The traditional model of compliance review services has always been to randomly select and review documents and compare them to known standards and templates that reflect an optimal version of what that document should look like. But is that enough?
When parents look to best help their children prosper in the world, they rely on much more than a random selection of “documents” to review. The parent uses subject matter experts (also known as teachers) to routinely review and assess a child’s capabilities in a variety of specialty areas such as math, science, social studies, English and physical fitness. The parent then uses a risk rating system (known as the “report card”) to determine how much effort must be put forth to support the child’s improvement in each of these areas.
So what can we learn from this system and apply to the compliance review and support of our credit unions and banks?
Traditional consulting solutions use expensive experts who know all areas of compliance to do their reviews and render their opinions. Yet we know the most effective teachers specialize in their areas of knowledge and that makes them more efficient and effective in the review, support and mitigation of errors made by our children in the classroom.
It’s a model that we’ve implemented here at AffirmX: we distill compliance down to areas of concentration and use a centralized operations center with subject matter specialists in each area, giving our clients the same advantage of a student who is tutored by specialists in their respective fields. It’s an approach that cannot be reproduced with decentralized compliance review experts who will never support the volume levels to get to that level of sophistication without raising prices.
Furthermore, should we not look at our institutions and understand where the highest risks are? That would tell us where to focus our review, mitigation, and remediation efforts, along with driving the frequency, priority and volume of reviews that should be allocated to each particular area. If someone were to simply use a tool to request random samplings of documents according to an arbitrary schedule, this would be relying upon sheer luck to protect a credit union or bank from making dangerous and costly compliance mistakes.
Finally, a nationwide platform and solution along with a single central center of dedicated professionals promotes consistent review, consistent reporting, quality control and sets a standard that can become uniformly respected by the governmental oversight administrations who audit our financial institutions. Risk and specialization are keys to the compliance review services credit unions and banks must have.
If a top-tier private school is available and comes at a state school price, it is worth making a site visit.
To arrange your personal “site visit” (online demo of the AffirmX platform), or to find out schedule for group demos, please contact Mike Lane, AffirmX’s client services representative via email or toll-free at 888-972-3624, ext. 7015.
