This focus, combined with our traditional high quality customer service, ensures that First Virginia remains the financial company of choice for both consumers and businesses in all of our markets. The corporation's increased concentration on improving the overall yield on the loan portfolio at the expense of growth caused the total average loans to increase at a lesser pace, Mr. Fitzpatrick noted. Installment loans to consumers declined slightly as automobile sales moderated and the corporation concentrated on improving the yield of the portfolio. The result is that changes in interest rates have a relatively minor impact on the corporation's net interest margin. During the quarter the corporation continued to repurchase shares of its stock, which reduced the funds available for investment and was the primary cause for the small decline in the net interest margin.
Asset quality is excellent and showed no signs of deterioration.
The corporation does not participate in the markets for either sub-prime loans or syndicated credits. The corporation continues to maintain strict expense controls and, despite higher equipment expense as a consequence of Year 2000 related upgrades and constant technological improvements, overall expenses declined. As part of the corporation's continual process of evaluating those segments of its business that no longer achieve required rates of return, the corporation will close more than 25 branches in 2000 and has closed its first mortgage and home equity lending subsidiaries. During the second quarter, the corporation repurchased 1.399 million shares of its stock for a total of 2.559 million shares in the first six months of 2000. There are 2.640 million shares remaining in the current authorization from the Board of Directors.