Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:WASH) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 24, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Elizabeth Eckel - Execuitve Vice President, Chief Marketing & Corporate Communications Officer

Ned Handy - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Ron Ohsberg - Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Mary Noons - Incoming President and Chief Operating Officer

Conference Call Participants

Mark Fitzgibbon - Piper Sandler

Damon DelMonte - KBW

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Q1 2023 Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Lauren and I'll be your coordinating your call today. There'll be an opportunity for questions after the end of the presentation. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand you over to your host, Elizabeth Eckel, Execuitve Vice President, Chief Marketing & Corporate Communications Officer to begin. Elizabeth, please go ahead.

Elizabeth Eckel

Thank you, Lauren. Good morning, and welcome to Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc.'s first quarter 2023 conference call.

Joining us this morning are members of Washington Trust's executive team, Ned Handy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Ron Ohsberg, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Mary Noons, who is our incoming President and COO, who will be succeeding Mark Gim, who has tiring effective with tomorrow's Annual Meeting and Bill Wray, 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 press release, which was issued earlier this morning, as well as other documents that are filed with the SEC. All of these materials and other public filings are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.washtrust.com. Washington Trust trades on NASDAQ under the symbol WASH.

I'm pleased to introduce today's host, Washington Trust's Chairman and CEO, Ned Handy.

Ned Handy

Thank you, Beth, and good morning and thank you for joining our first quarter call. We appreciate your time and your interest in Washington Trust. I'll provide some comments about the first quarter, as well as some thoughts on the current environment. Ron Ohsberg will then discuss our financial performance and afterward Mary Noons and Bill Wray will join us and will answer any questions you may have about the quarter.

As Ron will walk through in detail, our first quarter was impacted by the combination of steep interest rate increases and extreme deposit competition. Given the strength of our customer relationships, we were able to keep deposit levels intact, but we experienced both product mix changes and beta increases across all products. On a positive note, we've maintained a relatively low level of uninsured and unprotected deposits, which Ron will detail in his comments.