LOAN COMMITMENTS AND OTHER RELATED ACTIVITIES

Some financial instruments, such as loan commitments, credit lines, letters of credit, and overdraft protection, are issued to meet customer financing needs. These are agreements to provide credit or to support the credit of others, as long as conditions established in the contract are met, and usually have expiration dates. Commitments may expire without being used. Risk of credit loss exists up to the face amount of these instruments. The same credit policies are used to make such commitments as are used for loans, including obtaining collateral at exercise of the commitment.

The contractual amount of financial instruments with off-balance-sheet risk was as follows for the dates indicated:



	March 31, 2016				December 31, 2015
	Fixed Rate		Variable Rate		Fixed Rate		Variable Rate
	(In thousands)
Commitments to extend credit	$	59,085	$	127,837	$	40,312	$	99,026
Unused lines of credit	3,164		579,175		6,044		508,295
Letters of credit	760		14,213		2,611		11,278

Commitments to make loans are generally made for periods of 30 days or less.

As of March 31, 2016, total forward commitments were $882.2 million. These commitments consisted of to-be-announced (TBAs) of $825.0 million and best efforts contracts of $57.2 million. Additionally, the Company had IRLCs of $382.4 million at March 31, 2016.