Betsy Cohen
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Andres. And thank you everyone for joining us today. I know that this is a busy earnings day, and so I appreciate your taking the time. During this quarter, the second quarter of 2009, we believed that we've matured and improved our deposit franchise. As you can see on a year-over-year basis, transaction accounts increased by 67%, and even 15% to 60% on an annualized basis -- excuse me, 30% on an annualized basis since December 31st of 2008. More importantly, at this time, transaction accounts represent 88% of total deposits. And that's a very significant number. You may remember that we've always targeted somewhere around 65%. So we're growing a low cost deposit base, which has resulted in cost of funds for this quarter of $1.13 in contrast to the second quarter of 2008, in which they were $2.90. And I recognized there some interest rate variations that occurred during that period. Corollary to that is that time deposits have decreased 67% over the same quarter of last year and 54% since year-end. That has resulted in an increase in net interest margin, which is significant, and for this quarter was $3.96, up from $3.34 at the same quarter of 2008. On the asset side, we have what we think is some good news, which is all that one can hope for during this period of time. And that is that during this quarter we saw a decrease in non-accrual loans from approximately $12 million to about $8.5 million. Of that $8.5 million, $2.8 million, approximately, are under -- loans that are under agreement of sale that we hope to make further progress. The other piece of the asset improvement resides in the OREO component, and that is that we currently have no OREO. Although, as you can see from the earnings, during the period of time that it took us to get our arms around this property, the market in which it was located deteriorated. And so we took, in this quarter $1,700,000 loss in that OREO piece. The other bit of news or noise around the earnings was indeed the FDIC assessment, which was $775,000. In addition to that, we added to the loan loss provision beyond our normal allocation. On the 90-days and past due, we had a tic up from about $13 million to $21 million. About $9 million, a little bit less. The $9 million represents properties that are under agreement of purchase. And so we believe that that number will come down during the quarter. Although one can never be predictive about when these things actually settle. Back to the deposit side, I think we've made a good progress in the number of different lines of business. And Frank, maybe you'd like to just talk about health care and our prepaid business and the progress you've made there.