Top 5 in 2025 with DCG’s Joe Kennerson

DCG Managing Director Joe Kennerson returns to talk about the top 5 areas risk managers should be discussing as 2025 progresses. Joe, Zach, and Vinny dig deep into deposit and lending trends, potential margin restoration, hedging, and bond portfolios making a comeback.

For more insights and ideas, visit DCG at DarlingConsulting.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Transcript

On the Balance Sheet®  S4 E2 - Top 5 in 2025 with DCG’s Joe Kennerson

 Transcript

 [Vinny, 00:01]

  Welcome to On the Balance Sheet, season four, episode two. And we are once again joined by our colleague here at DCG, Joe Kennerson. And Joe, for those who may not be familiar with him, and I know that is a smaller minority of our listeners these days, Joe has worked in various roles at DCG for just about two decades. Most of his time these days is spent in business development, and he's kind of on the speaking circuit, if you will. He's done a lot of great things here at DCG. He's made us all look really good, and we're just really thrilled to be joined by him. I also should mention he was the MVP of the first and only DCG flag football championship. He had 12 catches for 174 yards that day. It was an absolute blast. matchup nightmare. Joe Kennerson, welcome to the podcast. 

[Joe, 00:52]

 The Julian Edelman of DCG, working the slot. Thanks for having me, Vinny and Zach. It's good to be back. You guys are doing a great job and you've had some phenomenal star power on this podcast. So, I'm honored to be back and hopefully sharing some ideas with your audience. 

[Vinny, 01:09]

 Well, great. Joe was one of our most listened to podcasts in 2024. And if you go back to that particular episode, it was called Five Questions for 2024 with Joe Kennerson. And I think we'll just follow up and kind of keep the same template for this go around. And so, we've limited to five things. And I think the first thing that's always on folks' minds is, comes back to deposits and the outlook for deposits as we move through 2025. There's a lot of uncertainty, but now the markets are sort of, it seems like deposits are stabilizing. And Joe, you are working so closely with all the data that we procure through our deposit tools and so forth. Why don't you give us a little bit of insight into what you're seeing and what your expectations are for deposits in 2025? 

[Joe, 01:56] 

 Sure. Great. Thank you. Yeah, the deposit game is an interesting one this year. It's like on one hand, things are getting easier. Deposit rates are going down. Balances are growing. But on the other hand, you still feel like it's going to be one of the more challenging aspects of our business this year. So, it's kind of like a weird feel. So, I thought what I would do here, to your point, is share some data insights, things that we're seeing in Deposit 360 through our client data, and then springboard that into some of the strategy discussions that our team is having. So just some little nuggets on the data side. Again, Deposit 360, we collect data from 300 institutions throughout the country. And our trends run pretty concurrent with the industry, which is pretty neat. And hopefully some stuff that you're not going to find in the call report. Number one, setting the table, deposit costs went down in Q4 by 8 basis points. And deposit balances went up by 1%, went up by 2.5% throughout the year, which again is in line with the industry. And for what it's worth, credit unions grew deposits more than banks. Here's another interesting data point. Again, this is one you can't find in the call report data. Newly opened CD rates, okay? So new CDs that are hitting the books, right? Those rates came down 83 basis points over the year. It's pretty good moves, not a perfect 100% beta with T-Bills, but clearly, it's pretty darn close. And newly opened CD rates ended the year settling around 409. Now that's getting a little bit cheeky, but the point there is that it probably is going to go lower. And if you hear Billy Guthrie, our colleague, talk, he's our deposit guru. He's really talking with his clients on thinking about that next benchmark rate to the top end of the CD market going to about 375. So that'll be an important data point that we get to today. Here's another. We're seeing an uptick in CD rollovers into regular rack rate products. So, CD retention levels are pretty strong. But even from like the specials, you're starting to see an uptick again in the specials even rolling over into the regular rack products. That's going to be important when we talk about pricing strategies, your CD curve, you know, as these CD specials become a little bit less attractive. Speaking of CDs, CDs barely grew in Q4. For all intents and purposes, flat. The growth was really on the money market side. So, we're still seeing the deposit mix shift out of the checking and savings, but it seems like it's going more towards money markets and less in CDs. Again, I'm going to play off of that when we talk about strategy initiatives. And finally, with our outlook and our deposits 360 forecast, on the balance forecast is always tricky. The data is always coming in and we're kind of recalibrating it and looking at it. But right now, just... like zero shock. So, like the Fed doesn't do anything. That'll be our base. We're projecting deposit balances to go up around 3%. Now, again, we'll see where that lands. But the point I think, or the takeaway would be, it's probably more than last year. but probably still off of what we've seen for longer-term deposit trends. And then we're projecting deposit costs to go down roughly 14 basis points, which as you can imagine is some of those legacy CDs that are going to be rolling through. So again, just thought I'd share some of those data pieces and happy to springboard this into some strategy thoughts. 

[Zach, 05:15]

 Joe, you mentioned some of the shifting over into the money markets. What are you seeing out there for folks? Are they offering out new products on the money market side? Are they being more targeted? Win-back campaigns? What are the types of things you're seeing with folks who may be successful in those endeavors? 

[Joe, 05:34]

 Yes. So, in terms of what's driving some of the growth on the money market and the savings side, that was – I think that's a big area that we're talking about with clients is leaning into like premium savings or premium money market products. And to your point, we have seen a good amount of successful rollouts in this cycle on premium savings and premium money market products for the ones that were like built with good structure, which I'll come back to. So, we've got the advantage of seeing thousands of promotional product rollouts through this cycle and what's working. And so, we've seen a lot of good stuff in terms of getting the appropriate tiers, obviously how you price it, the hooks, the marketing strategy, how you sell the thing. But it's interesting. You see decent amount of growth at weighted average rates that are far off from wholesale funding costs and far off from online alternatives, which you wouldn't think. Now, we're still experiencing cannibalization in those products. That's almost kind of part of the game. But the marginal cost of those products, a lot of the successful ones we've seen, have been very competitive. And I think it really goes into a focal point for 2025 is how do you think about the pricing relationship between the top of your CD offerings and those money market or premium savings products. Should that spread continue to narrow? Should it overlap in some situations? Maybe it should. Should it stay wide? That's very situational, but one we're diving into with a lot of our clients. 

[Vinny, 07:07]

 Joe, just to follow-up on that question that Zach had in regards to the kind of relationship between money market pricing and the CD promotions, the idea of new money only, how do you see that play out in these products? I mean, I'm guessing the lion's share of these quote unquote successful campaigns for high-rate savings or money market accounts is just a recapture of those legacy CDs that are coming off. But do you see organizations trying to implement new money only, particularly more recently? And has anyone had success to that end? So often you talk with folks around the country, and that's a really difficult hurdle to get over. 

[Joe, 07:44]

 New money only, I think, is a... It's a tough sell on my – I have a hard time pitching that out because you're trying to be fair to the existing depository base, but also like bring in new money and protect cannibalization. So, do we see it? Sure. Is it successful and people can defend it? Yeah, we do see situations where it works. I personally think it's going to be – again, it's a hard sell. What we do find that is a nice balance in some of these offerings through this cycle is like a new money minimum, something that's soft, you know, like hey you can shift over as much as you want, but you got to bring in an extra, make it up, $20,000, you know? And so, I think if you're gonna do anything that says new, you got to have a very competitive rate, you got to be top of the market. And so, when you have a new money component rather than new money only, what you generally find is that they bring in a lot more new money than just the minimum amount required. 

[Vinny, 08:36] 

 Gotcha. And one other sort of follow-up, you outlined so many really, I think, very interesting statistics from Q4 in our data set and so forth. But you also mentioned the conversion from the promotional rates into the quote unquote rack rates. What is the proximity of those rack rates to the promotional rates in the instances where you've seen this sort of occur? 

[Joe, 08:59]

 I’m going to make up some data just like based on like, it is more like anecdotal from like what we see kind of perusing through a lot of clients. And, you know, our team probably has a closer figure on this, but I feel like it's within like 75 bps. I think that's another data point that's worth tracking in the first quarter of this year, because you got big slugs of CDs in the first six months. And really understanding those rollover trends can help like dictate, I'm having this conversation with a client tomorrow. They're actually, they're trying to grow CDs. And so, we're really analyzing, okay, what are we experiencing for rollovers, both on rack rates and on promotionals? And then also what's shifting over to money markets? Let's understand that number. And if the rollover is, is pretty high, can we then test the rate levels and maybe squeeze a little bit more on the funding costs? So, understanding your roles, and, by the way, the more roles you get, you know, the more stable the funds are. We've got some data science that has been proving that out as well.

[Vinny, 09:59]

 Thanks, Joe. That's just really, really insightful and helpful. I mean, you have access to this. I mean, I guess we all do, but It's just very helpful to sort of provide a little bit of context. And my gosh, we have spent, as a firm, so much time internally/externally talking about deposits, but it's really been a very, very important driver of bank spreads here through this sort of cycle. I guess now I'd like to transition onto the lending side. One of the things that we're hearing, anecdotally, here early on in the first quarter is that lending expectations are probably lower than they have been in the past, on average. And there are probably a myriad of reasons for that. So, I'm really wondering, kind of in your mind, as we keep with the theme of five questions for 2025, what does lending look like as we move forward this year? 

[Joe, 10:44]

 Maybe I'll take the same approach, throw in a couple of things that we're seeing in the data, and then we can use that, again, to springboard into some loan strategy. And I know Zach did a really nice lending strategy webinar back in November that you can access on our website. Just a couple of data points from our Loans 360 module, which we just launched last year. You talk about pricing and spreads. The whole loan spread discussion is always a big one. I'll just kind of stick this to the commercial real estate side of the shop for the sake of time today. We're forecasting out rates and prepayment analytics and loans 360. We're forecasting CRE origination spreads to be about 275 or 280 over the five-year treasury rate, which is, I'm guessing, probably pretty close to like a longer-term benchmark average. So, okay, we can use that as a data point to work off of. The other really interesting data piece on the loan side, which is a takeaway for all of your listeners to dive into within their data set, is that there's been like this wild bifurcation in loan coupons on loan books today. It's been quite interesting. So, check this out. If you look at all of our commercial real estate data that we have in-house, about a third of all the CRE loans have a coupon at 4% or less. Pretty wild. And those are the ones that are cycling through over the next couple of years. With that being said, an almost equal amount of CRE loans are on the books at coupons of 7% or higher. So, you've got this like complete barbell of coupons that are residing on loan books today. And it creates a little bit of variability in expected cash flows or refinancings in different falling rate environments. And so that would be one worth exploring. In terms of, kind of, strategy discussions and thoughts, if we want to kind of springboard there. You're talking about loan pricing and spreads and to pitch to the market. Zach, again, I know you've spoken at our conference on lending in the last couple of years. Our CEO, Matt Pieniazak, has got a great spin on talking about pricing discussion. It's always a challenge, especially with the lenders. They're on the front lines. They're working the deals. Each deal is so idiosyncratic but really having a discussion on loan spreads as we look into this year. Kind of setting the baseline so that when we do get to those situations where those deals come in, that real competitive type of deal, we don't want to lose the credit, really kind of setting the tone of where we want to be pricing relative to if 275 over five-year treasury is par, what's our benchmark? Are we staying close to par this year? Should we be at a premium? How do we think about what would attribute to that premium, whether it's the credit risk overhang that's still out there. Maybe the challenge is still bringing in deposits and having that conversation and then maybe taking it one step further, which again, Matt talks nicely about, of really having a deep menu of offerings, like working the curve. If rate is most important, here's a deal with fully loaded prepayment penalties or a back-to-back swap. If, you know, having the optionality to ride rates down is important to you, tell me where you want to be on the yield curve. What lockout do you want? Do you want to have flexibility? Here's pricing, you know, with a weak prepayment penalty package and pricing with this kind of fully loaded prepayment penalty package. And so really being armed, you know, on the front lines to have a deep set of offerings. 

[Vinny, 14:11]

 Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about that because if you look at the prime swap curve today, you could basically price every single loan between two and ten years at the exact same rate if you follow that as a proxy for those of you who are familiar with that. I think one of the interesting sort of things we'll see evolve through the early part of this year is that – prior to the election, you had the longer end of the yield curve was significantly lower than where it resides today. Actually, I think it's actually rallying somewhat a little bit today. But we saw the long end of the curve kind of really shoot up about 100 bps. And simultaneously, the Fed came down 100 bps. So, when you look at those organizations that were maybe a little bit hesitant to lend prior to November, you would have had a situation where even if you were 250 or 275 over, you still had the incremental cost of your funding to do that deal really only got you a spread that was pretty thin. Now you fast forward to today, the Fed's down. You could probably bring in money at 375 or 4% depending on, kind of, where you find it. But now the long of the curve is shot up. And so how does that play out in these lending discussions? I'm kind of interested to see how it goes early on in the year. 

[Joe, 15:21] 

 It's a great point, right? It's like we were so used to that inverted curve and now it's flattened out and the spread game is back in our favor. And I think it's really going to help the shape of margins and what it does to loan pricing moving forward will be interesting. But to your point earlier, most of the shops that we talk with are forecasting or budgeting out pretty soft loan outlooks for 2025, relatively speaking. So maybe that keeps pricing in check. We'll see. 

[Vinny, 15:50]

 Yeah, no, great point. And probably a terrific segue in regards to your last remarks on how the yield curve has, sort of uninverted. And depending on how you look at it, we're now in a situation where there's some, I guess, some slope to the yield curve, depending on how you sort of look at it. I think for most organizations, when they entered 2025, there's this expectation that maybe rates were going to go down more than the market is currently saying they're going to. And maybe we'll kind of sit here and go sideways for a little bit. Clearly, the Fed has indicated that in its Fed speak. But that's a heck of a lot better, even if we go sideways from here in terms of margins, is my guess, as we move forward. Is that what your thoughts are, Joe? 

[Joe, 16:30]

 It's nice to have a little bit more optimism in these boardrooms, you know, and positive trends on margin going in the right direction after a couple of sluggish years. And you're right, like you look at this yield curve twist, and if it holds that’s going to bode well for margin outlook. You know, asset yields are climbing. Hopefully the runway is extended to cycle legacy assets up, and funding costs are going to come down. Here's kind of what's interesting right now. It's like we've – for the last four or five years, we've lived through some crazy bond market volatility. It's been wild. And you take a step back. Today, you mentioned the yield curve. And you look back, you're like, it almost has this kind of weird, eerie feeling where you look at that swap curve that you mentioned. So, for swap curve, pancake flat, as far as the eye can see. Throw a rock, you're going to hit 4%. And in your comment, you know, in the last episode with Lacey Hunt about how a lot of the big economic forecasts were pretty much like vanilla. And you're like, that's kind of… It's been so – now it's going to be steady? Maybe. Maybe history, recent history will tell you that it's going to play out differently. And so, I think the takeaway there is that if this rate environment does hold, I think we're going to like it. Margins are going to trend well. I wouldn't be surprised if we beat our budgets. The question will be like what if it doesn't? What if the Fed – something happens. The Fed has to cut a lot more aggressively or what if it goes the other way, and and inflation picks back up and they have to reverse course. I mean, not like high probability events, but those are the hard conversations of like, you know, my gut tells me this, but how do I take emotion out of the game and think about my balance? What's the worst case that could happen to my balance sheet? And what do I think about that? And should I be doing something, you know, with the balance sheet to protect against my worst-case scenario? Tough conversation, but it's been a healthy one at ALCO. 

[Zach, 18:25]

Yeah, Joe, I think that's really well put, and I was actually looking back at our conversation last year, and when will margins recover was one of the big questions last year, and it sounds like we've kind of shifted from they're already starting to recover, which is a good point. I'll give you credit for the point you made last year, that it was going to be like Q2, Q3, and 2024 was when the trough was, and we started to pick up, and now it seems like most models we see, what you're saying is, there's some upward momentum overall here, but there's obviously a lot of wild cards outside of the rate environment, Joe. I know I've been talking with some clients about, well, these models are showing upward movement, but that's assuming loans stay flat, right? Or that's assuming no more deposit mix shifting, or that's assuming that you can execute on CD pricing. Are you having similar conversations or when you're talking out there, when you're presenting, what other things outside of rates are coming up that you're saying, hey, these could be... obstacles slash what ifs slash things we're going to be quantifying and understanding.

[Joe, 19:29]

  I've heard from a couple of clients, and maybe this is fading a little bit because of rates selling off a little bit, but they were already experiencing and getting pressure for loan modifications. And they're like, my loan portfolio yield should be trending higher than what it has been. And so the higher coupons that were put on, let's say a year ago, weren't holding up that well. So that brings up a really good point to have in ALCOs about that value of prepayment penalties. And I think we might have even talked about that last year and having some protection there. The deposit mix play – it's still happening. Obviously, it's a much lower amount of deposit mix happening today than maybe like a year ago, but it is still happening, but to a lesser delta. So, I think that's another wild card that you would want to examine in your scenarios. We've got one of our colleagues. We're just loaded with brainpower, and we get together as consultants, a big group of us every Monday, and we talk about this stuff. Another one of our colleagues, Jeff Reynolds, is looking at some of this stuff, and a lot of us are running this in our ALCO meetings this quarter, of really taking a look at that potential risk of reinflation. And say, again, small probability event, but why wouldn't I want to look at the Fed raising rates and then deposit migration picking back up again? And if I've layered in protection through this cycle because of that risk, and if that scenario looks dangerous, do I layer more protection in? That's a very situational, tough conversation to have. 

[Vinny, 21:07]

 And probably a terrific segue once again to really our fourth item on the 2025 checklist, if you will, kind of, the hedging conversations. You just sort of talked about reinflation. Were for those institutions that may be – liability sensitive. A lot of them, quite frankly, who have done hedging in the past are now at the point where that hedging is expiring. They're at the end days for that. Do they go back out and think about more protection? So, it's so interesting. We've talked about the SOFR curve, the prime swap curve - how flat it is. That's the market's probably saying we don't really know. So, Joe, what are you hearing and seeing on the hedging side? 

[Joe, 21:50]

 Yeah, it's definitely not as easy just from that, like, pure perspective of day one. It's not like positive spread but doing the receive float swaps. It's again, I keep saying, it's like a tough conversation and start with the modeling, you know, and so our colleague Steve Buscelli talks about this a lot with his clients. If I have swaps on the books today, how am I modeling those? Am I replacing those? You know, am I putting new ones on today, you know, laddering them out deeper out, or am I letting them expire and then run an alternative looking at a couple of different options on top of that? So, I want to start, how are you capturing that in the model? What are you doing to run your pro-formas to get a sense of where you think you need the protection? That's the question. Do I need the protection or is the pickup in asset yields that I'm getting on the loan side, is that enough protection? Is, you know, status quo, you know, so to speak. You know, options are becoming, feel like they're becoming, a little bit more popular. Hey, I want to, you know, maybe I run with caps this time, so I don't give up the downside benefit of rates going - if the rates do continue to go down, I'll buy some like maybe at the money caps and look at that compared to swaps. Obviously, how are you going to position that? Do you have floating short-term borrowings that you would layer that into? And then talking about swaps is just tricky, tricky, tricky, but you got to run the analyses. You got to look at a, I think you would want to look at a reinflation scenario just to see that kind of worst-case perspective. I did a webinar yesterday and we asked two questions. The first question was, what do you think is going to play out in terms of what the Fed does in 2025? 90% of the people said higher for longer. The follow-up question was, what scenario is the worst case for your earnings? Now, all of a sudden, you had 40% say hard landing, so extreme Fed cuts. And then another 50% said reinflation. So, it's that whole thing of separating emotion and making the right play and having kind of breaking that because we don't control what happens with rates. We have some control what we do with our balance sheet and approaching it and that effect can help maybe lead you to the strategy. 

[Vinny, 23:57]

 Joe, one of the things that we probably mentioned last year in regard to hedging was this idea that I've talked to so many institutions over the years whereby they just say, ah, we missed it. Ah, we missed it. Well, the reality is if this thing is pancake flat, it's going to go one way or the other. So, I don't know. We certainly would encourage every institution who hasn't already to make sure that their management team, their boards go through prudent education and understand kind of how these tools work through your balance sheet and so that you’re prepared to execute when the time presents itself.  Because there will be opportunities, and they will work on your balance sheet at some point in time.  But, if you’re not not sure, you don’t have policies, your board doesn’t understand what they are and you can’t explain them, well then, you can’t do them.  So, if nothing else, I would, again, sort of a disclaimer here, make sure you have some level of education as a management team in regard to how these things work, so, I guess that brings us to our fifth and final item. And Joe, I give you credit. You're making a prediction here and I'll just read it bluntly out loud  and you can sort of defend it. You say bonds are going to make a comeback in 2025. So, tell me more. I was hoping you weren't going to see that. I'm pretty sure I said something like this last year. Okay. So, the argument against buying bonds would be. Listen, I'm still shifting my asset mix. I still have some runway to shift investments into loans. In a challenging deposit environment, I like that from a liquidity perspective. I'm still not comfortable putting on longer-term assets. I got the scars of the unrealized loss, whole debacle. But the argument for buying bonds is becoming stronger. You've got the yield curve that has come back a little bit, but MBS spreads are still wide. So, you can find leverage opportunities at over 100 basis points a spread. That's interesting. I think just from like an ALCO management, there are a decent amount of shops that haven't been active in buying bonds for the past two years. And now it's coming down to like a liquidity play. We're on balance sheet liquidity levels for a couple of my clients. You're looking out and saying, oh, I'm going to have to replenish my liquid assets. And by definition, I'm going to have to start buying bonds. That's been a healthy exercise. Like it's part of the liquidity discussion and ALCO saying, okay, when do I reach my quote unquote minimums in terms of my investment book for liquid asset reasons? And if I know I'm going to start buying in, you know, make it up September, um, and I want to get a head start and start to get my portfolio yield up now, should I think about maybe doing some pre-investment. Pre-investment's a soft way to kind of get back into the game. So, we'll see. 

[Zach, 26:45]

 Joe, and I give you a lot of credit for making a stand this year. Last year it was, why should we not sleep on bond portfolio strategy? So, it's a little different take this year, but... I think you're absolutely right with all those things that you just said. And I'm still seeing a lot of groups who aren't buying, right? And they're kind of waiting and waiting and waiting. And I'm not sure, candidly, what they're waiting for. But I do think being ready to buy, especially if going back to that loan conversation, if loans are soft and we're looking back, say we can get risk-free or credit risk-free yields in the high fours, low fives. I mean, I just think that that's a really good conversation that you're putting on the table there for people to talk to. And I do think you'll see more folks buy. I just hope they buy at higher yields and not if rates fall and then stop buying. I do know the stats out there, there's some cartoons out there that show that, hey, a lot of times in this industry when liquidity is high, is when rates are lower and that's when people buy and not when rates are higher. 

[Vinny, 27:44] 

 Yeah. There's, you know, I just come back to something Frankie Farone wrote more recently, and it said, uh, the best bond transactions typically occur when there's really no spread right out of the shoot, you know, when you execute them. So, we've been inverted, we've been flat here - at some point we won't be, we'll see, you know, we'll see. But, uh, Zach, anything else for our listeners? Maybe you've picked up on it, this is Zach Zoia's flu game, if you will. He's really fighting through it, not joining us in the studio. But thanks so much, Zach. Was there anything else before we let Joe go? 

[Zach, 28:19]

 Vin, I think one, the listeners know the show must go on. The show's got to go on. We got to get this stuff out there in a timely fashion. But I think these are really terrific five topics, questions overall. And we're going to follow up this podcast with a bulletin, too, right, Vin? Just kind of framing out this as well. Because I think it's really important as it goes through the year. And as you mentioned at the start, Joe was on last year. I thought he was terrific. It was one of our top, I think, two episodes, right, of the year behind Chris Lowe at the conference. So, I really appreciate Joe's time and all the help that he gives and support to the show. 

[Joe, 29:00]

 Love to be here, guys. I appreciate you having me back. This has been fun. 

[Vinny, 29:03]

 Thanks, Joe. And we're back, and I'll tell you, what an awesome interview with Joe. Joe always has such great insight, appreciative of all the sort of factoids he shared with us. That was really kind of cool. It just reminds me that when we walk around these hallways of DCG, there's so many impressive people, and it's sort of a privilege and an honor to work with a lot of these folks. My major takeaway from Joe was being prepared, kind of, for the unexpected in margins, I think, yeah, we could sit back on our laurels and say, whew, maybe the storm has passed with regards to the shape of the yield curve. But there's a lot of uncertainty. He referenced these larger blue-chip economic forecasts, which, you know, I think we said in a prior podcast were fairly vanilla, but we know that's not kind of how it's going to play out. It just seems like it never does. So, making sure you and your management team understand sort of how different rate environments, different shapes of the curve influence your margins moving forward and having a real serious conversation about, is there any insurance we want to have against those particular environments? So, I think that's important. That's something I'd be focusing on. What about you, Zach? 

[Zach, 30:19]

 I mean, I think Joe's terrific. He's the best and I really appreciate his time. And my big thing is kind of probably a derivation of what you were mentioning, Vin, which is we talked to the positive side, the lending side, margin, hedging, and the bond book, right? So, nothing that Joe said is necessarily a prediction or what we said is a prediction. It really comes back to if things go one way or the other, are we having these conversations? And is ALCO the clearinghouse for all of this with all the right stakeholders involved? Right? And we'll see. Hey, we can look again next year and see if any of these things that maybe were a little bit more predictive came through. Maybe they didn't. Maybe there's good reasons. But I think as long as the folks listening are having the conversations, challenging the folks at their institutions to think a little bit differently about all these areas. I mean, that's the key, right? Overall, and then we'll obviously play the cards that are dealt as this year goes on into next year. So, I thought, again, great discussion with Joe. Really appreciate it in a pretty good table setting here as we head into 2025. 

[Vinny, 31:23]

 Yeah, and you know, you said they're not necessarily predictions, but one thing's for sure, if any of them come true, Joe will let us know. If the opposite is the case, then we will certainly remind Joe of his prediction power. So, well, always thanks for listening. We look forward to you joining us next time on On the Balance Sheet. 

[Dana, 31:46] 

 On the Balance Sheet is a podcast produced by Darling Consulting Group, DCG. All views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are solely their own and may not represent those of DCG. All third parties are independent entities and are not affiliated with DCG. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and is not considered as advice. All views and opinions expressed are based on the information available at the time and may have changed based on current market and other conditions. For more information about DCG, please visit www.darlingconsulting.com or email us at info at darlingconsulting.com. Today's background music is provided by John Sibb and Coma Media and can be found on pixabay.com.

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