How Do I Prepare for an NCUA IT Examination?

by. Robin Remines

So NCUA will be onsite soon and you’re wondering if you’ve crossed all your T’s and dotted all your I’s? Even the most competent leader may get a bit anxious wondering if they have everything in place for an NCUA IT Examination.  So if you’d like a few tips on how you can be as prepared as possible then this post is for you!

NCUA IT Examination Readiness Checklist

1) Get out last year’s examination – Review the most recent examination. Look closely at all finding and more importantly the credit union’s response. There is nothing worse than to have to scramble to complete items that should have been taken care of or worse, not be able to take care of them and have them show up in an exam two years in a row!

2) Ask your peers – The thing I love about credit unions is that they will gladly assist each other. Reaching out to peers should be a fundamental part of any preparations you do with respect to examination prep (or product launch, risk mitigation or vendor selection for all that matters) to see what’s hot with NCUA this examination round. Use your credit union network to head off any surprises!

3) Dust off the NCUA AIRES ZIP file (if you don’t have it – get it here) – There really is no excuse for missing any of the questions outlined in the AIRES file questionnaires. They’ve categorized them nicely and even included some logic to the question in the note tabs in the cell. Grab your team about 2 months out and review a section or two per week. Get it done before the examiner shows up!

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