The world of credit union compliance is both fast-paced and high-stakes. It would be enough to drive any compliance professional mad… if there weren’t ample resources on their side.
Fortunately, the NCUA is also chock-full of compliance experts. And as such, they provide ample notice, explanation, and documentation for their regulatory moves.
Recently, the NCUA released its annual letter to credit unions. In that letter are a list of supervisory priorities for 2020. In case you haven’t seen the list yet, here’s a quick overview.
In 2019, Boeing faced the fallout of several 737 MAX airplane crashes. As the casualties rose, engineers and regulators raced to discover what was causing the flight malfunctions.
The answer was negligence of risk management across the organization. Here’s a very brief overview of what went wrong—and how following the three lines of defense would have helped.
Recently, we’ve been thinking about audits and examinations. We know, we know, that’s pretty par for the course over here. But we’ve been thinking about the exact role they take in the risk reduction process. Specifically, we’ve been thinking about the three lines of defense in audits.
We’ve got a couple blogs lined up to explore the topic. They’ll include non-financial industry comparisons and key takeaways for the credit union audit process.
So, let’s lay some groundwork.
At its core, Redboard is an automated exam and audit management tool for credit unions. But secrets don’t keep well among credit union departments. People outside of audit teams saw how Redboard worked and wanted to try it out.
Now, we’ve heard of several non-audit uses for Redboard at this point. We’re thrilled to see other departments benefiting from our software, and we figured we’d share these uses with you.
When we first started working on Redboard’s automation audit tools for credit unions, we had a few things in mind. For example, we wanted it to be robust, secure, time-saving, and easy to use.
We didn’t understand at the time just how important that last consideration truly was.
There’s no such thing as an all-knowing compliance professional. There are too many rules and regulations in the credit union industry for a single person to know them all. It takes a team of experts to carry out an audit or examination in any given area.
So naturally, it takes that same level of teamwork to build our credit union compliance software. Let us introduce you to how we set our product direction.
Remember way, way back in the old days at school? And how sometimes, for whatever reason, you’d get distracted for a couple seconds. And that’s when it always happened. The teacher called on you.
Are you supposed to act like you know what’s going on? Do you own up to it? Do you just blurt out random words and hope for the best until someone stops you?
It’s a terrible feeling. And we’re all happy to be done with school. But that doesn’t mean we’re safe from getting called on when we’re not ready. Credit union exams and audits can still approximate that feeling.
Let’s look at how to fix that.
So, you know how whenever you try to play pool, you have to discuss procedures for who breaks, or ball placement after a scratch, and so on? Or playing Monopoly, some people make the game a bit more punishing or forgiving to enhance play? Or how some dog owners feed their dogs scraps, but others won’t let their pups near the table?
House rules can change a lot about the way people do things. Even if some activities already have an official ruleset, there’s often room for preference and interpretation.
Often, those house rules extend to audits and auditors. Sometimes different auditors have different expectations.
Features. What can we say about features? It seems that every service, every computer program out there wants to boast dozens upon dozens of features. Right now, there’s more than one specialized audit software touting features.
But at some point, enough is enough. And yes, we’re talking about features—and the constant bragging on them.
What good is a feature if it’s too difficult to use? Or if it takes longer to learn than it takes to do things the old way?
So, here are two features that every specialized audit software program needs.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never done and audit or if you’ve completed dozens. You’re probably going to feel a little nervous. And a little exasperated. And, most importantly, you’ll wonder if you’re prepared.
We understand that worry. In fact, we’d like to help you out with that worry. So, we created an audit scorecard for your credit union.
You can use our audit scorecard to assess how ready your credit union is for your upcoming audit. It can show you which areas you might need help with, too.
(Don’t want to read what you’re getting yourself into? Check out our audit management scorecard here.)
Get FREE Access to the Audit Checklist for Credit Unions!
