Organizational Resources Support Protego Trust Bank’s Emerging Growth

Supporting a new startup in the financial tech industry

Protego Trust Bank N.A. is one of the first digital banks approved by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The institutional digital asset bank will custody, trade, lend, and issue new digital assets.

As a part of its ongoing business strategy, Protego needed to focus on the oversight and due diligence of its Board of Directors, ensuring the directors adequately understood the cutting-edge blockchain technology behind the business, the company’s overall strategic objectives, and high-level internal processes.

Additionally, Protego needed to find a substantial method for measuring its own progress and stay on a clear path to meet its regulatory requirements and strategic goals.

Implementing our expertise in governance and change management

Our client sought Spur Reply's expertise in governance and change management to design a Board educational program and self-governance survey. The goal of the organizational resources was to form alignment across the board of directors on Protego’s functional role as a company and measure its performance over time.  

Building a well-rounded readiness program

To help create and land a readiness program for Protego’s board of directors, our consultants first met with the Chair of the Board and the business unit functional leads. Together, we developed a leadership vision and standardized template to educate the board on all the startup’s business units, which included each of the business unit’s objectives and key goals. We then met with employees across each of the business units to document each function.

Defining each of Protego’s business unit objectives and functionalities ensured the board members would receive accurate and comprehensive information on internal operations. In order to adapt to Protego’s continuing growth in the marketplace, our team designed the program in a way that would allow our client to easily update it in the future, ensuring continued integration of the program into Protego’s ongoing operations. 

Our team then helped our client create a thorough self-assessment as a way for Protego’s board of directors to measure its ongoing progress as a governance body. Our consultants created the survey by conducting industry and regulatory research while leveraging their expertise in organizational governance and knowledge of industry best practices.

Providing our client with a way to easily identify actionable insights, we built an automated template that will convert the data from the self-assessment results into an executive dashboard. Measuring a variety of criteria within parameters such as performance, planning and communication, the self-assessment survey will enable the board to accurately track its own health and performance over time.

Organizational resources provide Protego with scalable solution

Our collaboration gave Protego’s Board of Directors, a total of ten board members at the time, an evergreen educational template that can be updated as the company grows and expands beyond its initial offerings. The template remains a valuable asset to our client because it allows the board to stay knowledgeable on the interdependent roles Protego’s internal teams play within the company, as well as the startup’s strategic goals.

"With Spur Reply's knowledge and expertise, our board of directors now has two crucial resources for ensuring Protego's continuous success as one of the first federally chartered digit asset banks. The readiness program and self-assessment will equip our board with the resources they need to make informed decisions and remain aligned on Protego's strategic goals as a whole," said Colette Taylor, chairwoman for Protego Trust Bank N.A. "Spur played a critical role in ensuring the project was completed on time with excellence."

Additionally, Protego’s Board of Directors received a comprehensive self-assessment survey to accurately measure its ongoing performance and health. The survey will provide a roadmap for Protego’s leaders on how to move toward their goals as well as a guide for when and how to adjust the team’s systems, structures, and processes in the future.

The educational blueprint and self-assessment survey both serve as vital organizational resources to ensure the success of Protego as a growing startup in the financial technology industry.