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Community Bankers Association of Illinois
Bank
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B
y now, you probably know that web-based portal
solutions can provide your board of directors with
secure, centralized access to a slew of confidential
materials, including meeting minutes, trust and
audit reports, loan delinquencies and voting archives—day
or night, from anywhere. And, board portals provide a safe,
simplified platform for communicating with your board.
Indeed, board portals are possibly the most popular type of
online Web portals. For board meetings, portals have made
the printing and mailing of huge board packets a thing of the
past. And beyond saving the related monetary resources and
man hours, convening members online means you needn’t
worry about board reports getting lost in the mail. A board
portal not only keeps these reports highly secure, but also
allows inaccurate data to be updated or new information
added, even at the last minute.
Further, posting board materials on portals give directors
plenty of time to thoroughly digest the information and make
sound business decisions. And if a past discussion item is
brought up, they can quickly search for related terms to find
all past references in the portal’s archives.
Otherwise, the meetings proceed much the same as always,
with the addition of such greater advantages as allowing
members who can’t be physically present to see the same
materials and information as those who are.
For a financial institution, communicating with boardmembers
through an online portal is an efficient, cost-effective and,
most importantly, highly secure means to keep them abreast
of all aspects of a bank’s proceedings. Directors can view all
current and historical materials the moment they’re posted,
and receive alerts when new content becomes available. The
portal also safeguards online voting and discussion threads,
and lets you assign permissions to ensure documents reach
only their intended audience.
And, directors can monitor such critical information as the
status of troubled assets, liquidity, capital ratios and net
income—information that changes daily.
But facilitating a safe, paperless boardroom is truly just the
tip of the iceberg for secure portal technologies. Employee
intranets and loan committee portals also provide an effective
alternative for securely managing a variety of sensitive data and
applications enterprisewide. These online Web portals require
all the same safeguards as do board portals, including login and
password verification, to ensure all materials remain protected.
Simplify Loan Committee Proceedings
A loan committee portal streamlines loan management
activities by providing a protected location for committee
members to save and store loan documents so they’re ready
for board review.
For example, the committee can post loan materials on a portal
workspace that’s dedicated to a particular loan, and notify
directors that the loan requires their review and approval.
The board is then able to review the loan data online, share
comments with others, make personal notations and place
their decision—which is instantly available for viewing by the
loan committee and archived for future reference.
In addition, the loan committee can easily make revisions
on the portal itself, allowing members to host paperless
loan review committee meetings and reducing the need to
circulate sensitive materials.
Bill Evers, Senior Business Development Director, CSI Regulatory Compliance, Computer Services, Inc. (CSI), Paducah, KY
Powerful Ways Online
Web Portals Transcend the Boardroom
