Hello, and welcome to the annual meeting of shareholders of Atlantic Union Bankshares Corporation. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. It is my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Ron Tillett, Chairman of the Board of Atlantic Union Bankshares Corporation. Chairman Tillett, the floor is yours.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Ron Tillett, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Atlantic Union Bankshares Corporation. I would like to welcome each of you and hereby call to order the company's annual meeting of shareholders. As you know, today we are holding this virtual meeting on the Internet due to the continued public health concerns regarding COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you very much to those who are participating in our virtual meeting online today. I hope that you will find this to be an informative meeting. In accordance with the company's bylaws, as Chairman of the Board, I will act as chairman of the meeting. The company's general counsel and corporate secretary, Rachael Lape, will act as secretary of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted in accordance with the rules of conduct, which are available on the meeting site. First, we have a few housekeeping matters.
Each of you should have access to the meeting agenda, which is located in the Documents tab in the upper right corner of the meeting screen. After an overview of the meeting logistics and introductions, we will first conduct the formal business of the meeting, and I will give shareholders an opportunity to submit any final votes online. After the polls close, and while the votes are being tabulated, I will provide a brief report from the board, followed by the announcement of the preliminary voting results. Then we will hear a report from management on operating results. Following management's report, shareholders will be given an opportunity to submit questions for management. As a shareholder, if you entered your control number when you logged in to the meeting, you may submit questions online by clicking on the Q&A icon in the upper right corner of the meeting screen.
After management's report, management will address questions from shareholders regarding the company. I call your attention to the rules of conduct available on the meeting site, which provide greater detail regarding the scope of questions that are appropriate and may be addressed at the meeting. Thank you for your cooperation. The Board of Directors fixed March 9th, 2022 as the record date for determining shareholders of record entitled to vote at this meeting. The notice of annual meeting, the proxy statement, and the company's 2021 annual report were furnished electronically with the mailing of the notice of internet availability, which was mailed on March 22nd, 2022 to all shareholders of record at that date. Copies of these documents will be filed with the minutes of this meeting.
Copies of all of the proxy materials, including the notice of Internet availability, the proxy statement, and the 2021 annual report, are available now online in the Documents tab in the upper right corner of the meeting screen. In accordance with Virginia law, a list of shareholders of record as of the record date is available on the meeting site and may be inspected during the meeting by any shareholder. The minutes of the May 4, 2021 annual meeting are also available on the meeting site for inspection by any shareholder who would like to see them. The corporate secretary will file the minutes of the 2021 annual meeting as presented. The Board has appointed Elisa Zegarra as Inspector of Election for this meeting and any adjournment of the meeting. Ms. Zegarra is a representative of our transfer agent, Computershare. Ms.
Zegarra has signed an oath of office that will be filed with the minutes of the meeting. The inspector is here to determine whether a quorum is present, to ascertain the validity of proxies, to tabulate the votes, and to certify the count to all proxies. The Inspector of Election has advised me that shares of our common stock representing more than 86% of the issued and outstanding shares entitled to vote at this meeting are present or represented by proxy. A report of the Inspector of Election to that effect will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. As a result, we have a quorum and can proceed with the business of the meeting. I would like to take a moment to outline the voting procedures. Online voting is currently open.
Any shareholder who has already voted and does not want to change or revoke their vote need not take any further action. If you have not voted or wish to change or revoke your vote, you may do so now by clicking on the Vote icon in the upper right corner of the meeting screen. Online voting will remain open until I am finished describing the formal items of business on the agenda. At that point, I will officially close the polls for voting and online voting will be closed. I would like to introduce the company's directors now. In addition to myself, all the company's other directors are in attendance virtually and some in person in our meeting room as well, including John C.
Asbury, the company's Chief Executive Officer, Pat Corbin, Russ Ellett, Greg Fisher, who will retire effective at this meeting, Dan Hanson, Jan Hoover, Patrick McCann, who is the Vice Chairman of the Board, Tom Rohman, Linda Schreiner, Tom Snead, Keith Wampler, and Blair Wimbush. I would like to thank our directors for their dedication and service to the company. Mike Williams, Andrea Stone, and Lakshmi Alagappan, representatives from Ernst & Young, the company's registered public accounting firm for 2021, are also in attendance online today and are available to respond to any questions you may have during the question and answer session of the meeting. Thank you all for attending our meeting today. There are three formal items of business for shareholder action that were listed in the notice of this meeting mailed to shareholders.
The first item of business is the election of nine directors to serve one-year terms until the company's 2023 annual meeting of shareholders. The nine director nominees named in the proxy statement standing for re-election are John Asbury, Patrick Corbin, Daniel Hanson, Jan Hoover, Tom Rohman, Tom Snead, Ron Tillett, Keith Wampler, and Blair Wimbush. Additional information about each nominee is contained in your proxy materials, and the Board unanimously recommended a vote for each nominee. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2022. Based on the recommendation of the audit committee, the Board of directors has reappointed Ernst & Young as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year- 2022 and is requesting shareholder ratification at this meeting.
The third item of business is to hold an advisory, non-binding vote on the compensation of the company's named executive officers as described in our proxy statement. The company's executive compensation program is designed to align executive pay with the company's financial performance and the creation of sustainable long-term shareholder value. The Board unanimously recommends that the shareholders approve the following resolution. Resolved, that the shareholders of Atlantic Union Bankshares Corporation approve, on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the compensation discussion and analysis, the tabular disclosure regarding named executive officer compensation, and the accompanying narrative disclosure in the proxy statement. As there have been no director nominations or other proposals properly made by shareholders pursuant to our bylaws, this concludes all items on the agenda for shareholder action at this meeting.
Any shareholder who has not yet voted or wishes to change their vote should do so now by clicking on the Vote icon in the upper right corner of the meeting screen. Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via the telephone or the internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. We will pause for just a moment to allow shareholders to submit their votes. Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls closed for the 2022 annual meeting of the shareholders. This concludes the formal business of today's meeting. The inspector of election will now finish tabulating votes and provide me with a preliminary vote tabulation when it is ready. This past year, we lost a longstanding member of the Atlantic Union Bankshares family, Taylor Murphy.
Taylor served as a member of the Board of Directors of the corporation and the bank beginning in 1993, when the company acquired Northern Neck State Bank, and on whose Board of Directors, Taylor had served since 1966. He dedicated his time and energy to this company and our predecessor firms for 55 years. Taylor was a man of honor and a man of commitment and dedication to his family, the Virginia General Assembly, Atlantic Union, the Monacan Foundation, and the entire Northern Neck community. He will be missed for his gentle, informative, supportive, and friendly advice to all of those on this Board. He will be missed greatly. Alan Myers retired from the Atlantic Union Bankshares and Atlantic Union Bank's board in February 2022. Alan had served on the Board of Directors since 2014, following Atlantic Union's acquisition of Stellar One.
Alan served on the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, the Risk Committee, and the Trust Committee during his time. We wish him and his family the best in his retirement from this Board. Lastly, Greg Fisher is attending his last annual meeting of the Atlantic Union Bankshares board as a member of our directors. Greg will be retiring following this meeting. Greg joined the Board in 2014, along with several others, following the acquisition of StellarOne. Greg served as the chairman of the Trust Committee and is a member of the Risk Committee. His leadership and steadfast commitment to Atlantic Union will be missed, and on behalf of the entire Board, Greg, we wish you the best upon your retirement from board service. We thank all of our current and past board members for everything they have done in supporting Atlantic Union Bankshares Corporation and our shareholders.
I understand that all votes have been counted, and based on the preliminary review of the votes cast, the Inspector of Elections has informed me that all nominees for director have been elected. The appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the independent auditor for 2022 has been ratified, and the resolution regarding executive compensation has been approved. The final tabulation report will be available online in the next few days, and the final results of this meeting will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The final inspector's report will be filed with the minutes of this meeting as well. On behalf of all of the company's directors, I thank you, our shareholders, for your support and for the opportunity to serve in this capacity. We take very seriously our accountability to you, and we appreciate your support.
Now, I invite John Asbury, the company's President and CEO, Maria Tedesco, who is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Union Bank, and Rob Gorman, the company's CFO, to provide their report on operating results. I'll now turn it over to John, Maria, and Rob.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I guess for the third year in a row, I have to begin by saying I hope this is the last virtual shareholder meeting, so we will certainly be hoping for the best. What I would like to do this morning is to begin with just a brief overview of your company, provide some highlights from the year 2021, and then I'll turn the conversation over to President and Chief Operating Officer, Maria Tedesco, and she'll take you into more details on the bank's operations. I do want to comment on Maria's promotion to Chief Operating Officer, in addition to serving as president. Practically, what this means is that what we would refer to as the whole end-to-end customer experience is under Maria's oversight.
I cannot think of a better leader to be overseeing this than she, and I think that should be evident as you hear from her in her comments shortly. Following Maria, Chief Financial Officer Rob Gorman will provide a financial update, and then we'll end with any questions that you may have for us. Let me begin with just a quick reminder of the franchise today. Obviously, for those who have been longtime shareholders, you're very familiar with our story, but I just want to point out that as you look at Atlantic Union Bankshares today, you know, this is a $20 billion Virginia-based bank, the first statewide independent bank in Virginia in over 20 years. This is a powerful franchise. It is very uncommon to see a bank of this size be principally a one-state bank.
Now, we have evolved beyond Virginia, of course. We have operations in Maryland and North Carolina, which are more limited. We're also very proud of the Atlantic Union Equipment Finance division, which is Atlanta-based, that we have built and has been very successful over the last two years. This is a uniquely valuable franchise. We are Virginia's bank. There is no other. The only statewide independent Virginia-based bank. Moving on. The reason why this matters is if you look at depository market share, Virginia is relatively concentrated, and you see this on the left-hand side of the presentation. Truist, 24% depository market share. Wells Fargo, 16%. Bank of America, just under 11%, and then Atlantic Union Bankshares at 7%. So 51% of all deposits in Virginia by this measure are really sitting at Truist, Wells Fargo, Bank of America.
Our philosophy from the beginning of the transformation that we've been through is you fish where the fish are, and most of the fish are sitting in the hands of the big three, so we are providing the clear alternative to these large banks that dominate depository market share. Of course, we compete against all banks of all sizes, including the smallest. It's very important that we have the capabilities to be able to face off for the segments that we choose to compete in with the big guys, to be an alternative to them while still maintaining the local market knowledge, the responsiveness, the caring and the feel of the community bank, which we have always been known for. We have grown up, and we are more capable than we used to be.
Also striking is on the right-hand side of this slide, these are the Virginia-based banks, and you can see that, Atlantic Union Bank stands out, you know, noticeably. This has been our strategy to bring back to Virginia a statewide independent bank, large enough and capable enough of providing an alternative to these big three, but at the same time, never forgetting our roots all the way back to our early days in Bowling Green, being accountable to these markets, responsive to our clients. Moving on to the next slide. Why is it a good thing to be the Virginia Bank? Because Virginia is one of the most attractive markets in the United States.
I won't take you through all of the details here, but I do know that people are often surprised when I point out a few of these items, that the household income in Virginia is 11th in the United States. We're the 12th most populous state in the nation. Our gross domestic product is 13th. Interestingly, we have the 7th most Fortune 500 companies of any state in the union, eclipsing Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Connecticut, North Carolina. It is a wonderful place to do business, and we are proud to be Virginia's bank, and we feel that we have a very long runway ahead of us to continue to grow this core franchise here on our own turf.
We're leveraging our operations in Maryland, North Carolina, our equipment finance division, and specialty capabilities such as the government contract finance unit, which is based in Reston, to extend beyond that footprint. It is a good place to be. Continuing the conversation in terms of the desirability of the marketplace here in our home state, this is a really interesting perspective. At the top of this slide, what you're seeing are the top 10 counties in the United States based on median household income. Take note that four of the top 10 are in Virginia, more than any other state. Number one and number two, Loudoun County, Falls Church, are Virginia, of course. Also, I'll call out second to the right-hand side of this slide at the top, Howard County, Maryland. That is just west of Baltimore.
That is where we have our Columbia, Maryland operations based, and so we do business. That means that we are operating in five of the 10 most affluent markets in the United States, four of which are actually in Virginia. I think that's a point that is not commonly understood and should not be underestimated. Looking at the bottom of the slide, this is referencing the top 10 counties and cities, as the case may be, since we have independent cities in Virginia, based on population growth, five-year projected population growth, and we are in nine of the 10 fastest growing counties and cities in Virginia. Again, a wonderful positioning to be.
You can see why we like keeping the franchise tight and dense and compact and making sure that we make the most out of the opportunity here in Virginia, extending with our other market locations, as I referenced before. I will not go through the markets in any great level of detail, but the key point on this slide is simply that we are in all the Virginia major markets. It's also interesting to point out that if you look at the data, looking at regional banks, which we would define as the banks of $100 billion and less, we have a number one or number two market share in all of these major markets.
The two where we are number two would be Virginia Beach, Norfolk, which is the greater Hampton Roads, as we Virginians call it, and Northern Virginia, and we have the number one regional bank market share in all of the other markets. This is a uniquely valuable franchise. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to replicate this franchise today. We're in a good footing to make the most out of it. Moving on to the next slide. This is simply an overview. We wanted to share some details in terms of the composition of our lending portfolio. Most of the income of the bank, of course, comes from lending. What's interesting to me about this is the progression that we've made in diversifying our loan portfolio.
I have now been chief executive for five and a half years, having joined the company in late 2016. One of the very intentional strategies has been to diversify the loan portfolio so that we are not overly reliant on commercial real estate finance. That is something we're good at. We still do. We still like it, but we've worked very hard to build out other forms of lending, particularly to commercial businesses. C&I means commercial and industrial, and that would be lending to operating companies that employ people and do things and have products and services, not just financing real estate. Owner-occupied real estate is a loan to an operating company, on a building that they own. The source of repayment is cash flow from the business, not rents on an apartment building or a warehouse or something like that.
Big picture, we are still, this largest category of our lending is still commercial real estate at 41% of the total. If you include non-owner-occupied real estate and construction, 34% would be other forms of commercial, and this is a good place to be. With passage of time, we expect that the commercial lending categories will continue to grow. We're obviously interested in consumer lending as well, but we will have more opportunity on the commercial lending space. On the right-hand side, we're showing the granularity of the commercial real estate categories, and the message here is simply it's very well diversified by property type. Good place to be. Asset quality, by the way, is a hallmark of this company. Last year, net charge-offs were 1 basis point, 0.01% for the entire year.
In my 35-year banking career, I've never seen anything like that. Did not think it was even possible. Asset quality has always been a strength of the organization, but that has really been a phenomenal performance during this disruption. Moving on to slide 11. This is the crown jewel of the franchise, and that's our depository base. If you look at the right-hand side from using the clock metaphor from noon to call it seven o'clock, what you can see is that non-interest bearing deposits and NOW accounts, which is a banking term for interest-bearing checking, that is 58% of the deposit portfolio. 58% of all deposits are transaction accounts. That is a wonderfully granular deposit base that is very stable. We are not interested in simply offering, attracting deposits through high rate strategies.
We want to be the primary bank for our customers. We want their checking accounts. We want them transacting on us. We want full relationships. This is a one of the more attractive depository profiles that you would find for a smaller bank like us. It is the crown jewel of the franchise. It's not to be underestimated. Slide 12. This is our value proposition to the shareholder. It's an attractive financial profile. Leading regional presence, as I've been describing. A very strong financial institution. Rob Gorman will take you through some of the capital strength of the bank. Very good growth potential for the reasons I described earlier and peer leading performance. This franchise is too valuable to be an average performer. That is not an option for us. You know, we must be a differentiated financial performer.
This is the shareholder perspective in terms of why we think this is a good investment for the shareholder. On to the next slide. The stakeholders of the corporation are more than just the shareholders. The way we think about this is it's a very delicate balancing act that has to be maintained. Trade-offs have to be made. We are accountable to our customers, to our communities that we serve, our regulators, being a highly regulated industry, the people who work here, and of course, the shareholders. We are well aware that we cannot optimize one at the expense of the others or bad things will happen over time. We're always managing a very delicate balancing act to make sure that we are delivering for all of our stakeholders and not just a few. Core values are slide 14. This is something we're very proud of.
The core values of this corporation are caring, courageous, committed. We went through a process, we the executive leaders, last year, having reflected on all that we've been through over the course of the pandemic, asking ourselves questions such as, "What have we become?" And how can we protect and preserve just this incredible, thing that has happened as the bank responded, rose to the needs of its communities and our customers, the most spectacular example of that having been our outperformance with the Paycheck Protection Program. Maria Tedesco will comment on that later. We wanted to really ask ourselves, you know, is there anything that we've learned here, and should we think differently about the bank's core values? The core values, we had six core values previously, all made sense.
They had been around for decades, but we thought it was time to take a fresh look. What you see here is nothing aspirational that we hope to one day be. What you see is what we concluded based on observation. That which really stood out to us over the course of the pandemic and just the enormous effort that was put forth by our people as they responded to meet the needs of our customers and our communities and each other, and frankly, our shareholders. Caring, courageous, committed. That really defines the culture of the organization. Culture being a reference to how it is that we work together and interact as a team. This is something we're very proud of. This is something we, the leaders, will fight hard to protect.
Also want to call out our diversity, equity, and inclusion statement at the bottom of this slide, something we feel very strongly about, something we are vocal about. Atlantic Union Bank embraces diversity of thought and identity to better serve our stakeholders and achieve our purpose. We commit to cultivating a welcoming workplace where teammate and customer perspectives are valued and respected, recognizing that, we are a bank for all, not just a bank for certain people. This is something we feel very strongly about and we are committed to, and you will continue to see us make great strides to drive our diversity, equity, and inclusion effort forward. I'll end my comments with, a few highlights of 2021 as well as an outlook for the coming year, or the current year, I should say, now that we're well into 2022.
Very good news to see the return to loan growth. In the fourth quarter of last year, after having seen very sluggish demand for lending across the board, be it consumer or business, mainly due to massive liquidity, suppressed demand, et cetera, we really saw lending growth come back, particularly as business sales increased, capital investment was made. We think about loan growth each quarter on an annualized basis. If you took the quarterly results and annualized it, we were at 11.7% annualized growth for Q4. We were at 10.8% annualized growth for Q1. That was the best annualized lending growth rate I've seen in my five and a half years at this company. We are on a growth footing. Asset quality was impeccable, as I indicated.
Net charge-offs for the first quarter of 2022 were zero. We are positioned for the long term. We have made some difficult decisions in this company as customer behaviors have changed over the course of the pandemic. Expectations, I call it the Amazonification of America. Our customers expect to bank when, where, and how they want, you know, their decision, which means we have to offer better technology, more digital and online banking options than ever before. The fact is we're seeing less usage of the branch network. The branches still matter, but there are fewer of them, and there are fewer transactions going on and more qualitative conversations. We did rationalize the branch network.
We did it very thoughtfully in order to extract costs from the organization, provide a more efficient network for our customers, and most importantly, be able to afford the investments that we've made in our technology and digital products so that we can serve our customers 24/7, as the saying goes. Differentiated client experience is very much a part of who we are. We have continued to make progress on the digital offerings, as I indicated, and we continue to win lots of awards and recognitions for the fine work that our people do. Maria will comment on that in a moment.
I also mentioned early in my comments about some changes to the organizational design, where the technology and operations group now report to President and Chief Operating Officer Maria Tedesco, in addition to the business units that serve our wealth management teams, our clients, our business clients, our customers, our consumer clients. It's all very much tied together so that we have an end-to-end view of the entire customer experience and that we're able to optimize for the customer need. I think of this as pushing the center of gravity of the organization closer to the customer. Lastly, capitalizing on strategic opportunities. The organic performance of the bank, which simply means making the most of what we have right here, right now, is the single most important thing we have to do.
Meanwhile, we continue to make investments in finance, financial technology, to actually include some financial technology funds, which help inform our decisions. From a mergers and acquisition outlook standpoint, it is possible we would look at additional M&A. The truth is that is not as important to us as it used to be. It is more likely than not that we'll have some opportunities that we will consider. If we do so, we will do it on a very thoughtful, selective basis as we've done in the past. That is our third highest priority, beyond organic performance and some of the technology and transformation work. With that, I would like to hand over to our President and Chief Operating Officer, Maria Tedesco.
Maria, as I set this up, I do wanna make one last comment, which is, I've been here five and a half years. You've been here three and a half years. This is the best footing I've seen the bank on, acknowledging all of the economic uncertainty, acknowledging the fact that the pandemic is still not over. The reality is that we are in a very good organic footing. We are on a growth footing, as I indicated. We will benefit from a rising rate environment. We have taken expense control actions. Credit quality is pristine. All of this should equal top-tier financial performance. With that, I'll hand it over to you.
Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. I do as well hope it is our last virtual annual meeting. As President and Chief Operating Officer, I lead the bank's operating group, includes all four lines of business, wholesale banking, consumer and business banking, home loans, and wealth management. Also under my supervision are supporting departments of enterprise operations and technology, which I think John has explained, digital strategy, enterprise experience, marketing, business line intelligence, and first line of defense. We also have a close partnership with each, of our other support areas, which include HR, finance, legal, and risk. You know, at the end of the day, Atlantic Union is just made up of people driven by our culture of excellence who partner together to help our customers bank where, when, and how they wanna do it on their terms.
We are strategic partners to our clients and have a wide variety of products and services to offer them, whether they wanna bank digitally, by phone, or in person. To go to the next slide, I wanted to provide you with just a snapshot of many of the key components of the three-year transformation journey that we've been on. I tried to capture it all on one page. It's pretty dense, but I'm gonna just talk about it from, you know, reading left to the right side of it.
We have dramatically captured and matured from a community bank with a very successful individual business units that was stood up in the three years ago to an even stronger regional bank with an enterprise approach of just offering more segmented value propositions, stronger capabilities, and better customer experiences, and the development of a new technology stack that has supported not only the past three years, but we will have a next generation for the future state. We're executing our strategic plan, providing sophisticated banking services coupled with the style of doing business that really differentiates us from our competitors. Just a couple of key things to that strategy. We've diversified our revenue streams by expanding product and service offerings. We've invested in technology and digital, as John has talked about.
These capabilities are so important, particularly when we compete against the biggest banks. Today, we can compete head to head with big banks. Key to organic growth is our ability to sort of pivot and capitalize on opportunities in the marketplace. We're extremely agile. For example, we leverage the new to bank PPP customers who came to us when their other banks let them down. Not only did we deliver a modern application process for PPP loans, but we had a deliberate plan to capture these, what I call new to bank customers in their operating accounts. We already made them happy by giving them and helping them with a very streamlined approach for their PPP loan. We wrapped our arms around them and captured much of the business and brought them over to Atlantic Union.
We also targeted displaced customers from bank consolidations and other disruptions through local direct mail, feet on the street calling efforts, and merchandising. We built our critical support functions that really are key enablers for our lines of business, and that includes our first line of defense data management, analytics, and enterprise experience. It's really, really matured the organization. Finally, we leaned heavily into a culture of excellence with continuous talent development. Now we're really preparing the bank for the next phase of transformation. We will absolutely continue organic growth with greater emphasis on customer segmentation, strong value proposition, and connected customer experiences. I agree with John, we have really good footing for the next three to five years. We have a more data-driven approach to customer experience by systematically eliminating key dissatisfiers one by one.
We listen to what our customers are saying. We prioritize what may be some of the challenges we have, and we just try to knock them off, so with that we are having more seamless customer experiences. Further building out of our talent deeper in the organization, this is important. You know, what's the next generation of bank leadership? How are we developing them? We've got a focus on that. Of course, I think we've said it before, but we wanna design a digital and technology roadmap, you know, the next generation to continue to be more nimble, customer-centric future state, and try to meet our customers' demands. How do we get there? By taking a holistic approach to our projects and initiatives to create a modern delivery system that maintains that human touch.
We're very proud of the progress we've made here, but this journey is absolutely ongoing. Each of the items shown here continue to be optimized by now purposefully building around those key customer segments and with an enterprise approach that brings greater scale and efficiencies. Here's the good news on the next slide. The market has recognized us for our progress. Our customers are voting for us. J.D. Power awarded us number one in customer satisfaction in retail banking in 2021 for the Mid-Atlantic region. We were 22 points ahead of our competition and 40 above the regional average. That is the second time in three years that we have been awarded number one customer satisfaction. In 2021, we will also have the highest satisfaction scores for mobile and online within the Mid-Atlantic region.
It just shows that our work, you know, is delivering an improved experience, and it's clearly paying off for us. Our customers are clearly sharing their satisfaction, which is demonstrated by a numerous other awards you'll see here. I won't go through all of them, but one that just is more recently, we were listed among the world's best bank in 2022 by Forbes. That was really nice. Now that's really the consumer side of things, but quite frankly, we've also knocked it out of the park in business banking. As you can see here, Greenwich, which I assume that you know, is the business banking equivalent of J.D. Power. Now, two years in a row, we've been named to their Greenwich Excellence Awards for US Middle Market Banking.
Perhaps more telling of our success in this segment is our Paycheck Protection Program results. Atlantic Union Bank was number one in 22 Virginia counties in the first round of PPP loan volume. I'm gonna quickly wrap up with just a few things. Just some closing thoughts. We've built a strong foundation over the past few years. I'm proud of what we've accomplished, but we are not resting on our laurels by any means. We have the right leaders in place. We have a good plan. Organic growth will absolutely be the top priority. We have lots to leverage from and to continue that organic growth. Our client satisfaction will guide our actions because we know without them, we don't exist, but we want them to continue to vote for us, continue to bring their business to us.
We're building the next generation technology roadmap. This is gonna shore up, excuse me, the foundational infrastructure, increase our velocity of innovation, and enable us to build better experiences, not only for our customers, quite frankly, but also for our teammates. We're very optimistic about the future as we have many of the right ingredients of what we need to propel the business forward and to prepare for AUB or Atlantic Union Bank 2.0. Lastly, we've got the right team in place to move us forward. Each has their own aggressive agenda, but they are working toward working together to accomplish more than they might otherwise do on their own. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Rob Gorman, our Chief Financial Officer.
Thanks, Maria, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. Let me start off my comments by briefly reviewing your company's financial results for 2021 and the first quarter of 2022. The business and economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative impact on the company's financial results in 2020 subsided dramatically in 2021. For the year ended 2021, reported net income available to common shareholders was $252 million, and earnings per common share was $3.26. That's up almost $100 million or $1.33 per common share from 2020 levels.
Excluding after-tax balance sheet restructuring costs, branch closing and facility consolidation costs, and the gain from the sale of Visa Class B common stock, 2021 non-GAAP adjusted operating earnings available to common shareholders were $273 million or $3.53 per common share, up $99 million or $1.32 per share from 2020 levels. The increases were primarily driven by the decline in the provision for credit losses compared to the previous year, as a significant COVID-19 driven spike in loan losses initially projected and reserved for in 2020 did not materialize. As recently reported, in the first quarter of 2022, net income available to common shareholders was $40.7 million or $0.54 per common share.
On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted operating earnings available to common shareholders for the first quarter was $45.1 million or $0.60 per common share, down $8.7 million or $0.11 per common share from the fourth quarter of 2021, primarily due to lower net interest income, which was driven by the decline in PPP loan-related interest and fees as the program winds down, as well as lower purchase accounting net accretion interest income. At the end of the first quarter, Atlantic Union Bankshares shares and Atlantic Union Bank's regulatory capital ratios remained well above well-capitalized levels. Regarding the company's capital management strategy, our capital ratio targets are set to maintain the company's designation as a well-capitalized financial institution and to ensure that capital levels are commensurate with the company's risk profile, capital stress test projections, and strategic plan growth objectives.
Our capital management priorities are, first, to support the organic growth of the company, and secondly, to maintain a sustainable dividend payout ratio targeted at 35%-40%. In addition, any excess capital generated can be redeployed to repurchase common shares and/or for mergers and acquisitions activity, assuming such capital deployment creates shareholder value. From a shareholder stewardship perspective, we remain committed to building long-term value for our shareholders. From that perspective, the company has generated total shareholder returns that have consistently exceeded the returns of peer banks, while the common shareholder dividends have increased at a compound annual rate of approximately 9% since 2013.
During 2021, the company returned approximately $209 million to common shareholders through common stock dividends paid of $84.3 million, or $1.09 per common share, as well as the repurchase of approximately four million common shares for approximately $125 million in 2021. In addition, the company repurchased approximately 630,000 shares for $25 million during the first quarter of 2022, and currently has $75 million remaining on its $100 million share repurchase authorization.
With the financial impact of the PPP loan program winding down, the pandemic-driven volatility related to expected credit losses and credit loss reserve levels subsiding, and the expectation that interest rates would begin increasing this year, we noted in the fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call in January that we've reset our top-tier financial metric targets to the following, return on tangible common equity within a range of 13%-15%, return on assets in a range of 1.1%-1.3%, and an efficiency ratio of 53% or lower.
As noted in our first quarter earnings call, we are now projecting that the company will achieve the top end of these top-tier financial metric target ranges for the full year of 2022 as a result of the company's asset sensitivity and updated assumptions that the federal funds rate will move much higher to 2.5% by the end of 2022 and increased on a more accelerated basis with 50 basis point hikes in May and June than previously assumed. In closing, please note that we remain focused on leveraging the Atlantic Union franchise to generate sustainable, profitable growth and are committed to building long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you again for your continued support and your investment in Atlantic Union Bank shares. With that, I'll turn it over to Chairman Ron Tillett.
Thanks, Rob. I appreciate that. Thank you to John and Maria for their insights and comments as well. If you have any questions for John, Maria, or Rob about the information you've heard here today, you may now submit your questions online by clicking on the dialogue icon in the upper right corner of the meeting center screen. I would like to ask Bill Cimino, the company's Director of Investor Relations, to present any shareholder questions regarding the company.
Mr. Chairman, we have not received any shareholder questions.
Well, as a result, I appreciate all of the presenters here today and all the comments that have been made regarding the performance of Atlantic Union Bankshares Corporation. If you have any other questions about the company not answered here today, please feel free to reach out to our Director of Investor Relations, Bill Cimino, using the investor relations contact information listed on the company's website. Thank you for taking the time to attend our shareholder meeting. On behalf of the company's directors and employees, I thank you for your loyal support, your business, and your attendance at today's meeting. That concludes our meeting, and the meeting is hereby adjourned. Thank you.
This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect and have a pleasant day.