Community banks and credit unions have been shut out of the small dollar installment lending business due to the cost of taking an application, getting a credit bureau report, underwriting the loan, getting documents signed, funding and servicing the loan. Industry experts say that the cost to underwrite consumer loans typically runs $150 or more, […]
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 […]
Managing the vendors your financial institution does business with is important but it can be time consuming and a stressful project. Some institutions have decided to let third parties manage the risk assessment and vendor due diligence process rather than do it on their own. Strunk’s Vendor Manager solution makes it easy to do risk […]
Does your financial institution do annual employee reviews of compliance with your policies and procedures? If not you should. Training employees on specific areas of the bank is crucial to running a successful company and testing for product knowledge is critical to customer service. All financial institutions have policies that are board approved on an […]
Service Charge income at banks and credit unions across the country is down around 20% for the first nine months of 2020 and there are several reasons why. First, many consumers received stimulus payments from the Federal Government in the second quarter to help spur the economy during the pandemic which has reduced overdraft fees. […]
I was recently at a bank and asked the CEO when was the last time you told your customers about a consumer program that they had put in place in seventeen years ago. His answer was seventeen years ago. The same bank had a sign outside and it said “Loan Sale” and I asked him […]
How often do you check to see if your employees know what polices or procedures your financial institution has in place? Security and ethics policies should be read from time to time and compliance to those policies should be tracked. Strunk’s Skills Manager program is one module of our overall Risk Management solution. It gives […]
Thirty years ago bankers were concerned that they might soon face a check-less society where most all debit transactions were no longer paper items. This was caused by the proliferation of debit and ATM cards that hit our industry. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s banks saw Pony Express couriers pick up “cash letters” […]
Strunk’s Overdraft Privilege program has helped financial institutions streamline the daily overdraft payment process for the past 27 years. Consumers would much rather have you pay an item into overdraft status than return it to the merchant…which only causes them grief. For debit card transactions that consumers want paid rather than denied at the point […]
Overdraft Privilege programs have been around since the early 1990’s and they continue to benefit both consumers and financial institutions. Consistent and proper training of all employees on the benefits and pitfalls of a successfully run program remains important as we work through the Covid-19 pandemic. Strunk has always recommended that all frontline personnel be […]
An independent certified public accountant has examined Strunk’s operations and found them to be in compliance with the AICPA’s Trust Service Principles. It was determined that Strunk meets the Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy criteria for SOC 2 established by the AICPA.
