The day when the board’s focus was limited to approving loans and marketing the bank in the community is long past. Today’s boards face a wide array of complex tasks, and, accordingly, the composition, structure and organization of the board must all be geared to facilitate the board’s performing its duties and functioning properly. This process today is lumped under the heading of “corporate governance.”
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The concept of functioning properly, of course, is in the mind of the beholder, but it clearly includes the board’s performing its primary duties of enhancing shareholder value, selecting, compensating and overseeing management and implementing risk management policies.
Boards of publicly traded banks are now fairly well acclimated to the issues comprising corporate governance, and bank regulators are now bringing many of these issues into the community bank board rooms. The regulatory exam almost always includes as its foundation an assessment of the strength of the board, whose oversight is considered critical to the proper functioning of a healthy bank. As a result, it is important for community bank directors to understand corporate governance principles, which fall under three broad categories.
- Board Assessment—Is the board properly structured to provide optimal oversight to the bank?
- Director Independence—Is the board able to effectively review management recommendations and make its own independent decisions regarding the bank’s strategy?
- Management Review and Compensation—Does the bank have the right management team, and are those individuals compensated in a way that incentivizes them to implement the bank’s strategy?
Board Assessment
A review of hundreds of regulatory memorandums of understanding (MOUs) and consent orders has produced a clear starting point: Virtually every formal action begins with the requirement that the board increase its involvement and conduct an assessment of the performance and composition of management. The board’s assessment function, however, begins with the directors themselves. This self-assessment by the board is a logical starting point to ensure top board performance.
The Interim Final Rules regarding Executive Compensation for TARP recipients provide a number of corporate governance standards for Compensation Committees. While these standards currently only apply to financial institutions that have outstanding TARP investments, many of the standards are likely to be considered best practices for the compensation committees of all companies.
TARP recipients generally are required to have a compensation committee consisting solely of independent directors (with independence determined by reference to the federal securities laws). (Private TARP recipients who received a TARP investment of less than $25 million are not required to have a compensation committee, in which case the full Board of Directors is required to take the actions detailed below).
