For some banks, social media is becoming much more than just a popularity contest on Facebook and Twitter.
Community banks are banding together on forums where they can share information on a range of business topics-from compliance to best practices.
"Our need for information is greater because we are a smaller bank," says Jenn McGlynn, vice president for information technology at Mariner's Bank, in Edgewater, N.J. "Bigger banks have more resources."
Pam Carl, the compliance officer for the $140 million-asset Lake Community Bank in Long Lake, Minn., saved herself a lot of work by going online to grab a risk assessment policy for mobile banking. The policy had been written by another banker and uploaded to a site called CBanc Network.
After only "a few minor changes," Carl says, the policy got approved by the bank's directors and regulators. "Our board loved it."
Producing her own document from scratch would have taken about eight to 12 hours, she says.
CBanc, of Austin, Tex., is like a cross between a members-only question and answer forum and Craigslist. The two-year-old website has 703 community banks and credit unions that participate.
Bankers exchange intellectual property in the form of white papers and other documents.
The site does not charge a fee, but uses a points system: Bankers amass points by "selling" their own papers, then use those points to "buy" other documents.
Carl also belongs to several other similar free forums, Bankers Online and Community Control. Both are popular with community bankers as well.
Carl favors CBanc because she is so happy with the quality of the material. She also likes the points system, because, she says, it places a value on the work.
She offered a SAFE Banking Act procedures and policy statement around the time the regulations went into effect in October and other banks downloaded the document 50 times, earning her about 750 points per transaction.
She cashed in some of the points she earned from her own work to get the risk assessment policy.
McGlynn, of Mariner's Bank, has been using CBanc since May, in response to audits by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "Many of our departments have used CBanc to get policy and procedures in place that we did not have, or had to update, or make more detailed," she says.
McGlynn also has shared a comprehensive blueprint for branch openings that she created. Since joining Mariner's in 2007, McGlynn has overseen three branch openings-doubling Mariner's network-and has developed some expertise in the process. So far, she has sold the document 50 times for 700 points per transaction.
In the last six months, CBanc has seen significant growth, with membership more than doubling and content on the site jumping to 700 documents from 200. It eliminated a $500 annual fee in November, and now members can immediately earn points by signing up, answering questions and rating vendors.
This article was published in USBanker, a Collections & Credit Risk sister publication.
