“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
-Albert Einstein
Successfully riding a bike to get where you want to go requires patience, knowledge, and experience. Determining what to say to your board of directors is like learning how to balance on a bicycle. The “what to say” is like leaning and pedaling on a bike. If you lean too far to one side or the other, you’ll fall off. If you pedal too slow, you won’t go anywhere; if you pedal too fast, there is a potential to crash. The “how to say it” is like where you look while riding a bike. If you look at the ground or the scenery around you instead of looking at the road ahead of you, you’ll crash.
For financial institutions, awash in a world of curving roads and bumpy obstacles like regulations, compliance issues are inevitable. Less certain is the matter of deciding which issues to present to the Board of Directors and how to present them. This can put compliance officers in the position of finding the delicate balance between not wanting to alarm the board while making sure the board is aware of the need to devote sufficient resources to address potential compliance concerns.
More specifically the questions financial institutions should ask are: What level of concerns should be brought to the board’s attention and what can be handled at a management level? And if an issue does merit presentation to the board, how can you present the information in a way that helps the board appreciate your institution’s compliance risks and decisions?…
Read the full post on AffirmX.com.
