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. In the first quarter of 2021, Central Pacific completed several key milestones.
We completed our RISE2020 initiative, which included the revitalization of our Central Pacific Plaza lobby, digital banking enhancement and other revenue and efficiency initiatives.
Additionally, as we continue our commitment to best-in-class digital banking technology in the first quarter, we implemented further upgrades and enhancements to our consumer online and mobile banking system.
And we launched our new small business online banking system.
Further, this quarter, we launched a new online platform for opening consumer deposit account and consumer term loan.
During the first quarter, Central Pacific stepped up again to support our small business community by originating over 3,600 PPP loans, totaling over $290 million.
We are proud of our hard working team of employees that have enabled us to accomplish these milestones and results.
We continue to be highly focused on building upon the successes and achieving our financial targets.
Our financial results for the first quarter were very strong with a highest quarterly pre-tax income since 2007.
We also continue to have solid asset quality, liquidity and capital.
Based on our strong results and financial position, our Board of Directors increased our quarterly cash dividend to $0.24 per share.
The state of Hawaii is making progress toward economic recovery.
Our unemployment rate declined to 9% in March, and while so elevated, is significantly down from its peak of 22% in April last year.
Our tourism industry is returning with our Safe Travel program running well and the potential for a vaccine passport program starting in the late summer.
Visitor arrivals have recently been averaging nearly 20,000 per day or about two third of pre-pandemic levels.
Real estate in Hawaii continues to be extremely strong with the medium price for a single-family home in Oahu hitting our record high of $950,000 in March.
The state of Hawaii continues to have a very low COVID infection rate with the lowest case rate in the nation on a per capita basis.
Our vaccination progress is also quite good with over 30% of our residents fully vaccinated, currently putting us the eighth high state in the nation.
With these strong stats, the states continue to safely reopen.
At Central Pacific, we are deemed in essential service and therefore our employees were given access to the COVID vaccination starting in March, and many are fully vaccinated at this point.
In the first quarter, our total loan portfolio increased by $174 million, primarily due to the new round of PPP loan originations.
Net of PPP loan originations, we grew our commercial construction, commercial mortgage and home equity portfolios, which was offset by declines in our commercial, industrial, residential mortgage and consumer loan portfolios.
The new round of PPP loan origination in Q1 required us to shift resources and attention to supporting our business customers with their second draw of PPP application.
In Q1, we processed over 3,600 PPP loans totaling over $290 million, which represented over 50% of the loans we funded in 2020.
Concurrently, our team continue to assist our existing PPP borrowers to apply for forgiveness from the SBA, resulting in approximately $100 million in paydowns in Q1.
To date, inclusive of forgiveness applications processed in 2020 and through March 31st, we have processed over 3,600 forgiveness applications, resulting in $234 million in PPP loan paydowns.
Our team continues to engage and support our small business customers to help meet their needs with our broader banking product and service offerings.
To date, we have expanded banking relationships with approximately 20% of the new to CPBs small business customers.
Total deposits during the first quarter increased by $410 million or about 8% sequential quarter, which was supported by PPP loan fundings and other government stimulus.
Additionally, our cost of total deposits declined by 3 basis points from the prior quarter and is now down just to 6 basis points.
As the economic recovery in Hawaii gains traction, our bankers will continue to engage and support our customers until a healthy pipeline of new business for the bank.
At March 31st, the loan portfolio totaled $5.1 billion with 53% consumer and 47% commercial.
Approximately 78% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances is real estate secured.
At quarter end, the total balance of loans on payment deferrals declined significantly by $80.7 million sequential quarter to $39.5 million or 0.9% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
Additional payment deferral were provided on residential loans and consumer loans.
We anticipate continuing to provide assistance through repayment plans and loan modifications over the next several months.
We had no payment deferrals in our commercial real estate and commercial and industrial loan portfolios at quarter end.
Total loans on payment deferrals further declined to $32.5 million as of April 21st.
During the quarter, criticized loans declined by $10.5 million sequential quarter to $181.7 million or 4% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
Special mentioned loans declined by $14.7 million to $127.8 million or 2.8% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances, and classified loans increased by $4.2 million to $53.9 million or 1.2% of the total loan portfolio, excluding PPP balances.
The decrease in special mentioned loans are primarily due to loans being upgraded as a result of improvements in our borrowers operating performance.
The increase in classified loans are primarily due to residential and consumer loans.
We continue to monitor our borrowers in the high-risk industries of food service and accommodation or $44 million is rated special mentioned, an $8 million is rated classified.
Approximately 27% of total special mentioned balances and 8% of total classified balances also received PPP loan.
Additional details on our high-risk industry loans and loans rated special mention and classified can be found on Slides 11, 13 and 14.
Overall, our asset quality remained strong and we expect to see continued improvement in our loan portfolio.
Net income for the first quarter was $18 million or $0.64 per diluted share.
Return on average assets in the first quarter was 1.07% and return on average equity was 13.07%.
Net interest income for the first quarter was $49.8 million, which decreased from the prior quarter, primarily due to less recognition of PPP fee income due to lower forgiveness.
Net interest income included $5.2 million in PPP net interest income and net loan fees compared to $6.3 million in the prior quarter.
At March 31, unearned net PPP fees for rounds one and two was $5.8 million and net fees for round three was $14.5 billion.
The net interest margin decreased to 3.19% in the first quarter compared to 3.32% in the prior quarter.
The decrease was due to the lower PPP fee income recognition as well as lower loan yields.
The net interest margin normalized for PPP was 3.12% in the first quarter compared to 3.17% in the prior quarter.
First quarter other operating income totaled $10.7 million compared to 14.1 million in the prior quarter.
The increase was primarily due to lower mortgage banking income of $2.5 million and lower income from bank-owned life insurance of $0.4 million.
Other operating expense for the first quarter was $37.8 million, which was a decrease of $6.8 million from carried through the prior quarter.
The prior quarter included one-time expenses totaling $5.9 million.
Additionally, in the current quarter, $0.8 million in PPP loan origination cost were deferred from salaries and benefits.
The efficiency ratio decreased to 62.5% in the first quarter compared to 68.2% in the prior quarter, primarily due to the one-time expenses in the prior quarter.
Net charge-offs in the first quarter totaled $0.7 million compared to net charge-offs of $1.8 million in the prior quarter.
At March 31st, our allowance for credit losses was $81.6 million or 1.80% of outstanding loans excluding the PPP loans.
This compares to 1.83% as of the prior quarter end.
In the first quarter, we reported a $0.8 million credit to the provision for credit losses due to improvements in the economic forecast utilized in our CECL methodology.
The effective tax rate was 23.2% in the first quarter, a slight decline from the prior quarter as we recognized the benefit for capital loss carry-backs.
Going forward, we expect the effective tax rate to be in the 24% to 26% range.
Our liquidity and capital positions remain strong and we continue to perform robust stress testing.
Finally, as Paul noted earlier, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.24 per share, which was an increase from the $0.23 in the prior quarter.
In summary, Central Pacific has a solid financial credit liquidity and capital position, and we continue to make positive forward progress on our strategies.
Further, we remain committed to providing support to our employees, customers and the community as we progress through the economic recovery.
At this time, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have.

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q1 earnings per share $0.64.
quarterly net interest income $49.8 million, compared to $47.8 million.

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