Are you tired of doing Risk Assessments?

We hear comments from community bankers across the country that they don’t like doing risk assessments and that they are time consuming. Risk Assessments generally come in the form of Excel Spreadsheets or Word documents. Often times they are done in silos where each functional area of the bank does their regulatory required risk assessment and periodically reports them to the bank’s board for review/approval.

Many banks do risk assessments for the regulators which is typically the wrong approach, in Strunk’s opinion. Risk assessments are done annually for those required by regulations and sometimes others are done two weeks before the regulators walk in. Risk Assessments should be designed to give senior management, board and ownership a snapshot of what risks your bank faces and what has been done to mitigate those risks. High risks aren’t bad; they just need to be managed.

Regulatory scrutiny of BSA/AML, ACH, Fair Lending, Loan Concentrations, Cybersecurity, Information Technology and other areas of the bank have caused financial institutions to spend more time and money focusing on the risks the bank faces. Outsourcing some of these functions to vendors is an expensive way to manage the risk assessment process and certainly unnecessary. Strunk’s GRC (Governance, Risk Management and Compliance) solution makes the risk assessment process easy to do and it consolidates all areas of risk the bank faces into one report.

Bank examiners often tell the community bank that they are coming out for the annual exam six weeks to two months prior to actually showing up. Generally, they ask the bank to send an extensive amount of information prior to coming onsite. This gives the regulator time to form their opinion on what risks the bank faces before arriving at the bank.

Strunk’s solution lets the bank tell their story rather than have the regulator tell the bank’s story to them. Comprehensive risk assessments are made easy with Strunk’s Risk Assessor Solution https://strunkaccess.com/risk-assessor/.