Simplifying risk and compliance in an ever-changing regulatory environment is no easy task.

Compliance failures can lead to serious consequences for any credit union. Regulatory violations can result in costly fines and civil penalties.

Implementation of compliance management technology which effectively supports risk management, tailored to your credit union, is becoming fundamental. Technology cannot eliminate risk entirely, however, it can reduce the likelihood that violations of rules and regulations occur.

The intersection of where regulations connect to CU policies, actual operating procedures and compliance controls match those policies, and are then carried out by the CU business units for full accountability is when the credit union has achieved a successful compliance management system as required by the NCUA.  Mapping means linking together all the relevant components of your credit union’s operating environment affected by regulatory requirement (state or federal).

Compliance management technology generates alerts when external regulation or internal policy changes create a compliance risk for the credit union.

“A good compliance management platform can monitor the regulatory environment and alert them when changes need to happen,” said Andy Vanderhoff, CEO of Quantivate. “It can also assure that the change management process gets performed by the right person at the right time.”

Mapping — supported by appropriate automation and technology such as Credit Union Compliance Management System PLUS^TM  (CU CMS+) — integrates all compliance efforts including impacted policies, processes, risk controls, required training and risk assessments back to the regulatory requirement itself. This means the system automatically provides alerts that a regulation change may have impacted a particular policy, process, or risk control and needs attention in order to ensure compliance.

“Technology is giving credit unions the ability to do more with less, and I’m talking primarily about the man-hours that go into compliance,” said Vanderhoff. “Recent CUNA surveys show that credit unions spend an average of 20% of their current headcount on compliance work. That’s a lot of man-hours.”

When an examiner wants to see proof of compliance, one CU CMS+ click brings it all into focus, creating a crystal-clear report of your compliance status.

“Technology gives credit unions the ability to spend less man-hours managing compliance, and more time serving their members,” said Vanderhoff.