DS News - U.S. Bank

62 BEFORE JOINING BELL, YOU SPENT SEVERAL YEARS AT TCF. WHAT ARE SOME KEY LESSONS YOU TOOK AWAY FROM THAT TIME AND BROUGHT TO YOUR CURRENT ROLE AT BELL? ere are two big ones that are pressing, especially with where I'm sitting right now at Bell. When I joined TCF, I had the opportunity to work under somebody who was one of the more brilliant risk managers I've ever met. TCF was at the onset of building a risk program coming out of the demand to more proactively manage risk amid the increased regulatory expectations coming out of the Great Recession. I spent three years running our Regulatory Affairs division, which included a significant component of rebuilding a risk program from scratch. at went all the way from implementing change management processes, changing the risk governance framework, and building a risk data infrastructure from a key risk indicator/ key performance indicator standpoint. [e goal was] to make sure that we had a better informed and more strategically proactive and value-add risk function at TCF. Seeing that—the necessary steps, the hurdles that we had to accomplish to build that, both externally, internally—is something where you can't buy that kind of lesson learned, especially as you're coming into a similar situation seven years later. After I moved on from that initial role, serving in the Chief Compliance Officer role, I learned the value of proactive compliance: the value of having a structured program in place to identify the risks, understand where that risk applies to your bank, and make sure that you have systems and processes in place to detect and mitigate those before somebody else does it on your behalf. at early identification, that early remediation, that commitment to proactive compliance and the benefit that it can have, it comes back to the principle of "pay me now or pay me later." And I know, oftentimes, when you're looking at that risk framework, you're not always getting the kind of the value-add from a monetary perspective on the balance sheet. But it's much better to build those early systems as opposed to what you could confront on the backend, whether it's reputationally or from a regulatory civil money penalty or anything else. YOU ALSO SPENT SOME YEARS AS A PRIVATE PRACTICE ATTORNEY. WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THAT ROLE THAT YOU'VE CARRIED ON THROUGH YOUR LARGER CAREER? As a private practice attorney, I spent a lot of time focused on consumer protection and bankruptcy work. So, it was dealing on the other side of the spectrum often. It goes hand-in-hand with what I talked about with the mission, vision, and value that we have from a Bell perspective. "Happy employees, happy customers," and the need to do what's best for our customers. But on a more micro level, the value of personal service. I look at what our employees are doing across Bell, from our tellers in the branches to our mortgage loan officers across the country. It's unequaled personal service that they're providing each and every day. at's the value, so how do we support those individuals from a risk management perspective, making sure that they have the appropriate processes, training, testing to make sure that we're doing everything that's right and making sure that we have a sound system as a bank to protect our customers? FROM A RISK MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE OTHER MORTGAGE LENDERS AND SERVICERS SHOULD BE PRIORITIZING AND ANTICIPATING RIGHT NOW? It's a new presidential administration, new regulators, and a new focus. We have a new Treasury Secretary; we have open appointments at both the OCC and the CFPB. I think we're going to get a different kind of regulatory posture, and we've already Cover Story By: David Wharton "Risk management is often seen as a roadblock, and that was never the goal."

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