AmericanWest Bancorp. in Spokane used to have an employee devote several days each month to compiling information for its directors on a compact disc, but the $2.1 billion-asset company recently started disseminating the information through a secure online portal.
It is one of a growing number of banking companies to do so.
Patrick J. Rusnack, AmericanWest's chief operating officer and executive vice president, said preparing the material for board meetings now takes about five hours — instead of entire days.
The directors find using the Web site less cumbersome than dealing with CDs, Mr. Rusnack said. "Our board members have used it for two months, and it has gotten rave reviews."
Board portals have been around for about a decade, but the concept is just starting to gain momentum in the financial services industry. Several bankers said that they have become more comfortable lately with the security features, and that their directors are more tech-savvy these days.
Portal providers are also multiplying. They include BoardVantage Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., Diligent Board Member Services Inc. in New York, Thomson Reuters in New York, and Directors Desk Inc., a unit of Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. in New York.
They said the awareness of board portals in general is on the rise, and the functionality is improving.
Electronic voting and conferencing are some of the new features that let portals be used for more than just looking through material for a board meeting.
Joe Ruck, the president and chief executive officer of BoardVantage, said the new features enable a board to take virtual votes and pass resolutions between meetings.
"Today there is a more rigorous view of corporate responsibilities," Mr. Ruck said. "Used to be a board would only work in the meetings. Today it is expected to continue beyond the meetings."
The number of banking companies that have set up a portal through BoardVantage has nearly doubled over the past year, he said; both large and small companies are signing up.
Though the providers were reluctant to be specific about costs, they said a basic site generally starts at $20,000.
Mitch Derenzo, the chief financial officer and executive vice president at the $580 million-asset American River Bank in Rancho Cordova, Calif., said it is evaluating portal options now and plans to switch to an online system this year.
A conservative culture is why banks like American River have only recently started looking into portals, even though the technology has been around for a while, Mr. Derenzo said.
"Bankers, you know, are not the leaders. We are the followers when it comes to new technology," he said.
He anticipates that a portal will make communicating with directors simpler and more efficient.
With American River's current system, once the inch-thick books are made and shipped, new information is hard to add, he said, and sometimes the board cannot get updates until the meeting,
"This will be a faster turnaround and get the information to them quicker," Mr. Derenzo said. "It will give them more time to analyze the actual data, and with that, we hope they make better decisions."
Mr. Rusnack said AmericanWest's CD was less bulky than a book but still made it difficult to find information from previous months.
Its portal eliminates those hassles, he said. "It has a complete archive of all the historical information. Before, we had to go back and find the right CD to look it up."
