Western Alliance Bank has a clear corporate governance structure that creates effective oversight and guidance for our Company, led by our Board of Directors. In addition to adhering to all applicable laws and regulations, our bank relies on well-defined guidelines to provide a roadmap for ensuring responsible, transparent and accountable governance of our organization.
High-Quality Governing Body
Our Board of Directors comprises 13 members, who individually bring strong experience, independent views, varied outlooks and a commitment to ethical governance. Of note:
Western Alliance is dedicated to ongoing Board refreshment, a process that reflects our continuing growth as a Company, and our focus on a Board composed of directors who actively contribute to the evolving needs of the Company, while maintaining the invaluable institutional knowledge brought by more tenured directors.
Care is given to ensuring that individual Board Members possess key skills that complement each other and represent the range of disciplines and experience needed to effectively guide our Company. Among these skills are corporate strategy, financial services industry experience, financial acumen, experience in a highly regulated industry, C-Suite leadership, operations management expertise, public company board service, corporate finance and mergers & acquisitions experience, technology/information security experience, geographic expertise and risk management. The Company also values gender and ethnic diversity of the Board.
The Board of Directors maintains five standing committees: Audit, Governance, Compensation, Risk, Finance and Investment.
Prioritizing Ethical Behavior
Integrity is another core value for Western Alliance Bank that imbues all of our actions and activities. We have developed a comprehensive Code of Business Conduct & Ethics that every employee is required to read and consent to on an annual basis. On February 6, 2024, our Board of Directors adopted an amendment to the Company's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics (applicable to the Company's employees, officers and directors). The purpose of the amendment was to provide updated information on the Company’s crisis and emergency response procedures. These updates are in addition to the updates made on May 5, 2023, which updates were to clarify that nothing in the Company's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics restricts employees, officers or directors, as applicable, from communications or actions protected or required by state or federal law. Corresponding changes were also made the Company's Corporate Governance Guidelines (applicable to our directors)
In line with our commitment to accountability, we have a companywide whistleblower program, administered by a third party, EthicsPoint. This program is designed so that any behavior, business practice or action that does not meet our high standards can be reported by our employees anonymously and confidentially. Issues can then be appropriately reviewed, escalated and addressed as necessary.
Robust Risk Management
Under the Company’s governance structure and applicable law, the Board of Directors is ultimately responsible for overseeing the Company’s risk management processes. The Company has adopted a three lines of defense risk management model, and the Board has distributed certain oversight responsibilities to its committees in keeping with the Board’s obligation to oversee and monitor the three lines of defense – the full Board of Directors, the Risk Committee, and the Audit Committee.
Stakeholder Engagement
We maintain an ongoing, proactive outreach effort with our shareholders in a variety of ways. Throughout the year, our executives and Investor Relations team regularly meet with current shareholders, prospective investors and investment analysts. These meetings often include our CEO, CFO, or business line leaders in order to engage shareholders and solicit feedback on various topics relevant to the Company’s performance and strategy.
We also engage shareholders through quarterly earnings calls, participation in investor conferences and our Annual Shareholder Meeting.
Feedback received from our shareholders is communicated to business leaders and the Board, and helps inform our business decisions and strategy, as appropriate.