M & T Bank
Q1 2022 Earnings Call
Apr 20, 2022, 11:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Welcome to the M&T Bank's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Brian Klock, head of markets and investor relations. Please go ahead.
Brian Klock -- Senior Vice President, Head of Markets and Investor Relations
Thank you, Gretchen and good morning. I'd like to thank everyone for participating in M&T's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call, both by telephone and through the webcast. If you have not read the earnings release we issued this morning, you may access it, along with the financial tables and schedules, from our website, www.mtb.com, and by clicking on the investor relations link and then on the events and presentations link. Also, before we start, I'd like to mention that today's presentation may contain forward-looking information.
Cautionary statements about this information as well as reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings release materials as well as our SEC filings and other investor materials. These materials are all available on our investor relations web page, and we encourage the participants to refer to them for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and risk factors. These statements speak only as of the date made, and M&T undertakes no obligation to update them. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our chief financial officer, Darren King.
Darren King -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. As we reflect on the past quarter, it was an eventful one. First off, we were pleased to have closed the acquisition of People's United Financial on April 1, and to welcome our new colleagues, customers and shareholders to the M&T family. We're excited to turn our complete focus to successfully integrating People's United, of course, not losing sight of the tenets that define M&T, delivering superior customer service, offering rewarding careers for our colleagues, engaging in the communities we call home, and providing top quartile long-term returns to shareholders.
We plan on completing the systems conversion in the third quarter of this year. Subsequent to our January earnings call, the outlook for interest rates has changed materially, low levels of unemployment and continued supply chain disruptions exacerbated by the situation in Ukraine have pushed inflation to levels not seen since the early 1980s. Interest rates began to rise even before the Federal Reserve raised its Fed funds target in late March, and the forward curve anticipates additional hikes coming more quickly than we anticipated in January. The change in rate environment created an opportunity for us to deploy excess cash into investment securities at a faster pace than we previously outlined and to restart our interest rate hedging program.