In the fourth quarter, net income of $25.7 million drove earnings per share of $0.27, beating the consensus estimate of $0.23 per share.
Core ROAA and the core efficiency ratio were 1.14% and 56%, respectively.
Our core pre-tax pre-provision ROAA was 1.76%, due to an increase in the core net interest margin to 3.29% and continued strength in non-interest income driven by mortgage, interchange income, wealth management and SBA.
Provision expense of $7.7 million included a pass-through item of $3.2 million in unfunded commitment expense.
This is why we continue to make significant investments in next-generation technology in 2020 with the new online mobile platform, a new treasury management system, 100% issuance of a contactless debit and credit cards and new P2P solutions like Zelle and real-time payments, and we refreshed our digital account opening, customer experience with the new mobile responsive design.
Debit card interchange income was up 11% or over $2.3 million year-over-year, driven by robust increase in transactions and dollar volume.
New digital deposit account openings were up 189%.
Digital customer conversations are up 233% from 2019.
Mobile remote deposit capture users increased 45%.
Image deposits at ATMs increased 84%.
Virtual meeting collaboration increased 175% to over 2,600 a month.
And then there is our favorable Apple Store rating of 4.8 on our FC Mobile Banking app.
During 2020, and per Page 10 in our supplemental deck, we quickly built our loan loss reserve using qualitative overlays.
It now stands at 1.61% of total loans ex-PPP and covers fourth quarter non-performing loans of $54.1 million by 187%, the highest coverage figure for the year.
NPLs or non-performing loans, as a percentage of loans, was 0.80% or 80 basis points and net charge-offs in 2020 were 27 basis points for the year.
On Page 13, the increase stems almost entirely from expanding deferrals to a handful of hospitality credits totaling $76 million or 29.6% of that particular portfolio.
During 2020, we grew our top line some $7 million while our expenses grew only $2 million, net of some restructuring charges.
Our full-year core efficiency ratio fell from 56.97% in 2019 to 56.28% in 2020, indicative of the result of the management team.
Among dozens of initiatives here, we consolidated some 20% of our branches before year-end after starting the process in late March.
We also nimbly used the remainder of a previously authorized buyback to purchase 2 million shares at a weighted average of $7.84 per share in the fourth quarter.
In 2020, we also had a record year with $94 million in non-interest income, as interchange, mortgage, wealth management and SBA all had record years as well.
Non-interest income for the fourth quarter was 28% of revenues and was 26% for the entire year.
Ex-PPP, total loans grew $111 million or 2% in 2020 on the backs of strong consumer and mortgage lending and modest growth in small business.
Once again, however, our newer Ohio markets found the path for broad-based growth and they now account for 34% of total loans.
Fee income was actually suppressed by $1.2 million due to the mark-to-market on a single derivative.
Second, the net interest margin expanded from 3.11% last quarter to 3.28%[Phonetic] this quarter, in part due to our intentional efforts to reduce excess customer cash levels.
Core NIM expanded by 1 basis point in the quarter from 3.28% last quarter to 3.29% as the cost of deposits continued to come down.
Third, core non-interest expense was up from last quarter as strong mortgage originations and other activity drove increased incentive expense, while at the same time reduced loan originations in other areas resulted in a slowdown of 1091 [Phonetic] expense deferrals.
Hospitalization expense was up by $600,000 from last quarter and we had a $400,000 expense in the fourth quarter related to the annual true-up of our BOLI liability.
So those two items alone accounted for $1 million of the increase in expense from last quarter.
As far as we can tell right now, we believe that our core NIM will be approximately 5 basis points on either side of 3.20% in 2021, but many factors could change that number and we'll update you as the year progresses.
Our expectation had been that we'd reach neutrality in asset yield in mid-2021, but in the fourth quarter negative replacement yields only brought down the loan portfolio yield by 2 basis points, so we're almost there.
We have $471.2 million in CDs maturing in 2021 with $289.9 million yielding 1.21% maturing in the first half.
And we also have $129.4 million in money market savings deposits that currently yield 1.22% that will reprice in the first half of 2021.
Turning now to non-interest expense, we believe core NIE should come in at between $52 million to $53 million per quarter.
That's up from $206.4 million in 2020 and from our previous guidance.
Part of the increase was due to a $2 million to $3 million expected increase in collection and repo expense, but that remains quite unclear, especially if foreclosure, moratoriums and unemployment insurance are extended.
As we announced yesterday, our Board has approved an additional $25 million share repurchase program.
Our consumer delinquencies at year-end continue to be very low and were only 2 basis points, I'm sorry our commercial delinquencies.
Our consumer delinquencies kicked up a bit at year-end to 45 basis points, due to seasonality.
We were pleased to see that our investments in the collections team resulted in a favorable comparison to pre-COVID-19, 12/31/19, consumer delinquencies at 54 basis points.
Criticized loans increased by approximately $114 million, largely due to downgrades in the hospitality portfolio.
Non-performing loans at year-end totaled $54.1 million, an increase of $4.3 million from the prior quarter.
We had a number of smaller credits that we moved to accrual and one hospitality relationship with the balance of approximately $7 million that was moved to non-accrual.
The net increase was $4 million in non-performing loans.
Non-performing loans as a percentage of total loans, excluding PPP, was 0.86% and our allowance for credit losses as a percentage of non-performing loans increased to a healthy 187%.
Non-performing assets as a percentage of total assets increased from 0.55% in Q3 to 0.62% in Q4.
Net charge-offs for the fourth quarter came in at $4.8 million.
Net charge-offs as a percentage of average loans, excluding PPP, was 0.30%.
First, you should note that we adopted CECL at 12/31/2020 and booked a transition amount of $13.4 million.
Provision for Q4 was $7.7 million, including $3.2 million related to the unfunded commitments.
As noted on Page 10 of the supplemental slide deck, the total qualitative reserve factors increased by a net $8.3 million quarter-over-quarter.
Specific to the identified COVID-19-related high risk portfolios, the qualitative reserve is applied for the quarter of $9.1 million.
Credit carefully considered the five high risk portfolios as outlined on Page 13 of the slide deck.
The reserve build slide in the deck provides a bridge from a 12/31/19 balance of $51.6 million to the year-end reserve of $101.3 million.
This is exclusive of the $3.2 million of provision for unfunded commitments.
Reserves to total loans grew to 1.50% of total loans and 1.61% of total loans net PPP loans.

Summary:
In the fourth quarter, net income of $25.7 million drove earnings per share of $0.27, beating the consensus estimate of $0.23 per share.