Sageworks, a financial information company that offers lending, credit risk and portfolio risk solutions to banks and credit unions, today announced that the 2018 Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) Workshop hosted by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) will feature two sessions led by Sageworks consultant Jared Mills. The event takes place September 11-12 at the Hilton Denver City Center in Denver, C.O.
The CECL Workshop is aimed at helping credit unions in their planning for the FASB’s new CECL standard, which goes into effect for credit unions in 2021. The standard signifies a major change in how a credit union will need to calculate its loan reserves, and the event will provide knowledge on the new rules and reserve calculation models to make compliance easier.
Mills’ two sessions during this year’s workshop will help credit unions learn more about the various models available for estimating credit losses under the new accounting standard. The first session will cover the roll rate method, or migration analysis, and will help attendees understand when this model may be appropriate, why data is such a major concern, and what modeling hurdles they can expect to arise in moving forward. His second session will cover the discounted cash flow (DCF) Model. Though some credit unions may believe DCF is too cumbersome or technical, Mills will explain why a DCF may ultimately be the easiest methodology to operate, understand and calibrate.
As a consultant with the Advisory Services team at Sageworks, Mills provides client services and assists with strategic direction and feedback for product development with specialization in ALLL, CECL preparation and other portfolio analytics. Before joining Sageworks, he was the Assistant Director of Accounting at South Carolina State FCU and played a key role in the institution's ALLL process and CECL transition team. Prior to that, Mills was a Financial Reporting Analyst at First Citizens Bank, where he worked on FDIC Assisted Acquisition accounting, financial reporting and analysis. He has also appeared on multiple webinars with CUNA throughout the Spring of 2018, teaching and training attendees on approaching CECLcompliant methodologies and helping them grow in understanding of data concerns.
“I’m hoping to create an openness to approaches to CECL that credit unions might initially think are too complicated, by helping them understand the concepts and use cases for those approaches,” Mills said of his sessions at this year’s workshop. “We at Sageworks believe there is a strong place in the market for credit unions, and they are made stronger by CUNA, including through conferences like these. We are happy to assist them in the CECL transition by helping them leverage more sophisticated models for allowance calculation in an operationally simplified way, as Sageworks has a long track record of doing even before CECL came along.”
The CUNA CECL Workshop will include sessions with NCUA and FASB speakers detailing their expectations for credit unions implementing CECL, and offer opportunities to learn the multiple accounting models that can be used for estimation from a variety of experts. The event also features sessions for attendees to review their credit union’s numbers and apply what they’ve learned onsite. Credit union finance, lending and compliance professionals, including CEOs, CFOs, controllers and accountants will benefit most from the program, and can earn CPE credits for their attendance.
To register for the event, visit cuna.org.