How do you Store Essential Vendor Documents

/in , , /by

In today’s environment it is crucial to understand how you are managing your vendor documents.  It is important to know when a vendor needs to send you data or if you are missing documents and also where the documents are located.  Having a centralized repository for your vendor documents will help you become more efficient, organized and increase organizational transparency.

Having the documents that belong to your vendors in one location opens the door for better communication and collaboration.  Linking all of your vendor documents to a central repository that features automatic notifications and reminders helps you achieve better collaborations in your organization.  An important factor in achieving a fast and efficient process is ensuring that everyone has access to the most accurate and up-to-date versions of your vendor document.  Using a software that can eliminate the need for physical filling and cluttered storage will help you become more organized and will eliminate human errors.  Storing your documents in a software will provide your organization the ability to retrieve the vendor documents as quickly as possible.

Searching for misfiled documents can be very frustrating and time consuming.  Using a software as your centralized repository for your vendor documents can reduce the time spent dealing with lost or misfiled documents, thus enhancing productivity and efficiency while allowing team members to perform tasks where their time is better spent.

When all of your vendor documents are in the same place, you have better visibility into that vendor.  Most software offers varying levels of accessibility based on role.  Different team members can have certain rights, permissions and levels of access that may be restricted to others.  Having this in your vendor document repository software allows an audit trail and the ability to track updates with little effort.

Is risk always bad?

/in , , , , /by

In our industry we are accustomed to thinking of risk as something we need to constantly assess and evaluate. At best, this exercise can be laborious and time-consuming. The number of risk factors to consider can run into the hundreds, often with different parts of the organization best qualified to assess each risk. The typical solution, emailing spreadsheets around the organization, is inherently cumbersome and error-prone.

Let’s take a step back and break down what a risk is. The definition of risk is a situation involving exposure to danger. But danger does not always look like we might expect. There is an important distinction to be made as some risks can actually pose a benefit to any company while others cause a greater reason for concern. Without risk, it can become easy to settle into consistency, security and stability.

Wouldn’t you like to know the importance of the risks you face and be able to easily identify them? Strunk’s Risk Manager can help identify risks you may be considering to help grow your business, as well as those risks that may present a greater threat to your organization. It helps to answer the questions:

  • What factors must financial institutions manage against?
  • At this point in time how much risk is each factor creating for us?
  • Do we have adequate management measures in place to manage the inherent risk?
  • And what is the trend – is our situation improving or getting worse?

Risk Manager tracks your risks in a database with fine-grained control over access. It documents your assessment of the inherent risk, the strength of your management of the risk and trend for both. If you must respond to a standards-based set of risks like banking industry requirements or SOC2, explicitly score yourself against these frameworks. The solution will map your policies against control activities to be sure you have appropriate policies in place that address each risk and will allow you to track your risk profile over time.

If you would like to bring together all areas of the risk assessment process into one easy to use format and eliminate your dependency on Excel spreadsheets, invest just 30 minutes to review our solution. Contact us at info@strunkaccess.com to learn more.

Strunk Solution Fall 2020 Features

/in , , , , /by

With Strunk’s most recent release, clients can now utilize new features in Risk Assessor, Policy Manager, Controls Manager, Vendor Manager, Skills Manager and ODP Manager. We’ve been busy!

Risk Assessor now provides the ability to pull multiple bank UBPR Data into one single risk assessment. This will simplify assessments for multi-bank holding companies.

Criteria based auto assignment for reader and editor groups is now available in Policy Manager. Users are able to assign specific documents based on physical location or job title, where assignment of a set of policies and procedures could dynamically change based on these rules. We have also adjusted the way the policy acknowledgement is assigned. Admin users have the ability to request that users read a policy at a configurable number of days in the event that a policy is updated throughout the year, rather than just every 365 days. Users will be notified of necessary policies to review via email.

Controls Manager now supports notification of the group owner rather than simply the control owner. Alerts will be triggered any time a significant change or update is made to a control.

Clients will be excited to see the improvements to Vendor Manager reporting. Users can sort by a customized list of vendor types, vendor risk level and renewal year within all summary reports. Reports will also include whether or not the vendor survey has been completed and if not, what the current status is.

Skills Manager exams have historically been comprised of multiple choice or true false questions. We now support the option to have an open ended comment for specified questions.

Lastly, ODP Manager provides the ability to mark old status codes as inactive or deleted so they no longer show on reports, such as the Status Tracking Report.

If you would like more information on any of Strunk’s new features or products, please contact us at 800.728.3116 or support@strunklp.com.

Educating Your Customers and Your Employees

/in , , , , /by

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 who he was selling his loans to?

During the recent pandemic many bankers are looking at ways to increase fee income even though mortgage origination and PPP loan fees have been through the roof. Telling consumers about the services offered by the bank is one way to generate fee income. Many banks “advertise” their services on a fee schedule and the benefits of the services are nowhere to be found. Ensuring that consumers know about the benefits of the services you offer are paramount to obtaining the level of non-interest income that high performing banks enjoy.

The same CEO answered my question about the last time the employees of the bank had been trained on the same consumer program…17 years ago! So, for the same reason as educating your customers on the benefits of a consumer product your employees need frequent training as well. Not all, but many, banks see a high turnover at the new accounts desk. Generally, the brief training that a new employee gets doesn’t go nearly as far as it needs to in order to increase the cross sale of fee income products and services.

Take a look at each service that you offer to consumers and ask yourself, “When was the last time we marketed the program (educating customers) and when is the last time you trained (educated) your employees on the features and benefits of the service?” Doing so will enhance your ability to generate additional fee income for your bank.

Is it time for your company’s next SOC 2 examination?

/in , , , /by

If your company is like Strunk, then a SOC 2 exam is an annual topic of conversation and the certification from your CPA firm is something you proudly provide your clients. At Strunk we have built a full-featured solution to help not only manage the policies your organization follows but to tie those policies back to the AICPA’s criteria and to your company’s own internal control procedures.

A SOC 2 audit can be time consuming, frustrating and burdensome. Strunk’s Policy Manager and Controls Manager modules can put much needed structure around this process. We keep on top of changes to the AICPA criteria so that you don’t have to. If changes need to be made to your existing policies as a result of any of these updates, you can easily address those within our software, and all modifications and approvals will be captured in our logs. The application will remind specific users within your organization when control activities need to be tested and the solution even supports breaking up this activity throughout the year so that your team is not focused on such a large task all at once.

The implementation with Strunk is extremely straightforward. Your company will submit your current policies for upload and creation within our system. If you are missing policies in any area we will provide you with a template document for you to customize but you will not need to start from scratch! We will work with your team to map these documents to the AICPA criteria in our solution.

Most companies are using Excel to track control activities. We ask that you simply provide this list of test procedures and we will set them up within the solution as well. Our Policy Map will provide a linked relationship from criteria to policies to controls. Once all of your company specific information has been uploaded and created we will host a training webinar for your team. It’s that simple.

Let Strunk help simplify and organize this process for you so that you can focus on what you do best – serving your clients.

Ensure Contract Completeness with Strunk’s Contract Review

/in , , /by

Having a well written contract with your vendor is a critical aspect in your vendor manager life cycle.  The contract is important as it sets forth the terms and conditions of the relationship with the vendor.  Vendor contracts are legal agreements that clearly set forth the provisions and conditions of the work or services that the vendor provides.  Because the contract is the foundation for the relationship with the vendor, a complete contract review should be done before the agreement is signed.

Strunk has created a Contract Review feature in our Vendor Manager solution to help ensure your contract does not have any gaps and that each provision is understood with clear expectations.  Contract Review will assist in clearly identifying what each party’s role is and who is responsible for each area.  This will prevent any issue between the financial institution and the vendor.  Regulations require that contracts contain key provisions such as confidentiality, service level agreements, and mutual rights and responsibilities.  A thorough review of your vendor contract should be done both prior to signing a new contract and while reviewing existing contracts for renewals.  Strunk’s Vendor Contract Review will help clients address significant risk controls and regulatory compliance within each of their vendors activities.

Power your team through continuing education with Strunk’s Skills Manager

/in , , , /by

If you are a Risk Assessor or Policy Manager user today, you may not be aware that Skills Manager is packaged with your solution. In order for your organization policies to be effective, your employees need to know the material. Skills Manager also lets you determine if your employees remember key aspects of those policies by periodically testing employee knowledge.

Through its Courses feature Skills Manager provides simple online training experiences to help your employees brush up on key policy details. For this online training you are able to create a library of training slides, either from text or exported from PowerPoint. You then will combine slides to develop courses and assign courses to your employees. It’s that simple! Users will then take courses via our online portal, with the ability to stop and pick up where they left off as needed prior to the due date.

Once Courses are complete you can then use the Exams module to test employee knowledge. Like Courses, you will create a library of exam questions that you can then assign to exams and then exams to users. Subsequently you will set parameters for frequency with which users must take exams and set parameters for a passing score or merit score. Your employees can show their knowledge of the material within each Course.

Strunk CEO Dan Roderick says “We launched Skills Manager V2 earlier this month and it’s easier to use than ever! It’s a great way to test employee policy knowledge and document results – particularly on those policies where periodic employee acknowledgement is required.”

Skills Manager also contains a user searchable document library for storing relevant reference materials that can be used as needed throughout the year.

Strunk Reports Record Sales

/in , , /by

Strunk is proud to report that October was the highest volume software sales month in our history. In addition, October 2019 YTD sales of Risk Manager, our Governance, Risk Management and Compliance management solution, are already up almost 50% relative to full-year 2018. New clients in October range in asset size from just under $100 million to over $1.2 billion.

This success was fueled by Strunk’s strategy to offer a broad range of services, allowing clients to purchase all of our GRC modules, including Risk Assessor, Policy Manager, Controls Manager, Skills Manager, Issues Manager, Vendor Manager plus our hosted ODP Manager software for one affordable price. Clients also signed up for Overdraft Privilege program reviews and implementation of new Overdraft programs.

Strunk CEO Dan Roderick commented, “In just one month we were able to add a record number of new clients across every line of our business and a broad range of software solutions. From my perspective, this is what it’s all about – providing full-featured, easy-to-use tools that also offer clients great value. Our sales team has really knocked it out of the park!”

With Strunk’s Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) solution suite clients can greatly enhance internal control and risk management processes and save time. The suite includes:

  • Vendor Manager is a specialized tool for managing vendor risk that standardizes risk assessment methodology and organizes all vendor related documentation.
  • Risk Assessor helps prepare comprehensive risk assessments consistent with regulatory or other requirements, in days, not weeks.
  • Policy Manager organizes all existing policies into a single database, mapped to the relevant standards and control procedures.
  • Controls Manager schedules tests of policy compliance and tracks test results.
  • Issues Manager is a centralized database for tracking all compliance issues and incidents across your entire organization.
  • Skills Manager provides online testing and training to ensure employees are knowledgeable about the organization’s policies.

In addition to our GRC solutions, financial institutions should periodically review their overdraft program to ensure they are not using policies and procedures that are non-compliant with current laws and regulations. Strunk’s comprehensive Overdraft Privilege Program review includes recommendations to increase fee income and ensure compliance. Additionally, clients receive access to our state-of-the-art program management software, ODP Manager.

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.