Alerus Financial in Grand Forks, N.D., restructured its securities portfolio.
The company said in a press release that it sold $360 million of securities, or more than two-thirds of its available-for-sale securities, at a $68.5 million pretax loss.
Alerus reinvested the proceeds into higher-yielding securities.
“Our focus in 2025 was to lower risk and improve returns without compromising our long-term strategy,” Katie Lorenson, the company’s president and CEO, said in the release.
“In the back half of the year, we executed a purposeful deleveraging plan – actively managing loan paydowns and pruning marginal credits – to strengthen our balance sheet and improve our flexibility,” she added. “As capital accreted and interest rate dynamics improved, we took disciplined action with our available-for-sale portfolio to better align assets with our organic growth expectations.”