American Savings Bank posted a solid second quarter and said it is business as usual as it waits to see whether the state Public Utilities Commission approves a Florida utility’s takeover of parent Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.

The state’s third-largest bank, which would be spun off as a stand-alone company if NextEra Energy’s $4.3 billion acquisition can overcome Gov. David Ige’s and others’ opposition, boosted net income 11.4 percent on the strength of higher mortgage banking income and increased fees on deposit products.

“We operate very independently and have for a very long time, so (the NextEra deal) really has no effect on day-to-day operations,” American Savings President and CEO Rich Wacker said Thursday. “We do have a parallel effort inside preparing for separation and putting in place some of the things that a holding company does for us like SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) reports and shareholder services, but those things happen around the main business of the bank. For us it’s mainly business as usual and following our strategy.”

Wacker said he’s looking forward to the deal going through and the bank becoming independent next year for the first time since 1988.

“I think it’s a very good deal for Hawaiian Electric, a good deal for Hawaii and a good deal for shareholders,” he said. “The spinoff is really good for the bank, and we’re pretty committed to it.”

Ige and various groups have opposed the deal. Ige said recently that the shift of control to a board of directors 5,000 miles away and NextEra’s failure to commit to the state’s clean-energy goals were major concerns for the state.

However, Wacker said that “when all is said and done, on the merits it should go through. That’s our plan.”

American Savings, which is sorting through bids to relocate its headquarters from downtown to Chinatown, boosted its net income last quarter to $12.9 million from $11.5 million in the year-earlier period.

“It was a good quarter,” Wacker said. “We’re continuing to do good loan originations across the bank. Like most banks in town, the mortgage market has been strong this year as interest rates dip.”

Loans rose 4 percent to $4.46 billion from the year-earlier period but are up only an annualized 1 percent since the beginning of the year. However, Wacker said he expects loans to meet the bank’s target of mid-single-digit loan growth for the year. He said the bank’s loan portfolio would have been much larger if it had not sold loans into the secondary market. Those sales increased the bank’s mortgage income more than eightfold to $2.1 million from $246,000 in the year-earlier quarter.

“What you see is strong production of new mortgages,” Wacker said. “We always retain the servicing relationships with the customers, but we have two choices about the investment in the mortgage. We either put it on our balance sheet and it adds to loan growth, or we sell it to the secondary market. This year, since the fixed interest rates are so low and we’d have more risk as interest rates rise, we’ve been selling most of the investment in the mortgages.”

Mortgage banking income, along with $5.4 million in fees related to deposit products, helped boost American Savings’ noninterest income 19 percent to $16.4 million from $13.8 million in the year-earlier quarter. Deposits rose 6.2 percent to $4.8 billion.

Net interest income, the spread between loan and deposit rates, increased 5.5 percent to $46.6 million from $44.1 million. The bank’s net interest margin slipped to 3.52 percent from 3.55 percent.

Assets rose 6.6 percent to $5.78 billion.