If you’re involved in the compliance effort at your bank or credit union, you know that these are challenging times just to keep up with what is going on, let alone trying to prepare your institution to respond accordingly.
Once a week, our new issues committee here at AffirmX gathers together to review what is coming down the line and when so that we can help our clients prepare accordingly. These are not ordinary times. The technical term we use to characterize the volume of today’s regulatory developments is “a boatload.”
To help make wrapping our arms around the boatload manageable, we have segmented the internet into various “beats” (agencies, industry observers, banks and credit unions, associations, etc.), and each of us posts the hottest topics we find each day from our beat onto our tracking board’s hot list. We then track what others have posted from their beats as well. In addition to studying the regulations themselves, the daily scouring of the internet is an important part of our effort to keep up with trending regulatory matters.
But this is what we do here. We live, breathe and eat compliance in order to help keep our clients up to date. What about those people who have many other responsibilities in addition to compliance? They know that keeping developing compliance matters on their radar is important, but maybe they don’t have time to scour the internet each day tracking down the latest developments.
If the time you have available to keeping track of new issues in compliance is limited, here are the top five compliance resources I’d recommend you visit each day. A few minutes on each of these pages will be time well-spent.

Risk InboX

Of course, we’d mention this one (link), since it is prepared by, ahem, us. But as long as we’re going to spend time scouring dozens of sites each day looking for the hottest compliance and risk issues, why not take advantage of that, save some time, and keep up on what’s hot? We divide our home page into three different tracking boards: 1) Credit Unions, 2) Banks, and 3) Agencies. We post 6-10 links daily and a short (like one sentence short, usually) summary of why the links matter. Once a week or so, we publish a special post, which usually contains a tool that is cool and, better still, free as long as it stays on the home page. Enter your email in the column on the right to get a weekly digest, the Risk Roundup, which includes the 5 hottest of the hot stories of the past week.

CFPB Newsroom

Even if your bank or credit union isn’t regulated by the CFPB directly, if you’re involved in compliance for your financial institution, you need to keep an eye on what “the Bureau” is up to (link). The whole site has useful information, but as far as tracking new issues, the CFPB’s newsroom page is a good place to start. You can also register to receive press releases via email on this page.

NAFCU Compliance Blog

Whether you’re a credit union or a bank, NAFCU’s compliance blog is worth a daily visit. They typically look at a single development daily and provide some useful commentary on why it matters and what to watch out for.

CU Insight News

This is another one geared at credit unions, but useful for bankers as well. This page (link) contains the first few lines of several different items from across the internet, with links to pages with the first few paragraphs. If what you find is of interest, the page then includes a link back to the full article or post on the originating site. It also includes a list of trending items in the right column.

Your Regulatory Agency’s Newsroom

Let’s face it, it’s good to keep up with what’s important to your regulatory agency, as indicated by what they’re writing about. Worth dropping by occasionally and seeing what’s new on their newsroom pages.

That’s it. My top 5. If you have time available to devote to keeping tabs on new issues is limited, I’d recommend hitting these sites. Anything you think I should squeeze onto that list? (Top 6, anyone?) Drop me a line at dennis (dot) agle (at) affirmx (dot) com or comment below.