Continuity Engine introduces Crowdsourcing for Banking.
Community brings open source licensing to community banking for TARP, compliance and operations materials.
Monroe, CT April 6, 2009 – Continuity Engine announces the availability of Community, a collaboration platform for community banking. Community offers freedom of access, open licensing and tools to enable crowdsourcing for banking. It is the first site to release content with free use, change and share licensing to bring the vitality of open source software to banking compliance and operations.
“Crowdsourcing is the right solution for community banking compliance, TARP and operations,” says Andy Greenawalt, CEO of Continuity Engine. “Over 17,000 community banking organizations in the US face the same regulations as the big failing banks. The typical community bank, with one hundred million in assets, will have 25 employees. Though they have the tight budgets of small businesses, they must spend thousands annually on policies and procedures that are identical from bank to bank, and credit union to credit union. Through the power of Crowdsourcing, Community lets bankers work with bankers to get what they need with the help of Continuity Engine experts and the experts among them.”
Community is open and free for those working at regulated banking institutions in the US. Freedom of access eliminates barriers responsible for shrinking the community of common interest. As seen with Linux, the great Crowdsourcing success story, community size and licensing type make all the difference. All content created on Community, by members and Continuity Engine experts, is released under Creative Commons license for the rights to share, remix and reuse. Typically, this content has been held as proprietary by consulting or documentation firms. Due to its secret nature, sharing could never gain focus and momentum.
“The first folks on Community were banking software users groups,” says Jim Kisch, Chief Community Officer for Continuity Engine. “Hundreds of bankers have been on over the last six months using Community to get more done. By finding others with common problems using the powerful social networking tools of Community, they can quickly organize around their issues, divide them up and work together. As a former bank CIO and CFO, it is really exciting to be building what I’d always wanted.”
Pattie Bernier of Bath Savings Institution in Bath, Maine adds, “Our user group has been around since 1987 with banks from $10 million to $6 billion over the Eastern Seaboard. While we would share information and exchange ideas at our annual conference, doing it throughout the year was complicated. With Community, we’ve been working together so that none of us is reinventing the wheel.”
To join Community please visit http://www.continuity.net and click Join.
About Continuity Engine, Inc.:
Founded in 2008 by SaaS, banking and compliance veterans, Continuity Engine created an on-demand platform designed to simplify regulatory compliance achievement in the management of policies, procedures and audit programs. Continuity Engine is backed by Gnostic Ventures and located in Monroe, Connecticut.
Contact:
Andy Greenawalt, Founder and CEO
Continuity Engine, Inc
203-903-0124
http://www.continuity.net
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