Customer Stories

AgTexas

Farm Credit Association Modernizes and Accelerates Its Process for Director and Officer Questionnaires

Industry: Financial Services

Headquarters: Lubbock, Texas

Board Management Goals

Simplifying and streamlining the process of creating and collecting annual disclosures from board members.
Fulfilling the regulatory requirements of the Farm Credit Administration.
Providing board members with a single source of all materials and information.

Results

Significantly reduced the amount of staff time spent creating, distributing, collecting, and reviewing board member disclosures.
Created a repeatable process for remaining compliant that takes minutes, rather than weeks.
Achieved board-wide adoption.
Saved resources by cutting down on paper use.

The Challenges

AgTexas Farm Credit Services knows agriculture. Founded in 1934, the rural lending cooperative provides competitively priced, reliable credit to farmers, ranchers and rural property owners throughout Texas.

As a co-op, AgTexas is customer-owned. That means each member has a voice in the business — as well as the opportunity to cast a vote in annual board of director elections.

AgTexas’ 14-member board of directors plays an essential role in the organization’s governance. Like AgTexas’ member-owners, those who sit on the board of directors are producers and business owners involved in agriculture.

As a farm credit organization, AgTexas abides by regulations set out by the Farm Credit Administration. One regulation requires farm credit organizations to undergo an annual standard of conduct process. Part of this process involves collecting disclosures from all board members, which outline any business relationships that could be considered a conflict of interest.

But creating, distributing, collecting, and reviewing these disclosures was a time-consuming, manual process for Kayla Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at AgTexas, and her team.

“We were doing everything on paper,” Robinson says.

“Even that process of catching an error and getting it fixed was really time efficient...It’s a massive time savings.”

- Kayla Robinson
Chief Operating Officer
AgTexas Farm Credit Services

Modernizing and Accelerating D&O Questionnaires

In the past, Kayla and her team manually created the year’s disclosures and then printed them to distribute at the January board meeting. While some board members would complete and distribute the disclosures on the spot, others didn’t. This created inefficiencies for the team.

“The entire process would take a couple weeks,” Robinson says. “We had to chase some of the forms down and review to make sure they were all complete.”

AgTexas has been a happy OnBoard customer since 2019. So when the team heard the company was launching a Director & Officer (D&O) Questionnaires feature to simplify and support this regulatory requirement, they knew it was a no-brainer.

“I attended a webinar where the Director & Officer Questionnaires product was introduced,” Robinson says. “I immediately saw how this could be a huge time-saver and said, ‘let’s do this.’”

Today, the entire D&O process is completed electronically. Disclosures are created and shared via OnBoard. Board members can then complete and sign their disclosures right from their company-issued tablets. And after submission, the AgTexas team can quickly and easily review the disclosures.

“This year, the board was finished in probably 15 minutes,” Robinson says. “It’s definitely easier because I don’t have to shuffle through a bunch of papers to make sure that everything’s the way it should be.”

The D&O Questionnaire solution also makes it quick and easy for AgTexas to correct any errors that crop up. For example, Robinson and her team noticed that a director had answered a question incorrectly, but he’d already signed and submitted his disclosure. The team was able to go back and reopen the disclosure, change the answer and send it back to the director to review and resubmit — without having to print and mail forms.

“Even that process of catching an error and getting it fixed was really time-efficient for us, versus if it had been on paper,” Robinson says. “It’s a massive time savings.”

“Being able to electronically copy content from the previous year is going to make the process a whole lot easier than when we did everything on paper.”

Creating a Simple, Repeatable Annual Process

AgTexas board members serve three-year terms, and it’s common for members to get reelected for multiple terms. Each year of their term, they must complete a new D&O.

In the past, board members would hand-write and sign printed disclosures, which would then be scanned and saved as PDFs. Robinson and her team would then take the information from the previous year’s disclosures and pre-populate this information into the current year’s version. This process was time-consuming, often taking several hours. It was also prone to error.

With OnBoard’s D&O Questionnaire solution, however, the team can quickly and easily duplicate the content from each board member’s disclosure from the previous year. Then the directors are able to add, edit, and delete rather than start from scratch.

“The ability to pre-fill was a really huge selling point for us,” Robinson says. “Being able to electronically copy content from the previous year is going to make the process a whole lot easier than when we did everything on paper.”

“Our board members are really proficient with OnBoard because it’s so easy.”

Adding Value to a Familiar, Trusted Solution

AgTexas’ current board members have grown accustomed to using OnBoard to access all board-related information and materials. They value the simple, secure user experience it delivers. Adding on the D&O solution was seamless, and board members quickly adopted the process.

“It wasn’t that big of a leap for them because they’re so familiar with the platform,” Robinson says.

Robinson anticipates it’ll be simple to get new board members up to speed with the solution, too. Her team typically conducts an orientation with new members to walk them through Onboard, and they plan to cover the ins and outs of the D&O process when they bring on a new board member.

“Our board members are really proficient with OnBoard because it’s so easy,” Robinson says.

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