How Financial Institutions Can Enhance Board Reporting and Governance with Technology

As financial institutions face greater expectations for corporate accountability from regulators, effective board reporting and governance are becoming even more essential in the banking sector. While board members aren’t generally involved in the day-to-day operations, they are ultimately responsible for the success of their institution. Proper reporting can enable the board to make decisions without having to be involved in routine activities, and technology can help institutions enhance their board reporting and, in the process, help directors exercise the care, skill, and diligence required for good governance.

Five Essential Elements of Reporting

Board members need access to a range of financial and non-financial information relating to their organization’s products and services. In order to function effectively as a feedback tool for the board and senior management, the FFIEC Management Handbook states that information systems reporting should meet five essential elements:

• Timeliness: To facilitate prompt decision-making, an institution’s information systems should be capable of providing and distributing current information to appropriate management or staff
• Accuracy: A sound system of automated and manual internal controls should exist to ensure the validity of the information and should include appropriate editing, balancing, and internal control checks
• Consistency: To be reliable, data should be processed and compiled uniformly. Variations in data collection and reporting methods can distort information and trend analysis
• Completeness: Reports should contain the necessary information to inform decision-makers without voluminous detail
• Relevance: Information systems should provide current, applicable, and actionable information

Reporting that contains the essential elements above can provide decision-makers with facts that support and enhance the overall decision-making process and can also “…improve job performance throughout an institution.” At the board and senior management level, information systems reporting provides the data and information to help the board and management make strategic decisions. At other levels, information systems reporting allows management to monitor the institution’s activities and distribute information to staff, customers, and members of management.

Applying Technology

Advances in technology have increased the volume of data and information available to management and directors for planning and decision-making. Converting that data into actionable knowledge is essential for the board to provide a “credible challenge” to management, which involves being actively engaged, asking thoughtful questions, and exercising independent judgment. Integrating technology into their InfoSec efforts, institutions can create a comprehensive system to generate, collect, and analyze data to support a more effective process for board reporting and a more knowledgeable board.

Heather Helms, CFO and Information Security Officer of Mount Vernon Bank, knows firsthand the importance of having an application that supports board reporting. “Before we started our partnership with Safe Systems, we were not up to par with the industry standards of reporting. Since redoing our Information Security Program and moving away from a paper-based model to automated applications, we’ve seen noticeably better results in our board reporting and regulatory updates,” said Helms. “When trying to wear numerous hats within a small community bank and stay on top of a topic so huge in a regulatory world, solutions like Safe Systems’ Information Security Program makes all of the difference.”

There are several advantages to financial institutions using technology solutions to automate and optimize board reporting and governance. The primary advantage is the ability to generate on-demand reporting on all aspects of information security management; from managing projects, to risk assessments (including risk appetite), to managing critical vendors, to mitigating operational risk through business continuity planning. Reporting should allow just enough detail to enable the board to fulfill their responsibilities, but not be so detailed that they struggle to comprehend. Ideally, technology should support high-level reporting, with the ability to “drill down” as necessary. The emphasis should be on quality, not quantity.

Another potential advantage of technology in reporting is the ability to aggregate business intelligence from multiple sources enterprise-wide. This not only gives the board a more complete picture of risk but can also stimulate internal collaboration and deeper insights, giving directors more meaningful information for analysis. The importance of timely, accurate, relevant, complete, and consistent information cannot be overstated, as the success or failure of management is often defined by the decisions they make. As the FDIC states, “The extreme importance of a bank director’s position is clearly emphasized by the fact that bank directors can, in certain instances, be held personally liable.” By having a comprehensive system in place for optimal decision-making, institutions can improve the quality of the information flowing from management to the board, and then from the board to other internal and external stakeholders—helping directors not only improve governance, but also enhance regulatory compliance and possibly even reduce lawsuits, monetary fines, and other negative consequences from inadequate board reporting.

Technology not only optimizes board reporting and decision-making but also makes it easier for directors to access the information they need to perform their due diligence and oversight obligations. It all boils down to implementing technology to exercise better accountability—ensuring sound policies are in place to promote strategic objectives and regulatory compliance.

Safe Systems offers a wide range of compliance-centric, innovative solutions that can help financial institutions take advantage of technology to improve their board reporting and governance.