Good morning. Thank you for joining the annual meeting of shareholders of M&T Bank Corporation, which sadly, we've had to hold virtually again this year. I'm really looking forward to the time when we can gather again in person. I'm René Jones, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of M&T. Our board of directors and our management group are connected virtually. Here in the room with me, though sitting quite far away, are Mike Spychala, the controller of the company, and Marie King, the company's corporate secretary. The Inspector of Election is John Zak from the law firm of Hodgson Russ LLP. As indicated in the proxy materials for this meeting, the following individuals were appointed by the company to serve as proxies and vote on behalf of our shareholders.
Matthew Dalbkey, vice president of Maryland Glass & Mirror Company Incorporated from Baltimore, Maryland, Thomas Jacob, chairman and chief executive officer of Blue Sea Products LLC in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and Patrick Paul, chief executive officer of the Anderson Center for Autism in Plattsburgh, N.Y. I'd like to thank each and every one of you for your service, and thank you for attending today. Before we begin our official business, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge John G. Hock Jr., who is retiring as a director following today's meeting. On behalf of all of us at M&T, I want to thank him for his years of service on our board and as chairman of the risk committee.
Although Jerry has decided not to stand for re-election as a director of M&T, we know he'll continue to be involved as a shareholder, as a mentor, and of course, as a friend. Jerry, thank you for your valuable years of service and for all that you've done to help make M&T the company it is today. I'd like to call the annual meeting to order. Madam Secretary, do you have a report?
Mr. Jones, I can report that proper notice of this annual meeting has been given to M&T shareholders. I can also report that the Inspector of Election has executed his oath of office.
Could the Inspector of Election please advise us whether a quorum is present?
Mr. Jones, a quorum is present. Shareholders holding more than a majority of the outstanding shares of the common stock of the company are either present at this meeting or represented by proxies.
Thank you. The annual meeting is now formally convened for the transaction of business. Any shareholder who intends to vote via the virtual meeting website rather than by proxy or ask a question during the meeting should follow the instructions provided on the website. We'll address as many questions as we can. If there are any remaining questions that we're unable to get to, M&T's Investor Relations Department will respond after the meeting. At this point in our program, I traditionally speak about the performance of the bank, the success and the progress that we've achieved for our shareholders and for all our stakeholders, and about the direction in which we are moving, our strategies and plans for achieving success in the coming years and beyond. This is both our report card and our roadmap.
Like last year, we've had to gather remotely to keep people safe and healthy and to do our part to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The video with which we opened the program this morning was intended to welcome you visually to our traditional meeting place here at our headquarters building up on M&T Plaza in downtown Buffalo. As I watched the camera zoom across the city, along the downtown corridor, and into M&T, it reminded me of the important role that our organization plays in our community. We're not just a collection of buildings on the city skyline. We're a collection of people, unified in our struggle to overcome challenges, to realize opportunities, and achieve goals. We see ourselves as an integral part of the fabric of this community and every community that we serve.
While I'll talk today about our recent results, I'll do so in the context of our mission and purpose, which above all, is to support and strengthen our communities, to make a difference in people's lives, especially in challenging times like these. In the face of unprecedented conditions caused by the pandemic, net income for 2020 amounted to $1.35 billion, compared with $1.930 billion in 2019. The decrease was principally the result of an $800 million addition to the reserves to address widespread and deep economic uncertainty that was present during the outset of the pandemic. Notably, though, we remained profitable in every quarter, as we have for 179 consecutive quarters, dating back to 1976.
In fact, in 2020, M&T grew its balance sheet by 19% and distributed $943 million to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases, all while tangible book value per share grew by 7%. Our net operating return on tangible common equity of 12.8% exceeded our investors' cost of capital, a key measure of value creation for our shareholders, as it has every year for at least three decades. In fact, over the past two decades, only two other institutions among the top 20 largest U.S. banks have achieved that distinction. Yesterday, we reported our results for the first quarter of this year. Net income was $447 million, up 66% from last year's first quarter, reflecting the reversal of the prior year's uncertainty, and we achieved a return on average tangible common shareholders' equity of over 17%.
Not explicit in our financial performance in 2020, but underlying those results, were improving trends in overall customer growth, customer experience, customer satisfaction, and employee and community engagement, measures that are part of our balanced scorecard for the year. Our retail customer satisfaction rating, which measures the likelihood of customers to recommend M&T to a friend or a colleague, increased six percentage points to 44%. Our customer satisfaction score in Baltimore alone increased by 26 percentage points over the last two years and now sits at 58%. Internally, employee engagement increased by four percentage points to 88%, despite the year's hardships, exceeding the 75th percentile across all industries in the U.S. for the first time since we began measuring 20 years ago.
We continue to expand the diversity of our senior leadership team and our board of directors, while embarking on programs that will ensure that our colleagues can be their authentic selves at work and enable us to be the bank of choice for diverse communities in every community that we serve. We touched over 2,800 not-for-profit organizations in our communities, providing $34.9 million in grants, while our dedicated employees generously gave more than 50,000 hours in volunteer service to others. We originated $1.6 billion in community development loans in low and moderate income areas in 2020, and we underwrote an additional $11.3 billion in new commercial loans and leases. Although we operate in just seven states in the District of Columbia, we became America's fifth-largest issuer of Small Business Administration 7(a) loans.
We're also the number one issuer of these SBA loans in Baltimore, Buffalo, Delaware, and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. We're the second largest lender in New Jersey, New York City, and West Virginia. We delivered $7 billion in emergency PPP funding to 35,000 local businesses, and through them, helped protect more than 765,000 jobs. We've worked hard to launch and support several initiatives to help our communities respond to and recover from this unprecedented crisis. From Open4, which connects women and minority-owned small businesses and nonprofits with resources, guidance, and support, to the Southwest Strong program providing microgrants to small businesses in Philadelphia, to the Women's Housing and Economic Development program providing relief to working mothers in the Bronx.
Not only did our commercial and small business banking teams receive a record 25 national and regional Greenwich Excellence Awards, but the Greenwich Crisis Response Index also identified M&T as a standout in its support for small business during the pandemic. For all this and more, I'm deeply proud of my colleagues and deeply grateful for our teams of what we might call our economic first responders. We didn't just do our jobs, we went above and beyond. We acted with care and concern and with empathy and compassion. This is what M&T is about. This is what makes it possible for us to achieve exemplary financial results while fulfilling our purpose to make a difference in people's lives.
It's our colleagues' heartfelt care and commitment to each other, to our customers, and to our communities, combined with their dogged determination to do whatever it takes, never to give up. We understand that families are still suffering and businesses are still struggling. Our efforts will continue to reach out to every neighbor in every neighborhood, seeking with our community partners to give strength and support wherever we can. Looking forward, as we emerge from the pandemic, we also remain focused on creating sustainable, equitable engines for economic growth, especially in and around the small and mid-tier cities that we predominantly serve. The formula for regional economic success started changing before COVID struck, influenced by the digital revolution, which has been accelerating throughout the pandemic.
In the decade after the financial crisis, 70% of our country's population growth and 80% of job growth accrued in the biggest U.S. cities, mainly those on the East and West coasts. However, a number of mid-tier cities are starting to buck that trend by successfully growing tech and innovation ecosystems that attract modern creative class talent. Cities like Boulder, Columbus, Detroit, Omaha, Pittsburgh, and others. In today's digital economy, economic development and prosperity is about building a community, an ecosystem, if you will, that attracts, retains, develops, and engages modern talent. Talent whose economic function is to create new ideas and solutions.
We're competing in a race for relevance, and the communities that are leading the race are likely to gain an insurmountable advantage. The cities that are leading the race are doing so by adopting new paradigms and constructs around convening and decision-making, and abandoning top-down command and control ways of thinking and working. Such ecosystems are inclusive, diverse, and transparent. Decisions and directions are not set in a vacuum by a select few, but made collectively and collaboratively with all stakeholders invested in the process. All must be invited to participate, and all are expected to contribute. They practice a give-first approach, giving three times before expecting anything in return. Oh yeah, the entrepreneurs, the problem solvers, the idea makers, the risk-takers must be at the center, for they are the engines of economic growth, identifying new problems, new solutions, and new opportunities, and founding new companies.
These kinds of ecosystems are magnets for modern talent, and our new tech hub at Seneca one will be a significant addition to our emerging ecosystem in Buffalo. Yes, the hub is for us. It's where our customer-facing bankers will work side by side with technologists, customer experience engineers, data scientists, coders, and programmers together in new ways that focus intently on what our customers need, on mapping their journeys, and identifying the moments that matter. The real purpose of the tech hub is to serve as a community asset that creates a sense of place for the problem solvers in our community, the creators, the innovators, the entrepreneurs who will help us grow and compete. Creative class talent doesn't so much care if they're solving problems in banking or healthcare, daycare or barbershops, used car sales, electric vehicle battery chargers, or even green-powered excavation equipment.
As long as they're working together to eliminate pain and friction from people's lives, to make people's lives simpler and richer. The tech hub and the larger ecosystem around it will become a place where creative collisions occur, where people from different companies interact, share problems, collaborate on solutions, develop ideas, and ultimately turn those ideas into new companies. It will enable us to attract new talent and leverage that talent to its full power and potential. It's already been building momentum with 43North, our startup competition and accelerator program, along with its portfolio of startup companies, and other tech firms like Odoo, Serendipity Labs, Lighthouse Technology Services, with ACV Auctions, Buffalo's first billion-dollar startup, along with other startups like SparkCharge and Squire, and companies of all shapes and sizes, it's already stretching beyond Seneca one.
As bankers, our role is to support the entrepreneurs and the risk-takers to help them achieve their ideas and dreams. That's why we were founded, and that's what we've always done, and that's what we'll always do in Buffalo and in each of our communities and ecosystems that we serve and support. Further success will also require our universities, middle schools, and high schools, boot camps, coding clubs, and scholarships, and joint recruiting campaigns, all of which are beginning to emerge. At M&T, we've long recognized the importance of quality education. This is especially true as it relates to lifting up children and families, breaking the cycle of poverty, and providing everyone with the opportunity to participate fully and fairly in the workforce, in the economy, and in society as a whole, regardless of race or background.
That's why we're working with a number of public-private sector partners to expand inclusivity through our tech academy, which will be an important part of our effort to attract, develop, and retain diverse talent, and those who have the aptitude but have not had the opportunity to pursue a career in tech. Our Western New York Tech Skills Initiative is now underway, providing in-demand tech skills to people affected by persistent underemployment, and unemployment and underemployment exacerbated by the pandemic. 500 people are already enrolled, and our hope is for over 3,000. We also launched the Z Development Program, which will expand opportunities for candidates from non-traditional backgrounds and underserved communities. In fact, we just hired the first class of 10 mainframe apprentices into the two-year program.
This is in addition to our broader technology development program, designed much like our long-standing management development programs, but with a tech track. In Delaware, we're partnering with Zip Code Wilmington to connect technologists from M&T with students during a 12-week training and mentoring program, after which they can interview for a full-time job. Across the footprint, we've supported startup business plan competitions for entrepreneurs, sponsored Women in Agile professional networking groups, and even run coder clubs to help develop skills in tech, in STEM, and computer science among middle school students. We must also do more to reach into Black and Brown communities, to reach communities of women. I must admit that this work is not easy. We at M&T know this from experience. In 1993, we began our unique partnership with the Westminster Community Charter School.
Since then, we've invested more than $17.8 million to help provide training for teachers and summer programming for kids, nutrition, health, technology, and physical plant. We've helped improve educational outcomes for thousands of children on Buffalo's East Side, a neighborhood where investment and involvement have been lacking, where outcomes and opportunities have been hard to come by. A number of our graduates went on to attend the best private high schools in the city, supported by Buffalo Promise scholarships. Among those, many have, are, or will attend top colleges. Now, that's not to say, however, that we've achieved complete success. Students were not always reaching their full potential. Our overall test scores, while better than those at other schools serving impoverished neighborhoods and families, were not measuring up district-wide. Recently, the Buffalo School Board voted not to renew the Westminster charter and to revert it back to district control.
That action by the school board surprised us. It saddened us, and to be candid, it frustrated us. Not because of the loss of our charter, but because it was arrived at through the kinds of old processes and behaviors that we need to change, that are inconsistent with modern, inclusive ecosystems. Ecosystems that thrive on inclusion and transparency and coming out from behind closed doors. Ecosystems in which the people who are involved in the work and the outcomes have a voice in the decisions. Ecosystems that put talent, in this case, the students, first. We're not discouraged, however, nor are we deterred. We will continue to working to create a new framework for setting direction and decisions in our community.
We'll continue to work for students and families to improve access to preschool programs, scholarships, Wi-Fi, and broadband access, support services for disadvantaged families, and to improve educational outcomes and opportunities. Indeed, we are more convinced than ever that new forms of partnership between public and private sectors will be required to achieve successful results in our communities, especially in those that are the most challenged. Our CIO has often told me that the best time to invest in tech was 10 years ago, but the second-best time is today. I believe the same holds true for people. Bob Wilmers, who would have turned 87 years old today, understood this. This is the reason he was planting new grapes in his vineyard when he was 78 years old, investing for future generations to enjoy.
It's the same reason he started and emphasized our talent development programs and our partnership at Westminster. It's the same today. Whether we're investing in the tech hub, the ecosystem, or education, whether we're working with Westminster or Highgate Heights in Buffalo, the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, or the Bridge Boston Charter School in Roxbury, Massachusetts. We're investing in people. We're investing for the future. Speaking of investing in the future, as you know, acquisitions have historically served as the primary vehicle for expanding our unique brand of banking into new communities. We've often been asked about our plans to acquire, the truth is, more often than not, our merger partners select us with the expectation that our brand of banking will be in the best long-term interest of their shareholders.
This is certainly the case in our partnership with People's United, which we announced just a few months ago. Our merger will create the 11th largest U.S.-based commercial bank holding company and the dominant regional banking network in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states that account for over one-quarter of the U.S. economy. Think of a company that believes in the power of friendly, caring people working together to bring solutions to customers. People who value ongoing relationships that span generations, and people who take pride in being leaders in their community. An organization with a history of strong returns to shareholders, sound risk management, and asset quality, and a leading customer deposit share in its main markets. All this might sound like a description of M&T, but those are the words that People's United uses to describe their company and culture.
They chose us because we share a sense of purpose, and we see this partnership as an opportunity to expand and extend our shared commitment to customers and communities that we both will serve. Together, we'll bring the very same approach to banking and communities that we practice in Buffalo and Baltimore, Paterson and Pottsville, Wilmington and Washington, to the cities and towns now served by People's United, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Boston, Massachusetts, to Bangor, Maine, and from Montpelier, Vermont, to Manchester, New Hampshire. For all of these reasons, my colleagues and I are proud of our accomplishments. We're excited about the prospects. We're engaged in the work. The future is bright, and we look forward together confidently. Thank you. I want to thank you for allowing me the time. Now let's turn to the rest of the agenda.
The first proposal to be considered is the election of 19 directors for a term of one year and until their successors have been elected and qualified, which is described in the proxy statement for this year's meeting.
Mr. Jones, on behalf of the board of directors, I nominate for election as directors of the company to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors have been elected and qualified, the persons listed as nominees in the company's proxy statement dated March 8th, 2021.
I declare the voting open on the election of directors. The second proposal to be considered is the approval of the compensation of M&T's named executive officers, which is described in the proxy statement for this meeting.
Mr. Jones, on behalf of the board of directors, I move for the approval of the compensation of M&T's named executive officers as set forth in the company's proxy statement dated March 8th, 2021.
Voting is now open on this proposal. The third and last item to be considered is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as M&T's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31st, 2021.
Mr. Jones, on behalf of the board of directors, I move for the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of M&T for the year ending December 31st, 2021, as set forth in the company's proxy statement dated March 8th, 2021.
Voting is now open on this proposal. We will now give 30 additional seconds for voting to be completed on the virtual meeting website. Thank you. I declare the voting closed. At this time, I'll respond to questions from shareholders that have been submitted prior to or during the meeting. Ms. King, have any questions been submitted?
Yes. Mr. Jones, our first question: How does M&T balance the real estate, fintech, and digital going forward?
Thank you for the question. I think it's a great question because we think sense of place, which I think of as real estate, and is really important in attracting modern talent. If you think of attracting modern talent, it's the main ingredient to being able to go on the digital revolution that we're going on. We're competing heavily with fintech companies, and really, they fall into two categories. Those that are looking to disrupt our business and looking to stand on their own. What people often miss is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of fintech companies that are actually working with us alongside us. For example, when we had about 72 hours to set up our PPP program during the first round during the pandemic last year.
In that 72 hours, we actually partnered with a fintech firm that allowed us to get up and running and worked with us through the course of a weekend, hearing customer friction points and pain points, and addressing our services all the way through that process. As a result, we were able to deliver the results that I shared before with about $7 billion of PPP funding. Oftentimes, fintech is really a misnomer. I think of it as a group of creative people. If we create an environment, in part through our real estate and places like the Tech Hub, that really talented people want to come, then other talented people are going to want to collaborate with us. What they'll do is solve problems and make life easier for our customers. I thank you for the question. The three go hand in hand.
Mr. Jones, there are no further questions.
Thank you, Madam Secretary. Would the Inspector of Election now please give his report?
Mr. Jones, I can report that all of the nominees for director were elected and that proposals two and three were approved.
Thank you. This concludes our agenda. I want to thank you again for participating in our annual meeting today. I wish you all good health, and please stay safe and be well. There being no objection, the 2021 annual meeting of shareholders of M&T Bank Corporation is adjourned. Thank you.