Customer Stories
New Valley Bank & Trust
OnBoard’s Minutes AI capability empowers more active meeting participation at this Massachusetts-based community bank.
Customer Stories
OnBoard’s Minutes AI capability empowers more active meeting participation at this Massachusetts-based community bank.
Industry: Banks
Headquarters: Springfield, Massachusetts
Board Management Goals
Results
OnBoard Capabilities Utilized
Founded just five years ago in Springfield, Massachusetts, New Valley Bank & Trust is a rare success story in an industry dominated by consolidation. As the first new banking institution to launch in Springfield in decades, the bank serves commercial clients in northern Connecticut and western Massachusetts.
With $350 million in assets and a lean team of 40 employees, New Valley combines the mission-driven values of a community bank with forward-thinking operational tools to maintain both regulatory excellence and customer satisfaction.
“We’re small,” says Jill Brody, New Valley Bank & Trust’s Senior Vice President of Risk Management. “Our mission is to work within the communities that we serve.”
Jill, who joined the organization three years ago, brings a deep understanding of risk oversight and governance to the bank’s leadership. At the heart of her daily responsibilities is managing board and committee meetings — often leading them herself — while ensuring compliance with regulatory expectations.
Historically, this has meant juggling multiple hats: facilitating meetings while simultaneously capturing detailed, regulator-ready minutes.
In community banks where lean teams are the norm, employees frequently wear many hats. Brody exemplifies this dynamic as a key contributor and minute-taker in board and committee meetings. But this multitasking came at a cost.
“I contributed a lot of the content to the audit committee,” Jill says. “I ran the meeting. And I did all those minutes. So, it’s kind of hard to capture the minutes as well as run the meeting.”
The result was a common dilemma: being too focused on note-taking to fully participate in strategic discussions. This compromise not only diminished the value of Brody’s insights during the meetings but also added significant time to post-meeting tasks, as she often had to reconstruct conversations from hastily scribbled notes.
To address this challenge, New Valley Bank & Trust implemented OnBoard’s Minutes AI capability, designed to seamlessly record, transcribe, and synthesize meeting discussions. The goal was simple: Free up leaders to fully engage in meetings without compromising the quality or accuracy of board documentation.
After six months of use, Jill confirmed a major shift in her ability to actively participate while maintaining confidence in the meeting record:
“I’m a participant like everybody else,” she says. “So, I have the comfort that everything’s being captured for me.”
While Jill initially felt uncertain about whether the tool saved time, she later recognized its indirect time-saving benefits. “I guess I was wrong because I’m not using the whole meeting typing,” she says. “So, I am saving time.”
Now, instead of hurriedly typing notes during live discussion, Brody can focus on dialogue, then return later to review the comprehensive transcript and meeting assets stored in one centralized, secure location.
— Jill Brody, Senior Vice President of Risk Management, New Valley Bank & Trust
A typical board meeting at New Valley includes 12 board members and multiple subcommittees, including four board committees and two management committees. Meetings occur on a regular cadence — monthly for the board and quarterly for most committees, with some, like the directors’ loan committee, meeting weekly.
Jill’s process using Minutes AI is straightforward:
“I start my minutes, make sure it’s recording, and then I let it do its thing,” she says.
The tool generates an outline and a transcript, capturing both the spoken word and the visual content shared during the meeting. For Jill, the real value lies in this comprehensive capture of meeting elements:
“You’ve got the transcript,” she says. “You’ve got the outline. You’ve got what is being shown on screen. If they’ve called in, you can see a picture of their faces … all of that is in one spot for your reference.”
Jill doesn’t use the generated minutes in their default form. She prefers to paste transcripts into her own customized format. But the presence of the raw material significantly reduces friction. Instead of trying to recall who said what or deciphering scribbled notes, Jill can access the voice, the transcript, and the visuals, side-by-side.
One unanticipated benefit was the ability to delegate minutes preparation to others, even if they weren’t present at the meeting.
“We have just hired another team member,” Jill says. “Even though he hasn’t attended these meetings, there’s an opportunity for him to reference this tool and it has all the information at his fingertips to start a rough draft of the minutes.”
Before Minutes AI this simply wasn’t possible. Delegating minutes to someone who didn’t attend the meeting would have been a non-starter. Now, with everything documented and accessible, Jill can share past meeting content and expect high-fidelity drafts from someone new to the process.
OnBoard’s Minutes AI have redefined how Jill participates in meetings and prepares critical documentation afterward. It has freed her to focus on strategic discussions, empowered her to share minute-taking duties, and given her confidence that no detail will be lost.
“Now I don’t have to take the minutes at all, and I can completely participate in the meetings and have comfort that all of that is going to be documented for my future reference,” Jill says.
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