The employees of Norwood-based King Information Systems, “live and breathe” banks and credit unions, according to CEO Patricia Tigue – a necessary trait, since they spend their days helping those institutions figure out how to manage vast piles of files and records.
Organizing paperwork isn’t thrilling, and most bankers themselves would rather not deal with it. But smart record keeping keeps banks in line with regulatory law, and also protects them from consumer lawsuits that can stir up a surprising amount of trouble, Tigue said. Her company, which serves New England and upstate New York, helps institutions figure out what to keep, how to keep it, and for how long.
Patricia M. Tigue
Title: President and CEO, King Information Systems Inc.; Norwood
Age: 59
Experience: 29 years
Q: So, how do you get started with organizing a new customer?
A: I’ll go in and spend a day, or 10 days or whatever, looking at their major record keeping areas, like signature cards. You open up an account, you sign a form, those are permanent records. Lending – you own a house, you own a car, there’s a folder [for each loan] …They’re allowed to [digitally] image certain documents, but if the documents are permanent, the retention of imaged media is not long-term. So they end up having to keep things physically for a period of time, or they can microfilm it. And we also look at the whole retention end of their operation… part of our expertise is telling them how long they have to keep these records. And then we bring the media. How do you keep that? Do you have to keep it in paper format? … If they have to keep something permanently, that’s when microfilming is the only permanent application you can bring to records because it’s rated for 300-500 years. So down the hall here is our microfilm lab. We have another location as well, in western Massachusetts, out in Wilbraham, where we do microfilming. The whole first floor of this building, the basement is 6,000 square feet, are hard copy records, in media safes. So we store records for customers, because they have no physical room.
Q: I always think of microfilm as a sort of old-fashioned technology, but when you think about it, I suppose digital files can be corrupted?
A: And they can be manipulated, that’s the other thing. You can change information. You can’t change information on a roll of film.
Q: I suppose bankers aren’t thrilled to have to deal with this?
A: It’s a tough business to be in for us …we have a fabulous reputation at this point, so a lot of customers, if they don’t do business with us, already know of us through seminars we put on and so forth, but it is a hard sell. People just want it to go away. It’s the heartbeat of any business, proper record keeping. I mean our customers, particularly banks and credit unions, they get hit with subpoenas and questions, they are always doing research.
Q: Last year we saw all of these headlines about foreclosures derailed because of questions about proper documentation of loans – did that inspire bankers to get religion on the necessity of good paperwork?
A: It’s kind of the typical thing, where they say, ‘It hasn’t happened to us yet’… When you talk about the things that have happened to other customers, how it’s important to have signature cards, etc. [other clients say], “Well, we’ve never had that happen.” It’s sort of like homeowners insurance. Would you not have a homeowners insurance policy? I’ve had one for 17 years on my home and I’ve never had a claim, but I would not go without a homeowners policy. The whole idea of record retention and record keeping is to protect you against the one time that something might happen. And that’s how you have to look at it. We do a lot of merger work, and that’s often what gets them going on it. Because you’ve got bank A merging with bank B, this one has a nice, up-to-date file, this one has a nightmare. How do you merge them together? Or they both have a nightmare: This one’s filed alphabetically, this one’s filed numerically, how do you bring them together?
Top Five Items On King Information’s Record-Keeping To-Do List:
- Update files/purge unnecessary files.
- Learn how long certain files must be retained.
- Provide the equipment for storage – paper, digital imaging or microfilm.
- Train staff for proper record-keeping.
- Set up a disaster recovery program.
