12. COMMITMENTS AND OFF-BALANCE SHEET RISK

Some financial instruments are used to meet financing needs and to reduce exposure to interest rate changes. These financial instruments include commitments to extend credit and standby letters of credit. These involve, to varying degrees, credit and interest-rate risk in excess of the amount reported in the financial statements. Commitments to extend credit are agreements to lend to a customer as long as there is no violation of any condition established in the commitment and generally have fixed expiration dates. Standby letters of credit are conditional commitments to guarantee a customer’s performance to another party. Exposure to credit loss, if the customer does not perform, is represented by the contractual amount for commitments to extend credit and standby letters of credit. Collateral or other security is normally obtained for these financial instruments prior to their use and many of the commitments are expected to expire without being used.

A summary of the notional and contractual amounts of outstanding financing instruments with off-balance-sheet risk as of September 30, 2014 and December 31, 2013 follows:

	September 30, 2014		December 31, 2013

Unused lines of credit and letters of credit	$	23,358,957	$	22,576,236
Commitments to make loans		3,379		243,721

Commitments to make loans generally terminate one year or less from the date of commitment and may require a fee. Since many of the above commitments on lines of credit and letters of credit expire without being used, the above amounts related to those categories do not necessarily represent future cash disbursements.