Website management for banks, credit unions and fintechs. One senior partner runs your public website on an ongoing retainer: WordPress maintenance, security hardening, hosting, privacy-safe analytics, accessibility and search, documented to the standard your vendor management program expects.
A retainer, not a redesign. Your site already exists. What it needs is someone accountable for keeping it patched, fast, compliant and online every month, with a written record of every change for your auditors.
One senior person, directly. No account manager, no handoff to a junior team, no offshore subcontracting. The person who signs the vendor agreement is the person in the codebase.
Built for due diligence. Vendor questionnaires, SOC 2 style control narratives, insurance certificates, access policies and change logs are part of the engagement, not an afterthought when procurement asks.
Watched between emergencies. Daily vulnerability scans, uptime monitoring, log review and a known response window, so a finding arrives as a notification with a fix attached rather than an examiner's letter.
What Managing a Bank Website Includes
A flat monthly retainer scoped to your institution. Every service below is framed for the controls a financial institution is expected to have over its public-facing web presence, and all of it is delivered by one senior engineer.
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WordPress Maintenance & Change Control Scheduled plugin, theme, core and PHP update cycles tested locally and on staging before production, deployed through git, with a change log and monthly report your compliance team can file.
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Security Scanning & Hardening Daily vulnerability scans against CVE and wpscan.io data, login and admin hardening, MFA, REST API and user enumeration blocking, Content Security Policy and security headers, and every alert verified by hand.
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Audit & Examination Remediation Penetration test findings, external security audit reports, security scorecard results and examiner questions worked through item by item in the codebase, with written closure for each finding.
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Hosting, DNS & Performance WP Engine, Kinsta or WordPress VIP coordination, Cloudflare DNS, WAF and edge caching, SSL and certificate management, zero-downtime deployments, and Core Web Vitals kept healthy release after release.
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Privacy-Safe Analytics & Consent Google Tag Manager and GA4 configured so no account numbers, form values or personal data reach a third party, consent management that actually blocks tags until permission is given, and a tag inventory your privacy officer can approve.
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Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) Audits, remediation and regression checks against WCAG 2.2 AA and ADA Title III expectations, including rates tables, calculators, PDFs and online banking entry points, with a documented accessibility statement.
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SEO & AI Search (AEO) Local branch and product visibility in Google and AI answer engines, structured data for FinancialService, LocalBusiness and FAQ markup, and content governance so rankings are protected rather than disrupted.
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Ad Tech & Conversion Tracking Paid media tags, conversion events and landing pages implemented through the same consent and privacy controls, so marketing can run campaigns without creating a data-sharing finding.
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Third-Party Script Governance Monitoring for new or changed scripts on the site, review of every vendor tag before it ships, and a maintained inventory of what loads, from where, and what data it can see.
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Urgent Availability A defined response window for outages, defacement, suspected compromise or a time-sensitive examiner request, with direct access to me rather than a ticket queue.
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Vendor Due Diligence Support Completed security questionnaires, access and change management policies, business continuity notes, insurance certificates and annual review calls for your third-party risk management program.
Security Work in Production, Every Day
This is a live Cloudflare security overview for a financial institution website I manage: nearly half of all requests in a 24 hour window mitigated at the edge before they reached the origin, including a 120,000 request attack spike absorbed without downtime. WAF rules, rate limiting and bot protection are tuned from this data month after month, not set once and forgotten.
Let's Chat
If you're a bank, financial institution, or credit union looking for expert consulting from a seasoned specialist schedule a consultation on Google Meet, or contact me by email.
Financial Institution Work in Production
Coastal1 Credit Union: Managed Under Monthly Audit
Rhode Island's largest credit union, with over $2B in assets and an external security audit every month. Ongoing management of the custom WordPress theme, daily CVE scanning, Content Security Policy and security headers at the edge, WAF rules tuned from live firewall events, GTM and GA4 run privacy-safe, WCAG remediation, and penetration test findings closed in code.
Cred.ai: Fintech Marketing Stack Without the Data Leak
A fintech banking app running paid acquisition across Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat on several WordPress properties. Consent gating in GTM, server-side conversion events with opt-out forwarded, Firebase SDK consent aligned with Consent Mode v2, recurring Lighthouse and accessibility reviews, and ongoing support of the headless onboarding flow.
Webster Bank: Marketing Technology & Organic Growth
A regional bank where I worked directly with the marketing team as their technical partner: Google Tag Manager implemented and governed across the site, advertising and marketing technology integrated through it, and organic search traffic grown and reported through Search Console. Older engagement, same discipline: one person accountable for the tags, the data and the results.
Arbor Investment Advisors: Designed, Built & Managed
A registered investment adviser whose site I designed and built as a custom WordPress theme, then kept running: analytics and advertising tracking implemented and maintained, scheduled updates, security hardening and monitoring handled on an ongoing basis so a small firm never had to think about its website.
The World Bank: 480+ Reports From a Headless WordPress CMS
A custom headless CMS and automated PDF generation system that let the World Bank publish and distribute more than 480 country-level COVID-19 reports to a global audience, built to their server constraints and managed through the publishing surge.
Compliance & Risk, Handled in the Codebase
A bank website is a third-party risk, a privacy surface and a public accommodation all at once. The controls your examiners and auditors expect are implemented as engineering and documented as evidence, not described in a brochure.
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GLBA and privacy: no account numbers, SSNs or form values in analytics, ad or session-replay tools; tag inventory and data flow documented for your privacy officer
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FFIEC and third-party risk: vendor questionnaire, access policy, change management policy, business continuity notes and annual review supplied for your TPRM file
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Security examinations: penetration test, scorecard and external audit findings remediated in code with written closure per finding
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ADA and WCAG 2.2 AA: accessibility audits, remediation, regression checks and a published accessibility statement
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Marketing compliance: rate, APR, Member FDIC, NCUA and Equal Housing disclosures kept intact through template and content changes, with your compliance team's review built into the release process
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Change control: every production change goes through local, staging and git deployment, and is recorded in a monthly change report
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Access control: named accounts, MFA, least-privilege roles, offboarding on request, and admin restricted by Cloudflare Access or IP where appropriate
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Incident response: a defined response window, log review, containment and a written post-incident summary; forensic breach response involving customer data is escalated to a specialist firm and your counsel
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Activity logging: every plugin update, content edit, user change and login recorded with a timestamp and user, as shown in the change management log from a credit union site I manage
Vendor Due Diligence & Insurance
Kevinleary.net, LLC is a Massachusetts limited liability company carrying professional liability and cyber liability coverage, with a certificate of insurance available on request and policy limits shared during onboarding. Access to client systems is governed by a written access policy with named accounts and MFA. Security questionnaires, control narratives, business continuity notes and references are provided during onboarding and refreshed annually for your third-party risk management review.
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Certificate of insurance for professional and cyber liability on request
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Completed vendor security questionnaire (SIG Lite, CAIQ or your own template)
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Written access, change management and incident response policies
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Business continuity and key-person contingency notes
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Annual vendor review call with your risk or compliance team
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References from financial institution clients on request
Security Scanning, Hardening & Real Patching
Vulnerability scanning is only a control if someone reads the alerts. Scans run daily, alerts route to me, every one is verified by hand, and patching happens on a schedule with a record of what changed.
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Daily scans against MITRE CVE data and wpscan.io
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Login rate limiting, brute-force mitigation and MFA
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Author and REST API user enumeration blocking
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Content Security Policy and security headers at the edge
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Cloudflare WAF rules tuned from live firewall events
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Abandoned plugins, backups and writable directories removed
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Plugin, theme, core and PHP patching on a schedule
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BigQuery threat reports built from GA4 event data, flagging injection attempts, probe hits and foreign-host activity per session
Privacy-Safe Tracking & Consent
Marketing needs GA4, conversion tracking and ad platforms. Compliance needs none of that to see an applicant's data. Both are satisfied when the tag manager is treated as a controlled system rather than a free-for-all.
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GTM and GA4 configured with PII redaction and no form value capture
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Consent management that blocks tags until permission is granted
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Consent Mode v2 for Google Ads and GA4
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Session replay and chat tools reviewed or excluded from sensitive pages
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Tag inventory documenting every vendor, its data and its purpose
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Ad platform conversions implemented through the same consent gate
Hosting, DNS & Speed Without Downtime
Managed WordPress hosts protect their platform. They do not configure your DNS, tune your edge cache, remediate your pen test or keep your Core Web Vitals healthy. That layer is where this work lives.
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WP Engine, Kinsta and WordPress VIP coordination
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Cloudflare DNS, WAF, bot protection and edge caching
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SSL, certificate and DNS record management
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Zero-downtime git deployments with staging environments
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Core Web Vitals fixed in the theme, not hidden behind plugins
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Uptime, error log and third-party script monitoring
Accessibility That Holds Up to Scrutiny
A financial institution website is a public accommodation, and demand letters do not wait for a redesign. Findings are fixed in the theme and the content, never papered over with an overlay widget, and re-checked on every release.
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WCAG 2.2 AA audits and remediation, including rates tables and calculators
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Published accessibility statement with a contact path
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Keyboard, screen reader and color contrast testing by hand
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Accessible PDFs and online banking entry points
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Regression checks on every release so fixes do not erode
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Lighthouse accessibility score of 95 on a managed financial institution site, backed by manual testing
SEO & AI Search, Protected & Grown
The people in your footprint search for branches, rates and products every day. Those rankings are an asset, so content governance protects them while structured data and AI answer monitoring extend them.
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Local branch, product and ATM visibility in Google and AI answer engines
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FinancialService, LocalBusiness and FAQ structured data
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Content governance so ranking pages are changed deliberately
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Technical SEO kept clean through every update cycle
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Search Console and AI answer monitoring reported monthly
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Three months of Search Console performance for a managed credit union website: 112k clicks, 508k impressions and an average position of 6.3
What Banks Ask
Before Hiring a Website Vendor
Vendor management, compliance and IT each have their own questions about an outside party touching the public website. These are the ones that come up before an engagement starts.
| Concern | Solution |
|---|---|
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Passing Third-Party Risk Review Our vendor management program requires a questionnaire, insurance, policies and an annual review. Can a single consultant actually clear that? |
Yes, and I have for existing financial institution clients. The security questionnaire, written access and change management policies, business continuity notes, insurance certificate and references are provided during onboarding and refreshed annually. Questionnaires have included SIG Lite, CAIQ and institution-specific templates. |
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Key-Person Risk If we hire one person, what happens when that person is unavailable? |
Everything is documented so a successor can step in: the codebase in git with a README, environments and credentials in a shared vault you control, hosting and DNS accounts in your name, and a written runbook. Urgent coverage windows and a named backup contact are spelled out in the agreement. A vetted backup engineer with read access to the documentation is named in the agreement for extended absences. |
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Access to Our Systems How much access do you need, and how is it controlled? |
Only the public website stack: hosting, DNS, the CMS, the tag manager and analytics. Never online banking, core systems or customer data. Access runs through named accounts with MFA, least-privilege roles, and offboarding on request, and your IT team can restrict admin by IP or Cloudflare Access. |
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Analytics Leaking Customer Data Our last audit flagged account data reaching Google Analytics through a form. How do we stop that happening again? |
By treating the tag manager as a controlled system. Form values and URL parameters are redacted before any event fires, session replay and chat tools are excluded from sensitive pages, every tag is inventoried with its data and purpose, and new vendor tags are reviewed before they ship. |
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Breaking Disclosures During Updates Rates, APR language, Member FDIC and Equal Housing marks have to be exactly right. How do updates avoid disturbing them? |
Disclosures live in controlled template regions and content blocks rather than scattered across pages, every change is reviewed on staging before release, and your compliance team gets a review window built into the release process for anything that touches a regulated page. |
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We Are Not Looking for a Redesign Every vendor we talk to wants to rebuild the site. We just need it run well. |
That is the engagement. Most clients come to me with a site someone else built. I audit it, stabilize what is fragile, set up proper environments and deploys, and manage it forward with incremental improvement. A rebuild only happens if you decide you want one. |
Common Tasks & Requests
A sample of the requests I handle for financial institution clients in a typical month:
- Working through a monthly external security audit report
- Remediating penetration test and security scorecard findings
- Completing a vendor security questionnaire for procurement
- Testing and deploying the monthly WordPress and PHP update cycle
- Updating rates tables and disclosures with compliance review
- Reviewing Cloudflare firewall events and tuning WAF rules
- Redacting form data from GA4 events after a privacy review
- Adding a new ad platform tag behind the consent gate
- Fixing accessibility findings on a loan calculator
- Publishing branch and product pages with local structured data
- Investigating an uptime alert or error log spike
- Hardening login and admin after a brute-force surge
- Reviewing how other banks and credit unions run WordPress
Website Management for Banks FAQ
Questions from marketing, compliance and IT leaders at banks, credit unions and fintechs evaluating ongoing website management.
- Is WordPress appropriate for a bank or credit union website?
Yes, for the public marketing site. Online banking, account opening and loan applications belong in your core and digital banking vendors, and the public site links to them. WordPress itself is not the weak point. Abandoned plugins, unpatched code, open login endpoints and uncontrolled tag managers are, and those are exactly what this retainer manages.\n\nFor proof it works at scale, see my list of credit unions, banks and finance organizations running WordPress.
- What does the monthly retainer include?
Maintenance and update cycles, daily security scanning and hardening, hosting and DNS management, privacy-safe analytics and consent, accessibility upkeep, SEO and AI search upkeep, ad tech support, a defined urgent response window, and the due diligence documentation your vendor management program needs. Scope is set in writing before we start.
- What does website management for a bank cost?
A flat monthly retainer scoped to your site and your compliance requirements. You will know the exact number before anything is signed, and it typically replaces an agency retainer at a lower cost with a more senior person doing the work.
- Can you complete our vendor due diligence process?
Yes. Security questionnaires, written access and change management policies, incident response and business continuity notes, a certificate of insurance and client references are provided during onboarding and refreshed annually. Professional and cyber liability coverage is in place, with the certificate and limits shared during onboarding.
- What systems do you need access to?
The public website stack only: hosting, DNS, the CMS, Cloudflare, the tag manager and analytics. I never need access to online banking, core systems or customer records. Accounts are named, protected by MFA and limited to the roles the work requires, and all of them stay in your institution's name.
- How quickly do you respond to an outage or security issue?
Urgent issues, including outages, defacement, suspected compromise and time-sensitive examiner requests, have a defined response window in the agreement and reach me directly rather than a ticket queue. Routine requests are handled within normal business hours in the US Eastern time zone. For most retainers that window is same business day, with a faster window available for institutions that need it.
- Who actually does the work?
I do. I am an independent, US-based consultant and nothing is subcontracted or sent offshore. The person your vendor management team reviews is the person in your codebase, your Cloudflare account and your tag manager.
- Can you take over a site built by an agency or a previous developer?
Yes, and most engagements start this way. I audit what exists, document it, stabilize anything fragile, establish staging and git deployments, remediate open security and accessibility findings, and then manage the site forward. A redesign is never a prerequisite.
- How do you reduce our ADA accessibility risk?
By auditing against WCAG 2.2 AA, fixing findings in the theme and content rather than layering an overlay widget on top, publishing an accessibility statement with a contact path, and re-checking on every release so fixes do not regress. Overlay widgets are not used; they have been named in demand letters themselves.
- Can marketing still run analytics and ad campaigns?
Yes. GA4, Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn tracking all run, but behind a consent gate and with form values, URL parameters and personal data redacted before any event fires. The result is reporting your marketing team can use and a tag inventory your privacy officer can sign off on.
Benefits of working together
One Senior Partner
The person who completes your vendor questionnaire is the person patching the site, tuning the firewall and answering the phone. No account layer, no handoffs, no offshore team.
Ready for Due Diligence
Questionnaires, policies, insurance and references are part of onboarding. Your third-party risk file is complete before the first production change.
Proven Under Audit
This work has been examined by external security auditors, penetration testers and scorecard tools for clients in banking, credit unions and fintech.
Managed, Not Rebuilt
Your site improves incrementally, release by release, with a change log for every month. A redesign only happens if you decide you want one.
Let's Chat
If you're a bank, financial institution, or credit union looking for expert consulting from a seasoned specialist schedule a consultation on Google Meet, or contact me by email.