The Company is a party to financial instruments with off balance sheet risk in the normal course of business to meet the financing needs of its customers. These financial instruments include loan commitments and standby letters of credit which involve elements of credit and interest-rate risk to varying degrees. The Company’s exposure to credit loss in the event of nonperformance by the other party to the instrument is represented by the instrument’s contractual amount. To control this credit risk, the Company uses the same underwriting standards as it uses for loans recorded on the balance sheet. The amounts of financial instruments with off-balance-sheet risk are as follows:

	December 31,
	2018		2017
	(Dollars in thousands)
Loan commitments	$	1,232,996	$	1,050,686
Stand-by letters of credit		56,096		57,074

Loan commitments are agreements to lend to a customer, as long as there is no violation of any condition established in the contract. Stand-by letters of credit are conditional commitments issued by the Company to guarantee the performance of a customer to a third party. These instruments generally have fixed expiration dates or other termination clauses and may require payment of a fee. Since many of the instruments are expected to expire without being drawn upon, the total amounts do not necessarily represent commitments that will be funded in the future.

The Company has operating leases, which primarily consist of office space in buildings, ATM locations, storage facilities, parking lots and land on which it owns buildings.

Future minimum lease payments required under operating leases that have an initial or remaining non-cancelable lease term in excess of one year at December 31, 2018, were as follows (Dollars in thousands):

2019	$	1,049
2020		789
2021		569
2022		369
2023		60
Later years		499
Total	$	3,335

Rental expense on all operating leases, including those rented on a monthly or temporary basis were as follows (Dollars in thousands):

Year Ending December 31:
2018	$	1,857
2017		1,597
2016		1,524

The Company is a defendant in legal actions arising from normal business activities. Management believes that all legal actions against the Company are without merit or that the ultimate liability, if any, resulting from them will not materially affect the Company’s financial statements.