Entries by Joel Lawrence

What are vendor reviews and why are they important

Vendor review is a process by which a business can evaluate the quality of the vendor performance while also understanding any potential changes that the vendor may have when providing the product or service for the business. A vendor review process will assess a vendor’s capacity to maintain effective and appropriate security practices and other […]

Finding the way through Regulatory Requirements

Recently, there has been a lot of confusion in regards to what is required for non-FDIC regulated financial institutions regarding their overdraft privilege program. Strunk has received several questions from our non-FDIC regulated clients (financial institutions that are regulated by either OCC, Federal Reserve or NCUA) regarding findings from either auditors or examiners.  It seems […]

Top 10 Overdraft Program Questions

Strunk offers overdraft privilege training to our clients to provide consistency on how the employees view the program and how the employees present the program to their consumers.  When providing training we will sometimes get questions on how to handle specific areas of the program. Here are the 10 most frequently asked questions during overdraft […]

New Due Diligence Guidance for Community Bank on FinTech Firms

On August 27, 2021, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and the OCC published new guidance aimed at community banks that are looking to expand their reach and service new customer bases through partnerships with financial technology companies (FinTech). While aimed at community banks, the regulators said the fundamental concepts could also […]

What is a Fourth Party Vendor and Why Should I Care About Their Risk

Fourth-party risk is rising to the top of most auditors and examiners list when it comes to evaluating financial institutions vendor management program.  Fourth parties are your vendor’s third parties and subcontractors.  These vendors you will not have a direct contract; however, your vendor does, and relies on these vendors to produce a product or […]

The Prospect of Eliminating Overdraft Fees

Ally Bank has recently made headlines announcing that it would no longer charge its customers overdraft fees. Ally is a popular online bank that offers one type of checking account and overdraft fees only accounted for less than .07% of Ally’s revenue in 2020.  Ally Bank typically excludes consumers that use overdraft protection to begin […]

Employee Overdraft Privilege Training

As more and more states are reducing their Covid-19 restrictions, we are seeing an increase in employees from financial institutions going back to face-to-face work environments. As workers start returning to their workspace in a safe fashion, this is a great time to have some additional training with your employees regarding your Overdraft Privilege program. […]

Residual Risk Explained

Having a well maintained vendor management program will allow you to build relationships with your vendors, while also strengthening your business. Understanding your vendors’ residual risk is a key piece of your vendor management program and it will let you know the amount of risk or danger associated with a vendor’s action after controls are […]