sheet, it's $45 billion in assets while earning a return on tangible common equity in the mid-teens. As a result, we've seen our capital ratios increase every quarter. Our CET1 currently sits at about 12%. We've also significantly increased our loan loss reserves, which currently sit at 1.6%. And I mentioned earlier that we're all trying to play economists and forecast the yield curve. And obviously, we don't have a crystal ball. And the only thing we know for sure is that all of our forecast will be wrong. So our goal is flexibility and optionality. And with these higher levels of capital reserves, we're in a perfect position to be opportunistic regardless if we have a soft landing, a hard landing or no landing at all. I'll pass it back to Will now to walk you through the details on the quarter.