Aloha, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Bank of Hawaii Corporation. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded and the recording will be made available after the meeting on the company's website. During the meeting, we'll have a question and answer session. It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Peter Ho, Chairman, CEO and President of Banc of Hawaii Corporation. Mr.
Ho, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, everyone. I'm Peter Ho, and on behalf of our Board of Directors and Management, I welcome you to this, our 49th Annual Meeting of Shareholders and our 2nd virtual shareholders meeting. Due to the global pandemic and our concern for the public's health and safety, we've determined that it is in the best interest of all to conduct our annual meeting virtually. It is now 8:30 and in accordance with the notice of meeting, I will call the meeting to order.
At this time, I'd like to introduce the Board of Directors of Banc of Hawaii Corporation, who are all in attendance by phone. Beginning with our Lead Independent Director, Raymond P. Vera, Haunani Apollonia, Mark Burack, John Erickson, Joshua Feldman, Michelle Holst, Kent Lushan, Alicia Moy, Victor Nichols, Barbara Tanabe, Dana Tokioka and Bob Wo. I'd like to also recognize 2 very special individuals, our former Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Nominating Corporate Governance Committee, Mary Bitterman and former Vice Chairman of our Audit and Risk Committee, Robert Heurette, who retired from the Board last year. Mary served 36 years and Robert served 20 years.
Mary and Robert both continue to serve our Board as Directors Emeritus, Emerita and collectively Emeritai. Now I would like to introduce our management team, beginning with our Vice Chairs, Sharon Cross, Wayne Himano, James Polk, Mary Sellars, Dean Shigemura and our Senior Executive Vice Presidents, Matt Emerson, Jill Higa, Ed Hudson, Susan Ng, Christy LaForge, Patrick McGurk, Craig Norris, Taryn Salmon and Dana Takushi. I would also like to introduce Mike Ching and Nathan Lee representing Ernst and Young, our independent public accounting firm. Now you'll see from the agenda on the meeting website as well as the link to the rules of conduct for the meeting, we appreciate your cooperation and abiding by the meeting rules. As a reminder, shareholders attending the virtual meeting can vote their shares online from now through the closing of the polls by clicking the graph icon on your screen.
If you have previously voted by proxy and do not wish to change your vote, your vote will be cast as you previously instructed and no further action is required. During the business portion of the meeting, we will consider the following 3 proposals. 1st, the election of the company's directors secondly, the advisory vote to approve the compensation for the named executive officers and thirdly, the ratification to reappoint Ernst and Young to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021. We will follow the formal business with our company report and current state of business. Following our report, you will have the opportunity to ask questions.
We ask that shareholders who wish to address the meeting do so at that time. Now, let's proceed with the meeting. The Board of Directors fixed March 5, 2021 as a record date for determining the shares of common stock entitled to vote at this meeting. The company's corporate secretary has advised me that the meeting was called and proper notice was given to all shareholders of record. A copy of the notice of annual meeting and an affidavit of mailing are on file.
The number of shares represented in person or by proxy is 34,000,000 702,000 782 or 86 percent of the 40,338,584 shares issued and outstanding as of the record day. Therefore, I hereby declare a quorum is present and we are qualified to act on all matters set forth in the notice of meeting. Most of you who return your proxies authorize the persons named in the proxy to vote on all proposals coming before the meeting. We will now act on the recommendations of the Board of Directors relating to the proposals listed in the proxy statement. First proposal is the election of 13 directors.
The 13 nominees will serve a 1 year term. They are as follows: Hanoni Apolima, Mark Birak, John Erickson, Joshua Feldman, myself, Peter Ho, Michelle Holst, Kent Lushan, Alicia Moy, Victor Nichols, Barbara Tanabe, Dana Tokioka, Ray Vara and Robert Woe. As no other persons have been nominated in accordance with the company's governing documents, the nominations are closed. The second proposal is to approve on an advisory basis the compensation of the named executive officers disclosed in this year's proxy statement. The final order of business is to ratify the reappointment of Ernst and Young as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2021.
Before I report the preliminary vote results for these three proposals, as everyone who wanted to vote cast their vote, It seems that all those desiring to vote have voted. I therefore declare the voting polls closed. I've been advised by our inspectors of election that in accordance with received from our shareholders, each of the director nominees received a substantial majority of votes cast of at least 28,000,069,800 votes in the favor or 93% of votes cast. With respect to proposal 2 related to the advisory vote on executive compensation, approximately 28,312,608 shares voted in favor or 94% of votes cast. And with respect to Proposal 3 related to ratifying Ernst and Young as the company's 2021 independent registered public accounting firm, approximately 33,605,757 shares voted in favor or 97% of votes cast.
Since we received more than a majority vote in favor of each nominee and each proposal, I'm therefore very pleased to announce that all 13 of the company's directors have been elected for a 1 year term and the 2 remaining proposals have been approved as the Board recommended. The final results of the voting will be published in our Form 8 ks and filed with the Securities Exchange Commission. There being no further business to come before the meeting, this concludes the official business portion of the meeting. The 2021 Bank of Hawaii Corporation Annual Meeting is now adjourned. Now, let me share with you a few highlights of 2020.
I'll then touch on how we've met the challenges of COVID-nineteen and then we will have a 15 minute question and answer session. 2020 was an unprecedented year and Bank of Hawaii had a solid year despite the many challenges we faced due to the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Our company earned $154,000,000 or $3.86 per diluted earnings per share. Our loans grew 8.6 percent, deposits reached a record high growing 15.4% over the prior year. Total assets expanded to a record high of $20,600,000,000 at the end of the year.
Our overall asset quality remains stable. Net charge offs to average loans and leases totaled 6 basis points for 2020. Our efficiency as measured by our efficiency ratio improved to 54.9% to 55.7% in 2019. Our disciplined approach to expense management allowed us to continue making significant progress on our strategic initiatives, which position us well for continued growth in the future. Tier 1 capital was a robust 12.1 percent at the end of the year.
We maintained our dividend at $0.67 per quarter throughout the year. In 2020, Moody's Investor Services affirmed our AA2 bank deposit long term rating. This places Bank of Hawaii in the top 6 of Moody's domestic bank universe and makes us the highest rated bank by Moody's in the Hawaii market. Also D. A.
Davidson recognized us as an industry leader in ESG. We were also listed once again as one of America's best banks by Forbes Magazine. The COVID-nineteen pandemic and low rate environment was tough on the banking industry overall. Our stock price declined 19% In comparison, the KBW Regional Bank Index declined 12% and the S and P Regional Bank Index declined 10%. Now let me share with you some thoughts on our COVID-nineteen response.
The safety and health of our employees are our primary concern. 67% of our staff are working from home. In addition to health protocols and PPE, we've upgraded the ventilation and filtration of all of our corporate facilities. Secondly, we committed to supporting our community. The Bank of Hawaii Foundation contributed $4,800,000 in 2020 to various organizations.
Over 300 employees worked tirelessly to book 4,500 loans for over $500,000,000 in support of the SBA Paycheck Protection Program and additional loans are currently underway. Bank of Hawaii granted $1,900,000,000 in customer deferrals to over 17,000 customers in 2020. I'm grateful to report that today those deferrals are down to only 2.3% of our customers. Finally, we continue to provide exceptional service to our customers, providing enhanced cleaning and social distancing protocols within our branches. Additionally, this pandemic has caused a marked shift in consumer behavior towards digital and digital mobile platforms, allowing our customers to continue banking from a distance quite successfully.
We believe that the outlook for our reemergence from the COVID-nineteen pandemic is improving and the Bank of Hawaii is well positioned for the future. And now we'd be happy to take your questions. So it appears we have a question already. The question is from Jeffrey Sur. Thank you, Jeffrey.
You really have two questions. The first one relates to Page 76 of our report 10 ks regarding advertising expense, which Jeffrey notes went up 36 percent to $8,300,000 from $6,100,000 The question is why the dramatic increase? Let me begin with that, Jeffrey. It's a good question. You have quite a keen eye for numbers.
Really, I think that this is fundamentally a good story. And really what's happening here is because the company is involved in so many new initiatives, namely digital and mobile initiatives, which as we meet the consumer demand for such types of devices and applications, we find ourselves needing to communicate and explain and share with our customer public exactly what is available at Bank of Hawaii. And so that is really the reasoning behind the increase. The increase in actual digital traffic and digital commerce, I think more than offset that increase. So all in all, the increase of 36% was actually a pretty suitable investment from our standpoint.
Jeffrey's second question relates to credit cards. He notes that we don't have a credit card on our own portfolio. We do have a marketing arrangement with the Hawaiian Airlines Barclays card. But the question is why don't we have a credit card portfolio, which in his view could contribute to the bank's profitability, especially given our exceptionally low loan loss experience in the remainder of the lending program. So I think that's a good question as well.
It's really I think as you know, we've had from time to time twice actually had our own credit card portfolio. Where we've landed on this is I think that our alliance with BarclaysHawaiian Airlines gives us the best outcome in this space, Jeffrey. And the reason why is because it allows us to service that portion of our customer base, which wants that form of product, but also allows us to effectively more efficiently provide that product because credit cards are a generally higher volume, lower dollar amount loan type, which creates efficiency challenges for us. So the ability to effectively outsource the product offering to the Barclays Hawaiian Airlines card, I think, allows us to maintain the best profit position while supporting our customers that wish that type of product. But thank you for the question.
Let's see. Other questions? Why don't we give it a few moments here, gentlemen? Well, it appears that there are no further questions. And so I want to thank all of those who have tuned in today to listen to our annual meeting as well as our review of 2020.
I hope you're staying safe and are prosperous and well. So thank you for this year. This concludes our meeting for 2020. Mahalo.