Still relying on inefficient bank policy management?

Several market factors can quickly change the financial services landscape, causing regulators to update existing rules, create new ones or heighten enforcement given fresh attention from lawmakers and the public at large.

Financial services organizations must comply with these regulations no matter market conditions, which means they need to have sound policies in place. And yet, despite the flux, many financial services organizations create, update and communicate their policies manually, which is both time-consuming and inefficient, and could leave banks and credit unions exposed.

Manual policy management hinders compliance managers because it impedes policy writers’ ability to collect feedback and edits in real-time from multiple parties. Instead, they must collect and manage policy acknowledgments individually.

So, what can compliance professionals do to make their policy management process more effective?

The answer is to use dedicated policy management software. Policy management software can address three major areas of ineffectiveness that are common with manual policy management practices.

1. Knowing what policy updates to make

One of the biggest areas slowing down compliance professionals from completing policy updates and creating new policies is a lack of regulatory resources. When a new decision comes from a regulatory body, compliance managers will have to review that decision, which could be hundreds of pages long, to understand how complying with the new requirements affects their organization. Once they have that understanding, they need to find a policy template they can use to develop a policy that meets their needs and can be shared with the appropriate employees.

Policy management software provides compliance professionals with all the information they need to draft and edit policies in one place. Instead of spending time searching for and interpreting all the necessary information to work on developing policies, compliance professionals can use the platform to stay on top of everything through helpful tools, including:

• Regulatory alerts that track regulation changes and what policies could be affected
• Regulation overviews that summarize new regulations for compliance professionals
• Policy considerations compliance professionals should factor in when updating or creating policies
• A repository of policy templates that provides standard language to use when developing policies

2. Automated communications and dashboard navigation

Once policies have been approved, they need to be sent out to the relevant people within an organization.

Recipients are given a deadline to sign and acknowledge the policies, but if a compliance manager wants to send follow-up emails at any point, they will need to manually track who has already submitted their acknowledgments and remove them from the email distribution list, which can take a significant amount of time.

Policy management software can significantly reduce time when it comes to policy communications and acknowledgment collection. Instead of using a spreadsheet and importing it into an email database to send a mass communication, the software should have all the relevant users in its database and allow compliance managers to filter users by specific criteria to message any audience they want at any time. They can then set up automated trigger emails to send reminders after a certain amount of time has passed, encouraging each employee to review and acknowledge the policies that were sent to them.

In addition to automated communication, policy management software should allow compliance managers to create dashboards for both department managers and individual users.

For individuals, these dashboards can include relevant information like open action items and signed acknowledgments to help them stay on schedule.

Managers can have dashboards set up to help them see their whole team’s status on active items, send reminder notifications, and download audit reports to help them better manage their team.

By automating the initial communication process and delegating the follow-up process to department leaders, policy management software should help compliance managers save significant time, allowing them to focus on other critical job responsibilities.

3. Self-service solutions

Another aspect of manual policy management that can be inefficient for compliance managers is having to be the main contact for policy questions for the organization.

At any time, employees might ask for copies of certain policies or archived policy templates. Tracking down the requested items can be distracting and take valuable time away from other responsibilities that compliance managers have.

With organization-wide policy management software, individual users should have access to a variety of tools and resources to find relevant policy information for themselves. Within the platform, there should be functionality to allow users to find and store specific information they are looking for, including:

• A centralized repository of all current and archived policies
• Policy bookmarking, so users can mark important policies and access them from their dashboard
• Policy distribution functionality to allow users to share policies and updates with each other in-platform
• Acknowledgment tracking, so users and managers can confirm which policies they are appropriately trained on
• In-platform communication tools that enable employees to ask questions of compliance managers and compliance managers to communicate new updates and tasks to employees and manager

Another aspect that can affect policy efficiency is when employees acknowledge and sign off on policies but don’t truly understand them.

If policy acknowledgment is part of their compliance training, it is imperative they understand each policy to avoid making mistakes that could cost the organization and its customers significant time and money.

Policy management software shouldn’t just collect acknowledgments, it should focus on properly educating employees. Using policy management software that includes quizzing functionality to assess understanding will help compliance professionals increase the effectiveness of their compliance programs, which in turn will help the business run more efficiently.

Christopher Boersma is Product Manager — Compliance, Learning & Development at BAI.

Learn more about BAI Policy Manager or schedule a demo.