Company: WTFCN
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001015328-25-000093
Chunk: 43

Company: WINTRUST FINANCIAL CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 43
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 presentation of the 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 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 financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the 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 account or disclosures to which it relates.

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Allowance for credit lossesDescription of the MatterAt December 31, 2024, the Company’s allowance for credit losses (ACL) was $437.1 million. As more fully described in Notes (1) and (5) to the consolidated financial statements, the ACL represents management’s estimate of expected credit losses over the contractual term of the loan. The ACL is measured on a collective or pooled basis when assets share the same risk characteristics or on an individual basis when assets do not share similar risk characteristics. For assets measured on a collective basis, the Company applies modeling methodologies that utilize the Company’s historical loss experience to estimate lifetime credit loss rates on each pool, including methodologies estimating the probability of default and loss given default on specific segments. The historical credit loss experience utilized in the ACL models is adjusted for the Company’s reasonable and supportable economic forecasts. The modeled results are then adjusted for certain qualitative factors. For assets measured on an individual basis, the Company measures the expected losses primarily based on the estimated collateral value.Auditing management’s estimate of the ACL was especially challenging due to the complexity of the Company’s ACL models, the significant judgment required in establishing management’s reasonable and supportable economic forecasts, and the significant judgment required in developing and applying management’s qualitative factors.How We Addressed the Matter in Our AuditWe obtained an understanding, evaluated the design, and tested the operating effectiveness of internal controls over the ACL process, including, among other things, controls over management’s process for the development, operation and monitoring of the ACL models, assessing and challenging the reasonable and supportable economic forecasts, the development and application of qualitative factors, and verifying the completeness and accuracy of key inputs and assumptions used in the ACL models.To test the Company’s ACL models, we involved our specialists to test a sample of the ACL models