Here’s what regulators care about more than compliance course completions

Training is a crucial element for financial services organizations. For policy management, that training is fundamental to enterprise risk control as key staff must keep pace not only with the bank or credit union’s products and business strategies, but with regulatory changes.

Today, many organizations assign up to 20 compliance training courses annually for employees to complete. With such a lengthy roster, most organizations choose to prioritize deadlines, making sure courses are completed on time. And while ensuring employees complete this continuing education expeditiously to keep pace with state and federal rule changes, simply meeting completion requirements is not enough. In fact, falling into this habit could raise concerns among regulators.

Supervisory agencies are starting to focus on two standards for success, with multiple considerations within each standard.

1.) Are course assignments adjusted based on an organization’s specific enterprise risks? Is an organization tracking the total training hours based on the risks being addressed?

2.) Is compliance training changing behavior and creating a culture of compliance? Are employees given the resource tools to change their behavior? Are there fewer customer complaints? Are there fewer suspicious activity reports?

Adjusting training based on risks

For banks and credit unions, organizing how they train staff is their best approach. Organizations are likely best served by adaptable policy management systems that can scale to the changing regulatory landscape. Regulators expect course content and assignments to change based on the organization’s ever-shifting risks.

Identifying the right compliance courseware to assign to a group of learners can be a time-consuming and challenging process. At many organizations, compliance course assignments are determined by a series of meetings at the department level, reviewing course catalogs and Excel spreadsheets, as well as discussing regulatory changes and enterprise risks, all of which can take months to fully develop.

In fact, this manual process is so time consuming at many organizations they don’t update course assignments annually. That means learners potentially won’t be up to date on the latest regulatory changes and building their knowledge of those changes before implementation, which puts the company at risk of being noncompliant.

A manual course identification process can also be problematic when examiners ask why specific courses are assigned to a particular group of learners because the manual process doesn’t always include assignment decision documentation.

Fortunately, there are virtual collaboration tools that help people in a financial services organization identify the right courses to assign to a group of learners based on the enterprise risks they encounter. These tools also document the assignment decision reasoning for regulators and then automatically turn a prescribed course list into an assignment rule.

Creating a culture of compliance

Implementing a culture of compliance in your organization can seem like an impossible task. But financial services providers that fail to even try to reach that goal risk serious regulatory repercussions, reputational damage, and low employee morale.

To change learner behavior, it is important to have a learning manager that can assign and track usage of more than just courseware. Look for a learning manager that can support job aides and relevant reference material, regulatory updates and learning tools that your employees can leverage to be more effective. Look for a learning solution with:

• Quick references — learners can search the catalog and pin these important resources to their student dashboard for quick one-click access.
• Centralized policy repository — store all your organizations policies and procedures in one centralized portal with the rest of your training.
• Real-time reporting — training administrators and managers can distribute and track usage to help identify which topics or resources have been viewed most, potentially highlighting trends within your organization.
• Additional content — access to a library of industry-specific resources, like checklists and critical forms.

Read more: Don’t rubber stamp regulatory courses — establish KPI for training success

Christopher Boersma, CRCM, CAMS, CISA, CC, is Product Manager at BAI.

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