SIERRA BANCORP

LIQUIDITY

The Company continues to have substantial liquidity through unencumbered assets and available borrowings. In addition, the Company’s loan-to-deposit ratio was 81% at both March 31, 2025, and December 31, 2024, compared to an internal policy guideline of less than 90%.

Liquidity management refers to the Company’s ability to maintain cash flows that are adequate to fund operations and meet other obligations and commitments in a timely and cost-effective manner. Detailed cash flow projections are reviewed by Management on a monthly basis, with various stress scenarios applied to assess the Company’s ability to meet liquidity needs under unusual or adverse conditions. Liquidity ratios are also calculated and reviewed on a regular basis. While those ratios are merely indicators and are not measures of actual liquidity, they are closely monitored, the Company is committed to maintaining adequate liquidity resources to draw upon should unexpected needs arise.

The Company, on occasion, experiences cash needs as the result of loan growth, deposit outflows, asset purchases or liability repayments. To meet these short-term needs, the Company can borrow overnight funds from other financial institutions, draw advances via FHLB lines of credit, or solicit brokered deposits if customer deposits are not immediately obtainable from local sources.

At March 31, 2025, and December 31, 2024, the Company had the following sources of primary and secondary liquidity (dollars in thousands):

Available funding sources detailed above of $2.3 billion represented 79% of total deposits and 287% of estimated uninsured and/or uncollateralized deposits as of March 31, 2025. Unpledged investment securities include $160.4 million of CLOs. As CLO’s have a rate that resets every 90 days to current rates, the volatility of pricing of these securities is limited and the Company could sell such securities for liquidity at a significantly lower loss than selling lower rate fixed term securities such as US government bonds or municipal bonds.

The Company performs regular stress tests on its liquidity and at this time, Management believes that it has sufficient primary and secondary liquidity sources for operations.

The Company has a higher level of actual balance sheet liquidity than might otherwise be the case since the Company utilizes a letter of credit from the FHLB rather than investment securities for certain pledging requirements. That letter of credit, which is backed by loans pledged to the FHLB by the Company, totaled $125 million at March 31, 2025, and December 31, 2024. Other sources of liquidity include the brokered deposit market, deposit listing services, Intrafi, and the ability to offer local time-deposit campaigns. Management is of the opinion that available investments and other potentially liquid assets, along with standby funding sources it has arranged, are more than sufficient to meet the Company’s current and anticipated short-term liquidity needs.

The Company’s primary liquidity ratio was 20% at March 31, 2025, as compared to an internal policy guideline of “greater than 15%” Ratios and sub-limits for the various components comprising wholesale funding, which were all well within policy guidelines at March 31, 2025, are also periodically reviewed by Management and the Board. The Company has been able to maintain a robust liquidity position in recent periods, but no assurance can be provided that the liquidity position will continue at current strong levels.

The holding company’s primary uses of funds include operating expenses incurred in the normal course of business, interest on trust preferred securities and subordinated debt, shareholder dividends, and share repurchases. Its primary source of funds is dividends from the Bank since the holding company does not conduct regular banking operations. As of March 31, 2025, the holding company maintained a cash balance of $2.4 million. Management anticipates that the holding company has sufficient liquidity to meet its funding requirements for the foreseeable future. Both the holding company and the Bank are subject to legal and regulatory limitations on dividend payments, as outlined in Item 5(c) Dividends in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, which was filed with the SEC.

INTEREST RATE RISK MANAGEMENT

Market risk arises from changes in interest rates, exchange rates, commodity prices and equity prices. The Company does not engage in the trading of financial instruments, nor does it have exposure to currency exchange rates. The Company’s market risk exposure is primarily that of interest rate risk and has established policies and procedures to monitor and limit earnings and balance sheet exposure to changes in interest rates. The principal objective of interest rate risk management is to manage the financial components of the Company’s balance sheet in a manner that will optimize the risk/reward equation for earnings and capital under a variety of interest rate scenarios.

To identify areas of potential exposure to interest rate changes, the Company utilizes commercially available modeling software to perform monthly earnings simulations using a dynamic balance sheet and calculate the Company’s market value of portfolio equity under varying interest rate scenarios. The model imports relevant information for the Company’s

financial instruments and incorporates Management’s assumptions on pricing, duration, and optionality for anticipated new volumes. Assumptions regarding deposit betas in the up cycles can range from 25 to 100% and from 0 to 50% in the down cycles depending on the deposit type. Deposit decay rate assumptions range from 5 to 10% and are based on historical averages. Prepayment speeds are based on three-year historical averages. Various rate scenarios consisting of key rate and yield curve projections are then applied in order to calculate the expected effect of a given interest rate change on interest income, interest expense, and the value of the Company’s financial instruments. The rate projections can be shocked (an immediate and parallel change in all base rates, up or down), ramped (an incremental increase or decrease in rates over a specified time period), economic (based on current trends and econometric models) or stable (unchanged from current actual levels).

In addition to a stable rate scenario, which presumes that there are no changes in interest rates, the Company typically uses at least eight other interest rate scenarios in conducting rolling 12-month net interest income simulations: upward shocks of 100, 200, 300, and 400 basis points, and downward shocks of 100, 200, and 300 basis points. Those scenarios may be supplemented, reduced in number, or otherwise adjusted as determined by Management to provide the most meaningful simulations considering economic conditions and expectations at the time. Pursuant to policy guidelines, the Company generally attempts to limit the projected decline in net interest income relative to the stable rate scenario to no more than 10% for a 100 basis point interest rate shock, 15% for a 200 basis point shock, 20% for a 300 basis point shock, and 25% for a 400 basis point shock.

The Company had the following estimated net interest income sensitivity profiles over one year, without factoring in any potential negative impact on spreads resulting from competitive pressures or credit quality deterioration:

The above table is for parallel interest rate shocks for all rate curves and represents an extreme scenario. Management utilizes this as a starting point for determining its overall interest rate risk strategy. Based on the interest rate shocks, for the period ending March 31, 2025, management believes that the Company is asset sensitive, slightly more asset sensitive than the same period a year ago.

The incremental changes in net interest income are similar between the up 100, 200, 300, and 400 basis point scenarios. If there were an immediate and sustained upward adjustment of 100 basis points in interest rates, all else being equal, net interest income over the next 12 months is projected to increase by $3.3 million, or 2.4%, relative to a stable interest rate scenario, with the favorable variance increasing as interest rates rise higher.

If there was an immediate downward adjustment of 100 basis points in interest rates for all rate curves, net interest income would drop $7.4 million, or a negative variance of 5.3% over 12 months. The change in net interest income in the down 200 basis point scenario is a decrease of $15.0 million or 10.8%. As a significant portion of the Company’s deposits remain in noninterest-bearing accounts or low-cost deposit accounts, in a downrate scenario, these rates would not change or only change slightly. However, floating rate earning assets (loans and deposits) would reprice downward more than the decline in floating rate liabilities. All interest rate shock scenarios are within internal policy guidelines.

Management also models other interest rate scenarios that do not assume a simultaneous and parallel shock of all points on the yield curve including short-term and long-term rates. One of these alternate rate change scenarios uses rate forecasts from a known economist over the next twelve months which reflect overnight rates moving differently than longer-term treasury rates. Using this forecast of interest rates, net interest income models close to the base case scenario, indicating that based on a most likely interest rate forecast the Company’s net interest income is expected to be close to the same

level modeled in an unchanged rate environment. This use of a most likely interest rate forecast suggests that we are less sensitive to interest rate changes, when compared to an interest rate shock. Management believes modeling alternative scenarios is an important part of interest rate risk management given the current shape of the yield curve, with an inversion between the overnight rate and five-year rate. In an inverted yield curve, shocking all points on the yield curve in parallel tends to overstate the sensitivity to a change in rate. Thus, management has isolated the parts of the yield curve its balance sheet is most sensitive to and is strategically focused on those parts.

As the Company utilizes a dynamic balance sheet for its interest rate modeling, the Company also models using a static, or no-growth, balance sheet to validate the interest rate sensitivity in the dynamic balance sheet model and noted no significant changes in interest rate risk outside of the base case. In addition, the Company runs stress scenarios for stresses to average deposits, higher deposit betas than the base case, deposit migration from low cost to high cost deposits, and both higher and slower prepayment speeds. The most significant impact to net interest income in the net interest income simulations is the reduction or migration of low-cost deposits.