This is How One Financial Institution is Organizing the “Chaos of Compliance”

December 1, 2020

By Darron Dunn, VP, Client Development

As luck would have it, Lincoln County Credit Union’s (LCCU’s) strategic vision heading into 2020 was to enhance the digital experience for its more than 5,400 members. As part of that vision, the $132 million financial institution developed and launched a new website, ramped up its social media presence and introduced electronic signatures into the lending process – all before the pandemic forced branch closures and remote working. 

In addition to leveraging digital technology to enhance the member experience, the financial institution also committed to integrating a few back-office solutions to streamline processes. Among the technology solutions LCCU worked into the fold was ViClarity's GRC Management Software.

The Montana credit union’s most pressing GRC needs centered on policies.

ViClarity Manages Each Step in the Policy Management Process

“The pace of regulatory evolution over the past several years has introduced a number of challenges,” said LCCU CEO Lindsay Beaty. “There have been times we consistently confronted policy changes on a monthly basis. While 2020 brought some regulatory relief, we don’t expect that calm to remain.”

While making a policy change is not overly burdensome on its own, the execution of the updating process can be. Routing the new policy for approval, adjusting it based on feedback, putting it into effect, training employees on the change and then continuously testing to make sure procedures are reflective of the new policies – those are the elements that make policy changes tough to manage. Each of those steps is an additional layer that, if not managed properly, can be overlooked.

Because the ViClarity's GRC Management Software manages each of those steps with transparency via color-coded process markers, Beaty and her team are much less anxious about the prospects of a stalled, inaccurate or untested policy.

Board Meetings Stay Focused on Strategic Initiatives

“Rather than ask our board directors to review something at the last minute or on-the-fly at a meeting, they have several days to review the document and make changes right inside ViClarity's GRC Management Software,” explained Beaty. “I can track who has reviewed it, who has feedback and who has approved it in real-time on any given day leading up to our board meeting. No more marked-up papers; no more checking email to make sure the policy was delivered. The history is great for me from a project management standpoint, but also for auditors and examiners who increasingly want to see an engaged board.”

Beaty reports that since the integration of the GRC Management tool, board meetings are much more strategic in nature, a circumstance that came in handy during the pandemic.

Vendor Due Diligence is Next Step on GRC Technology Journey

The GRC Management Software's modular design allows organizations to start small and expand uses over time. Beaty says her team is taking the first steps toward using the tool's vendor management module, as well.

With the financial institution’s digital evolution comes a patchwork of third-party providers and some new relationships, each of which requires due diligence at onboarding, as well as risk assessment and monitoring on an ongoing basis. ViClarity’s GRC Management Software has real-time reporting on vendor management and provides a complete view of risk and compliance all from a single interface.

“ViClarity helps us organize the chaos of compliance, and as we look to the future, we can see lots of opportunities for additional uses of their GRC Management platform.”

To read more of LCCU’s story, download “Technology Organizes Chaos of Compliance.”

Services performed by ViClarity are compliance and not legal in nature, and do not form an attorney-client relationship or any of the protections attendant to the attorney-client relationship.