HERITAGE FINANCIAL CORP /WA/

Shareholders and the Board of Directors of Heritage Financial Corporation

Olympia, Washington

Opinions on the Financial Statements and Internal Control over Financial Reporting

We have audited the accompanying Consolidated Statements of Financial Condition of Heritage Financial Corporation and Subsidiaries (the "Company") as of December 31, 2025 and 2024, the related Consolidated Statements of Income, Comprehensive Income (Loss), Stockholders’ Equity, and Cash Flows, for each of the years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2025, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the "financial statements"). We also have audited the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025, based on criteria established in the 2013 Internal Control – Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (“COSO”).

In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2025 and 2024, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2025 in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. Also in our opinion, the Company maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025, based on criteria established in the 2013 Internal Control – Integrated Framework issued by COSO.

Basis for Opinions

The Company’s management is responsible for these financial statements, for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting, and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, included in the accompanying Management’s Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements and an opinion on the Company’s internal control over financial reporting based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) ("PCAOB") and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud, and whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects.

Our audits of the financial statements included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. Our audit of internal control over financial reporting included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, and testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk. Our audits also included performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinions.

Definition and Limitations of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

A company’s internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company’s internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the company’s assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.

Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Allowance for Credit Losses on Loans – Qualitative Allowance

As described in Note (1) Description of Business, Basis of Presentation, Significant Accounting Policies and Recently Issued Accounting Pronouncements and Note (4) Allowance for Credit Losses on Loans to the consolidated financial statements, the Company’s consolidated allowance for credit losses (“ACL”) on loans was $52.6 million at December 31, 2025 and provision for credit losses on loans was $1.5 million for the year then ended. The evaluation of ACL on loans is inherently subjective as it requires estimates that are susceptible to significant revision as more information becomes available. While management utilizes its best judgment and information available to recognize estimated losses on loans, future additions to the allowance may be necessary based on further declines in local and national economic conditions.

The Company primarily uses a historic loss, open pool credit loss methodology to calculate the ACL on loans, which the Company has applied to identified loan segments with similar risk characteristics. The allowance for collectively evaluated loans is comprised of the baseline loss allowance, the macroeconomic allowance, and the qualitative allowance. The baseline loss allowance begins with the baseline loss rates calculated using average quarterly historical loss information for an economic cycle.

The baseline loss rates are applied to each loan’s estimated cash flows over the life of the loan under the remaining life method to determine the baseline loss estimate for each loan. The Company uses macroeconomic scenarios from independent third parties. These scenarios are based on past events, current conditions, the likelihood of future events occurring and include consideration of the forecasted direction of the economic and business environment and its likely impact on the estimated allowance as compared to the historical losses over the reasonable and supportable time frame. Management also considers other qualitative risk factors to further adjust the estimated ACL on loans through a qualitative allowance. Qualitative adjustments primarily relate to certain segments of the loan portfolio deemed by management to be of a higher-risk profile where management believes the quantitative component of the Company’s ACL model may not have fully captured the associated impact to the ACL. Qualitative adjustments also relate to heightened uncertainty as to future macroeconomic conditions and the related impact on the loan segments.

The subjective nature of the qualitative risk factor adjustments requires significant judgment by management both in the selection of qualitative factors to apply, if any, and the magnitude of the adjustment once selected. The audit procedures over the qualitative allowance utilized in management’s methodology involved especially challenging and subjective auditor judgment. Therefore, we identified auditing the ACL qualitative allowance as a critical audit matter.

Our audit procedures to address this critical audit matter primarily included the following:

•Tested the operating effectiveness of controls over application of the qualitative factors, including:

◦The Company’s ACL committee’s review and approval of the qualitative risk factor adjustments used to derive the qualitative allowance for the ACL on loans, and the relevance and reliability of the data used therein.

◦Management’s controls over the completeness and accuracy of the data utilized in the qualitative allowance for the ACL on loans.

•Substantively tested management’s application of the macroeconomic sensitive model and related factors including:

◦Evaluated the reasonableness of management’s judgments used in the determination of the qualitative risk factor adjustments by loan segment and the resulting allocation to the qualitative allowance for the ACL on loans.

◦Evaluated the reliability and relevance of data used as a basis for the qualitative risk factor adjustments.

◦Tested the completeness and accuracy of the data utilized in management’s ACL methodology to derive the qualitative allowance for the ACL on loans.

/s/Crowe LLP

We have served as the Company's auditor since 2012.

Sacramento, California

February 27, 2026