Thank you, Ellen, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Customers Bancorp's earnings webcast for the third quarter of 2026. The presentation you will see during today's webcast has been posted on the Investors webpage of the bank's website at www.customersbank.com. You can also download a PDF of the full press release on the same page. I'd like to remind you that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may differ materially from management's expectations due to a variety of factors which are described in our earnings materials and our SEC filings. We also reference non-GAAP financial measures, so it's important to review our GAAP results in the presentation and the reconciliations in the appendix. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Customers Bancorp CEO, Sam Sidhu.

Thanks, Phil. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Customers Bancorp's third quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm joined this morning by our Chief Financial Officer, Mark McCollum. I'll take you through a few key highlights from the third quarter, give you an update on our strategic priorities, and then Mark will provide additional detail on our financials. Simply put, it was a great quarter. We delivered record deposits and loans, real wins in AI, a more diversified Qubics platform and continued success recruiting teams. On top of that, we have strong momentum to finish the year and a very positive outlook as we move to 2027. Turning to slide four. Our third quarter results reflect strong execution across the franchise. To give a few highlights, deposits grew 4% in the quarter and 11% year over year to a record $22.6 billion. Non-interest bearing deposits grew by $300 million to $7.2 billion, a third consecutive quarterly record. Total loans grew 3% in the quarter and 14% year over year to a record $18.5 billion. NII increased 8% quarter over quarter. EPS was $2.25, up 10% quarter over quarter. ROE rose to 14%, up more than 70 basis points quarter over quarter. Our efficiency ratio improved by approximately 340 basis points in the quarter. Intangible book value per share increased 10% year over year. That's 17 consecutive quarterly records for book value, five for loans, and eight for total deposits. We delivered these results with strong credit quality and solid capital while growing the balance sheet and returning capital through share buybacks. Slide 5 shows our priorities for 2026, which remain unchanged. I'll provide an update on each again this quarter, starting with AI on slide 6. Over the past several quarters, we've shared our AI journey. We're currently in a phase of reimagining and automating end-to-end workflows coupled with rapid product development. We're shipping new capabilities every quarter that make banking faster and simpler for our clients and free up our team to focus on higher value work. Everything we're doing is aimed at a better experience for our customers and importantly, our employees. In Q3, we advanced our top three top-down priorities. In lending, we scaled our AI-powered loan underwriting process, adding functionality and increasing utilization. Thank you for joining us. and in payments, we enabled programmable subaccounts on Cubix, enhancing our product offering for existing clients as well as broadening potential agentic payment use cases. Using AI and automation tools, we now have an ability to rapidly ship new products. Just to give you a few examples. We launched voice agents on our main customer service line and are now working on incorporating them into our customer onboarding journey. We're expanding an AI digital twin pilot to more members across the organization. and we piloted an automated savings suite for consumers. To drive this progress, we now have over 60 people focused on AI transformation at the bank. And our engineering talent is increasing too. We have a dozen and growing forward deployed engineers from our partners working in pods alongside our in-house engineers and subject matter experts. And the results are tangible. Our team doubled the number of AI agents deployed. Cumulative estimated hours saved have now grown to 76,000. And we've unlocked an estimated 15 million plus of annualized capacity. In the last six months, revenue producers grew 6% and accounted for about 60% of the new positions we filled, while total headcount drifted lower. Even with the great results in the quarter and positive momentum for next year, if I had to leave you with one point, it is that productivity gains are showing up in our financial performance and are already above our investments today. Revenue per employee is up 13% and pre-tax profit per employee is up 34% on an annualized basis this quarter versus last year. We rank number one and number four respectively among all 10 to $100 billion asset banks on these metrics. A better equipped team helps us improve customer employee experiences. This should enable us to grow revenue meaningfully faster than expenses and reach our goal of a low 40s run rate efficiency ratio by the end of 2027. Turning to slide seven and Cubix. Diversification is expanding the opportunity for our payments franchise. Cubix accounts grew 19% in the third quarter with real estate and mortgage finance driving new client growth. Those two verticals now represent more than 30% of Cubix deposit balances. That broader reach puts our payments capabilities into more of our clients' day-to-day operations and creates opportunities to deepen relationships and gather low-cost operating deposits. Network activity is on pace to hit another record this year, surpassing last year's $2 trillion volume and showcasing the value of the platform to our clients. and looking forward, we're developing extended hours trading capabilities for capital markets and correspondent banking services that support cross-border flows. At the end of last year, we did not expect Cubix to be a growth vertical. With this diversification, we believe there's substantial opportunity ahead to continue to increase low-cost deposits on the platform. Turning to slide eight, our recruitment strategy, which is a unique part of our business model, continues to build a larger and more valuable deposit franchise. The teams we've recruited since 2023 now hold approximately $4.3 billion in deposits or 19% of our total deposit base. They added roughly $415 million in the third quarter alone and more than a billion dollars so far this year. That's more than a six-fold increase in their share of our deposits in about three years, all through organic recruiting. The breadth of the franchise is also expanding. We've added more than 3,000 commercial deposits accounts so far this year, which is more than we achieved in all of 2025. That's up 13% year to date, and accounts have roughly doubled since 2022. And our 2026 recruiting class keeps growing. 15 revenue producers join us in the third quarter. That brings year to date revenue producing hires to 50 and 12 teams represented. That's up 50% from last year. The success of these teams gives us confidence that we can sustain this pace of recruiting high-quality revenue producers in 2027 and beyond. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to take you through the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Sam, and good morning, everyone. My comments will begin on slide 9. We're only showing you gap earnings this quarter, as we do not have any material adjustments to those gap results. and many more. Our balance sheet carries virtually no goodwill. As a result, our third quarter ROE of 14% is within the top quintile of all banks between $10 and $100 billion in assets. On slide 10, we provide details on our deposit franchise. Total deposits ended the quarter at a record $22.6 billion, up 4% in the quarter and an increase of $2.2 billion year over year. Our total cost of the deposits remained flat, despite the increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve during the quarter. The quality of our growth was strong, and I'll highlight a few stats. Non-interest-bearing deposits grew by about $300 million during the quarter, ending at $7.2 billion, which as Sam noted, is another record for the third consecutive quarter. That's 32% of total deposits, which is top quartile for regional bank peers and up more than $800 million or 13% year over year. A direct result of team recruitment and payment strategy Sam just walked through. Our goal remains to have the highest percentage of non-interest bearing deposits among our peers. One additional metric I want to emphasize, our broker deposits came in about $370 million lower for the quarter and now make up less than 20% of our deposits. Turning to slide 11 in loans. Total loans grew nearly $500 million or 3% in the quarter to $18.5 billion compared to 1% linked quarter growth for the industry. On a year-over-year basis, loans are up 14%. Just as important as the pace of growth is the breadth. Growth was delivered, led by business units like fund finance, healthcare, and commercial real estate, which more than offset lower mortgage warehouse and real estate specialty finance balances. As we always say, the mix of top contributors may shift from quarter to quarter, but the diversified nature of our origination platform helps us deliver strong growth while remaining disciplined on structure and pricing. Slide 12 covers net interest income and net interest margin. Net interest income exceeded $208 million, up 15 million or 8% from the second quarter, driven by higher average loan and security balances and higher interest spread. As we signaled last quarter, the second quarter was expected to be the low point for our margin in 2026. Our third quarter net interest margin expanded two basis points to 319. Our margin would have expanded further, but was impacted by the timing of our deposit growth, which occurred earlier in the quarter, versus when we funded loan growth, which occurred later in the quarter. Our run rate net interest margin in September was approximately 325. Additionally, our growth in the quarter was accretive to margin, as the spread between gross loan originations and deposit inflows was about 4%. When combined, these factors set us up well for further net interest margin expansion in the fourth quarter. Looking ahead, our NIM and NII momentum are supported by a few factors. Our low-cost deposit pipeline, led by our new teams and our new business units on Cubix, the strength of our diversified loan origination platform, and we have a fixed asset repricing opportunity heading into 2027. With positive levers on both sides of the balance sheet, we expect continued net interest income and margin expansion going forward. Moving to slide 13 and expenses. Non-interest expense was 113.4 million in the quarter, down 1.5 million from the second quarter. The story here continues to be long-term strength in our efficiency ratio. Our efficiency ratio improved by approximately 340 basis points from the second quarter. Thank you for joining us today. We remain confident the work underway will deliver sustainable positive operating leverage. On slide 14, tangible book value per share grew to $65.66, up 10% year over year. That's approximately two and a half times where we stood at the end of 2019, a CAGR of roughly 15%, compared with about a 5% CAGR for regional bank peers over this same period. Without the industry-wide impact of interest rates on AOCI this quarter, our tangible book value per share would have increased 13% year over year. Given the short duration of our investment portfolio, our AOCI as a percent of TCE was just 5% compared to over 8% for our regional bank peer set. Further, our held to maturity portfolio is just 2% of total assets. Turning to slide 15, our capital position remains strong and continues to provide meaningful strategic flexibility. Our estimated CET1 ratio was 12.6%, and our tangible common equity to tangible assets ratio was 8%, while we grew our tangible assets by over 3% and repurchased nearly 500,000 shares, or about 1.5% of our common stock during the quarter. Strong organic earnings position us to support continued balance sheet growth and, when appropriate, to return capital to our shareholders. On slide 16, credit quality remains strong. Non-performing assets were down 8% quarter over quarter, and NPAs as a percent of total assets were just 29 basis points, down 3 basis points quarter over quarter, and well below the regional bank peer median of 36 basis points. Net charge-offs continue to perform well, with total net charge-offs improving to 28 basis points from 34 basis points last quarter, with commercial charge-offs of just 13 basis points. I'll finish with slide 17, where we have a few updates to provide as we close out our 2026 guidance. For loans, given the performance year to date and the strength and breadth of our platform, we are now raising our guidance and now expect loan growth to be 12% or higher for the year. For deposits, the momentum from our new teams and the new QBICS verticals continues to be strong, and we expect balances to finish up 9% or more in 2026, even after deliberately moving out about $1 billion of higher cost deposits during the year. The combination of loan and deposit growth opportunities should continue to drive solid growth in net interest income and we are tightening our range to $805 to $810 million for the year. On non-interest expenses, we update our range to $460 to $465 million as we continue to invest in people and technology. And for income taxes, we now expect a range of 22 to 23% for the year. Taken as a whole, we believe this guidance sets us up for a strong finish to 2026 and a strong springboard for 2027. With that, I'll pass it back to Sam for closing remarks before we open the line for your questions.

Thanks, Mark. To wrap up, we delivered exceptional results across our priorities in the third quarter. AI is moving from pilot to production and it's already showing up in our numbers with more opportunity ahead. Kubik's is on track for record activity this year and is diversifying fast with mortgage finance and real estate now representing over 30% of balances. Loans grew 14% year-over-year to a record. Deposits grew 11% year-over-year to a record. Non-interest-bearing deposits grew $300 million to a record. Our new teams added about $415 million in the quarter and over a billion so far this year. From the second quarter, our NII increased 8%, our EPS increased 10%, our ROE increased to 14%, and our efficiency ratio improved by 340 basis points. We're building momentum heading into 2027, and we remain in the early innings of what this franchise can deliver. With that, we'll now open up the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand, and to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question for optimum sound quality, and if muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Janet Lee with TD Cowan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Noah Castanon for Janet Lee. Can you just talk about what you're hearing from commercial borrowers today and how demand has evolved given the recent move in rates? And as you look at the pipeline, how are you thinking about the sustainability of the growth from here?

Hi, good morning. So first of all, I think loan demand continues to remain strong at the franchise and, frankly, in the industry as a whole. What we can see over the next 30 to 90 days, which is most tangible, as Mark sort of described, is we sort of have a pretty good sense of where fourth quarter is going to turn out. And in conversations more softly, with the exception of, say, in the commercial real estate industry, where there's a little bit more tepid reaction, we generally are seeing strong interest in customer activity as well as their own customers' activities.

Yeah, and then Noah, I would also just add, as I said in my prepared comments, that our average loan balances for the quarter were less than kind of where we ended for the quarter. Most of our loan growth occurred in the month of September, so that also sets us up really well for fourth quarter average loan balances.

That's helpful. Thank you. and then one follow-up on expenses. I know you mentioned comp and tech expenses possibly contributing to some pressure in 4Q. As we think about the exit rate into 2027, can you help frame the right quarterly expense space from here as we look ahead?

Yeah, we're going to be giving, Noah, this is Mark again, we're going to be giving expense guidance for 2027 as well as all other material metrics in our fourth quarter call in January.

Okay, thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Ellion with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Mike on for Tony. On NIM, you guys called out margins expected to improve further in 4Q given that the September rate or run rate NIM was 325. I guess, could you put a finer point on where you expect Fork, Unim to land and some of the puts and takes there? And then also maybe how we should think about that trending into 2027. I know you're not giving specific guidance, but maybe just a general trend.

We don't give specific guidance on margin, but we did obviously tighten our range, which you can impute from that where we expect NII to be for the fourth quarter. So I would do that, and then you can use your own assumptions on balance sheet to translate into a margin. But one data point I will give you is that our loan yields during the third quarter Our new volume on those loan yields came in at about 683, which is about 50 basis points higher than our overall loan yield of 633 for the quarter. So that should give you another data point and some comfort for further NIM expansion in the fourth quarter.

Great. That's helpful. And then you guys announced this partnership with Palantir. I guess, what's the extent of this partnership? Is it just for account onboarding or could it result in Palantir sort of maybe one day replacing the bank's core?

First of all, let me sort of just zoom out sort of a bit of a high level. We see at the bank, as you can tell, value in partnering with a broader range of companies, especially folks that are sort of the leading edge of technology, AI, as well as services. Palantir, as you probably well know, are pioneers in the FDE or forward deployed engineer model, as well as incredible experts on the data layer that sits on top of any LLM. So as you can imagine, in complex commercial deposit account opening, it's incredibly useful to have them involved in sort of helping work with our teams side by side in AI pods with our own engineers, as well as subject matter experts. So Your broader question, we're not looking to reinvent the world here. We're looking to do the things that drive the most value for our employees and our customers. And that's really where our focus is today, which is how do you improve the employee experience and how does that directly and indirectly improve the customer experience? Got it.

Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Moss with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Nice quarter. Maybe starting on deposits here, continuing with that, you guys had really good deposit growth this quarter. Just kind of curious a little bit about the underlying mix here. I see the disclosures around cubics. Just kind of wondering maybe, you know, where are QBIC's balances these days and trying to get a sense for how much of the deposit growth this quarter may have been from title and just kind of how to think about that going forward here.

Sure. Broad ranging question. I'll take a stab. And if something is missed, you know, you know, please feel free to ask a follow up or Mark can sort of step in. You know, as it relates to Cubix, I think we're really proud, as I mentioned on the call about the diversification at the end of last year. You know, we were being sort of pressed on how we saw this as a potential growth vertical when it was went from 100 percent in cash to. 100% in DA to 80% to now under 70%. I think that's really the testament to the team's success as well as the fact that the platform has been monetized by a broad range of customers. There was contribution from title teams, I think about 150 million or so on a spot basis. Importantly, that team continues to perform incredibly well and their pipelines also remain strong. The total sort of non-DA Cubics balances are about $1.4 billion, and I think you remember last quarter I talked about a $1.5 billion goal by the end of the year.

Yeah, Stephen, this is Mark. I would just add, we had said that the new teams contributed over $400 million of growth during the quarter. Title, as Sam mentioned, was one of the larger ones, but it was broad-based growth when you look throughout all of our teams.

Okay, great. And maybe just curious also with regard to Cubix, what does a correspondent banking business look like for you guys? You guys mentioned cross-border transactions. Just kind of curious, what's that type of customer or how to think about that market there?

Yep. So I think the way to think about this, we talked a little bit about this last quarter. This is something that we're developing internally with existing as well as new customers. Just an ability as money moves to 24-7, how do you expand and leverage the technology capabilities, the customers that we have both directly on the network that also can be in support of other customers to allow us to provide 24-7 money movement? And that's really the way I would sort of describe how we also think about cross-border.

Okay, okay, appreciate that. And then just one other thing here in terms of just back on the expenses here, I know you guys tend to target an efficiency ratio, you know, obviously very good trends here over the course of the current year. I'm, you know, curious as to like as we look forward here, does that efficiency ratio trend from like call it 49 this year to maybe to the 46, 47 range? in 27.

So I think as Mark said, you know, well, stay tuned, you know, for fourth quarter for us to be able to, you know, provide a lot more guidance. What I would sort of, you know, the trend you're describing is obviously the trend we want to be on. Quarter to quarter matters a lot. We put out sort of a incredibly ambitious, you know, target of sort of low 40s led by sort of some of our transformation efforts and on the technology side. Some more to come, but you're right, we are incredibly focused on efficiency ratio. We also are incredibly focused on making investments, which we have done and will continue to do. But, you know, that's sort of in support of the growth of the franchise.

All right, great. Appreciate all the time there. I'll step back.

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Wilczynski with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The commercial banking teams continue to perform extremely well. I was wondering, as we think about the deposit cost outlook from here, can you give us some more color on the average cost of deposits among the commercial banking teams and QBICs and just how you see overall deposit betas playing out as we move into a rising rate environment? Thank you.

A couple of things there, Brian. I'll try to take a stab at that. First, we'll go on the deposit betas. While it's still early, so far from the first 30 days since the September rate hike, our deposit beta has been about 33%. That compares to the last time there was an upcycle in rates, our beta was around 60%. I think that's a testament to some of the progress we've made in our deposit transformation. As we've said on prior calls, the overall cost of deposits that we bring in from our teams generally is in kind of the low twos range, all in. And that has continued this quarter. And then remind me if there's anything there I didn't answer.

No, you hit it. Thank you. Appreciate that caller. And then maybe just going back to AI, clearly a big strategic priority for the bank. I think in the past with the commercial banking teams, you had talked about how those teams typically ramp over about a 12 to 18 month time period. I'm wondering, given the investments you're making in AI, particularly on the deposit onboarding process, is there an opportunity for that timeline to accelerate over time? How should we think about the benefit to deposit growth from your focus on AI? Thank you.

Thanks so much for the question, Brian. So just to kind of build off of what I mentioned earlier, this sort of complex commercial deposit account opening in minutes versus days. Think of this as multiple signers, background checks being done in parallel, multiplayer between an RM and a customer. We really believe this is going to be industry leading and all in support of a better customer experience. But importantly, as you described, Growing our commercial account deposits and supporting the growth as well as potentially helping accelerate future growth. As you can imagine, if you have manual processes in the background, which we will eliminate as part of this process, that can slow down the account growth that we're talking about. And I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we are already at the growth in all of 2025 year to date so far this year.

Got it. Really appreciate all the detail and thank you for taking my question.

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Winter with DA Davidson. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Sam, I wanted to touch base on the Cubix digital asset deposits. When I think about one of the reasons clients came to you You were at the time one of the few banks that had this 24-7 settlement. But we've seen that one of the largest crypto exchanges now has a direct bed payment access and a settlement deal with another bank. And we're seeing also some of the biggest banks have also launched this 24-7 and looking to serve exchanges and markets. So the question is, Are you seeing any of your larger clients start to move balances to these other rails? And if these clients now have a choice, is there a risk that the deposits that are zero cost, you might have to start paying interest on those deposits?

Yep. Hey, Peter, thanks for the question. So I think our position here sort of remains the same, which we're very pleased by. There is really no material change in our customer activity as a result of perceived, what I would describe as perceived competition. There's a large network effect and barrier to entry here of the 24-7 network that we've built. You know, prior to, you know, over the past number of years, even prior to, you know, banking charters and FedEx has been available, we've had banks and custodians and investors and many other folks that are and continue to be incredibly active on our network. So I think the value we bring is sort of a intrabank network that has best-in-class technology with a broad, diverse network that continues to grow and is non-interest-bearing.

And if I could just follow up, the consent order was lifted. Congratulations. Does that impact your thoughts on how much digital assets you want to hold on the balance sheet? And would you start lending against those deposits? And then just third, just where were the deposits this quarter, digital deposits?

Sure. Yeah, thanks. We're on the on the on the, you know, PA, Department of Banking and Securities lifting its order. We're, you know, we're pleased, you know, and I would also just add that, you know, the regulatory agreements, including, you know, with the Federal Reserve are essentially the same. And as I said earlier this year, we'd essentially put that, materially put that work behind us at the end of last year. So it is a very good big recognition. It doesn't change, to answer your question, the way that we are operating on a day-to-day basis. And I think that's really the key of how we're approaching our current and future business. So it's just an important milestone. But what I would say is I think now I can confidently say that risk management is now becoming a real strength for us and it is creating a further mode building off of your previous question as well around our payments business.

Got it. Thanks, Sam. Congrats on a great quarter.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Brees with Stevens. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning.

Hey, good morning, Matt.

Sam, I'm sorry. I missed it. What was the digital asset deposit? I think you got a little garbled on my end.

Yep, sure. About $3.1 billion. Okay.

Okay. And my follow-up there around QBICS deposits in general, all of which are in non-interest bearing. Are there any associated earnings, credit rates with the QBICS deposit base or waived fees? And to what extent did that play out this quarter, last quarter? I'm just trying to get a sense of if there's anything flowing through expenses tied to the QBICS deposit base.

I mean, they're predominantly 100% non-interest bearing. I would just sort of clarify that 70% of the title deposits are non-interest branched. There's a very small portion, tens of millions, that there would be sort of a little bit of expense associated with them.

Got it. Okay. So pull it. 90-something percent of these are truly non-interest bearing.

99, maybe.

Not yet. Okay. All right. And then this is my bigger picture question for you. I heard a lot from investors and sell-siders and questions around agentic AI, the potential, the ability for a much more kind of volatile deposit environment as things like Muse came up. I wanted your thoughts there and I couldn't help but think that maybe the partnership with Palantir was applicable to this, a defensive play. And yeah, maybe that's a little bit of an open-ended question, but you get where I'm going with this.

Yeah. Sure, so I think that The short answer is Muse is a consumer app. And at the end of the day, we have limited exposure to sleepy consumer deposits. Our clients are primarily sophisticated corporate customers that have treasury teams and are optimizing their liquidity. And they run their operating accounts pretty efficiently with moving things into interest-bearing accounts if they do have those excess deposits. I also mentioned in my prepared remarks we launched a pilot of an automated suite product so while we don't have a huge consumer base but for our consumer customers to help them earn, this is something that we do plan to roll out more broadly in the future and while this type of retail deposit is not a big part of our franchise today to your point, this could be a potential product for us in the future it is something that we want to make sure that we're prepared for as consumers may wake into the benefit of of agentic money movement. But what I would say is the key here is going to be using this as a tool to a primary relationship, not just as a high cost deposit gathering tool, because that's not really a customer's bank's objective here.

I appreciate all that. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Kelly Mada with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. I joined a little late, but I think at this point in the call, I don't know if anybody's asked about credit, which has been, to your credit, quite boring. In this higher rate, you know, higher for longer period, Are you seeing anything incremental that you're watching? Any changes in early changes in customer demand? Just wondering both from just an overall asset quality perspective as well as how it's impacting borrower behavior. Thanks.

Hey, Kelly, it's Mark. Yes, boring, always better when talking about the credit story for our company and the industry. We had really strong credit performance this quarter. We continue to watch the entire portfolio. We will have some rate resets going into next year, which has a benefit both ways. It obviously picks up net interest income, but for certain borrowers, that could put stress on capacity to pay. and may end up having some of those borrowers restructured to create the necessary capacity for them to continue to pay. But we're monitoring it closely. But at this point, it's been steady as she goes.

Got it. I appreciate that. And maybe a nitpicky modeling question for you. If I look at the guide for expenses, it's mostly unchanged but implies a step up. in Q4. I know you guys had kind of a, I believe it was somewhat of a true-up last Q4. I'm wondering if there's any sort of year-end housekeeping items that we should be mindful of when thinking about how we're thinking about the go-forward run, right? Thanks.

Sure, yeah, and the step up, I mean, obviously, we're not giving guidance beyond the fourth quarter, you know, but for that fourth quarter guide, I mean, it was really, it was a combination of factors. I mean, we did have a couple of things that were just a little bit lower in the third quarter that we typically see that won't continue, that will go back to their normal run rates. We're having a good year. We just had a good quarter, which was, you know, maybe the step up you're referring to last year. So then in the fourth quarter, we would expect additional incentive compensation. and then also you know as we've noted you know on the call here we're investing in technology so you know you saw a step up in some of our technology costs in the third quarter that would continue into 4Q as well.

Got it that's helpful and then I know you've covered your AI partnerships a bit I may have missed some of the details I apologize if this is repetitive but You have this new exciting partnership with Palantir. I think the release cited account opening. I'm just wondering about, you know, is this the first thing that they're working on? If there's potential kind of like next step priorities, one, and then two, how this is different from what OpenAI has been working with you on? Thanks.

Yep. Happy to take that, Kelly. And just to sort of recap a little bit of what I mentioned earlier is that we see value in partnering with a number of folks. Right now, Palantir is working with us, as I mentioned, on sort of this deposit onboarding. And they may continue to work with us, especially in areas where there's a benefit of using their expertise. And some of the services side by side with our engineers, as well as sort of a focus on sort of the data ontology, which is something they are really passionate I know incredible experts on. We are continuing to work on three top-down domains, so loans, where we're really leaning in heavily with OpenAI, deposits we just talked about, and also on the payment side. So those are the three domains we'll continue to sort of really – and those are really kicking up into high gear and sort of working on each of them concurrently now as well, whereas they were sort of a focus – in the second quarter on the loan and third quarter on deposits. But now we're starting to sort of build a big transformation project in the fourth quarter that will sort of lead and give us momentum into 2027.

Got it. That's helpful. And maybe just a quick follow up. You know, banks have been mostly confined to a certain set of core providers over time. Do you think AI is something that could be helpful in developing and improving upon and perhaps replacing the core. Thanks.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right in terms of the benefit of some of these software tools. I think the real help is if you sort of think about the old world of data transformation and data maturation and data lineage and definitions and data keys, All of that is much easier today. There is an incredible amount of benefit to having systems of record across the organization that you can actually build on top of. And also the real focus at our bank today is focusing on end-to-end automated workflows, whereas before you would sort of just have automated portions of workflows that sort of represented a bit of an 80-20. If you actually want to get to an AI native regional bank, which is what our focus is, you have to have sort of end-to-end workflows. Our focus is on the workflows. and using the technology tools to be able to assist in those workflows and not trying to sort of reinvent the software wheel.

Great. Thank you so much for entertaining the question. Nice quarter off the back.

Your next question comes from the line of Manuel Navas with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. I just have a question on NIM Dynamics. What are you seeing on new loan yields and the marginal cost of deposits? And do you see the September NIM 325 as the floor in the fourth quarter?

Hey Manuel, it's Mark. Thanks for the questions. Yeah, so obviously we have multiple lines of business. So when you think about a spread, you know, you really have to take that kind of business line by business line where we have some where it might be closer to 225 over But then we have other businesses where the index might be prime or it might be something other than SOFR But when you equivalize that to a spread over SOFR, it could be over 400 basis points over a common index For the quarter, we had mentioned earlier that our third quarter loan originations were at 683 and our cost of deposits was 250. I will tell you that our spot balance on deposits, which as a CFO, I don't place as much emphasis on as the average balance, but our spot balance at step 30 was 247. So you can just take that marginal asset production over our spot balance on deposits and you get over 400 basis points I appreciate that.

But the 15 new team member hiring, is there any stats on that? Maybe you gave it earlier, but like, do you have a thought on their prior book of business? Maybe where they're coming from broadly in terms of what type of bank they're coming from? And you described on the slide what segments they're in, but which is like the most focused of those segments? Anything you could add on the new hires?

Sure. I think that it's really broad across a number of sectors, 50 plus team members. This is just like the new team members. We've also hired about 60 revenue producers in total this year across 12 teams. So there's also sort of density that we're sort of increasing in existing teams. So There's no real direct answer. What I would say is that we're hiring more this year than we did last year, which I think is sort of a good indicator of where we are in our overall growth cycle. I had also talked about the teams that we've hired this year last quarter, that there was a nine-figure pipeline on both loans and deposits, which is great. We're pleased by that. It's the benefit of getting folks joining the bank as early as April of this year. But what I would leave you with is we are having a flurry of conversations Now for 2027 hiring, which is the strongest hiring pipelines that we've had and encountered. I think it's a testament to our own success. It's the flywheel we'll talk about that we have in the appendix and our own success, our customer success, our new team members success, their alumni networks that allow us to kind of continue to hire and support the organic growth business model we have.

I appreciate that. Is that that kind of bigger hiring pipeline? Is that that? come from any one spot. Obviously, the referral network is working well. Do you think there's any other drivers there in the industry beyond your own success?

Yeah, same answer as before. There's nothing specific that I would point to. I think we give a pretty good snapshot of areas that are new to the bank or accretive to sort of where we are, especially as you think about fee income. But these are predominantly sort of deposit-led and revenue-generating hires.

And then just one last question. Broadly, do you have – Can you give some thoughts for next year in terms of growth momentum, margin, you can't get fourth quarter it sounds like, or OPEX trajectory? Any thoughts on 2028 targets broadly?

We're going to be talking about, oh, you said 2028 targets. Definitely not. But 2027, we'll be giving you all of our thoughts on guidance, obviously on the January call.

Understood. Thank you very much. Thank you for the commentary.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Sam Sidhu, CEO, for closing remarks.

Thanks, Ellen. Thank you, everyone, for your continued investment and support of Customers Bancorp. Have a great day and a great weekend.

This does conclude today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.