Navigating the Newest Enhancements in Policy Manager

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The landscape of document administration is shifting, and Policy Manager is evolving right along with it. Recently, several new features were integrated into the platform to streamline oversight and simplify the editing process. From enhanced reporting capabilities to a more intuitive approval workflow, these updates are designed to save time and reduce the manual effort typically associated with policy maintenance.

One of the standout additions is the robust ability to generate Policy Log PDFs. This feature provides administrators with granular control over their audit trails. Whether you need to review the history of a single specific policy, an entire policy chapter, or every change made across the system within a specific window of time, the tool adapts to your needs. This flexibility extends further, allowing for time frame filtered logs even when narrowing your focus to a single chapter or document.

Transparency is key when managing organizational standards, which is why the new “Draft Status” and filtering tools are so impactful. Now, when a user modifies a policy, the document is automatically assigned a draft status until it receives formal Board Approval. To make managing these pending updates easier, a new “Has Draft” checkbox has been added to the primary policy list. By selecting this, administrators can instantly isolate every document with a pending change, allowing them to quickly generate PDF Redlines to send to the Board for final review.

Finally, the actual process of building out policy content is now faster and more automated. Creating a Sub-Provision is now easier than ever before. While using the “Update All” feature, users will notice an “Add Sub-Provision” button conveniently located beneath each provision. Selecting this button automatically creates and correctly numbers a new sub-provision directly under the section you are currently working on, ensuring the document remains organized without extra clicks.

Strunk can help automate your policy management process. Contact Strunk at info@strunkaccess.com, call us at 800.728.3116, or for more information visit https://strunkaccess.com/compliance-software/#policies. Stay tuned for more updates in the future!

Why Vendor Risk Assessment Surveys Matter

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Strong vendor oversight begins with asking the right questions. Vendor risk assessment surveys are a critical component of an effective third-party risk management program, helping financial institutions evaluate vendors’ operations, financial stability, cybersecurity, compliance, and business continuity. To simplify this process, Strunk’s Vendor Manager solution is designed to improve how surveys are created, shared, tracked, and scored.
Through the platform, standardized surveys can be sent directly to vendors based on their specific risk levels. You can easily track which surveys are outstanding and which are complete, providing transparency without manual tracking or long email threads. Additionally, Vendor Manager enables institutions to score residual risk at the question level based on vendor responses. This allows teams to assess a vendor’s controls and quickly identify areas that may require further review or additional safeguards.
A more recent feature is a set of available onboarding questions designed to help institutions quickly gather key information when establishing a new vendor relationship. These questions provide a practical starting point for evaluating vendor risk and ensuring consistent data collection during the onboarding process.
Another powerful enhancement is the ability to customize survey questions. Every institution’s vendor management program is different, and this capability allows organizations to tailor their surveys to their operational needs. Whether adding new questions or modifying existing ones, teams can ensure their surveys collect the most relevant information.
Vendor Manager provides significant value for financial institutions wanting to execute a structured vendor management program with confidence. If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Strunk at info@strunkaccess.com for more details.

How can Banks make more money without raising prices?

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Banks across the country charge fees for all types of services…have you ever looked at the service charge schedule of a bank? Typically, those charges stay the same for years and are never reviewed for potential increases. Just go to a bank’s website and click on service charges and most banks publish their fees. Notice at the bottom of the page the date of the update to the fee schedule. Many times, it has been 5+ years since any changes have been made.

At Strunk we developed a program thirty years ago that increases fee income substantially without raising prices. Our Overdraft Privilege program focuses on the volume of checks/debits that overdraw an account rather than the fee the bank charges. Of course, we don’t want to encourage consumers to overdraw their account, but we don’t want to discourage them either.

Overdraft Privilege gives consumers a choice on how they want their account handled, rather than the bank deciding how the consumer wants their account handled. For checks and ACH items that overdraw and account, those debits are typically not returned to the merchant since fees pile up when that happens. Conversely for debit card and other electronic transactions that overdraw the account, consumers must opt in for those overdrafts. It’s been like this since July 1, 2010.

There are two components to generating fee income for a bank. 1) the fee being charged and 2) the number of “uses” for that service. ODP is all about the “uses” and not the fee.

Let Strunk revitalize your old ODP program to generate some additional income. Contact Strunk at info@strunkaccess.com or call us at 800.728.3116.

Maximize Your Bank’s Potential: The Power of Relationship-Based Pricing

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In the competitive world of banking, precision is everything. If you’re looking for a way to sharpen your strategy, Strunk’s Pricing Manager offers a full-featured solution for loan and deposit pricing combined with a powerful relationship profitability tool. By utilizing this integration, banks have seen a proven increase in net interest income by the equivalent of 25-50 basis points.

It is undeniably important to look at a customer’s entire relationship before making new pricing decisions. Strunk’s Pricing Manager allows you to:

  • Model Scenarios: Develop pricing scenarios for individual loans and understand the specific “pricing power” that deposits bring to your bank.
  • Create Win-Wins: Build scenarios that benefit both the borrower and the bank simultaneously.
  • Determine Total Value: Use the relationship profitability feature to understand a customer’s total value, ensuring that data—not guesswork—factors into your pricing.
  • Optimize Strategies: Utilize rate sheet tools for consumer loans and deposits to build strategies that actively improve profitability.

One of the biggest hurdles in portfolio management is data entry, but the Pricing Manager integration feature automates this entire process. Clients can import their entire loan and deposit portfolio directly from any core system. The process uses a data extract file that is specifically customized and configured for your bank. Your data remains current through updates performed according to a defined schedule, typically imported monthly.

Integration gives your bank the ability to use Strunk’s profitability analysis to pinpoint exactly where you might be missing your target objectives. The system captures and organizes vital statistics, including:

  • Categorization: Loans are automatically grouped by type for better organization.
  • Deep Metrics: The tool tracks number of loans, total balances, average yield, average life, and average ROE.
  • Growth Tracking: You can also monitor the number of loan originations by type on a monthly basis.

Ready to boost your profitability? If you want to see how Pricing Manager can be configured for your bank, you can reach out to Strunk at info@strunkaccess.com or visit https://strunkaccess.com/pricing-manager/ for more details.

A modern approach to Enterprise Risk Management: Clarity, Consistency, Confidence

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Enterprise risk management expectations for community banks and financial institutions continue to evolve. Regulators increasingly emphasize risk-based supervision, tailored oversight, and clear documentation of enterprise-wide risk exposure. Consequently, organizations relying on manual or disconnected assessment processes often struggle to maintain a consistent, defensible view of their risk posture. Modern compliance programs require centralized tools that enable organizations to efficiently identify, measure, and monitor risk while demonstrating these processes to auditors and regulators.

Strunk’s Risk Assessor, part of our Risk Manager software suite, provides a structured approach to performing and maintaining enterprise risk assessments. Instead of coordinating assessment activities through multiple files and emails, institutions can conduct evaluations within a centralized platform aligned to regulatory and industry frameworks. This standardization improves consistency, reduces assessment cycle time, and ensures institutions score risks against recognized requirements.

Beyond compliance benefits, Risk Assessor delivers actionable insights to support strategic decision making. Interactive dashboards and heatmaps allow leadership teams to quickly identify areas of elevated exposure, while drill-down reporting provides detailed visibility into individual risk factors and trends. Automated, board-ready reporting simplifies communication with senior management, directors, and examiners. Furthermore, the solution enables teams to collaborate in a controlled environment with managed access and assigned responsibilities.

In today’s dynamic risk environment, enterprise risk management must be a continuous process rather than a periodic exercise. Institutions that can clearly demonstrate their methodology, scoring rationale, and mitigation tracking are better positioned to respond to examinations and meet expanding regulatory expectations. By centralizing assessments, improving visibility, and strengthening reporting capabilities, Strunk’s Risk Assessor helps organizations confidently demonstrate a proactive risk management culture.

For more information, please email info@strunkaccess.com or visit us at https://strunkaccess.com/compliance-software/#risks to schedule a brief demo.

How to Make Commercial Lending More Profitable

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Commercial lending has been a staple for most community banks but is it possible to make lending more profitable for the bank? Are most commercial loans priced too cheaply for small loans and too high for larger loans? The answer to both of these questions is “yes”.

Bank’s lenders need to know which customers are profitable and which ones are not. Does the type and size of the loan matter and how do you factor in the customer’s deposit relationship into the profitability equation? Do your bank’s lenders work for the customer or for the bank when it comes to loan pricing and whether or not to charge a fee? Well, we all know the answer to that question…they are working for the borrower and not for the bank.

A loan and deposit pricing tool will help banks increase net interest income and win more deals when in a competitive situation. Even though getting fees on loans is always a good thing do they really matter to the profitability of the loan? Of course the answer is it depends on the type, size, and term of the loan. Not many banks factor this into the equation.

Relationship profitability many times comes down to does the customer have multiple loans and deposits with the bank? Or, could I get a deposit account if I make a loan to a new customer. All of this is relevant but the type and size of the loans/deposits are critical. Are the deposits interest bearing or in an operating account? Are the customer’s loans small or large and how many loans are there?

Loan pricing tools have been around for decades and most large and regional banks use them. Strunk’s loan, relationship and deposit pricing solution is easy to use, affordable and your lenders will like the tool. Contact Strunk at 800.728.3116 or email me at info@strunkaccess.com to learn about how our loan pricing tool will increase net interest income by at least 25bp.

 

Bankers: 2025 was good and 2026 can be even better!

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As consolidation continues in the banking industry many banks rely on new products and services to compete with the larger regional banks acquiring the smaller ones. Strunk has helped community banks increase income since 1993 and there are several programs that can help increase income in 2026 and beyond.

Strunk is well known for their ODP program that has been one of the best fee income ideas in our industry’s history. Many financial institutions are looking to revitalize their formal ODP program and Strunk can help maximize fee income without raising prices from the daily overdraft payment process.

About 15 years ago we introduced the Secure Checking program which substantially increases fee income while proving consumer customers something other than just a free checking account. Now, in over 1,200 cases nationwide, providing benefits for a small monthly fee is not only something consumers want but they will also use the underlying benefits.

Loan pricing tools were popular in the late 2000’s when banks were loaned up so much they were borrowing money from the FHLB to fund the loans. Today, Strunk’s loan pricing tool will help you meet your bank’s profitability target for loans and relationships and to win more deals that will increase interest income.

Now is the time to look at income producing programs that you might have been putting off until the “new year”. Contact Strunk at info@strunkaccess.com or call us at 800-728-3116.

Choosing the Right Cybersecurity Assessment Tool in a Post-FFIEC CAT World

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Since the announcement of the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool’s sunset, many financial institutions have taken meaningful steps to identify what comes next for their cyber risk management. The question is no longer whether to move on from the CAT, but how to do so in a way that remains practical, regulator-ready, and right-sized for your institution.
Strunk’s Cyber Risk Assessments feature was built with that exact challenge in mind. Our solution gives organizations the freedom to choose the best approach; designed specifically to align with two leading frameworks recommended by the FFIEC: NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and the Cyber Risk Institute (CRI) Profile. Both frameworks offer a structured, defensible approach to evaluating cybersecurity risk without adding unnecessary complexity.
For institutions seeking flexibility, NIST CSF offers a high-level, outcome-based structure across six core functions (Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover). Our tool translates those outcomes into clear scoring, progress tracking, and the documentation that examiners expect, supporting strategic planning and board-level reporting.
For institutions looking for greater financial-sector specificity, the CRI Profile builds on NIST with more granular diagnostic statements, nuanced response options, and a dedicated focus on supply chain risk via its Extend function. Strunk’s tool streamlines CRI assessments by automating tiering and highlighting gaps most important to regulators and stakeholders.
Whether you’re transitioning from the FFIEC CAT or looking to modernize an existing program, Strunk’s cyber risk assessment solution helps transform complex frameworks into valuable, actionable results. We are committed to making cybersecurity assessments efficient and repeatable, ensuring your institution can move forward with clarity and confidence.
Contact Strunk at 800.728.3116 or info@strunkaccess.com to learn more.

Is it Time to Reevaluate your Overdraft Payment Process?

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Strunk’s Overdraft Privilege program has been around for over 30 years and many banks still take advantage of the strategy that turned out to be one of the best fee income programs in our industry’s history. Other financial institutions decided to go back to the old “ad hoc” program. Now is the time to rethink that decision.

Consumers want a choice when handing their finances and ODP gives that choice to them. Do customers want their debit card transactions to be authorized at point of sale or do they want the transaction denied? Virtually all consumers want their paper checks paid rather than returned to the merchant. Strunk’s formal ODP program allows financial institutions to make this happen in a simple and compliant fashion.

Non-sufficient fund and overdraft fees have dropped dramatically over the past decade and today they are about a third of what they were in 2010. Electronic transactions make up about 95% of all debits that a bank processes which is considerably more than what it was at the turn of the century.

Running a compliant, efficient, automated daily overdraft program is good for both the customer and the bank. Consumer complaints regarding paying overdrafts and charging a published fee are very small. After over three decades of helping financial institutions enhance customer service and fee income at the same time we have learned a lot about consumer banking.

Contact Strunk at 800.728.3116 or email at info@strunkaccess.com to learn how we can help you make more money efficiently.

How a Pricing Solution Empowers Lenders at a Community Bank

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Lenders often tell us they determine loan pricing by “pulling a number out of the air” or simply reacting to the competition. This approach puts your bank at a disadvantage.

A loan pricing tool gives your lenders a crucial resource to ensure every deal they work on is consistent relative to other deals the bank makes. Utilizing a tool makes the daily process of pricing a loan much easier and equips your lending team with the power to make better, more profitable decisions.

Winning Business with Options and Transparency

People love options. A pricing solution provides a straightforward way for lenders to create optional scenarios for the borrower, which can help win more business. Even if a borrower chooses the original option, offering alternatives leaves them with the impression that the bank was working hard to earn their business.

It also sends a powerful message: there is a detailed methodology behind your pricing decisions, meaning the initial price is not just a number that should be negotiated.

By arming lenders with the data and drivers of profitability, they can develop multiple scenarios that work for their customer. For example, if a customer is rate-sensitive, the tool will show what other factors affect profitability, allowing the lender to still structure a deal that works for the bank.

Strunk’s Proven Approach for Lender Buy-In

At Strunk, we place lender buy-in at the center of our tried-and-true training process. Having trained lenders at over 400 financial institutions over the years, we know what works.

Our training starts by asking for specific examples of live loans—typically deals we know will produce a profitable result. This helps the audience see that the results make sense. It often reveals opportunities where the bank could have won a deal they lost or passed on because they thought a competitor’s pricing was too low. It’s easy for lenders to see that the approach is sound and could help them win more deals.

Once lenders are onboard with the profitable opportunities, we dig into areas where current pricing is producing less-than-optimal results. At that point, it’s hard for the audience to discredit the approach because they’ve already concluded that it makes sense for the more profitable deals.

Designed for Lenders

Strunk’s Pricing Manager is designed with the user experience in mind. The goal is to provide quick, accurate, and consistent pricing results.

  • Lenders can model a loan in minutes. We are routinely told how easy our tools are to use.
  • We display the results—calculation by calculation—for every month throughout the life of the loan.
  • This means users can see exactly how the solution arrives at the calculated result. This transparency is a huge benefit for achieving full lender buy-in. Lenders know they aren’t just inputting a few variables and pressing “Save” with no idea how the result was reached.

While lenders leverage the tool for each pricing decision, management gains access to up-to-date reports on the full loan portfolio. Our management reports group data based on loan type, lender, loan size, and Return on Equity (ROE).

By giving your lenders the power of accurate, consistent, and transparent pricing, you can empower them to make better decisions and capture more profitable business.

For more information, please email info@strunkaccess.com or visit us at https://strunkaccess.com/pricing-manager/ to schedule a brief demo.

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.