NCUA priorities and how CU CMS+ can help you navigate this year

Every year, NCUA issues a letter to credit unions advising of their supervisory priorities for the year. This letter provides further clarity and explanation of what NCUA examiners will be focusing on while conducting exams throughout the year.

NCUA’s 2023 Supervisory Priorities letter identified 6 specific areas examiners will focus on which includes interest rate risk, liquidity risk, credit risk, fraud prevention and detection, information security (cybersecurity), and consumer financial protection. Within each of these areas of examination focus, NCUA also details the specifics of what they will be looking for when performing credit union examinations.

Preparing for an examination can be a stressful process but having a technology that allows you to track and consolidate your work into one, centralized location and move beyond spreadsheets, word docs, and screenshots can help make that process a little easier.

Launched in 2020, CUNA’s Credit Union Compliance Management System PLUS™ (CU CMS+) is a compliance management system created with credit unions specifically in mind. CU CMS+ comes with a guided workflow that allows you to document the steps taken to implement regulatory changes beginning with:

• initial impact assessment (identifying those business units, documents, processes and products/services that could be affected by this change),
• moving through an advanced risk assessment identifying the initial risks and later evaluating the controls already in place to mitigate that risk, and
• assigning out specific action items related to those regulatory changes.

NCUA specifically mentions in their letter to credit unions they will be paying close attention to adjustments that should be made to a credit union’s overdraft program, the Flood Disaster Protection Act, fair lending and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This system allows users to document the work being done within your credit union to successfully implement those changes, with additional reporting that allows you to quickly and easily access that work any time.

CU CMS+ not only provides prebuilt workflows and quick-pull reports to guide users through the process of implementing regulatory changes; it also allows users to create new workflows and processes to adapt the system to their credit union’s needs – so the system can grow with your credit union.

In addition to the compliance management component of CU CMS+, users also have access to a policy and document management module, which allows a credit union to not only formalize a process of creating, updating, and maintaining documents for their credit union (including policies, forms, procedures, disclosures, and marketing ads), but also allows you to assign and track attestations and trainings related to those documents as well. This means a credit union can demonstrate that they not only have their fraud policy in place within their credit union, but that they are also providing ongoing training to credit union staff and have a record of annual attestations provided by employees for the policy, as recommended by NCUA. The Policy and Document Management module can also function as a document library for employees, so they have quick access to the most up-to-date and current versions of a document they may need to access at any given time.

Interested in learning more about CU CMS+ and how it can help you prepare for NCUA examinations? Set up time to speak with one of CUNA’s GRC experts to learn more about this system.