Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc.

I will be your operator today. If participants need assistance during the call at any time, please press star zero. Participants interested in asking a question at the end of the call should press star one to join the queue. Today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Elizabeth B. Eccle, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing and Corporate Communications Officer. Ms. Eccle.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Washington Trust Bancorp Bank's conference call for the fourth quarter in year-end 2023. Joining us this morning are members of Washington Trust Executive Team, Ned Handy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mary Nunes, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Ron Osbers, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, and Bill Ray, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer. Please note that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements and actual results could differ materially from what is discussed on today's call. Our complete safe harbor statement is contained in our earnings release, which was issued yesterday, as well as other documents that we file with the SEC. All of these materials and public filings are available on our investor relations website at ir.washtrust.com. Washington Trust trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol WASH. I'm pleased now to introduce Washington Trust host, Washington Trust Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ned Handy.

Thank you, Beth. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us for our call. We definitely appreciate your time and interest. And I know we have a busy morning this morning, so I'm going to be fairly quick in my comments. Then Ron will dive into the fourth quarter performance, and then Mary Nunes and Bill Ray will join us for Q&A. We continue to be focused on ensuring a durable balance sheet that is positioned to take advantage of opportunity as external conditions improve. We're concentrating on capital, credit, deposits, and expense management, all to prepare for what we believe will be a steadily improving external environment throughout 2024. In that way, we'll remain positioned to resume growth of our long-term focused, profitable, relationship-driven company. On the capital front, we've slowed asset growth and are managing our funding base and expenses to build earnings capacity. Our lenders are primarily focused on managing existing credit, raising deposits, and attending to the needs of our all-important customer base. We're emphasizing deposit growth and are looking particularly at deposit-oriented segments of the economy. We've made some technology investments to supplement our deposit growth strategies, including the addition of an omnichannel automated deposit account opening tool. Our deposit franchise remains strong, although understandably more expensive. We remain committed to incremental branching and are pleased that our three newest branches opened within the past two years have almost $130 million in aggregate deposits. Our average branch size remains above 200 million. We held in-market deposits steady in the fourth quarter in a very competitive landscape, and through our continued efforts and focus, we will drive growth in future periods. While there are signs of a stabilizing economy, It is difficult to gain short-term certainty about rates, inflation, the credit cycle, and other aspects of the general economy. Our focus is on what we can control and on protecting and enhancing our customer base and the experience they have with us. Included in our expense focus is a detailed look at our real estate footprint, both leased and owned. We will right-size our footprint and look at appropriate ways to unlock capital and reduce expenses where able. Our employees always provide reason to be optimistic, both according to our customers and reflected in the recognition we've received from Newsweek, Forbes, the American Banker, and Blue Cross as a great and healthy place to work. In summary, we are positioned to ensure stability and to regain our customary strength in the quarters ahead. We have a strong and dedicated team, a known brand, very strong credit statistics, sufficient capital, and an appropriate short-term strategy to weather the current challenges and to enhance franchise value. At this point, I'll turn it over to Ron for a more detailed review of the quarter.