You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: As always, we appreciate your interest in Central Pacific Financial Corp.
The start of 2021 is a very exciting time for Central Pacific.
We are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed our RISE2020 initiative, which positions us extremely well in the current environment and for the future.
We also completed our RISE2020 milestone on digital banking with the new online and mobile banking platforms that launched in the third quarter and the completion of our full ATM network upgrade in the fourth quarter.
This is part of an exciting new brand design that we just launched.
The new brand reflects both the Company's unique history and our bright future ahead.
We had strong financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020.
While net income was impacted by one-time expenses and higher provisions for credit losses, our core pre-tax pre-provision earnings were solid.
We continue to thoroughly review and regularly monitor our loan portfolio to appropriately manage the credit risk in the pandemic environment.
During the fourth quarter, our total balance of loans on payment deferrals decreased significantly and was down to 3% of total loans, excluding PPP loans at year-end.
Finally, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.23 per share and approved a new share repurchase authorization.
The State of Hawaii continues to manage through the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are vaccinating our residents as quickly as possible and have worked through the first tier of first responders and frontline medical workers.
We have recently opened two mass vaccination sites in Honolulu, as we move to the next tier, which includes the elderly population.
Our COVID infection rate in the State of Hawaii is currently the second-lowest in the nation on a per capita basis.
The tourism economies remained open with the requirement for a negative COVID test to avoid quarantine.
The daily visitor arrival counts have recently been in the 5,000 to 8,000 range per day, but is still significantly down compared to a year ago.
We are optimistic that with the mass vaccination initiative we will start to see a Hawaii economic recovery in 2021.
At Central Pacific, we continue to operate with the highest standards of health, safety and social distancing.
We've successfully consolidated four branches into neighboring branches in 2020, three of which were in-store branches that had too small of a footprint for adequate social distancing.
We expect to retain customers and deposits from these closed branches as we continue to provide exceptional service at our other branches and through our digital channels.
Much of our back office teams continue to work flexible remote schedules and all employees are required to complete a daily online health questionnaire prior to starting work each day.
We believe the actions we've taken will continue to enable us to provide a safe environment for both our employees and customers.
In the fourth quarter, excluding PPP loan pay-offs of $112 million, the bank grew its loan portfolio by $46 million, driven by growth in commercial, construction, residential mortgages, HELOC and commercial mortgages.
Our residential lending team continues to outperform with record levels of production, resulting in $5.4 million in mortgage banking income for the quarter.
For the 2020-year, mortgage banking income was $13.7 million, which was more than double the income from the previous year, augmented by over $1 billion in loan production.
During the fourth quarter, we received and processed a significant amount of PPP forgiveness applications, which resulted in the recognition of $5.4 million in fee income.
We continue to process PPP forgiveness applications and recently started accepting new PPP loan applications for both first draw and second draw loans from our business customers.
Additionally, our team continues to engage and remain steadfast in our support of our customers and for the broader business community impacted by COVID-19.
Core deposits during the fourth quarter increased by $132 million, which is consistent with year-end seasonal inflows augmented by our front-line business development efforts.
For the 2020 year, core deposits increased by $787 million.
Additionally, our cost of total deposits declined by 4 basis points from the prior quarter and is now down to 9 basis points.
Providing best-in-class digital technology for our customers remain the key priority for us.
In 2020, we launched our new consumer mobile and online platforms and completed the rollout of our new ATM fleet.
We are seeing strong adoption and utilization of these new digital tools by our customers.
And just yesterday, we launched a new platform that will allow our customers and other consumers to open a new personal checking or savings account online or apply for a consumer loan online.
Our team is laser-focused on adding additional digital products and services this year and we look forward to updating you in the coming quarters.
At year-end, the loan portfolio totaled $4.96 billion with 55% consumer and 45% commercial.
During the quarter, we continued to monitor the loan portfolio and provided support to our customers as they continue to navigate through the ongoing changes in the marketplace.
We assisted our customers by providing additional loan payment deferrals as needed and we were pleased to see a significant number of borrowers resume making their monthly loan payments.
At quarter-end, the total balance of loans on payment deferrals declined to $120 million or 3% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
Our redeferral rate was 15% and was primarily driven by residential loans where payment deferrals were extended to nine months.
During the quarter, we saw a significant decline in consumer loans on deferral as customers returned to making loan payments.
Of the approximately 4,200 consumer loans that returned to payments, only 7% are granted a short-term loan modifications with 93% resuming payment at contractual terms.
In the commercial and commercial real estate loan portfolios, the total balance of loans on payments deferrals declined to $47 million or 1% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
The highest exposure by industry continues to be Real Estate and Rental & Leasing totaling $33 million, a decline of $14 million sequential quarter.
The loans in the Real Estate and Rental & Leasing industry are supported by low loan-to-value ratios.
The majority of these borrowers are expected to resume making loan payments at the end of their six month loan payment deferrals.
Loan payment deferrals for our high-risk industries totaled $12 million or 0.3% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
As of January 20th, our total balance of loans on payment deferrals decreased further to $101 million or 3% of total loans, excluding PPP balances.
Additional details on our loan payment deferrals can be found on Slides 20 and 21.
During the quarter, criticized loans declined by $4.5 million sequential quarter to $192 million or 4.2% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
Special mention loans declined by $6.3 million to $142 million or 3.1% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances and classified loans increased by $1.7 million to $50 million or 1.1% of the total loan portfolios, excluding PPP balances.
We sold a classified and non-accrual commercial real estate loan at par of $4.2 million and settled a payoff of another classified and non-accruals commercial real estate and commercial loan at 92 [Phonetic] or $2.9 million.
Approximately 32% of special mention balances and 10% of classified balances also received PPP loans.
Additional details on loans rated special mention and classified can be found on Slides 22 and 23.
Overall, we continue to believe our proactive approach to working with our customers and our disciplined credit management and diversified loan portfolio has allowed us to remain strong and our asset quality to remain stable through these unprecedented time.
This will continue to serve us well into the future.
Net income for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $12.2 million or $0.43 per diluted share.
Return on average assets in the fourth quarter was 74 basis points and return on average equity was 8.87%.
For the full 2020 year, net income was $37.3 million or $1.32 per diluted share.
Return on average assets was 0.58% and return on average equity was 6.85%.
Pre-tax pre-provision earnings for 2020 was $88.2 million compared to $84.2 million in 2019.
2020 pre-tax pre-provision earnings were the highest CPF has generated since the Great Recession.
Our 2020 earnings were impacted by higher provision for credit loss expense due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, in the fourth quarter, there were several one-time expenses which totaled $5.9 million.
Net interest income for the fourth quarter was $51.5 million, which increased from the prior quarter due to accelerated recognition of PPP's fee income as PPP loans were forgiven by the SBA.
Net interest income included $6.3 million in PPP net interest income and net loan fees compared to $3.4 million in the prior quarter.
The net interest margin increased to 3.32% in the fourth quarter compared to 3.19% in the prior quarter.
The increase was due to the aforementioned PPP fee income recognition.
The NIM normalized for PPP was 3.17 in the fourth quarter compared to 3.26 in the prior quarter.
The decrease is due to lower loan and investment yields and the new subordinated debt interest expense.
Fourth quarter other operating income totaled $14.1 million compared $11.6 million in the prior quarter.
The increase was primarily due to higher mortgage banking income of $1.1 million sequential quarter.
Additionally, in the current quarter, we realized a gain on sale of securities of $0.2 million compared to a loss on sale of securities of $0.4 million in the prior quarter.
Other operating expense for the fourth quarter was $45.1 million, which was an increase of $8.1 million compared to the prior quarter.
The increase was largely driven by one-time expenses totaling $5.9 million which related to employee incentives and benefits, branch consolidation costs, litigation settlement, debt prepayment fees, and other one-time expense accruals.
Additionally, in the current quarter, there was higher deferred compensation expense related to equity-market volatility and higher computer software expense related to our technology initiative.
The efficiency ratio increased to 68.8% in the fourth quarter compared to 60.9% in the previous quarter, primarily due to the one-time expenses.
Excluding one-time expenses of $5.9 million, the fourth quarter efficiency ratio would have been 59.8%.
Net charge-offs in the fourth quarter totalled $1.8 million compared to net charge-offs of $1.3 million in the prior quarter.
At December 31st, our allowance for credit losses was $83.3 million or 1.83% of outstanding loans, excluding PPP loans.
This compares to 1.79% coverage as of the prior quarter-end.
The buildup of credit reserves was largely driven by the economic forecast utilized in our CECL methodology.
The effective tax rate was 23.7% in the fourth quarter.
And going forward, we expect the ETR to continue to be in the 24% to 26% range.
Our liquidity and capital positions remain strong and we continue to perform robust stress testing.
With the $55 million subordinated note offering we completed in the fourth quarter, our CPF total risk-based capital ratio increased to 15.2% as of December 31st.
In summary, Central Pacific continues to make positive forward progress on our strategy, while at the same time managed well through the COVID-19 pandemic.
We have a solid financial, credit, liquidity and capital position.
As the economic recovery gradually begins, we remain committed to supporting our employees, customers and the community.
At this time, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have.
Back to you, operator.

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q4 earnings per share $0.43.
net interest income for q4 of 2020 was $51.5 million, compared to $47.9 million in year-ago quarter.

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