Case Study: Bank of the Sierra Automates Compliance Tasks

With the ever-increasing regulation burden, community banks with small staffs struggle to keep up with new and changing rules. Some have deployed software to streamline their compliance to-do lists and handle the documentation and reporting required. Bank of the Sierra, a $1.5 billion-asset bank based in Porterville, Calif., is one of them.

Wanting to find a way to make its compliance workflows more efficient, Bank of the Sierra was in search of software in 2011. At the time, the bank sat through demos of about a half dozen vendors but wasn't sold on any particular application, finding that many companies were selling complex software or products that provided risk management dashboards without allowing the bank to take action on any of the information displayed, recalls Sarah Scott, senior vice president of risk management at the bank.

Then Scott came across Continuity Control, which offers a compliance management application with built-in workflow. The software lets the bank automatically assign tasks, such as vendor management and compliance issue routing, to employees. It also lays out the steps required for a person to complete the assigned task. The software sends alerts about regulatory changes and offers specific guidance for accommodating the changes in bank procedures, risk assessments and audits.

The Bank of the Sierra implemented Continuity Control's software more than a year ago to its 400 employees. Since deploying, Scott says the bank has been pleased with how the software has performed at the bank, especially as it can customize its own controls to assign to employees — a feature Scott is making much use of. In fact, she has already created about 100 custom controls on the platform, which she says alleviates the pressure of having to remember the litany of compliance tasks.

"Every time I see a gap in a process, I just go online and create controls for things I don't want to remember," Scott says. "There are so many things to remember in compliance. Whenever I create a control, it's great for me."

One custom control helps staff report hours in accordance with the Community Reinvestment Act. This frequently used control has replaced what had been a manual and inefficient process for the bank in the past.

"I've never had a good way to report service hours," Scott says. "It's always been a problem."

With the control, that inefficiency has gone poof.

The software can handle tasks beyond compliance, too. In the last week, the HR team asked Scott to create a control that would let employees pitch ideas to the bank about how to do business better. She's listening, and that control will soon be live to all employees.

Among the benefits of deploying Continuity Control, Scott cites strong documentation, the ability to pull reports and time savings as the top three.

Just how much time — and money — the platform saves the bank is hard to pinpoint, however. "It does save time, but I don't know how much," Scott says. "It enables me to do things I couldn't do before."

Overall, she praises the product's usability but finds employees require help understanding the different lexicon between assigned to-dos (what an employee has to complete) versus on-demand to-dos (not necessarily required), which are both displayed in the interface. "It's a learning curve for employees," she says.

Looking ahead, the bank is considering allowing employees to sign onto work-related apps via their fingerprints to avoid the hassle of having to remember passwords. It's also evaluating more ways to use cloud-based technology, she says.

"As my CEO would say: 'The bank is built to grow,'" says Scott. "As we get larger, we need to adapt and embrace technology."

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