Loan Portfolio and Composition
During the third quarter of 2020, gross loans grew to $2.45 billion, an increase of 1.0% from $2.43 billion as of June 30, 2020, and an increase of 64.9% from $1.49 billion as of September 30, 2019. Our loan pipeline continues to build back to pre-COVID-19 levels. We continue to see some loan growth, but we do not expect to see our pre-COVID-19 loan growth until uncertainty surrounding the effects of the global pandemic and the timeline of a vaccine lessens. However, we are committed to lending in these times and are in regular contact with prospective borrowers regarding future plans and funding needs.
Many of the industries in our loan portfolio that we have been monitoring have begun to show signs of improvement. Specifically, we expect restaurants, which comprise $33.7 million, or 1.4%, of our loan portfolio, to benefit from recently opened dining rooms and an easing of occupancy restrictions. Additionally, retail strip centers, which comprise $164.7 million, or 6.7%, of our loan portfolio, appear to be benefiting from increased retail sales and movements to support local small businesses. We will continue to monitor trends in these portfolio segments, but our primary short-term focus is on the hospitality segment, which is still under stress as business and leisure travel has yet to return to pre-COVID-19 levels. At September 30, 2020, our total exposure in the hospitality segment consisted of $97.6 million, or 4.0%, of our loan portfolio. Oil and gas prices appear to have stabilized, however, we continue to closely monitoring our exposure in this segment which at September 30, 2020 was $66.5 million, or 2.7%, of our loan portfolio.
Asset Quality
Asset quality continues to remain strong in the third quarter of 2020. We have enhanced monitoring processes throughout the Bank to quickly identify problem loans and/or negative industry trends in order to ensure timely downgrades, charge-offs, and qualitative factor adjustments. Based on the results of these enhanced processes, we are pleased that downgrades and increases in impaired loans appear to be due to borrower specific events and not systemic weakness. The provision for loan losses recorded for the third quarter of 2020 was $2.8 million, which served to increase the allowance to $12.2 million, or 0.50% of the $2.45 billion in gross loans outstanding as of September 30, 2020. The coverage ratio on the organic portfolio was 0.94% of the $1.29 billion in organic loans outstanding, excluding PPP loans which are fully guaranteed and not reserved for as of September 30, 2020. The majority of the provision expense for the third quarter of 2020 related to annual updates to the allowance model as opposed to a deterioration in credit quality or an increase in impaired loan balances. As an emerging growth company, we have opted to delay the adoption of CECL until 2023. Under our current incurred loss model, our reserves are based upon an estimate of loss events which have occurred as opposed to forecasting future loss events.
Nonperforming loans to loans held for investment ratio continues to remain low as of September 30, 2020 at 0.36% compared to 0.31% as of June 30, 2020, and 0.61% as of September 30, 2019. Annualized net charge-offs were 8 basis points for the third quarter of 2020, compared to 17 basis points for the third quarter of 2019.
As of September 30, 2020, the vast majority of our approved COVID-19 related loan relief requests, including periods of interest-only payments, full payment deferrals, and escrow deferrals associated with loans with an unpaid principal balance of approximately $520.6 million. Approximately 81% of the approved deferrals have exited the 90 day deferral period, and 98.5% of these borrowers have resumed regularly scheduled payments.
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