Financial institutions have faced increased scrutiny surrounding their ethical practices following the Great Recession of 2008. This has placed additional pressure on boards of directors to manage the ethical reputation of the banks they serve. In an article published in the Journal of Business Ethics, researchers Emilia and Sami Vähämaa, Laura Baselga-Pascual, and Antonio Trujillo-Ponce hypothesize that a positive relationship exists between director characteristics favoring effective oversight and the ethical reputation of their financial institutions.
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Risk Oversight on Bank Boards
While most organizations understand the value and necessity of risk oversight, banks boards face a pressure which is unique to most other industries. The worst-case scenario in failing to monitor and mitigate risk is always devastating, but unlike other organizations, banks are also burdened with their depositor’s financial well-being. Let’s take a closer look at how banks are handling their risk oversight and what they could be doing better.
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What Banks Can Learn from the Board Best Practices Report
Deloitte is one of the largest providers of professional financial services in the world; one of the “Big Four” accounting firms. In 2014, Deloitte’s Center for Corporate Governance published the ninth edition of their Board Best Practices Report. The report surveyed board members across multiple industries to provide a glimpse into the makeup and priorities of the modern board of directors.
The tenth edition of the Board Best Practices Report was published in 2016. The surveys conducted in both the ninth and tenth editions are nearly identical. While both editions offer valuable insights, governance aficionados have yet to explore all that can be learned from comparing the two. Today, we’re changing that.
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Bank Boards: Don’t Spread Your Portal Across Multiple Apps
From a management standpoint, bank boards walk a thin line when implementing a board portal; a line that exists, in part, due to the challenge that arises in overcoming a learning curve. How do you ask a group of people with decades of expertise to learn something new? There’s no way to get around it. Seamless design is great for mitigating the curve, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Introducing new technology to your board of directors is too complex and delicate a task to cover in this article (or any one article, for that matter).
Instead we’re going to focus on a major pitfall bank boards fall into when implementing a board portal. Avoiding this single hazard can mean the difference between success and failure in the implementation process.
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The Impact of CEO-Board Dynamic on Bank Performance
If you’re on the board of directors at a community bank, keeping up with the latest research and best practices in governance is important. In most cases, that requires more reading than any sane human being has time for. Don’t worry. We’ve got your back! Continue reading