Revenue in the second quarter was a record of more than $1.5 billion, an increase of 29%.
For the six-month period, revenue was nearly $2.3 billion, up 27% and further illustrating our growth was roughly as much as our 2015 full year revenue.
The growth in revenue and lower expense ratios resulted in record non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.70, which was up 65% year-on-year and $3.20 year-to-date, which is up 75% and when compared to our past full year results would rank as the fourth best in our history.
I'm also pleased with our operating leverage as we generated record pre-tax margin of 24% and our annualized return on tangible common equity was nearly 31%.
Tangible book value per share increased 29% in the last year.
Our record second quarter net revenue was driven by global wealth management and increased 26% in our institutional business, which posted a 31% improvement.
Compensation as a percentage of net revenue declined sequentially to 59.5%, which was in-line with our guidance on last quarter's call.
Our operating expense ratio of 17% and excluding credit provision in investment banking grow subs, our operating ratio totaled 16%.
This, coupled with strong credit performance in our loan portfolio resulted in a reversal of more than $9 million of credit provisions during the quarter.
I would note that this was comprised of a $4 million release of credit provisions due to improving economic outlook and approximately $5 million relating to loan sales.
Neutralizing the impact of credit provisions, Stifel's pre-tax, pre-provision income totaled $270 million, which increased 31% year-on-year and 13% sequentially.
To illustrate some of the numbers, at the end of 2015, our net revenue total approximately $2.3 billion, with nearly $1.4 billion from Wealth Management and roughly $1 billion from our institutional group.
This has led to a more than 70% increase in total client assets and annualized global wealth revenue that would surpass 2015 results by 84%.
Our institutional business, we've made six acquisitions and our total Managing Directors have increased 67% and our investment banking business contributing an 111% increase in our institutional revenue since 2015.
In the first half of 2021, our pre-tax margin increased to 23% from 10% in 2015, while our return on tangible common equity improved to 30% from 10% in that same time period.
We now expect net revenue to be in the range of $4.5 billion to $7 billion, up 13% to 18% from the high end of our prior guidance.
We are tightening our net interest income guidance to $465 million to $485 million as the benefits of the growth in our balance sheet has helped to offset the decline in short-term rate.
In the second half of 2021, we anticipate an additional $2 billion of asset growth at our bank.
Our comp ratio is lowered to 58% to 60%, given our expected NII results and strong investment banking.
Our operating non-comp expense ratio expectations has declined to 16.5% to 18.5% as we continue to see improved operating leverage in our business.
I would also note that not only is our updated guidance, significantly above our original expectations, but also well above the current 2021 Street expectations of $4.3 billion in revenue and $5.57 of earnings per share.
Second quarter revenue totaled a record of $638 million, up 26% year-on-year and with six-month revenue of $1.3 billion, also a record and up 17%.
Total assets under administration were $402 billion and fee-based assets of $149 billion rose 8% sequentially.
Net interest income increased 3% year-over-year, primarily, given our continued ability to grow loans and produce a stable net interest margin.
We added 26 advisors, including 14 experienced advisors with total trailing 12-month production of $12 million.
Our quarterly net revenues total a record $521 million, which was up 31% from the prior year.
Six-month revenue increased 41% over $1 billion.
Quarterly advisory revenues more than doubled to $207 million while capital raising posted revenue of $158 million, which was up 42%.
These results more than offset a 17% decline in our trading revenue.
The leverage in these investments was on display this quarter as our pre-tax margins improved by 630 basis points to 27%.
Looking at the revenue components of our institutional business, our equities business posted record first half results of $391 million, up 52% while our second quarter revenue totaled $163 million, up 29% year-on-year.
Our fixed income business posted quarterly revenue of $147 million, while down 13% year-over-year was up sequentially.
With respect to our trading businesses, equity quarterly revenue totaled $61 million, down 22% from record levels in the first quarter, which was slightly better than the overall market volume declines which we witnessed.
Six-month revenue was $141 million, which was up 5% from 2020.
Fixed income trading revenue of $92 million was down 7% sequentially.
On slide 9, investment banking revenue of $376 million was our third consecutive quarterly record, an increase of 73%, driven primarily by record advisory revenue.
First half revenue of $716 million increased 81% as we generated record capital raising in the first quarter and record advisory revenue in the second quarter of this year.
Record revenue of $207 million surpassed our prior quarterly record by 19%.
Since the beginning of 2020, KBW has advised on 8 of the 10 largest bank mergers and has the highest market share in the firm's illustrious history.
Our equity underwriting business posted revenue of $112 million, up 61% and our second best quarter in history, trailing only the first quarter of this year.
In addition to the strength of our equity business, we generated record results in our fixed income underwriting business of $57 million, which was up 16%.
Our municipal finance business posted another great quarter, as we lead managed 244 municipal issues.
For the first 6 months, our market share in terms of number of transactions increased to 12.5% from 10.9% in the first half of 2020.
I think it is noteworthy that in the first half of 2021, non-public finance revenue which was minimal just a few years ago now accounts for nearly 20% of our fixed income underwriting.
I the quarter, we saw a $0.10 differential between our GAAP and non-GAAP results.
For the quarter, net interest income totaled $190 million, which was up $6 million sequentially.
Our firmwide and bank debt interest margins remained at 200 basis points and 240 basis points respectively.
While net interest income, benefited from a 6% increase in interest earning assets.
In terms of our third quarter expectations, we see a net interest income in a range of $115 million to $125 million and with a similar NIM to the second quarter.
We are maintaining our prior guidance of $150 million to $175 million of incremental pre-tax income as a result of 100 basis point increase in rates.
We ended the quarter with total net loans of $12.9 billion, which is up approximately $700 million from the prior quarter and was primarily driven by growth in our consumer channel.
Our mortgage portfolio increased by $400 million sequentially as we continue to see demand for residential loans from our Wealth Management clients.
Our securities based loan portfolio increased by approximately $240 million.
Our commercial portfolio accounts for 37% of our total loan portfolio, it is primarily comprised of C&I loans, which were up slightly from the prior quarter.
Our portfolio is well-diversified with our highest sector exposure in Fund Banking, which increased outstanding balances by $325 million during the quarter.
I also want to note that we had a nearly $200 million reduction in our PPP loans during the quarter.
Moving to the investment portfolio, which increased by $300 million sequentially.
In the second quarter, we had a $9 million reversal of our allowance through a negative provision expense as additional reserves tied to loan growth we're more than offset by the improved economic scenario in our CECL model.
I would also highlight that approximately $5 million of the negative provision expense was tied to $200 million of loans that are being sold at a premium.
As a result of the reserve release in the composition of our loan growth during the quarter, our ratio of allowance to total loans declined to 99 basis points, excluding PPP loans.
At quarter end, the consumer allowance to total loans was 35 basis points, while the commercial portfolio was 142 basis points.
We also continue to see strong credit metrics with non-performing assets and non-performing loans declining to 5 basis points.
Our risk-base and leverage capital ratios came in at 18.9% from 11.7% respectively.
During July, we also closed on a $300 million, 4.5% non-cumulative perpetual preferred stock offering and announced the redemption of our 6.25% percent Series A preferred.
We continued our share repurchase program in the second quarter by buying back 440,000 shares at an average price of $65.85.
In addition to the $6 billion available on our sweep program, the bank has access to off-balance sheet funding of more than $4 billion.
Within our primary broker dealer and holding company, we have access to nearly $2 billion of liquidity from cash, credit facilities that are committed and unsecured, as well as secured funding sources.
In the second quarter, our pre-tax margin improved 650 basis points year-on-year to a record 24%.
Our comp-to-revenue ratio of 59.5% was down 50 basis points from the prior year.
For the first six months of this year, our comp ratio was 60.2% and given our updated guidance, it is safe to assume that we expect the comp ratio in the second half of the year to be below the first.
Non-comp operating expenses excluding the credit-loss provision and expenses related to investment banking transactions totaled approximately $185 million that represented approximately 16% of net revenue.
The effective tax rate during the quarter came in at 25%, which is at the lower end of the range and in-line with our commentary on last quarter's call.
Absent any other discrete items, we'd expect to see an effective rate to be between 24% and 26% in the second half of the year.
In terms of our share count, our average fully diluted share count was up 1% primarily as a result of normal stock-based compensation, offset by share repurchases.
Absent any assumption for additional share repurchases and assuming a stable stock price we'd expect the third quarter, fully diluted share count to total 118.5 million shares.
In addition to the excess capital we generate from operations as Jim noted, we raised an additional $300 million in preferred shares during July after redeeming our Series A preferred, we added an incremental $150 million in capital.
As our updated guidance illustrates, we believe that we can grow our balance sheet by an additional $2 billion in the second half of the year.
The combination of these growth channels has enabled us to generate and the average annual loan growth rate of 30% in the last seven years, while maintaining a strong credit profile.
In terms of growth in our other business lines, we continue to focus on both hiring and acquisitions while we haven't done an acquisition in 18 months.

Summary:
The growth in revenue and lower expense ratios resulted in record non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.70, which was up 65% year-on-year and $3.20 year-to-date, which is up 75% and when compared to our past full year results would rank as the fourth best in our history.