Board Portals: Communication Here, There or On-the-Go

By now, you probably know that web-based board portal solutions can provide your company's 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.

Today, online board 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.

Why Use an Online Board Portal?

Primarily, 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, board meetings held via portal 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.

Further, communicating with board members through an online portal is an efficient, cost-effective and, most importantly, highly secure means to keep them abreast of all aspects of their proceedings. Directors can view all current and historical materials the moment they're posted, and receive alerts when new content becomes available. Online board portals also safeguard 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.

Security and Compliance

A critical point to remember is that, when collaborating with a board portal provider, you must perform due diligence on your vendor's security controls, including compiling related proof, because examiners will ask for it.

That said, web-based portals offer several advantages from a compliance standpoint. Directors gain access to the most up-to-date, clickable regulatory changes, as well as convenient online compliance training. After all, no single entity is more accountable for, or deeply affected by, a compliance slip.

Board portals also add stronger compliance and efficiency to policy management, since they allow you to post and archive financials, bylaws, training documents and manuals, disaster recovery plans and more-and compel both directors and employees to accept or deny them, when necessary, with a simple click.

Bottom line-online board portals stretch beyond the boardroom to benefit your company's entire staff, and put powerful technology at your fingertips. They save time, energy and money that can be put toward what counts-protecting the businesses, its employees and, of course, customers from unnecessary risk.