Our next question comes from Mark Fitzgibbon of Piper Sandler. Mark, your line is open. Please go ahead.Mark Fitzgibbon Hi, guys. Good morning.Nitin Mhatre Good morning, Mark.David Rosato Good morning, Mark.Mark Fitzgibbon Nitin, just wanted to follow up on a question that you and I’ve talked about in the past. Do you worry about growing loans as fast as you are given how late we are in the economic cycle? I know that spreads look better. But do you worry that perhaps really pedal to the metal on loan growth right now is ideal from a credit perspective?Nitin Mhatre Yes, Mark, great question. No, and you’re right, there’s no pedal to the metal here. We actually slowed down originations. We’ve ended up potentially saying no more in the last quarter than we probably have in the last year or so.
We are being selective. We recognize that we got to keep the focus on the long term. We want to serve our clients. We want to take care of the customers that are currently with us, as well as some of the new prospects that come with relationships. So we are slowing down. And in fact, our originations in the first quarter were roughly about a quarter lower than the previous quarter, right, and we expect that to slow down further. So we are actually slowing down. And yet as a function of the fact of the market disruption and the distractions that some of our competitors have, we’re getting more swings at the plate. So we get better opportunity to be selective, better pricing, better relationship like I said earlier. So no, it is — originations are slowing down.
The other part of this is the pre-pays are slowing down as well. So I think that’s creating the balanced growth. So this growth is not driven by originations, they’re actually going to be lower this year than last year. It’s really the CPRs that go down.Mark Fitzgibbon With a 4% — you grew 4% in the first quarter. That’s a pretty aggressive growth rate. It’s certainly well above what the market’s growing and your peers are growing.Nitin Mhatre Yes. It’s really the strong pipeline that we have in the fourth quarter, that’s now down 25%. As we get into the next quarters, the originations slow down. The rate of growth slows down correspondingly. And yet, Mark, I think we also recognize that this is also a great time and opportunity for us to provide lending to our customers that continue to perform well.
And we don’t want to turn them away in this kind of scenario.Mark Fitzgibbon Great. And then I wonder if you could update us on your thinking around sort of the franchise footprint? Geographically, obviously your footprint’s pretty spread out. Is there more potential to sell or shrink parts of the franchise?Nitin Mhatre We have looked at it, Mark. And as you know, we got out of Mid-Atlantic. We reduced our branch footprint by about 25% to 30% over the last three years. We continue to look for it, but we’re comfortable where we are, especially given the fact that we’ve found a lot of new bankers that are able to serve customers in those markets over the last couple of years. And we see significant opportunity for deepening relationships in those markets.
So I think at this point of time, we’re not looking at any further consolidation of geography or branches outside of tactical opportunities that come along the way.Mark Fitzgibbon Okay. And then last question, your BEST goals or insight here, I guess I’m curious at what point would you consider raising them to something closer to sort of pure levels of profitability? Thank you.Nitin Mhatre Great question, Mark. And we will do that as part of our next year’s guidance when we — I think our BEST targets, we call it BEST 1.0 now that was scheduled to be done by mid 2024. So our guidance in January 2024 will also have the BEST 2.0 guidance.Mark Fitzgibbon Thank you.Nitin Mhatre Thanks, Mark.David Rosato Thanks, Mark.Operator Our next question comes from David Bishop of Hovde Group, LLC.
David, your line is open. Please go ahead.David Bishop Good morning, gentlemen.Nitin Mhatre Good morning, David.David Rosato Good morning, David.David Bishop Dave, I’m just curious. It sounds like in the preamble there might have been some noises that maybe temporarily or abnormally deflated operating expenses in the first quarter. Just curious if you can go over them again and how we should think about a good run rate in second quarter and to the second half of 2023 from a holistic basis what you’re targeting in terms of total operating expenses?David Rosato Yes. Hi, Dave. It’s David. I wouldn’t really say there was noise in the first quarter. We called out a little bit in other, but we also Q1 have, as you know, employee benefit costs go up with the return of tax payments and FICA, et cetera.
What’s been impressive to me is the steady state run rate here on expenses. And we’re right within guidance. We expect that to continue. So really no — from our perspective, no real noise in the first quarter. It’s a good run rate.David Bishop Got it. And then, I appreciate the updated disclosures on the — off of CRE. Outside of that within the commercial real estate portfolio, any other areas you’re monitoring for heightened monitoring here where we might see some stress or slippage here that maybe it’s not on anyone else’s radar screens at the moment?Greg Lindenmuth No, not at all. I’m sorry, go ahead.Nitin Mhatre Go ahead, Greg.Greg Lindenmuth No, not at all. We’re not seeing any weaknesses develop out of any other portfolios right now.
And it’s really reflective really in the strong performance of the overall portfolio that you’re seeing. But I will say, we continue to really remain focused on credit management regardless to any type of cycle.David Bishop And then, Greg, just curious maybe from an origination loan yield what you’re seeing and within the first quarter in terms of new loan origination deals, what’s your — your on boarding this quarter versus last, I know a couple of years at least in the Southeast are starting to see credit spreads [indiscernible] and LIBOR?Nitin Mhatre Yes, Greg, I can take that. The yields on the new production was closer to 6% — 5.85%, 5.86%, so closer to 6% in the quarter. And that’s almost a 50 basis points improvement over the previous quarter.