BOARDIRECTOR: A GAME-CHANGING TECHNOLOGY FOR COMPLYING WITH CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
Boardirector’s systems help public companies and reporting corporations manage their board and committee meetings legally, perform securities studies, safely distribute their materials and more
In today’s vigorous business world, in which failure to observe the regulatory rules and laws of corporate governance can be criminal offenses, companies need real-time tools to help them comply. Boardirector, developed by the SQLink group, provides technological compliance solutions for companies trading securities.
Boardirector’s smart system helps manage the company. Its starting-point is a dynamic workplan for the company director, board and committees, observing all the regulations that apply to running banks, reporting corporations and Capital Market Authority-supervised management companies. The system allows creation and intelligent editing of protocols, follow-up of decisions and management of current tasks, along with the alerts and reminders for required reporting obligations.
“Our system is tailor-made for public companies,” says Boardirector CEO Nurit Kenner Yahav. “Simply and efficiently, it helps the work of the company secretary, board of directors, the committees and management. It monitors decisions, tasks and their execution, and does it all with documentation, transparency and control.”
In which Areas does Boardirector Operate?
“Boardirector operates in the Legal-Tech branch known as Reg-Tech,” explains Kenner Yahav. “Our technologies help reinforce compliance with regulatory provisions and maintain corporate governance rules. In the past two years, this is an area which has grown greatly in Israel — spurred by the COVID pandemic. It was during this time that local companies realized their need to assimilate and apply technologies which enable business continuity at any time and in any place, secure against cyber incidents and identity leaks. This is what our system does: it protects sensitive information while allowing users to work securely and efficiently at any time and in a changing business reality.”
Boardirector helps in decision-making and tasks from management down to business units. “The more our system is integrated into an organization, the more we see that client enlarging their use of it — to manage investment, credit, procurement and locating committees, internal audits, CEO offices and more,” says Kenner Yahav. “They quickly understand that operating in a controlled, streamlined and thorough manner is wholly in their own interest.”
Boardirector is currently adapting its solutions for international clients. “We’re negotiating the integration of our capabilities into overseas markets,” notes Kenner Yahav. “Our system is multilingual so it can support any regulation and any language. We see ourselves as a proud blue-and-white company that will be talked about in stock exchanges around the world.”
Assimilating Securities Laws
Boardirector has also developed interactive online learning, in collaboration with Attorney Inbal Ben Artzi, to teach employees about internal securities enforcement in a friendly and accessible way.
Internal enforcement programs are voluntarily adopted by companies trading securities on the stock exchange. They do so to detect and prevent violations and offenses, and to ensure that their company, its subsidiaries, employees and those working on its behalf comply with securities laws. An internal enforcement program can be used in a company ’s defense under Israel’s 2011 Administrative Enforcement Law, with the country’s Securities Authority ruling that effective internal enforcement provides individuals and corporations with the necessary standards by which to examine its probity and effectiveness. With company directors and managers demonstrating to the prosecutor that they have taken all reasonable measures to meet their legal obligations and remain within the law by implementing the enforcement plan, it can also serve as the basis for a Securities Authority recommendation against criminal prosecution.
It is the task of the legal advisors and those responsible for enforcement in public companies and reporting corporations to mediate the securities laws for employees. To do so, they must instruct staff and management in the securities laws and violations — a difficult proposition with employees and officeholders often geographically dispersed, training sessions missed and no mechanism for testing whether the material has been understood.
It is to address this that Boardirector developed its series of interactive online learning sessions. At the touch of a button, study material concerning core procedures of internal enforcement programs is delivered, employees are reminded to learn it, and a report is produced testifying to the learner’s performance.
Study topics include flow of information for immediate reporting, prohibited use of insider information, securities fraud, transactions with interested parties and more,” says Attorney Ben-Artzi. “They are taught through case studies and interactive tasks rather than traditional tutorials, in a light-hearted way at the click of a button in any requested language. Engaging and entertaining, with their content professional and updated, the online courses are and have proven very popular.”
in collaboration with Boardirector
