Good morning and welcome to the UMB Financial Corporation Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Miss Kay Gregory. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us for our conference call and webcast regarding our third quarter 2015 financial results. Before we begin, let me remind you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements, all of which are subject to assumptions, risks and uncertainties. Actual results and other future events, circumstances, or aspirations may differ materially from those set forth in any forward-looking statement. Information about factors that may cause them to differ is contained in our 10-K for 2014 and subsequent 10-Qs and other SEC filings. Forward-looking statements made in today's presentation speak only as of today and we undertake no obligation to update them. By now, we hope most of you on the call or listening via webcast, have had a chance to review our earnings press release that was issued yesterday afternoon. If not, the release is available on our website at umbfinancial.com. Also, on our website, we've provided supporting slides that contain additional details on some of the drivers and metrics we will discuss today. A link to the slides can be found in the investor section of umbfinancial.com under News & Events, and Presentations and will be available in the webcast link for your reference during the call. On the call today are Mariner Kemper, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Brian Walker, Chief Financial Officer; Peter deSilva, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Mike Hagedorn, President and Chief Executive Officer of UMB Bank. Following our prepared remarks we'll be happy to answer your questions. I'll now turn the call over to Mariner Kemper.

Thank you, Kay. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us. I'd like to cover two major points with you this morning, our high level results for the third quarter and details related to our efficiency initiatives designed to drive future improvements on our results. Beginning on Slide 5, we continue to see improvement in net interest income, driven largely by increased volumes. However, noninterest income contracted, due primarily to lower income from Scout Funds and a reduction in unrealized equity earnings from alternative investments. Expenses increased on a year-over-year basis and included $4.5 million in integration costs related to the Marquette acquisition, as well as $9.4 million in Marquette salaries along with other increased expenses in the first full quarter of combined results. Net income for the quarter was $22.5 million or $0.46 per diluted share. Brian will provide a more detailed look at our quarterly results later in the call. While we were facing some headwinds we've had a lot to be excited about. Our Marquette acquisition is already showing bottom-line results and we've had yet another quarter of loan growth and net interest margin expansion. At September 30, acquired balances plus production through the legacy Marquette channels comprised $1 billion of the increase in total balances. The remaining increase of $937.9 million was generated through legacy UMB lenders, for a year-over-year increase of 13.2%. Details are shown on Slide 7. Mike and Peter will discuss details on our loan book and other drivers in our segments later in the call. In today's persistent environment of low interest rates and intense competition nothing is more essential to profitable growth than operating efficiency. As you'll recall, in July, we announced the consolidation of several customer facing lines of business primarily in the bank and reorganization of our technology, operations…

Thanks Mariner, and good morning, everyone. First, as I did last quarter, I'd like to share an update on the progress we're making on the integration of the Marquette acquisition. In the December 2014 acquisition announcement, we discussed estimated transaction cost of $23 million. On Slide 16, you'll see the total to date acquisition cost of $7.9 million shown by quarter in the four categories we disclosed at the time of the announcements, HR, technology integration, professional fees and other integration fees. In addition, we're still on track to recognize the estimated $14 million in cost savings related to the acquisition, to be baked in over a two-year period following the May 31st closing. We're pleased with the metrics surrounding the acquisition and will continue to update you as we work towards full conversion in 2016. Looking at the balance sheet, total securities available for sale in our investment portfolio stood at $6.7 billion at September 30th, a decrease of 1.3% from a year ago. As you can see on Slide 19, we've purchased $114 million in securities with an average yield of 2.17% for our available for sale portfolio during the third quarter. You'll note that this is the first time in several quarters that the purchase yield has exceeded the roll off field. Mike will cover other aspects of our balance sheet in the bank segment discussion. Turning to the income statement, net interest income before provision rose 25.6% year-over-year and 12.9% on a linked quarter basis to $109.9 million. Third quarter net interest margin of 2.73% is 20 basis points higher than in the third quarter of 2014. On a linked quarter basis, net interest margin increased 14 basis points. The year-over-year increase was due to the addition of Marquette's higher yielding loans, a primary driver of…

Thanks Brian and good morning. Bank segments financials and business drivers can be found starting on Slide 27. The 28.9% lift in year-over-year net interest income in this segment was primarily driven by improved average loan yields, which increased to 3.76% from 3.5% a year ago and improved loan volumes including the addition of Marquette's loan book. Our continued strategy to add higher-yielding loans to replace lower yielding investments has resulted in improved average loan to deposit ratio of 62.3% for the third quarter compared to 55.9% a year ago. Over the past several quarters, we've been discussing various loan verticals we're building as part of our strategy to further diversify our portfolio, while adding exposure to higher-yielding loan categories. Seasoned lenders with expertise in areas such as agriculture and commercial real estate and more recently aviation healthcare lending have built strong teams to meet the needs of customers in these areas. UMB has always been in the agricultural lending business, given that our footprint contains some of the most concentrated areas of ag resources, in both the U.S. and the world. In late 2012, we expanded our focus adding relationship officers with specific expertise in dairy, food processing, row crop and seed production. Since that time, we've seen a 75% increase in ag loan balances, which recently stand at $493.1 million and are classified as follows. $165 million in loans to finance ag products, and $328 million of loans secured by farmland. On the CRE side, most new loans were in the multifamily housing, senior living and office complex space. In the third quarter, we continue to see interest in CRE refinancing, a business we like as those loans are fully funded right away. Kansas City continues to be our largest region in terms of CRE originations. However, we…

Thank you, Mike and good morning. I'll begin with Scout, our institutional investment management segment. Details on this segment begin on Slide 33. For the third quarter, Scout's net income was $3.5 million, a decrease of $6.1 million compared to third quarter of 2014. Revenue for the segment declined $12.5 million or 36.8% year-over-year. This was driven by net outflows over the past several quarters, primarily in the international fund, and the resulting shift in AUM mix as fixed income assets continued to comprise a greater percentage of Scout's overall AUM. Expenses in the segment were $16.5 million for the quarter, a decrease of 21% compared to the third quarter of 2014, driven largely by lower processing fee. The resulting pre-tax profit margin for the segment was 23%. This business with its fixed expense base is highly leverageable as assets under management rise. However, it takes time to reset that fixed expense base during periods of contracting AUM. As shown on Slide 34, assets under management stood at $28 billion on September 30, 2015, which is a decrease of 8.5% compared to AUM a year ago. You'll see a breakdown of our assets on that slide, which as of September 30 were 24% equity and 76% fixed income, compared to a 41% and 59% equity, fixed income mix at September 30, 2014. As of September 30, 2015, assets in Scout Equity Strategies decreased $2.1 billion compared to June 30, driven again by net outflows of $1.4 billion and a negative market impact. Assets under management in Scout's fixed income strategies increased $72.2 million on a linked quarter basis, due to net inflows of $37.7 million and a $34.5 million positive market impact. Slide 35 on the supporting materials shows the various components of these changes. The focus at Scout continues…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Chris McGratty of KBW. Please go ahead.

Mariner, I'm looking at Slide 12. I'm interested in the allocations, roughly 70% of the salaries line. Could you maybe take that a step further and kind of remind me how much of that is coming from the bank versus any changes that might be going on at Scout?

Yeah, so first of all go Royals, I might just add for all of those on the phone who aren't aware that the Royals just won the first game of the World Series. The Page 12, you know, I must kept this high level and as you can see through our financial statements, the bank represents three-quarters of our Company's earnings revenue at this point. So, I would say, largely most of this is coming from the bank. Every part of the organization contributed, including Scout, but the large majority of these savings are coming from the bank as you might expect.

Okay, maybe just kind of following up on the efficiency, 70%, how should we -- given that earnings have kind of been moving around quite a bit lately, how should we as kind of investors in the sell side be thinking about this target? Is this -- would you describe this as kind of a near-term, intermediate-term, kind of one to two year goal or is this kind of a three to five year move -- a little bit of a structural change in kind of efficiency?

Well, I would definitely say it's structural. We absolutely are committed 100% to getting more efficient, much faster and without giving you an exact timeline, which is hard to do giving, given how dependency we have on getting there through what the Fed does and what interest rates do, so it's hard to give you an exact target on the timeline, however what -- I think what's really important to note about this and try to say something about it in my remarks as well is the tone. It's the way for you to understand, for all of our investors to understand that we're operating in a new level, with a deeper commitment and a greater sense of urgency around operating more efficiently.

Okay, thanks. Just want to touch on capital for a minute. Your stocks lagged quite a bit this year. I'm wondering, can you remind us what the buyback authorization is and is there a level that the Board would consider utilizing it or is it still organic growth and select M&A?

So, we look at all of our uses -- ways to use our capital and share buybacks are certainly part of that. We analysed it against acquisitions, we analysed it against growth and our share buyback program authorizations 2 million shares and we analysed it, just as we do everything else and I would say, we're always looking for the best long-term alternative for use of our capital, long-term returns.

Great, and maybe the last question and I'll hop out. The one-time charges, can you remind us? It seems like the $15 million [ph] is still coming from Marquette, can you remind us the timing of that and then from this plan, I think there were some charges in the quarter, how much should we be putting in for the fourth quarter?

This is Brian. Specifically for the Prairie Capital transaction, we did settle that transaction during the quarter and there were $5 million in unrealized losses associated with underlying funds of that organization.

Yeah, I appreciate that Brian, but I'm looking for the Marquette and the --

I'm sorry. On the Marquette, during the quarter it was $4.5 million in acquisition expense and year to date, we've accomplished $7.9 million.

And the rest will come in ratably over the next few quarters. Is that fair?

That's right.

Okay. So the adjustments in the quarter, would be, just so I'm clear, to be $4.5 million from Marquette and $5 million from Prairie. There's no other, you would call one time charges in the quarter?

There is the severance component specifically related with this operating efficiencies of 0.7 after tax.

Okay. Got it. Thanks.

The next question comes from David Long of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Looking at the Scout funds, at this point I thought maybe the outflows were a little bit better under control and they seem to accelerate this quarter. Was there a single large movement in the quarter or what can we expect from that going forward or do you feel comfortable that you've stemmed some of the outflows there?

Long, it's Peter. A couple of comments. Number one, the fund is 65% smaller today than it was just about a year, year and a half ago. So, we have seen a significant amount of outflow there. It's about a $3.1 billion fund at the end of the third quarter. It's hard to know how the fund's going to perform from a growth standpoint on a go forward basis. We don't generally single out one large client or another, so I won't comment really on that, but I also want to spend a moment and talk about some of the really good things that are going on at Scout in addition to the challenges that we're having in the international front. Number one, if you look at our performance on our other strategies, our mid cap fund is now in the 9th percentile on a year to date base, the 19th percentile on a one year basis, our three bond funds are all in the top decile, and the international fund does continue to lag, but those are the funds that are doing extraordinarily well. In the quarter, the mid cap fund earned back its fourth Morningstar star. It had fallen to a three star fund, but we got that back to a fourth star, and we also had, as I noted in my comments, we had the two new -- two funds that reached their three year duration. So, there's a lot of good things going on in Scout. We continue to focus on improving performance of all of our strategies and leveraging our distribution channels.

Excellent. Thanks for the additional color on that Peter. Then second question, two new subjects here. Looking at C&I loans in the quarter were down on a linked quarter basis using period end numbers. Just curious what was going on there if you had maybe some pay downs? It seems like most things are reporting some growth there. Just want to see -- I know that can be choppy at an individual bank, but wanted to see what's going on there.

Yeah, this is Mike. So, as we disclosed in the comments between pay downs, pay offs we're at $288 million for the quarter. So, in my comments I talked about how that's fairly normal compared to the last four quarters, looking backwards. I think our production was very strong. Production was over $500 million. So, obviously those pay downs and pay offs reduced that number, but I think actually our overall growth has been pretty strong. Remember, the growth in quarter over quarter numbers was 27% including Marquette, but if you back Marquette out, our legacy UMB portfolio was up 13%. So I think we have pretty good growth. I don't think that our pay down or pay offs are unusual.

Got it. Thank you for taking my questions.

The next question comes from Ebrahim Poonawala of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Just had a quick follow-up question on loan growth. Is it fair to assume that going forward, you still think you can get, given what you talked about your markets double-digit annualized loan growth? Understanding some lumpiness from a quarter to quarter, but overall low double digit kind of loan growth, is that reasonable to assume?

Yeah so, Ebrahim, all I can really give you is some history and then tell you a little bit about -- a little color on the coming quarters. So from a historic perspective, we've been doing on average, the last four quarters, about $497 million in production on the commercial -- that's total. So, $497 million is the total, and that's for the last four quarters and then Mike mentioned what our pay downs and pay offs have been at about $288 million, over that period of time, also quarterly average, the pay down and pay off of our lines, utilization has been a positive $22 million over those four quarters. So, if you look back, we've been doing somewhere between $200 million and $250 million in net production on a quarterly basis over the last four quarters. So, that's the history. As we think of the next quarter, our production, we feel pretty good about, kind of being in line, we expect to see the same kind of production. What we can't predict for you is what pay down, pay offs actually will be or what activity will happen on pay downs and pay offs for our line activity. So, I hope that helps. Production, pretty well in line, and -- give you a little history on what pay downs and pay offs have been over the last four quarters.

Got it. No, that's helpful. Thank you, and I think switching back to expenses and the efficiency target, you've talked about this previously. I think as we think -- and then Mariner, you mentioned about some of that depends on when rates move higher but if rates don't move much higher, if that 70% is just an aspiration target or can you still get there assuming maybe we get a couple of rate hikes next year and that's about it?

Well, so again without being able to give you any time, when we get there, obviously if you look at our rate chart, you can make your own assumptions on what happens to our earnings in an up 100, up 200, up 300 and you can kind of probably back into how quickly we can get there, but we're not giving that direct guidance. So, if you look at Page 30, you can sort of see what the impact on net interest income would be in an up 100, 200, 300 range. I can't give you much more than that. I'm sorry.

This is Mike. I'll add that's new disclosure. So, we think that -- we're trying to ask and answer this question around asset sensitivity, that's why we included this page.

You've got year two in there now, showing you how sensitive we are, so if it does happen, I guess, sooner, rather than later the impact is greater sooner, right?

Right, and I guess my question more was if that doesn't happen, then where do we go?

Well, you tell me. That's an industry question, right, if you stay flat longer we're all going to be reassessing all sorts of things, right, but so, we'll reassess along the way depending on how long we stay flat, right.

All right. We'll stay tuned. Thanks for taking my questions.

The next question comes from Matthew Olney from Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

On the expense side, I guess there's two separate initiatives, the $32.9 million on the legacy business and I believe Marquette, that expense initiative, its $14 million in those two things separately, was there any cost saves associated with either one of those two recognized in the third quarter or is that all incremental?

We disclosed what happened in the third quarter for Marquette. I think that's -- what is it 4 -- [indiscernible] he's asking if there were expense -- ongoing expense saves related to Marquette that they're going to see in the run rate and I don't know that we've disclosed that. We've not broken that out. There have, there were and there will continue to be. I would say this Matt. Right now, the expense saves we've disclosed at the time we did Marquette and the related synergies are absolutely right in line, so we feel very good about the numbers we originally put out there.

And what about the $32.9 million. How much of that's been recognized so far in the third quarter numbers if any?

We break that out in the deck there as to what's happening in '15 and what's happening in '16, Page 13.

12 and 13.

12 and 13 show you when those impact and then it's obviously fully annualized in '17. The actions taken in '15 and '16 show the full save as an annualized number in '17.

That was the 0.9 or 0.7 after tax severance that I quoted a little bit earlier.

Would've been related to the severance. Just not the Marquette piece but rather the other piece. I guess that's the total.

And as far as that $32.9 million, that's a pretty sizable chunk of the overall expense base. Can you give us some additional comfort that revenues won't be affected at all --?

Absolutely. It's 4.9%, and absolutely dead on with not doing harm to the organization. We [indiscernible] through the exercise all the opportunities and executed on all of the items that would not impact revenue and revenue growth, customer -- making sure we're taking care of our customers et cetera and did not execute against things that would do harm to both value of the organization or customer relationships et cetera.

Okay, thanks for that Mariner and then lastly, I'm curious if there are still any ongoing strategic reviews within the businesses to help get to that 70% efficiency ratio and specifically would you consider the sale of any businesses or segments that are less profitable?

So, we consider everything all the time, and I think, I'll just hit on three things. Again, I said a moment ago about [indiscernible]. So, the three things for you to pick up on. One is, we did execute on an initiative, but alongside the initiatives a new operating environment in which the entire management team is very focused on operating lean and mean, and then secondly, I would say that on top of the initiative through the way we operate you will continue to see through the normal course of business ways to either reduce or eliminate or avoid expense. It does not impact revenue and then lastly back to your business review question, kind of in line with everything, we're always doing that. We're reviewing the plans with all of our business and business leaders all the time and in this again is an operating environment. It's the way UMB operates and we are laser focused on being lean and mean.

All right. Thank you.

The next question comes from John Rodis of FIG Partners. Please go ahead.

I guess, back to the expense question and maybe just a follow-up on that. Brian, maybe this is for you, but -- so the $0.7 million in severance after-tax, you said that's during the quarter. You also say in the press release that there's $6.8 million in expense saves in 2015. So am I looking at right that the $6.8 million, minus the $0.7 million after tax, so the difference there is what's in the fourth quarter? Is that the right way to look at it?

Part and parcel. The severance would be excluded from that $6.8 million total. The $6.8 million would be the component of the salaries and the process improvements that won't be fully appreciated for a rolling 12 month if you will, and so these different activities occur in the period, but we won't get much savings within the financial statements until we quarter by quarter achieve those full year run rates.

So, the $6.8 million in 2015, that's sort of like an annualized number. Is that what you're saying?

That's the component that we will achieve before the end of the year, another $22.6 and $16 million for that full annualized run rate of $32.9.

To be recognized fully in '17.

Okay, and just when we're looking at expenses guys, is the goal still before the expense saves to -- there's still going to be some normal growth and I guess, obviously the goal would be to keep that growth below 5% before the savings?

We're not giving out any targets for that, but it is definitely to your point, our goal to reduce that expense growth rate from a total perspective at a new level of focus.

Okay, that makes sense Mariner, and maybe just one other question guys on credit quality. I know NPA's on a relative basis still very low, but non accruals were up $12 million linked quarter. Can you provide any detail on that?

Sure. So, on the NPLs, two things I'd have you know, one, so make sure that as you kind of analyse this against the peers in the industry while we had a slight increase, the industry NPLs in the second quarter were 130 and peers were 80 basis points against our 55 basis points. So we did have for us, an unusual jump there, but it's still very low, at the industry and peer level and so I'll just take you to ours specifically now. That's really specifically largely related to one credit and it's well secured and we're not particularly worried about it.

Can you say what industry that's in?

I don't think that's probably appropriate at this point. It doesn’t relate to any concentration that we have. I'll tell you that much. How's that?

Fair enough.

The next question comes from Peyton Green of Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

I was just wondering why there wasn't a revenue component to the efficiency initiative, particularly on the interest income side.

Well Payton, this is Mariner, I guess, because of really making sure that whatever we share with you, we can hold ourselves to, there's certainly plenty of things we're doing on the revenue side, but you can't -- we can't give you any assurances, right to what might happen through the revenue side of the income statement. So, what we've given you is stuff that is happening, that we have done, that you can count on. There's certainly plenty going on in the revenue side and then obviously, the biggest thing that can happen to us and the thing that will really drive any of that is going to be interest rates and you tell me when and what's going to happen on the interest rates. I'll turn around and tell you what the impact's going to be.

Well, not for a while, but I mean, let's just take the interest rate discussion away and if you've looked at the business that you're putting in place or have in place, and what you want to do over the course of the next year and you looked at it on a marginal basis. I mean, over the past couple of years, the marginal efficiency ratio has been higher than your underlying efficiency ratio for the Company, and I think that's led to the inefficiency problem, but what would you expect that marginal efficiency ratio to be? Meaning, what dollar of expense would you expect to generate a dollar in revenue going forward? Is that the right way to think about kind of the underlying business?

Well, we try to drill down and look at each business, and make sure that their efficiency ratio's where it needs to be and as we talked about a little earlier, clearly the bank as it represents the lion's share of both the expense and the revenue at this point, the marginal impact is going to come from the bank. Certainly, we need to get more revenue, more juice out of our non-bank businesses. We are still committed to those businesses, which should then in turn give you comfort that we think we can get revenue -- appropriate revenue production out of them to continue to improve the overall efficiency of the organization that's --

Payton, I might add one thing. This is Mike. While clearly not part of this efficiency initiative that we're talking about, I just want to make that very clear to everybody, on the revenue side, we have been talking about for quite some time changes to the earning asset mix of the Company and I think in our prepared remarks we talked about the higher CRE totals that we have, the lending verticals and hopefully not lost in all of the discussion this morning is that we now have a little under $600 million in industrial revenue bonds and our health to maturity portfolio that are yielding much higher than the current AFS portfolio. So, I think we have done some of the things that's happening. It's just not part of the initiative.

But, I mean, I guess, if I look at the numbers, expense is up $19 million and revenue is up $13 million. I mean, it's not adding up to what you want it to add up to and I guess, the margin, when does it flip and I guess, that's kind of the underlying problem, is you've still got some underperforming segments, and unprofitable business lines that keep being given rope and they're not allowing the good businesses to get more resources. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but that just seems like some of the underlying problems, and I was just wondering is there any more beyond what you've outlined, which seems great. I mean, it's certainly a lot of process improvement and certainly a big step in the right direction, but it's a little less than one year's expense growth on average for the past years. Just trying to see, is there anymore I guess accountability towards return goals going forward to get towards more industry level ROA and ROE goals.

Well, I mean, the answer is yes, right. I can't give you all of the details around what we're doing at each one of those business levels to get where we need to be. We agree with you, and it is part and parcel to all this is to make sure that all of our actions drive profitability at all four of our businesses. So, back to the tone, the message to all of our business leaders is all of our spending has to relate back to profitability and lean operations.

Okay, so, if the Fed doesn't raise rates through next year, how would you view a reasonable -- I mean, will there be more responses than just this initiative?

We're still going through all those. I mean -- we're not even done with our own budget cycle to give you enough feedback on that but I mean, we're always reacting, we're always going to keep looking and making sure we're doing what we need to continue to build value here.

And this is the last way I'll ask it, but did this set of actions take into account that the Fed would raise Fed funds target rate?

We are taking actions. We can't be running this Company waiting for rates to rise. So, we're operating this Company as if rates are not rising.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the color.

[Operator Instructions] We have a follow-up question from Matthew Olney from Stevens. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking my follow-up. Just want to revisit fee income and obviously in the third quarter, the fee income was affected by the market conditions, especially in the trust and securities processing but other fee income items were also down the quarter, bankcard fees, trading and investment banking, what's your sense of how much fee income could snap back in the fourth quarter versus these 3Q numbers?

This is Mike. Let me take the bankcard and I'll have Peter add to the end. Bankcard is mostly being impacted by two things. One, lower fuel prices, which actually lower the ticket price on credit cards. So, that's a big driver of outstanding balances. The second is -- and this is substantiated by some of the research that Visa does, folks are just using revolving credit a lot less. I mean, the utilization rates are down. So, you have ticket size and utilization. Those are both the biggest drivers of it, other than rate obviously and that's a systemic thing in this industry. It's not specific to UMB. I don't think that's going to change until kind of people's sentiment becomes more positive and they feel better about their own personal financial situation.

Just a little color maybe on both fund services in Scout. Fund services did have lower AUA as we saw. About 60% of fund services is indexed to AUA, so as AUA moves around, either because of new business, lost business or equity markets, we will see changes in that regard. So, if the market were to snap back for example in the fourth quarter, we've had higher AUA and we'd see some improvement in earnings there. We also have one large client in fund services that's having some significant outflows right now, that's something that we're wrestling with as well. On the Scout side, you know the story there. It's all about assets under management and we're working hard to try to raise those in every one of our categories as we can.

And what about the outlook in the trading and investment banking line item?

Actually in the third quarter they had a pretty good year or a pretty good quarter. It's interesting -- this one, I think is going to be predicated on rates to hang lower longer. I think that a lot of the bonds that we sell are in the correspondent bank side and if people can't get loan growth and the economy does slow down and rates stay lower, bonds are an attractive alternative. So, we feel pretty good about what's going on in that space right now, and by the way, we're also trying to sell fixed income securities to more than just banks too.

We're in the middle of expanding that business and broadening out the -- both the offering and the different verticals. So, you might see some positive impact in that business.

Then another follow up on loan growth. Mike, I believe you mentioned the market loan book was relatively flat. What are your expectations within this book over the next year or so?

It is relatively flat, so that's correct. We have the same expectations for Marquette that we do for our existing portfolio, at least in the Meridian Bank. There are high growth areas as I said in my prepared remarks. They're the two fastest growing regions that we have on a percentage basis in Arizona and Dallas/Fort Worth. Now for the other two national lending platforms, the ABL and factoring businesses, we have higher growth projections for those businesses, because they present a national platform and we brought 150 of our current legacy UMB salespeople that can sell into that platform as well.

The indications there are pretty strong, just maybe some assimilation and getting to know each other is partially what has slowed some of that down. The other thing on the factoring side particularly that business has been largely dependent on the transportation sector and Mike was mentioning fuel prices for the card business, that fuel prices also impact the transportation industry and the clients in that business with lower fuel prices have been doing better themselves and using more of their cash and borrowing less. So, that's driven a little bit of the activity on that front.

We have a follow-up question from Chris McGratty of KBW. Please go ahead.

Can you help us with the tax rate outlook? It looked a little high in the quarter.

The quarter was 26.6, effective tax rate and we're expecting a 27.3 on the year.

Then follow up on a previous question about growth in Texas, you grew the portfolio a little bit in the quarter. Can you remind us what you're doing there given the kind of developments that are happening in Texas and maybe was that increase in nonperformers related to energy?

Well, so, the -- as a whole energy still is 3% of our total. You shouldn't expect it to be much more than 3% of our total. It might slightly tick up, but probably not, because the rest of the balance sheet will grow too, and Texas much like Arizona, when we went into Arizona everybody thought all we were going to do is development loans, because it's a real estate town, everybody thought if you go to Texas all you can do is energy. What I would tell you about that is we're in both of those cities and states to take advantage of what we've always done really well in both markets, there's millions and millions of people. Both those places are larger than our headquarters town and on a population basis, which means there's lots of toilet paper, lots of sheet metal, lots of light bulbs, lots of heating and air conditioning, you name it to support all of those lives and that's why we're there. Certainly energy is part of that economy and we want to take our piece of that, but we did not go to Texas to be in the energy lending business. We went to Texas to be in all lines of business including energy.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Miss Gregory for closing remarks.

Thank you for your interest in UMB today, this call can be accessed via a replay at our website beginning in about two hours and it will run through November 11th. As always, you can contact UMB investor relations with any follow-up questions by calling 816-860-7106. Again, we appreciate your interest and time. Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.