Company: NWBI
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001471265-25-000016
Chunk: 298

Company: Northwest Bancshares, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 298
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 on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of a critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Allowance for credit losses for loans evaluated on a collective basis

As discussed in Notes 1 and 5 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company’s allowance for credit losses for loans held for investment was $116.8 million as of December 31, 2024, a portion of which included the measurement of expected credit losses on a collective (pool) basis for all loans that share similar risk characteristics. The expected credit loss methodologies incorporate probability of default (PD) and loss given default (LGD) to determine a PD and LGD loss assumption which is applied to loan level exposures on an undiscounted basis over the contractual term of the loans, adjusted for prepayments, certain of which use a prepayment model. The Company uses a twenty-four-month reasonable and supportable forecast period, which is based on a probability-weighted multiple macroeconomic forecast approach (macroeconomic forecasts) and reverts to historical average loss rates over a twelve-month period for the remaining life of the loans. The following methodologies were developed for each significant loan portfolio segment: (1) the allowance for credit losses within the residential mortgage and home equity loan portfolios are calculated using a PD, LGD, and prepayment model adjusted for asset specific characteristics at the loan-level using projected default rates, prepayment rates, and severity rates as well as macroeconomic forecasts determined at the pool level; (2) the allowance for credit losses within the vehicle loan portfolio is calculated using a PD, LGD, and prepayment model adjusted for asset specific characteristics at the loan-level using projected default rates and prepayment rates, as well as macroeconomic