Northern Trust - Q4 2020

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day and welcome to the Northern Trust Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mark Bette, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Mark Bette (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Madison. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Northern Trust Corporation's Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on our call this morning are Michael O'Grady, our Chairman and CEO, Jason Tyler, our Chief Financial Officer, Lauren Allnutt, our Controller, and Kelly Lernahan from our Investor Relations team. Our Fourth Quarter Earnings Press Release and Financial Trends Report are both available on our website at northerntrust.com. Also, on our website, you will find our Quarterly Earnings Review presentation, which we will use to guide today's conference call. This January 21st call is being webcast live on northerntrust.com. The only authorized rebroadcast of this call is the replay that will be available on our website through February 18th. Northern Trust disclaims any continuing accuracy of the information provided in this call after today.

Now, for our Safe Harbor Statement, what we say during today's conference call may include forward-looking statements which are Northern Trust's current estimates and expectations of future events or future results. Actual results, of course, could differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements because the realization of those results is subject to many risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. I urge you to read our 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for detailed information about factors that could affect actual results. During today's question-and-answer session, please limit your initial query to one question and one related follow-up. This will allow us to move through the queue and enable as many people as possible the opportunity to ask questions as time permits. Thank you again for joining us today.

Let me turn the call over to Michael O'Grady.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Mark. Let me join and welcome you to our Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. Amid the ongoing public health crisis, I hope you and your families are healthy and well. At Northern Trust, we continue to operate in what we call resiliency mode, which means we're focused on providing our clients continuity of service while over 90% of our employees worldwide are working remotely. Though challenging, the transition across each of our businesses has been effective. Throughout 2020, despite the environment, we've executed on initiatives to continue to drive organic growth within each of our businesses, one of our key strategic imperatives. Within Wealth Management, we're steadfast in our commitment to serving the world's most affluent families and family offices in a holistic and integrated manner across their array of financial needs, including planning, investments, fiduciary banking, and other capabilities.

During the turbulent year, our goals-based approach allowed our clients to adhere to their investment strategies and avoid selling into the downturn and realize the recovery within risk assets. We've adjusted our sales approach to execute our growth strategy during the pandemic through our digital marketing efforts, including our Navigate the Now campaign. Through the launch of the Northern Trust Institute, we will continue to leverage our 130 years of experience and depth of subject matter expertise for our clients' needs. Our asset management business has seen considerable market share gains during 2020 within our liquidity products. Our Northern Institutional Government Select Fund was named the top-performing government institutional fund of 2020. Beyond our liquidity funds, our Quant Active Equity Mutual Funds and factor-based ETFs perform well relative to their peers.

We also continue to see growth in ESG mandates, with assets under management of over $125 billion at year-end, up 30% from the prior year. Our asset servicing business, which did see a deferral in implementation activity earlier in the year, finished 2020 with strong growth. Recent notable public wins highlight our success globally and across products and include Pershing Square Capital Management, Emerald Technology Ventures, Sands Capital Management, Strategic Global Advisors, First Sentier Investors, and Westwood Holdings Group. We continue to invest and expand our asset servicing solutions in areas such as our front office solutions, as well as outsourced trading and foreign exchange execution. As we move forward in the current and persistent low-interest rate environment, we've accelerated our focus on driving greater efficiencies as well as continuing to grow organically in a scalable and profitable manner.

Finally, I want to express my sincere appreciation for our staff, whose commitment, expertise, and professionalism throughout these extraordinary times has been exceptional. Now, let me turn the call to Jason to review our financial results for the quarter.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Thank you, Mike. Let me join Mark and Mike in welcoming you to our Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. Let's dive into the financial statements of the quarter starting on page two. This morning, we reported fourth quarter net income of $240.9 million. Earnings per share were $1.12, and our return on average common equity was 8.8%. The quarter's results included the following three items. First, a $55 million severance charge in connection with a reduction in force. This charge relates to actions we're taking to eliminate approximately 500 positions globally, representing about 2.5% of our staff. This is in line with our ongoing efforts around productivity and efficiency and expected to result in annual run rate savings of approximately $50 million on a net basis. Second, we recognized an $11.9 million occupancy-related expense relating to an early lease exit arising from our workplace real estate strategy.

And lastly, we recognized $26.8 million in tax expense related to the reversal of tax benefits previously recognized through earnings. As you can see on the bottom of page two, equity markets performed well during the quarter. Recall that a significant portion of our trust fees are based on a quarter lag or a month lag asset levels, and both the S&P 500 and MSCI EAFE Index had strong sequential performance based on those calculations. It's worth noting that on a year-over-year basis, the MSCI EAFE Index remains negative, which creates an unfavorable impact for our global fees compared to the prior year. As shown on this page, average one-month and three-month LIBOR rates stabilized during the quarter with only modest declines. Let's move to page three and review the financial highlights for the fourth quarter.

Year-over-year, revenue was down 2%, with non-interest income up 5% and net interest income down 20%. Expenses increased 7%. The provision for credit losses reflected a release of $2.5 million in the quarter compared to a release of $1 million in the prior year. Net income was down 35%. In the sequential comparison, revenue grew 3%, with non-interest income and net interest income both up 3%. Expenses increased 5% and net income declined 18%. Return on average common equity was 8.8% for the quarter, down from 14.8% a year ago and 10.5% in the prior quarter. Assets under custody and administration of $14.5 trillion grew 21% from a year ago and increased 11% on a sequential basis. Assets under custody of $11.3 trillion grew 22% from a year ago and increased 11% on a sequential basis.

Assets under management were $1.4 trillion, up 14% from a year ago and up 7% on a sequential basis. Let's look at the results in greater detail, starting with revenue on page four. Fourth quarter revenue on a fully taxable equivalent basis was $1.5 billion, down 2% compared to last year and up 3% sequentially. Trust investment and other servicing fees, representing the largest component of our revenue, totaled $1 billion and were up 3% from last year and 2% sequentially. Foreign exchange trading income was $69 million for the quarter, up 6% year-over-year and up 11% sequentially. The increase compared to a year ago was driven by higher volumes and higher volatility, while the sequential growth was primarily driven by higher volumes. The remaining components of non-interest income totaled $93 million in the quarter, up 32% compared to one year ago and up 2% sequentially.

Within that, securities commissions and trading income increased 16% compared to a year ago and up 24% sequentially. Both the year-over-year and sequential growth were primarily driven by strong performance within our core brokerage business. Other operating income increased 52% compared to the prior year and was down 7% sequentially. The increase compared to last year was primarily driven by a $20.8 million charge in the prior year related to a decision to sell substantially all of the lease portfolio, partially offset by higher expense relating to visa swap agreements. The sequential decline was primarily associated with lower income in the supplemental compensation plans, which also resulted in a related decrease within other operating expense. Net interest income, which I'll discuss in more detail later, was $345 million in the fourth quarter, down 20% from one year ago and up 3% sequentially.

Let's look at the components of our trust and investment fees on page five. For our corporate and institutional services business, fees totaled $596 million in the fourth quarter and were up 5% year-over-year and up 2% sequentially. Custody and fund administration fees were $420 million and up 6% year-over-year and up 6% on a sequential basis. The year-over-year performance was primarily driven by new business and favorable currency translation, partially offset by unfavorable non-U.S. markets. The sequential increase was primarily driven by new business, higher transaction volumes, favorable currency translation, as well as favorable markets. Assets under custody and administration for C&IS clients were $13.7 trillion at quarter end, up 21% year-over-year and up 11% sequentially. Both the year-over-year and sequential increases were attributable to new business, favorable markets, and favorable currency translation.

Investment management fees in C&IS of $125 million in the fourth quarter were up 8% year-over-year and down 9% sequentially. The year-over-year growth was primarily driven by new business and favorable markets, partially offset by money market fee waivers. The sequential decline was primarily driven by higher money market fee waivers. Assets under management for C&IS clients were $1.1 billion, up 15% year-over-year and 6% sequentially. The growth from the prior year was driven by favorable markets, client flows, and favorable currency translation. The sequential growth was driven by favorable markets and currency translation, partially offset by net outflows. Securities lending fees were $18 million in the quarter, down 22% year-over-year and down 11% sequentially. Both the year-over-year and sequential declines were driven by lower spreads. Average collateral levels were up 6% year-over-year and up 4% sequentially.

Moving to our wealth management business, trust investment and other servicing fees were $430 million in the fourth quarter and were up 1% compared to the prior year and up 3% sequentially. Both the year-over-year and sequential performance were primarily driven by favorable markets, partially offset by money market fund fee waivers. Assets under management for our wealth management clients were $348 billion at quarter end, up 11% year-over-year and up 9% sequentially. Both the year-over-year and sequential growth were driven by favorable markets and net flows. Moving to page six, net interest income was $345 million in fourth quarter and was down 20% from the prior year. Earning assets averaged $131 billion in the quarter, up 22% versus the prior year. Average deposits were $115 billion and were up 29% versus the prior year.

The net interest margin was 1.05% in the quarter and was down 54 basis points from a year ago. The net interest margin decreased primarily to lower interest rates, as well as mixed shift within the balance sheet. On a sequential quarter basis, net interest income was up 3%. Average earning assets increased 1% on a sequential basis, while average deposits were up 2%. The net interest margin increased 2 basis points sequentially, primarily due to balance sheet mix and lower costs, partially offset by lower asset yields. Net interest income also benefited in the quarter from approximately $5 million in non-recurring benefits relating to the FTE adjustment and interest recovery on non-accrual loans. Turning to page seven, expenses were $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter and were 7% higher than the prior year and 5% higher sequentially.

The current quarter included a $55 million severance charge related to a reduction in force and an $11.9 million increase associated with an early lease exit arising from our workplace real estate strategy. Expense during the prior quarter included a $43.4 million charge related to a corporate action processing error. Excluding these items in each period, expenses were up 1% year-over-year and up 3% sequentially. Compensation expense totaled $525 million in the quarter and included $52.5 million in severance-related charges. Excluding the charge, compensation was up 2% from both a year ago and sequentially. The year-over-year growth was primarily driven by higher salary expense due to staff growth, base pay adjustments, and unfavorable currency translation, partially offset by lower incentives. The sequential growth was driven by salaries and higher incentives. Employee benefits expense of $102 million was up 10% from one year ago and up 5% sequentially.

The year-over-year increase was primarily related to higher pension expense. The sequential increase was driven primarily by higher medical costs. Outside services expense was $208 million in the quarter and included $2.5 million related to severance charges. Excluding the charge, outside services expense was flat compared to the prior year and up 11% sequentially. The sequential increase was primarily due to higher technical services, legal and consulting services, and third-party advisory fees. Equipment and software expense of $176 million was up 7% from one year ago and up 3% sequentially. The year-over-year growth reflected higher depreciation and amortization, as well as higher software support costs, partially offset by lower software disposition costs. The sequential increase was driven by increases in software disposition, software support, and amortization costs. Occupancy expense of $67 million for the quarter included the previously mentioned $11.9 million occupancy charge.

Excluding this item, the category was down 4% compared to the prior year and up 7% sequentially. The year-over-year decline was driven by lower rent, as well as lower building depreciation and real estate taxes. The sequential increase was primarily driven by higher building operation costs and real estate taxes. Other operating expense of $72 million was down 18% from one year ago and down 43% sequentially. Excluding the prior quarter's $43.4 million charge, costs were down 14% sequentially. The year-over-year comparison was primarily driven by lower expense related to business promotional activities. The sequential comparison was impacted by higher costs associated with the Northern Trust-sponsored golf tournament in the prior quarter and lower costs associated with supplemental compensation plans. Turning to the full year, our results in 2020 are summarized on page eight.

Net income was $1.2 billion, down 19% compared to 2019, and earnings per share were $5.46, down 18% from the prior year. On the right margin of this page, we outline the non-recurring impacts that we called out for both years. We achieved a return on equity for the year of 11.2% compared to 14.9% in 2019. Full year revenue and expense trends are outlined on page nine. Trust investment and other servicing fees grew 4% in 2020. The growth during the year was primarily driven by new business and favorable markets, partially offset by the impact of money market fee waivers. Foreign exchange trading income grew 16%, driven by increases in market volatility and higher client volumes. Net interest income declined 14%. Average earning assets during the period increased by 16%, while the net interest margin declined 41 basis points due to lower interest rates.

The net result was flat overall revenue in 2020 compared to 2019. On a reported basis, expenses were up 5% from the prior year. Adjusting for the expense items noted in both years, expenses were up 3% from 2019. Turning to page 10, our capital ratios remained strong, with our Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of 12.8% under the standardized approach and 13.4% under the advanced approach. Our Tier 1 Leverage Ratio was 7.6% under both the standardized and advanced approaches. During the fourth quarter, we declared cash dividends, $0.70 per share, totaling $147 million to common stockholders. Looking back at 2020 showed the importance of a strong capital base and liquidity profile to support our clients' needs. We continue to provide our clients with the exceptional service and solution expertise they've come to expect.

As we begin the new year, our competitive position in wealth management, asset management, and asset servicing continues to resonate well in the marketplace. Thank you again for participating in Northern Trust's fourth quarter earnings conference call today. Mark, Mike, Lauren, and I would be happy to answer any of your questions. Madison, please open the line.

Mark Bette (Director of Investor Relations)

Absolutely.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. One question plus a relevant question is allowed. We'll go ahead and take our first question from Glenn Schorr with Evercore.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Hi, Glenn.

Glenn Schorr (Senior Managing Director)

Hello, there. So I appreciate you noted the 4% trustee growth in 2020, some of that's markets, some of that's new business. And in the press release, you referred to the "growth agenda." I wonder if we could just revisit what reasonable expectations and reasonable markets, whatever that means, could be for trustee growth over the coming years and where your investments are being made under this growth agenda. I appreciate that.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure, Glenn. So let me start on the growth side and separate the business into the two reported segments and maybe touch on asset management as well. In C&IS, the quarter and frankly the year reflected good growth. And you see 6% sequential growth from a trustee perspective in C&IS. A point of that 6 comes from more macro factors between currency markets, but 5 points of that 6 come from good growth in the business. And that said, I'd provide a little caution there by splitting that 5% in half and saying about 2.5% coming from what you would think of as very traditional trustee growth that's more ongoing in nature, and then about 2.5% coming from items that are more one-time in nature. And so that could be true-ups on pricing and transaction-related volumes that we wouldn't necessarily consider predictive of what's going forward.

But certainly, we viewed the fourth quarter for C&IS as onboarding significant new business. There are a couple of very significant pieces of new business onboarded there, and the pipeline in the short run still feels good. You shift to wealth management and think about the growth there. The business did an outstanding job, I think, in engaging with clients over the course of the year. The growth there, and this is fine. This is the nature of that financial model. It came more from growth in equity markets over the course of the year. It was a very odd year for onboarding new clients in wealth, and so we'll see what that looks like going forward, but couldn't feel stronger about how the group did from client interaction over the course of the year. And then a difficult one to predict is asset management.

We obviously had extraordinary growth into the money market mutual funds, and it's anybody's guess how long that stays on and whether or not we see a shift back to more risk-on transactions or not and what the growth looks like there, but I also have to say the business is working on other elements as well to try and bring organic growth into the business. You asked about where we're investing as well, and there are several areas. Each of the businesses has their own view of where they're investing, and you see some of those coming to fruition in different areas, but one constant theme across the company is digital.

And you'll see in every aspect of the business how we're trying to ensure we're connecting better with clients in our digital engagement, and you see that show up in the income statement in a couple of different line items and outside services and equipment and software, for example.

Glenn Schorr (Senior Managing Director)

I appreciate all of that. My one tiny follow-up is if you could just give a little more color on the wealth management fees only up 1%. I know we have some lagged pricing coming in the fourth quarter was up huge, but just curious what might be holding back on the fees even without adding new accounts. Markets are good. Just curious for a little more color. Thanks.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure. Well, you hit on a key item, which is that there's a lag that takes place there. And then secondly, I think it's a little harder for you to see, but we did have positive flows in the fourth quarter in the wealth business, which was good. And I do think even if you'd said we were going to go through this environment of not being able to be in front of clients a lot, and it's very, very difficult to test the growth in the wealth business based on what we went through this year in terms of how we're interacting with clients. I would say that the overall trends of clients using us for deposits and also the flows we saw, particularly in fourth quarter, I think as everyone got more attuned with doing normal business more electronically and more virtually is a relatively positive sign.

Glenn Schorr (Senior Managing Director)

Okay. I appreciate all of that. Thanks so much.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Thanks, Glenn.

Operator (participant)

All right. We'll go ahead and take our next question from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Hey, Alex.

Alex Blostein (Managing Director)

Hey, Jason. Good morning. So maybe building on Glenn's question also a little bit. In the past, you guys have talked about fee growth kind of aligning with expense growth. You've announced a couple of, obviously, expense-cutting initiatives that should help 2021, maybe even trickle down into 2022. The markets are obviously a big helper. So help us understand maybe how that relationship should progress through 2021. And maybe you can talk to that both sort of including the tailwinds from markets and excluding that, meaning that if fees are up, including the benefit of the market, how much of that will naturally trickle down into higher expenses? And are you still kind of targeting organic expense growth to mimic organic fee growth, excluding the market? So a couple of things in there, but I can clarify if it's not 100%, but maybe we can start there.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Oh, I'm going to take the theme as operating leverage and organic growth, and you tell me if I hit on too little. So first of all, as I think back on the year and we've been talking about it internally, one of the things that jumps out is we did have. It was a positive year in terms of fee operating leverage. And if you look at the last few years, you go back to 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, it was relatively close to zero, which actually isn't bad because over time we'll get market lift. But in 2017, we had adjusted fee operating leverage. It was positive at about 0.7. 2018 was plus 1.6. 2019 was negative 0.5. 2020 was actually positive 1.6.

Then if you unwrap the quarters within 2020, third quarter plus 2 points and fourth quarter was plus 4, which is one of the best quarters, maybe the best quarter we've had since we started tracking this number this closely over the last five years or so. I can appreciate that from your perspective, people are always trying to, how do we match that to what we would expect on the income statement. Let me just flip to the supplement, flip to the press release tables, and go to the detail, the year-over-year detail, which is just page one of the supplement. I think it might be helpful for people to circle a couple of items. This is how I think about the quarter and the overall run rate in hindsight. If you take trust fees of 1,026 last year, let's exclude SEC lending.

So, take out $17.6 million, take out waivers of $23.5 million. We had market lift zero in C&IS. It was probably 10 to 15 in wealth. And so you get to about a 1,020 number. And then you compare that to 2019. And for the quarter, take out securities lending again, and you get something like 970. And so the growth is more like 970 to 1,020. That's 500 basis points of growth. And that gets more to how we look at it. And then you compare that to the expenses, do the same type of analysis, and take the 1,151, take out the $55 million in severance we talked about, take out the $12 million in real estate, and you get to 1,084. And then compare that to the 1,072. It's more like a point.

And so those are the line items, I think, to look at and to kind of do an analysis to at least you're getting closer to how we think about it. And by the way, I didn't even add in how we move from the reported to the organic numbers on the expense side. And there's things like third-party advisory fees and other stuff we take out, but that's how we track internally. Those are the first numbers we're looking at. So hopefully that's helpful in getting at the spirit of what you're asking.

Alex Blostein (Managing Director)

Yeah. No, it definitely helps. I was thinking that maybe we can talk a little bit more kind of perspectively as you think about 2021. And I know you guys are not in the business of giving explicit guidance, but obviously there are some cost initiatives that are at play. And I'm just kind of trying to think about, given normal market conditions, given your sort of views on the pipeline and the organic growth into 2021, what is the outlook for expense growth, maybe a little more explicitly?

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Alex, it's Mike. Why don't I jump in here as well? Just to build on what Jason said, to your point, we do look at that relationship between organic fee growth and then our expense growth. And when we see that the environment is making it more challenging on the organic fee growth side, absolutely need to focus more on the expense to make sure that we have that positive relationship. And as Jason went through, we were able to achieve that in 2020. Now, again, very unusual year, I would say, on both sides of that relationship, but that's what we're looking at going into the next year. Now, if we have the opportunity to grow faster organically and profitably, then we'll look to do that.

But not knowing that, we don't want to go in with higher expense expectations and then have another year where it's very unpredictable as to your ability to onboard that new business. So the relationship holds, and it's just in different environments, you have to tack differently.

Alex Blostein (Managing Director)

Got it. Okay. Great. That was helpful. Thank you both.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

All right. We'll go ahead and take our next question from Brennan Hawken with UBS. Please go ahead.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Brennan.

Brennan Hawken (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I just wanted to revisit the outlook on the fee waivers and the NII. I know there's a good deal of uncertainty, and it's always subject to what's happening to rates, particularly on the short end. But I believe, Jason, you had updated the guide to the upper end of around 35. I think the range was 25 to 35. And you'd said tracking to the upper end of that on the waivers front. And so I just was curious whether or not we should just assume that that holds since you didn't update it. And then you also have, in the past, said that I think you had said that you expected NII to be generally stable from 4Q levels, of course, depending on what happens with loan growth. So is that still true?

How are you thinking about loan growth from here? Thanks.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

So let me take those, I think, three questions. So on waivers, the $35 million run rate is pretty good. And I think from here, it's less about what we can see internally from repricing, and it's more what you guys can see externally from what's happened in the short end of the yield curve, so overnight repo and what does the short end of the curve look like, and AUM. And so I think for the run rate on an annual basis right now is 140-150. And that we expect to hold in. The book is effectively 100%. It's a 98%-100% reprice at this point. And so from here, it's those factors that I mentioned. And I think the key is to be careful and ensure you realize that that disparity between C&IS and wealth and where the waivers are hitting.

Because the wealth waivers, because the wealth fee rates tend to be higher, they got into waiver land first. But the AUM isn't as high. And so now that rates have come all the way down and the duration isn't protective anymore, the waivers are actually going to be heavier in C&IS. And the relationship's not linear. There are step functions in the middle because you've got some very large funds that kick in at certain levels right around where we're investing right now. But those are the key things I'd want you to keep in mind as you try and model out waivers. On NII, we did mention there's probably $5 million of the 345 that was more one-time in nature. And so from there, I think actually a very similar theme to what I talked about on waivers.

From this point forward, it's pretty predictable that we've communicated things we can see, which are that we're running off of $1-$2 billion a quarter at about 100 basis point delta. And so that gets you at $3-$5 million of drag, about a point and a half maybe on a sequential basis. And that has been offset over the last couple of quarters by deposit levels hanging in higher than what we thought, and also loans hanging in higher than we thought. You'll also notice in this quarter, there's a little bit of a shift from the money from central bank deposits into the securities portfolio. Nothing dramatic there, but that was also somewhat protective. And that'll stay going forward. And so from here, the key things are what do you think is going to happen with loan volume?

What do you think is going to happen with deposits? And what do you think is going to? And then also, we're obviously losing two days coming from fourth quarter to first, which is probably $3-4 million a day. And then you asked about loan growth. And it's been a positive surprise that loans have held in there. It's something we've talked about internally. We've been working on it and making sure that we're talking to clients about our appetite and what our hold levels and interest levels are. And again, clients tend to come to us for liquidity. And there's some correlation between the deposits and the loans, for sure. And so that's been a positive that it's held in, and it's been one of the offsets to that continued drag of a point or so a quarter.

Brennan Hawken (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Great. That's all helpful color. I appreciate that, Jason. So when we think about organic growth, you walk through in response to an earlier question, you walk through some of the rates and some of how the profile has looked, which is helpful. Is the back half of the year more like what we should expect, kind of like a 2%-4% organic? Does that seem like something that you guys can hold in this weird environment that we are all stuck dealing with for a little longer, I guess? Is that the way we should think about it from here? And just kind of as a tack on for that, I think you guys had said there was a non-recurring servicing fee in wealth, so if it's possible to quantify that, that'd be great too. Thanks for my multi-part questions here.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure. So the non-recurring servicing fee in wealth, it was a couple million dollars and just has to do with some. It's typical business for us, state settlement type work and other items. There's a couple real estate-related items, but think a couple million dollars. On organic growth broadly, I think you can go back to separating it. C&IS and Pete Cherecwich would say that part of what we experienced in fourth quarter, part of it was a catch-up of some of the new business we had that was in the not-funded category. And so certainly shouldn't expect 6% sequential continued increases there. But that said, the pipeline, and we had said earlier in the year that we felt like the pipeline had been delayed but not cut off.

And so this fourth quarter was not super surprising to us in that we were able to get onboarded a lot of the new business that had been delayed. And so that's good. The other piece of good news is the near-term pipeline. Their view is it still seems decent. And that said, the longer-term pipeline, they're paranoid about. And so that's just something to watch. On the wealth side, it's more of a continued story. Underneath the numbers that you see there, GFO continues to have to expect the business to do pretty well. And the East Region continues to do pretty well, not necessarily quarter to quarter, but over longer periods of time.

And then you see the other regions that are more mature and not having the same migrational benefits that the East Region does, because that includes Florida and the development of wealth on the East Coast, not as robust, and so it'll be interesting to see whether or not the experience we had in 2020 of not being able to be in front of clients as much, how much impact that had in suppressing organic growth.

Brennan Hawken (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

That's helpful. Thanks. And you found some paranoid salespeople. That's remarkable. Usually, they're optimists.

That's a very optimistic group, but they're always making sure that we're not baking in too much on the back end.

Operator (participant)

All right. We can go ahead and take our next question from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Brennan Hawken (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hi. Good morning.

Steven Chubak (Managing Director)

Morning.

So, yeah, I just wanted to dig in a little bit to some of the organic growth commentary, particularly on the wealth side. So you said the positive forward trends in 4Q, but taking a step back, the organic growth in the wealth business is much more tepid since the start of COVID. And it's a little bit tough to reconcile given some of your wealth peers with a nearly greater focus on less affluent cohorts. We're seeing some acceleration over the past few months across both the wirehouse and independent channels.

I know there have been the idiosyncratic factors that drive some divergence in organic growth trends, but if I can just for some insight in terms of what we should be looking for as the economic recovery continues and with vaccine deployment, just to better anticipate the timing of organic growth getting back to a more normalized run rate?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. I think it's hard to predict. I think a lot of it will depend on how things open up again. And I think it's also important to keep in mind, and I don't know specifically the peers you're talking about at all, we're targeting a client base that's really at the upper end. And imagine unplugging, getting the comfort level, the confidence level to unplug potentially generations of connectivity with a family office from a custody perspective, from an investment management perspective, and putting that back in place again. And so, again, the business had lower but positive flows for the quarter, for the year. And so we're all looking and monitoring and seeing what it looks like, but not surprising that in this environment, some of the organic growth maybe not look as strong as what it has been historically.

Mike, I don't know if you want to add any perspective from your lens on it.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I think it's a fair and appropriate question, Steven. And when you think about fee growth for wealth management, as you know, there's a number of drivers in that overall fee number. And so if you break it down a little bit, for us, there's an advisory component to it, and then there's the investment management fee component to it as well. So right there, you can have different dynamics within that. So Jason's saying, "We've been building the business," but you could have, and that will drive the advisory fee. But on the investment product side, if you will, where they're utilizing Northern Trust product and others because we're open architecture, that will have a dynamic as to what's happening to the overall wealth management fees. And again, our approach with our clients, as Jason's pointed out, is to give them a holistic approach to this and outcome.

So through different environments, that's going to have a different impact on what the outcomes are for that mix. And then beyond that, I would say that's just the fee component. Again, these are holistic relationships that involve banking as well. And so there's always going to be a shift there between what they put into funds versus what may go on the balance sheet, situations where they're borrowing more, or credit is a bigger component. And those are important as well. We focus a lot on fees for the right reason, but overall, the relationships are much broader, and we're looking to drive those fee lines or revenue lines as well.

Steven Chubak (Managing Director)

Thanks for that color. And just for my follow-up, I wanted to ask on capital management. Now that you've had some of your trust peers actually outline some pretty explicit capital targets, either somewhere in the zone of 10%-11% CET1 or 5.5%-6% Tier 1 leverage target, I know you've never wanted to deviate from the path despite not being part of the GSIB cohort. And just given how strong your capital ratios are, as we think about the SCB framework, potentially this payout restriction getting lifted, hopefully in the not-so-distant future, how you guys are thinking about the pace of buyback and capital return when some of those restrictions are ultimately lifted?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. From a capital perspective and aggregate, you're right, at 12.8% CET1 and at 7.6% on tier 1 leverage, we feel strong in terms of, and by any measure, in terms of our capital levels. And we certainly, if you think about our overall payout ratio for last year, it was, and particularly the last three quarters, lower than what we would have anticipated. But coming into the year and having the ability to get back to stock repurchase, I'm a broken record on this, but the framework of what are our conversations with the board?

Secondly, what do we think about on an absolute basis, and how do we want to ensure we're competing externally, not just being at strong capital levels, but how does that resonate with very large family office clients or sovereign wealth funds that look very, very heavily at whether or not they're dealing with financial institutions that are strong? What do the capital levels look like on a relative basis? So we can say we're not just strong, but we're strong relative to our peers. And then lastly, regulators, very big influence in terms of what they're looking for. And so all that is a mosaic that plays in along with looking at what our return alternatives are as we think about investing in the business. We've talked about what we're doing in terms of digital.

We've talked about what we're doing in terms of building different, more technologically deep operating models for our C&IS business. We've done things within the asset management business to ensure that we could have the product set and the technology to be a strong provider of liquidity products that took investment two, three, four years ago. And you couple all that with looking at how we think about the stock on a relative basis from a valuation perspective. And so it's not one where we say we're going to go down to 12% or we're going to go down to 7% in Tier 1 leverage. It really, truly is a conversation. We're looking at all of the factors I just mentioned and determining what's best from a capital perspective.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

That's great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Steven Chubak (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. If you find your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. We'll go ahead and take our next question from Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Mike Mayo (Managing Director)

Mike. Hi. Look, you need to spend money to make money. I get it. And your core fee growth is about 500 basis points better than trust bank peers. But on the other hand, expenses were up across the board. And so I guess the first question is, were there any extra one-time or elevated expenses in the fourth quarter as you've onboarded additional business? And specifically, in the punchline, do you expect to have fee growth in 2021 faster than expense growth, especially with lagged pricing on a lot of your products?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

On the expense side, there were some one-time items that the severance charge, $65 million occupancy, but specifically related to the new business coming on. The timing of that matters. It's particularly as you bring on very, very large clients. Some of the clients, if it's just a custody mandate, that may not require us bringing on additional people. If it's investment outsourcing, investment operations outsourcing, then that's going to take people. It'll take people upfront in advance so they can get onboarded and trained in advance of us bringing the assets on and billing. That can certainly happen.

That's the dynamic. That's why we tend to not think about an absolute expense growth level, because we can have the foresight in looking at what the new business wins are and what the expense needs are to handle that intra-year, unless it's coming at the very beginning or the very end of the year. And so as we look into 2020 and into 2021, this is what Mike was hinting at earlier, our expense experience is going to be driven in very large part based on what we're onboarding, not just the size of it, but the nature of it. I think that's something that's very important for people externally to realize.

Mike Mayo (Managing Director)

I know you don't always answer this question, but so for 2021, do you expect fee growth to be faster than expense growth?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

That's always the goal. That's what we spent a lot of time even this morning talking about, that if we have, regardless of where fee growth is, that's how we're testing what the expense growth is. Now, there are often items on the expense lines that are not related to bringing on new business. So last year, we brought on $30 million in additional pension expense. That has nothing to do with what's the expected return on assets, what's the discount rate. Those are not related, but we actually highlighted those items last year. We talked about real estate commitments. We talked about pension, and we talked about base pay adjustment that we committed to last year. This year, as we come into this year, it's probably noteworthy that we're not seeing any of those items.

Pension is a million-dollar drag year over year. I think you can take the occupancy that we had in fourth quarter, strip out the $12 million, and you get to a decent run rate. You should see between comp and ben you should start to see the RIF charges that we've talked about start to bed into those two line items. Then the other thing we should expect before we get to new business, the equipment and software, that's been a faster growth item, and that's likely going to continue as we make sure we're where we want to be from a digital perspective and outside services. From there, Mike, it comes down to from those items, it really comes down to what new business comes on board.

Mike Mayo (Managing Director)

Okay. And can I have a follow-up question? And this relates to the question from a couple of questions ago. If you think of the food chain, and you can correct this framework that I'm going to give you, but from the low end to the high end, the low end would be maybe it's Robinhood or some of these smaller fintechs with small amounts, huge retail engagement, lots of revenues. Some reports say that New York Stock Exchange volume has gone from 10%-20% retail trading. So that would be the bottom end. Then you get online brokers, you get mass affluent, you get private banking, and you get the family office. And as you go from left to right, you go from more revenues today, more activity during the pandemic, and more erratic, more lumpy.

When we get to your business, it's a lot more stable. It's annuity-like, but maybe not as elevated revenues as it is today. As you think about the advice business, is it moving more down market, and do you need to move down market with it, or do you view some of the activity down market over the past six or nine months as kind of one-off?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. Actually, the conversation we have a lot internally. I don't know, Mike. Want to.

Sure. So I want to start, Mike. First of all, I'd say I would agree with your framework at a very high level as you think of that kind of low to high and the characteristics as you move up that spectrum. And you're absolutely right. We are focused on the upper end of that spectrum. And one point that it highlights is, I'll say, both the importance of retention, but also the benefits of retention. So I'm not going to speak to turnover or what may happen on the lower end, because, again, that's not where our business is focused. But I can tell you on the higher end, you have time periods like 2020 where that model of holistic advice and high level of service results in very high levels of retention. So excellent year in retention at that level.

Mike Mayo (Managing Director)

But if you said, "Was there a lot of trading activity?" The answer is no. In fact, as you heard some of my opening comments there, that's exactly what we, I would say, counseled our clients against because we're goals-driven, and so instead of trading out and then trying to get back in, it resulted in our clients actually doing well through that because they stuck to their goals-driven framework, and then to your point of, "Well, then how do we think about the growth opportunity going forward?" There's still a significant opportunity for us to grow at the upper end of that, so you put GFO at the top, as Jason pointed out, that part of the business has been growing at a high rate for us, and again, we think we are differentiated at that end.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

And then absolutely, I'll call it below that with ultra-high net worth, likewise seeing very good growth, continued growth there, and still plenty of opportunities. Because as much as just kind of leave that lower end aside for the time being, even in the environment that we're in, there's a tremendous amount of wealth that's being created. That means that there are opportunities for us, whether that's family businesses being sold or companies going public and the executives being in a position of having wealth that needs to be managed in a way that we do it. So we still feel very good about that part. And it's not to say that we don't service clients that are below that ultra-high net worth end of the market.

Mike Mayo (Managing Director)

Frankly, that's where a lot of the digitalization efforts that we have underway in wealth will allow us to serve that part of the market, but in a much more efficient way. And so that will enable that growth in that part of the market to be more profitable, more scalable. Thank you. Thank you.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

All right. We'll go ahead and take our next question from Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Hi, Bette.

Betsy Graseck (Managing Director)

Hi. Good morning. A bit of a follow-up there. In the past, you've mentioned that you're open to acquisitions, particularly in wealth and intermediary distribution, and I just wanted to understand the level of appetite at this stage, given some of the organic opportunities you have, and then maybe layering onto that capabilities when you talk about wealth creation, and I'm kind of sitting here thinking about, "Well, crypto's got a lot of wealth creation, and maybe there's a sleeve there that you could add," so maybe you could speak to that. Thanks.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Sure. I'll take that, Bette. It's Mike. So to your point, historically, our acquisitions have focused on capabilities. And that's been across the businesses. So asset management, wealth management, and asset servicing, we've done a number of capability-type acquisitions, which then we're able to leverage that capability in our business model and grow. And there's a number of examples of that. For that type of acquisition, you're right. We continue to look at areas where those types of additions will enable us to further grow with client bases, and importantly, in segments that are growing faster. So I won't address any one of them in particular, but to your point, that can be very small, either acquisitions or investments, for example, in C&IS, where we have a capability that's in an area that has innovative new technology.

And then I would say, more broadly than that, as far as just appetite, absolutely to the extent we find something that fits strategically and is attractive financially, we're open and interested in doing that. We've done more, as you know, over time in C&IS on the asset servicing side. And I would say we'd be more interested or likely to do it in asset management or wealth management.

Betsy Graseck (Managing Director)

Just on the crypto side, I mean, there's been some loose competitors adding crypto capabilities. We're talking about potentially adding. Is that on your radar screen or too out there?

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Definitely from a capability perspective, you've seen some of the things that we've announced in order to have the capability to serve our clients. So to the extent that digital assets continue to grow in the sense of use by not just, I'll call it, personal or retail clients, but also moves more to institutional clients, those are institutions we need to have the capabilities to serve them. And so yes, both, I would say, on our own, but more importantly, partnering with others to be able to meet those needs.

Betsy Graseck (Managing Director)

Does it take a regulatory requirement change at all to do that? I know the OCC recently approved stablecoin for banks, which maybe is a part of the announcement you need. But I'm just wondering, from a regulatory perspective, is there anything you need from that end to execute on that?

I would just say, without getting into the specifics around digital assets and the regulatory framework on that, but it is a component. And so from our perspective, I'll call it there's a technical or technological aspect of it. There's a service aspect of it. In other words, how does it fit with other things we're doing for those clients? And then to your point, there's a regulatory aspect. And then I would also say there's a financial aspect to it. So how can you be compensated for the ability to provide, for example, custody for those types of assets?

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Right. Yep. Okay. Back to real-world deposits. I shouldn't say real-world, but the bread and butter here of balance sheet. Could you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about managing deposit inflow? We've heard from some folks that bringing on, whether it's operating or non-operating deposits, and others have been signaling that they really only want the operating deposits and will discourage non-operating. Can you tell us what your strategy is there as we think about balance sheet size and growth over the next year?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

I come back to the capital levels, and at 12.8, and maybe more importantly at 7.6, we've got room to bring on deposits, and we want our balance sheet to be there for clients, and so when we reach out to clients saying, "We want to move," and sometimes it's very significant. Sometimes it's not millions of dollars or hundreds. Sometimes it's billions of dollars, and for existing long-term clients, we want to have capacity to help them, and we have. In terms of how we deal with it, oftentimes they'll let us know that it's episodic. It's them moving money. They might be liquidating a position, going somewhere else, and so there's no formula for and so we're not going to take two-year duration on reinvesting those deposits, and that said, there's a component where we do know it's more stable.

And so if you look at the balance sheet, back to the press release tables, it's actually you can look at a handful of the line items and see how, of the deposits that have come in, really roughly half have gone to central banks and stayed short, and about half have gone and been reinvested more in the securities portfolio in one way or another, not out. If it's an institutional deposit, and it seems from the nature of your question, you understand the different regulatory treatments of the deposits as they come in. And so we have to hold liquidity and capital for those. But in many instances, it's enabled us to take the securities portfolio from $50 billion to $60 billion over the last year.

Betsy Graseck (Managing Director)

Right. Right. Okay. All right. Thanks. I appreciate the clarity.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks, Betsy.

Operator (participant)

Okay. We'll go ahead and take our next question from Mike Carrier with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Mike.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning, guys. Just a few cleanups here. I think the core tax rate in the quarter was a bit elevated. I think you guys mentioned in the release somewhere like the mix. But any change, just how you're thinking about the outlook there?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

No. In general, we've been able to move some of the cash, if I understand the question, some of the cash down into the securities portfolio.

No. On the tax rate, the 28% in the quarter versus 24%.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Thank you.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. So the tax rate that was printed was higher. Obviously, you take that out, you get back down to 28. The difference between 28 and 24, more episodic. It's not something that we think is longer term. We think 24 is still the right number in the long run. Now, that said, I'll tell you, fourth quarter can be even within that 24%, fourth quarter can be a tick higher than the 24. Usually, you'll have first quarter that's a little bit lower, and then second, third, fourth quarter, for different reasons, a tick higher. But 24 over the course of the year is still a good number in the long run.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Makes sense. And then in the release, you guys mentioned some non-recurring fees just in wealth management during the quarter. If you could just explain those or maybe the magnitude since you highlighted it?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. Mark Bette.

Mark Bette (Director of Investor Relations)

Yeah. Mike, it's Mark. A couple million was basically the number, and it's for the types of services that might not be a recurring thing, estate services, real estate services, that kind of thing. And those were a little bit more elevated this quarter that helped some of the sequential growth.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay. Makes sense. Thanks a lot.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

All right. We'll take our next question from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Brian.

Brian Bedell (Director)

Hi. Good morning, folks. Just maybe back to net interest revenue. Just if you can comment on the trend into 1Q, given we did see a big spike in deposits. I know that's typical of calendar year-end. Maybe just to talk about deposit balances on an average basis, whether they're trending or are trending higher into 1Q. And then also on the loan strategy, both, first of all, have the loans fully repriced now, given the resets for LIBOR? I know there's some that are lagged. And then just your desire to extend more loans and that trend into 1Q for net interest revenue. Do you think that can offset the day count and keep an IR flat in 1Q versus 4Q?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sorry. Near the end. Loans are 85% repriced at this point. And as I work my way back up, and let me know if I missed part of the question, but walking from fourth quarter to first quarter, the loan balances and deposit balances have stayed elevated relative to where they were a year ago, for sure. But I really want to caution people to look at fourth quarter. At the fourth quarter end of period, it was a particularly large spike that we had at the end of fourth quarter. And we did see that spike come down very quickly. And so what's a better predictor is looking at the average from fourth quarter. And the average from fourth quarter to the average so far coming into first quarter, it seems the deposits are staying elevated at about that level.

But just caution you from looking at that $171 billion balance sheet at quarter end.

Given those trends, do you think you could keep NII flat in one Q and offset the day count? I know that's about a $3 million per day headwind, $3-$4 million per day headwind on just the day count.

And that's right. I feel we've given, I think, what we know at this point, and the drivers from what we just went through are going to be more how do large families and how do large institutions handle liquidity and what happens with rates. And I think you guys can monitor, guess at that. It's close to what we can. It's just hard for us. We wanted to be as transparent as possible on this, but there's just uncertainty that comes from what our clients are doing with their liquidity. And it happens late in the quarter. And so at this point, I feel like the description of how much of the securities portfolio is rolling off, what the impact of that is, probably gives you the starting point that we have from this point.

Brian Bedell (Director)

Okay. Okay. Fair enough. And then just one on expenses. You talked a lot about it. Thanks for all the detail on the plan to continue to generate positive operating leverage. If I look at the expense trust fee ratio and back out the money market fee waivers, it looks like 103%, which is an improvement from 106%-107% last year. If you had to guess, if you just take your normal or your sort of expected organic growth over the long term and you'd say 8% equity market returns on an annual basis, and given your expense management plans, on a calendar year basis, what do you think you might be able to get to parity between expenses and trust fees under those scenarios?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

A couple of things. One, it's not necessarily a specific goal to get to 100%. We want to get there. We want to get going past it, and there's no magic between 101% versus 99%. Secondly, there's so many factors that go under what you just said and what type of business is coming in from a trust fee perspective, how much of it is driven by markets, are we growing from investment operations outsourcing versus custody versus wealth, and so that's why we've tried to give you a good launch point on expenses and then give very firm dynamics of what the key drivers are, but that's probably where we should leave what our predictions are over the course of the longer periods of time.

Brian Bedell (Director)

Okay. All right. Fair enough. Thank you.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Thanks, Brian.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Jim Mitchell with Seaport Global Securities.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Hi, Jim.

Jim Mitchell (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey. Hey. Good morning. Hey. Jason, maybe if you could just give us a sense of we all kind of know what the downside risks are in NII. And I think if we just exclude the idea of the Fed raising rates, maybe we could just speak to what other drivers could be more positive, I guess, for NII going forward. Is it kind of a steepening in the middle of the curve? Is it mortgage rates and the impact on premium amortization? Or is it loan growth? Just trying to think through how we should think about upside risks to NII over the next 12 months.

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. So you hit on, I think, two of those three examples are the big ones, and if you look right now, if you look at the yield curve, it's interesting. There's not been any movement out for kind of overnight through two years, and so it hasn't really helped us. But if you look out farther, kind of five to 10, that's where you've seen the lift. But we're not buying a lot in between there in that space, and so if we have some of that steepness start to come, not even overnight, but if it starts to hit two, three, four years, that starts to change things, and then secondly, loan growth. You think about the difference we have in yield in loans versus even the securities portfolio, let alone central bank deposits, really, really large. So those are really the two big items.

Jim Mitchell (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Yeah. No, that makes sense. Very helpful. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Brian Kleinhanzl with KBW.

Brian Kleinhanzl (Managing Director)

Great. Thanks. First question on expenses. I guess in the quarter, is there still any trailing impacts from COVID that would have impacted the numbers this quarter?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

It's slowed down a lot. We had some items early, and by the way, it goes both ways. I mean, please remember, travel is, and I tried to highlight it in the opening comments by pausing more, but the business promotion expenses being down, that's COVID-related, and that's material, and that'll start to revert, hopefully, as things open back up again, and then there are also other savings, even cleaning millions of sq ft of office space that we've been able to save, and so that said, the flip side to it is that we've continued to make investments on the resiliency environment that Mike hinted to in his opening comments, and so that means getting fresh equipment in the hands of existing partners. It means making sure that the technology package that new partners have enables them to work on a work-from-home basis that's more consistent.

With that said, I don't think those investments at this point, and those investments aren't tens of millions of dollars. The one area that you might connect to this is that we want to make sure that our technology, because of being in a resiliency mode, we're continuing this journey of ensuring we're doing a lot from a technology perspective. We do link that somewhat to being in this resiliency period of time.

Brian Kleinhanzl (Managing Director)

And then a separate question on the loan growth. I mean, a lot of the peers are seeing down loans in the quarter and just deleveraging in general. You're seeing your loans hold in. I guess what's the driver of the loan growth there and can kind of expect loan growth to continue to improve as you look out the 2021? Thanks.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Well, a couple of things I mentioned earlier that we have been spending more. Some of it is deliberate in conversations we're having with clients, letting them know that our balance sheet is here for them. And part of it is the nature likely of our clients starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and starting to make more investments in different ways. So it's hard to, it's very difficult to predict whether or not that increase is going to continue to develop over time or accelerate. I would say it hasn't declined.

And even at the end of the year, even coming after looking at where numbers were at year-end, where they had been just in the first two or three weeks of the year, I think the risk of decline and it's hard to say this too confidently, but the risk of decline is low. We feel better about it stabilizing and hoping that it continues to increase somewhat. But we've had very stable loans for a long period of time. And it's hard to see an environment where it goes up by several billions of dollars. We're talking about a billion or two has a significant impact on our overall loan volumes.

Operator (participant)

All right. We'll go ahead and take our next question from Vivek Juneja with JPMorgan.

Vivek Juneja (Senior Analyst)

Hello? Can you hear me?

Mark Bette (Director of Investor Relations)

Hello?

Vivek Juneja (Senior Analyst)

Yeah. Yes. I can hear you.

Thanks. Okay. Thanks, Mike, Jason, and Mark. First one, just a little clarification on a couple of the items you mentioned for the quarter. The fee waivers, Jason, you said $35 million. You're almost repriced at the moment. But what was that in 4Q compared to the $35 million? Was that fully was that the $35 million number for the fourth quarter also, or is that currently in what was it in fourth? What's the change? And another question that you had on the items you mentioned, the true-ups, 2.5% of the growth from true-ups. That's about $10 million. Never really seen $10 million positive. Generally, you'll tend to have it on the negative side. What kind of true-up was this that was positive? Was it a contract terminated early that you got paid by the client? Or can you give some color on that?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Sure. Fee waivers in fourth quarter were $23.5 million. But Mark, maybe it's better for you to explain the true-ups and C&IS. Yeah. I think you were referring to the comment that Jason made about some of the non-recurring type of organic growth. So I wouldn't not necessarily a true-up or an adjustment per se, but transaction volumes were higher during the quarter. And then we also have certain types of services that we might be doing for clients that are billed based on the period that we're doing them in. And so those are the kinds of, I would say, non-recurring fees once they come online. There's also some true-ups that might happen from a quarter to quarter, but don't want you to think that there was a one-time $10 million item like that.

It was more of kind of an aggregation of the types of fees that we see that might be a little more episodic than just the kind of recurring fees that we see each quarter.

Vivek Juneja (Senior Analyst)

And Mike, I have a bigger picture question for you. The new business that you're seeing, and Mike, and Jason, the $13.5 trillion that you have in your CIS, the strong growth you've seen there, what client types are you seeing? That $13.5 trillion, how would you break that down, firstly, in terms of mutual funds versus pension versus insurance, etc.? And where are you seeing more? And hedge funds, obviously, or alternatives. And where have you seen more of that growth, the strong growth you've seen recently?

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

So Vivek, it's Mike. So start off by just answering your question. Yes, it is across all of those groups, if you broke down the 13 trillion. As far as growth, it's interesting because as you look across the globe, at least for us, in 2020, we had stronger growth, asset growth on the asset owner side in North America. And that just relates to having a large business there in the U.S., also in Canada, and having nice growth during the year. But if you look at EMEA and the APAC region, the growth was more from asset managers.

So for example, in APAC, specifically Australia, strong growth with asset managers there, which for us is, I would say, a nice positive because that business started off years ago, primarily focused on asset owners, with the strategy over time, similar to what we've done in other geographies, to then build out the asset manager services. And so that's gone well. And as I mentioned, in EMEA, the growth with asset managers primarily being driven in Luxembourg and Ireland, where, again, we've made investments to grow those businesses over time.

Vivek Juneja (Senior Analyst)

What percentage of your assets under custody would you say of that 13.5 trillion is North America versus EMEA versus APAC and any sort of?

Mark Bette (Director of Investor Relations)

Yeah. I mean, this is Mark. So the geography breakdown we'll have in our 10-K, I don't have that right in front of me. And it's hard even looking at the assets just because the assets aren't going to be necessarily equally driving the fees. So a large custody mandate might have lower fees than a smaller fund mandate. So if we looked at the fees themselves, though, you're looking at across the regions, almost 40%-45% EMEA and similar in Americas and then APAC growing quite a bit. And then when you look at it, asset owners versus asset managers, when you look at the asset servicing fee, that too, about 60-40 or so at this point, asset managers. So the assets, though, it's not always an easy comparison just looking at the assets because that doesn't necessarily translate through to the P&L.

Vivek Juneja (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Mark Bette (Director of Investor Relations)

We will go to our next question. Caller, you may go ahead.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, Gerard. Hi, Gerard. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Mike, can you share with us, or maybe Jason, obviously, this year has been or this past year has been unprecedented. We all know that. With the Federal Reserve taking its balance sheet to just about $7 trillion and many of your private wealth and corporate customers building up their liquidity, which led to that incredible deposit growth you and your peers have seen in this past year, can you lay out a scenario where the deposits start to come down? I know they're not going to come down right away, but if you look out over the next two years, when do you start to see that change and maybe deposits start to run off the balance sheet?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

So Gerard, to your point, difficult to predict something like that at a very high macro level. And Jason indicated this earlier.

Where we do see the assets begin to move, and it would be true both on the balance sheet but also within the funds, within the money market funds, is where our clients, which I think is a good proxy for a certain part of the market, want to deploy those funds in other ways, and so to the extent and I think you're already seeing that in the increasing values in other markets, right, so equities obviously have done quite well, well, that's more buyers than sellers, as they say, and some of that's coming from liquidity, where they're earning anywhere from zero to negative, depending on the jurisdiction, and they're saying, "Well, I need to move into riskier assets," and so that's gradually what's happening, absent what the central banks will do.

And so to your point, at this point, the central banks have kind of said they're going to stay where they are for an extended time period. So that would indicate you would expect these trends to continue. And then once they begin to shift, similar to the rise in liquidity, you would expect to see a decrease in liquidity, and that would then flow backwards, I'll call it, through the system.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Very good. And then second, there's been talk on your call today, as well as some of your peers, about all the different types of wealth managers and asset managers in the system. Can you guys talk about pricing pressure? Do you find that there's pricing pressure in different client categories? Or no, you really don't see it because of the product offerings that you've got, as well as your reputation as being one of the high-quality wealth managers in the country?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

So there's pricing or fee pressure across all of our businesses. And that has been consistent for some time period. Now, does it ebb and flow at different time periods given other dynamics within one of our businesses, for example, or even within one of the services? Yes. But if you just start with the concept of fee pressure is there, and it's our expectation that that will continue. Now, on the other side of it, to your point, is what is our competitive positioning? And we very much are focused on providing a differentiated service across each of our businesses. And in doing so, our intent is to be able to offset the market fee pressure. Now, whether you can offset all of it or not, again, it depends on many factors.

But we are looking to have a differentiated offering in the marketplace and not be commoditized as much as possible.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

The fee pressure is both on the institutional business as well as the personal, or is it more on the custody institution business as we go through?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

Yeah. It's across the board. And again, depending on the service or the product, you can have more or less. But I would say it's across the board.

Mike Carrier (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

All right. Always appreciate your insights. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. We can go ahead and take our next question from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, Brian.

Brian Bedell (Director)

So great. Thanks very much. Hey, thanks very much, Vitala. Just one last one on the balance sheet, on the lending strategy. Jason, you mentioned the balance sheet is there for the clients. Is there a change in thinking on that, on the lending side? Are you seeing more demand from your wealth clients in particular in terms of their desire to either borrow more to fund projects or to benefit from the lower rates or other cash needs? And are you more willing in the past to extend those loans? And then how do you think, in terms of the size of the balance sheet, how are you thinking about share repurchase, given that you are now allowed to buy back up to your quarterly average net income for the first quarter?

Jason J. Tyler (CFO)

On the loan question, most importantly, there's not been a change in our risk appetite or our risk strategy. I'd say, if anything, it's just been a change and an intensification of our communication strategy with our clients about being here for them and being willing to be supportive as they have liquidity needs. And the credit portfolio is held in extremely well, obviously. I mean, you look at charge-offs or de minimis over the course of 2020, and non-performings, they crept up a tiny bit in fourth quarter, but still very, very low levels, less than 40 basis points, I think, of the portfolio. And our watch list actually declined for the period. So everything there looks good. But that said, the bankers are intensifying their communication with clients about our lending capacity and willingness. And so that's really the driver.

And then, as we think about the capacity, the balance sheet, the size of it, certainly not something that we're actively looking to change in any way. We obviously take the fact that we now have the ability to go back and do share repurchase seriously. It's something we've already started engaging with our board on so that we can, at the appropriate time, be back in the market within the framework that I described earlier. But it's not something where we'd say we're trying to increase or decrease the size of the balance sheet or the capital level. It's not going to be monumental change from the fact that we were out of the market is not going to drive monumental change in how we think about the capital levels.

Brian Bedell (Director)

Nice. Okay. Thank you.

Michael G. O'Grady (Chairman and CEO)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. This concludes today's call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.