4 Tips for Conducting BSA Training for Directors
In this Compliance Clip (video), Adam provides four tips that can be used when conducting BSA/AML training for directors of the Board. These tips are designed to help BSA/AML professionals craft a short, sweet, and sufficient training program for the board of directors.
For those interested in more information on providing Bank Secrecy Act training to the board of directors, be sure to check out our own BSA/AML Training for Directors in our store here. https://www.compliancecohort.com/bsa-training-for-directors
Video Transcript
The following is a transcript of this video.
This Compliance Clip is going to talk about conducting BSA training for your directors. BSA training for directors can be a bit tricky because the board is ultimately responsible for BSA/AML compliance, but it's also difficult to not get into the weeds and not provide too much detail. The examiners typically require, or at least want to see, some level of training. But what do you provide? So the real question we have is how much information do the directors really need to know?
I think there's three main things that directors need to know when we're talking about the content of BSA training for directors. First of all, we should provide the directors with an introduction and history to the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering laws. It's important for them to have a framework to understand what is required of the financial institution so that they understand how to manage this from a high-level perspective. Secondly, it's important to provide your directors with an overview of the Five Pillars. These five pillars are the core requirements of your Bank Secrecy Act program, and therefore your directors should be familiar with these five pillars. Finally, it's important to talk to your directors and explain how the Bank Secrecy Act applies to them; to put it in context and to deliver it in a way that they can understand how this actually applies to them. And we're not just presenting this as a rule that's out there, but we're talking about this as a rule that applies to our financial institution.
There are some tips for actually delivering the training to your board of directors that I wanted to share with you. The first tip is to provide comprehensive training, but to keep it short. This means you really need to go through and decide what exactly it is that they need to hear. I've seen a lot of training for directors that tend to go an hour or even longer, and that is just sometimes too much information. I believe the BSA training has a sweet spot of about 25 or 30 minutes. That's a point where directors can still be engaged and obtain a lot of information, but not be burned out and tune out at that point. So you really need to figure out how to keep it comprehensive. But to keep it short, it's also important to keep it at a high level. Your directors really don't need to get into the weeds of all the specifics of BSA, and believe me, there are a lot of specifics. As you probably know, they just need the high-level pieces so they can understand how to manage the program. As a director, they're not doing day-to-day monitoring. They just need to understand the high level pieces so that they can manage it as a director.
Also, it's important to provide your directors with tips on what they can look for and some tips and tricks and things that they can do as directors to help them have effective oversight of their program. For example, one of the best things directors can do is to review the policy in detail - review your bank's policy. So they're probably approving the board policy every year, and that's a great opportunity for your directors to really understand your program by taking a pretty detailed look at the policy to see what's outlined and then to evaluate whether or not the bank is following their own policy. Also, it's a good idea if you're conducting training to directors to provide a handout of everything you cover. This becomes your proof of content so examiners can look at the training and see exactly what was included in that training.
Now, this is a lot of information and oftentimes, it is difficult to narrow it down into that shorter time period. So if you're looking for a way to narrow this down and to make it effective for your directors, we have an option for you in our store at www.compliancecohort.com/store, and we actually have a program that is 27 minutes long. It just gets down to the point of what your directors need to understand and provides them with the need-to-know information. We also include a comprehensive manual that's a great resource to give your examiners, to show them exactly what was included in for the director training. Your directors can also review this on their own time and get further information for those directors who may be new to BSA and not as seasoned as some of your other directors. Our program also concludes with some tips for your directors on what they can do to have a strong oversight function of your BSA/AML program.
This program is designed to be presented in one of two ways. You can either play the video of myself presenting this, which we've done in a method that's designed for directors, or you can take the video, watch it yourself and use our manual and slides to present this to your directors on your own in a live setting. So it's really designed for you to tweak if you need to, or to use the actual video to provide the training to your directors.
Our program has 60 day access to the video, though we actually allow you to download both the video and the manual so you can use it at a later time in the year, or you can put it on a shared drive for directors to access it individually through an online portal, something like that. It's really up to you how you deliver this. Our price, we believe, is a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to bring in an outside trainer like myself. Believe me, this is a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to fly me in, have me stay overnight, present the training and the travel back to my home. So it's really an economical option for you if you don't want to bring somebody in. It really gives you a change of voice if you're looking for somebody different.
Also, we do offer a hundred percent money back guarantee. Basically, if we do not deliver on the value that we promise, we are going to give you your money back within the first 10 business days of purchase. So we don't believe that we're ever gonna need that, but it provides you some assurance that you're not purchasing a product that's gonna be a waste of your money and resources because we do have that guarantee.
I hope that helps you understand some things you can do to have your BSA training for your board of directors. It gives you an option and some tools. That's all I have for you today in this Compliance Clip.
If you have any questions on anything related in this clip or related to our BSA training for directors, you can email me at adam@compliancecohort.com.