Company: WBS-PG
Filing Date: 2025-03-03
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000801337-25-000004
Chunk: 290

Company: WEBSTER FINANCIAL CORP
Filing Date: 2025-03-03
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 290
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 accompanying notes thereto, in accordance with GAAP and practices generally applicable to the financial services industry, requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses, and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities. While management’s estimates are made based on historical experience, current available information, and other factors that are deemed to be relevant, actual results could significantly differ from those estimates.

Accounting estimates are necessary in the application of certain accounting policies and can be susceptible to significant change in the near term. Critical accounting estimates are those estimates made in accordance with GAAP that involve a significant level of estimation uncertainty and have had, or are reasonably likely to have, a material impact on the Company’s financial condition or results of operations. Management has identified that the Company’s most critical accounting estimates are those related to the ACL on loans and leases and business combinations accounting policies. These accounting policies and their underlying estimates are discussed directly with the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors.

Allowance for Credit Losses on Loans and Leases

The ACL on loans and leases is a reserve established through a provision for credit losses charged to expense, which represents management’s best estimate of expected lifetime credit losses within the Company’s loan and lease portfolios at the balance sheet date. The calculation of expected credit losses is determined using predictive methods and models that follow a PD, LGD, EAD, or loss rate framework, and include consideration of past events, current conditions, macroeconomic variables (i.e., unemployment, gross domestic product, property values, and interest rate spreads), and reasonable and supportable economic forecasts that affect the collectability of the reported amounts. Changes to the ACL on loans and leases, and therefore, to the related provision for credit losses, can materially affect financial results.

The determination of the appropriate level of ACL on loans and leases inherently involves a high degree of subjectivity and requires the Company to make significant estimates of current credit risks and trends using existing qualitative and quantitative information, and reasonable and supportable forecasts of future economic conditions, all of which may undergo frequent and material changes. Changes in economic conditions affecting borrowers and macroeconomic variables that the Company is more susceptible to, unforeseen events such as natural disasters and pandemics, along with new information regarding existing loans, identification of additional problem loans, the fair value of underlying collateral, and other factors, both within and outside the Company’s control, may indicate the need for an increase or decrease in the ACL on loans and leases.

It is difficult to estimate the sensitivity of how potential