Workshop On BSA/AML/OFAC Risk Assessments - Are you Doing them Correctly

The seminar highlights BSA/AML/OFAC risk assessments. The areas of focus outlined in this session are based on best industry practice, supervisory experience and cover the major components of an effective BSA risk assessment program that audit focuses on. The instructor will look at these areas and the specifics of each area as it pertains to BSA compliance.

This Bank Secrecy Act risk Assessment training will emphasize BSA best practices that are being acknowledged and recognized by regulators and examiners and will discuss each risk assessment area. The areas covered in the session:

• Implementing BSA risk assessment
• Assessing policies and procedures for risk assessments
• Comprehensive risk assessment review for BSA / AML / OFAC
• Review of risk assessment matrixes
• Determining effectiveness and thoroughness of risk assessments
• Performing risk assessments

Financial institutions are required to be compliant with BSA rules and regulations. Such compliance needs to be well documented and consistent to ensure financial institutions avoid BSA violations and implications. Financial institutions’ BSA Programs must have adequate risk assessment policies and procedures, monitoring programs, training programs, qualified employees overseeing the BSA daily operations and independent testing programs. An effective BSA risk assessment program will ensure that all areas are being evaluated for risk appropriately and being monitored on a routine basis. Having a strong BSA risk assessment program will ensure that financial institutions are proactive in assisting the Bank in mitigating risk that can negatively impact its strategic and business plans for growth, development, and compliance.

All financial institutions have some level of risk to money laundering, terrorist financing, or financial fraud. The cornerstone of any good anti-money laundering (AML) compliance program is an assessment of these risks in order to develop strategies to manage and mitigate them.  The principle of the risk-based approach is that resources are directed congruently with priorities so that the greatest risks receive the highest attention.

Risk assessments are the foundation of a BSA/AML Program. The purpose is to identify the BSA/AML risk profile and use the results to apply appropriate controls to mitigate risk. Steps to identify specific risk categories, such as: customers, products, services, and geographies and quantify the specific risk categories.

An Office of the Treasury that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy objectives and national security goals against targeted: Foreign countries and regimes, Individuals, Entities, and Practices. The sanctions programs administered by OFAC require transactions, accounts and/or other property to be blocked or rejected; depending on the specific program requirements. OFAC can assess Civil Money Penalties (CMPs) for processing or engaging in an apparent violation of a U.S. sanctions program. OFAC operates under a clause of strict liability. If a sanctioned transaction is processed, there is a violation of law. When determining whether a CMP is appropriate, or in calculating the CMP amount, OFAC reviews the existence, nature, and adequacy of the bank’s OFAC compliance program, including the views of the institution’s regulator.

Register yourself for this brainstorming session now- BSA/AML/OFAC Risk Assessments - Are you Doing them Correctly

Status Classification: Exempt vs Non-exempt

This topic will help you understand the current overtime exemptions, the nature of the claims asserted by plaintiffs, and common areas of focus and arguments advanced by plaintiffs' counsel and the Department of Labor. It will also explain what steps you can take to assure proper classification and minimize the likelihood and success of these misclassification claims.

The differences between exempt employees and non-exempt employees can cause a lot of confusion for both workers and employers. Whether or not you are entitled to minimum wage and/or overtime pay for working more than 40 hours per week depends on your exemption status, as governed by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Non-Exempt Employee vs Exempt Employee

a) Definition of Non-exempt employee- Most employees are entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. They are called non-exempt employees. Employers must pay them one-and-a-half times their regular rate of pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. The biggest problem most employers have with non-exempt employees is miscalculating how much overtime workers are owed.

A non-exempt employee must be paid the minimum wage and overtime pay for any time worked beyond 40 hours in a given week. Under FLSA rules, non exempt employees are entitled to time and one-half of their regular pay rates for each hour of overtime. Non-exempt employees mistakenly treated as exempt employees, or whose "off-the-clock" hours are not properly recorded and compensated, may file FLSA overtime claims with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Most workers, particularly those working an hourly wage, are in fact non-exempt employees.

b) Definition of exempt employee- The Fair Labor Standards Act contains dozens of exemptions under which specific categories of employers and employees are exempted from overtime requirements. The most common exemptions are the white-collar exemptions for administrative, executive, and professional employees, computer professionals, and outside sales employees. There is an also a lesser known exemption for certain retail or service organizations. The primary advantages of classifying employees as exempt are that you don’t have to track their hours or pay them overtime, no matter how many hours they work.

Obviously, this is an appealing scenario for employers. However, exemptions from the overtime requirements of the FLSA are just those exceptions to the rule. They are very narrowly construed, and as the employer, you will always bear the burden of proving that you have correctly classified an employee as exempt.

Understanding of the FLSA exemption categories and how to apply them including:

• Executive Exemption: what is management and how many employees must the executive supervise

• Administrative Exemption: what is management or general business operations and what is discretion and independent judgment

• Professional Exemption: who is a learned professional and who is a creative professional

• Computer Employee Exemption: what makes certain of computer professionals exempt and how is their salary test different

• Outside Sales Exemption: what are the requirements and how much do they have to be paid

• Highly Compensated Employees: how does their salary get calculated

• Other exemption rules: who is automatically covered and who is excluded by rule

Register yourself for this interactive webinar now - Status Classification: Exempt vs Non-exempt

Compensation Systems Explained: Essentials of Creating Pay Structures

In this training program, participants will understand the fundamental concepts of creating a compensation system. They will receive information on the concepts of: compensation policy, internal and external equity, ranges, grades, position analysis, job evaluation systems, and point factor systems, benchmark positions, using market analysis to establish pay ranges and midpoints, options for movement through salary ranges, and calculating compa-ratios. Sample pay grade with variable ranges will also be discussed in the session.

Best practices relating to base salary is a fixed amount of money paid to an employee by an employer in return for work performed. Understand why developing a company philosophy on base salary structure is important and discusses how managers can work with different approaches for their company. The two usual approaches for base salary structure creation are identified (pay for the job and pay for the person) and explained. Readers are then introduced to the concepts of broadband and salary ranges. How broadband and salary ranges function and why they are vital in the creation of a base salary structure. Readers are also taught the practical issues surrounding base pay structure from the four perspectives: people, economic, risk, and operational.

Less than half the companies with fewer than 100 employees have formal salary structures and only 70% of all U.S. companies have such structures. Yet almost all companies report that they have hard-to-recruit positions and they are vulnerable to loosing top talent. Having a competitive well-designed compensation system has long been a corner stone of employee recruitment and retention and regardless of the economy, it is critical to have a competitive compensation structure that fulfils your company's goals. This webinar will give you the tools to get started in developing a base pay plan or tune up your current plan. It will present a broad overview of the philosophy and application of compensation systems.

Here are ten steps to develop a salary structure for your organization, with some special considerations for international developing markets:

• Establish your compensation philosophy

• Gather market data

• Identify benchmark jobs

• Measure your market position

• Calculate the compa-ratio

• Check your budget

• Start allocating

• Final adjustments

• Management approval

• Communicate

Register yourself for this brainstorming session Now- Compensation Systems Explained: Essentials of Creating Pay Structures

Document Retention and Destruction What Human Resource Professionals Must Know

This topic will help you learn the legal requirements for document management policies and understand how to implement the practical considerations unique to their respective companies. Best practices will be emphasized, especially litigation avoidance and satisfying legal requirements.

Make sure you are in full compliance with your current document retention and destruction policies. Many employers lack a document management policy altogether, resulting in inconsistent document retention and destruction a sure fire path to litigation and spoliation claims and little to no reliable protection for confidential information. Another substantial number of employers rely on generic policies whose sources are unknown, are from a different industry, or rely on a different state’s laws, just to cite a few of a myriad of problems with generic policies. The enormity of creating a model policy unique to a specific employer creates a psychological barrier that hinders the development and implementation of a much needed document management policy.

Importance of Document Retention and Destruction

Record retention in the past was a mundane affair. File cabinets stuffed with paper served the purpose best. Today, new forms of information and communication storage as well as data retrieval systems are more prevalent than ever before.

Some of the major accounting firms have had bad publicity in the press for questionable record keeping and handling. Many other companies have shut down operations for the same reason. Records today are subjected to greater monitoring and regulation. However, appropriate record maintenance is necessary not only in the context of law but also from the perspective of efficient business functioning. 

The most critical thing to address in context of records is their safe maintenance. Lost records lead to loss in tax advantages, business opportunities, and time. In addition, businesses that do not keep their records safe may face difficulties in situations like hacker attack and fire breakout when recovery may be impossible.

Role of Human Resource Professionals

The key to document retention is the extensive training to human resource professionals in managing, organizing, and retaining key business information and records. The human resource professionals can make the right policies and put them in place for appropriate management of records. However, each and every employee must be guided by these policies with the adequate sense of responsibility towards safe record keeping.

Document Retention and Destruction: The Right Way

Document disposal is as important as its retention. It must be done in a right way. Business must know which records are to be retained and figure out the least time for which they must be retained. The trend is growing towards retaining documents for a longer time than it used to be in the past.

There are some records like corporate governance, minutes, bylaws, and shareholder agreements that must be permanently maintained and their copies must be with the business attorneys. There are other records like leases and agreements that must be kept safe at least until ten years after their expiry. However, intellectual property documents must be retained forever. The same goes for insurance policies since past claims can create issues many years later.

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Preparing a Proactive Root Cause Analysis with the Ishikawa Fishbone Tool

How to Use theFishbone Tool for Root Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis is a structured team process that assists in identifying underlying factors or causes of an adverse event or near-miss. Understanding the contributing factors or causes of a system failure can help develop actions that sustain the correction.

A cause and effect diagram, often called a “fishbone” diagram, can help in brainstorming to identify possible causes of a problem and in sorting ideas into useful categories. A fishbone diagram is a visual way to look at cause and effect. It is a more structured approach than some other tools available for brainstorming causes of a problem (e.g., the Five Whys tool). The problem or effect is displayed at the head or mouth of the fish. Possible contributing causes are listed on the smaller “bones” under various cause categories. A fishbone diagram can be helpful in identifying possible causes for a problem that might not otherwise be considered by directing the team to look at the categories and think of alternative causes. Include team members who have personal knowledge of the processes and systems involved in the problem or event to be investigated.

The Ishikawa Fishbone Diagram (IFD) is one of seven powerful Quality Management Tools (1. IFD, 2. Check Sheet, 3. Control Chart, 4. Histogram, 5. Pareto Chart, 6. Scatter Diagram, 7. Stratification - flow or run chart) that is typically used to solve problems within organizations. In this webinar, you will learn how to apply IFD’s to capture potential problems before they affect cost, quality, schedule, and customer satisfaction.

Fishbone Diagram Procedure

1) Agree on a problem statement (effect). Write it at the center right of the flipchart or whiteboard. Draw a box around it and draw a horizontal arrow running to it.

2) Identify the major factors and draw four or more branches off the large arrow to represent main categories of potential causes.

Service Industries (The 4 Ps):

•        Policies
•        Procedures
•        People
•        Plant/Technology

Manufacturing Industries (The 6 Ms):

•        Machines
•        Methods
•        Materials
•        Measurements
•        Mother Nature(Environment)
•        Manpower (People)

3) Brainstorm all the possible causes of the problem. Ask: “Why does this happen?” As each idea is given, the facilitator writes it as a branch from the appropriate category. Causes can be written in several places if they relate to several categories.

4) Again ask “why does this happen?” about each cause. Write sub–causes branching off the causes. Continue to ask “Why?” and generate deeper levels of causes. Layers of branches indicate causal relationships.

Why-Why Analysis (The 5 Whys):

It is a method of questioning that leads to the identification of the root cause(s) of a problem. A why-why is conducted to identify solutions to a problem that address it’s root cause(s), rather than taking actions that are merely band-aids, a why-why helps to identify how to really prevent the issue from happening again.

5) Analyze the diagram. By this stage there should be a diagram showing all the possible causes of your problem.

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Teaching your Front-line How to Ask BSA Questions?

Guidance to Front-Line Staff on How to Ask BSA Questions

Learn the responsibilities of front-line staff on how to respond for BSA questions. Register for the live webinar today.

Teaching your front line how to ask BSA question? This Bank Secrecy Act training will explain how to train your front line staff to ask BSA questions. It will cover Currency Transaction Report (CTR), Monetary Instrument Log (MIL) and Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) scenarios and questions and much more.

Front-line employees are your first line of defense against money laundering. But in too many cases they’re near the back of the line with regard to training. This webinar brings together experts who share practical tips and strategies for bringing compliance concepts down to the rank-and-file, protecting your institution in the process.

Learning Objectives:

• Establishing compliance training programs for new hires
• Creating ongoing education programs and performance metrics
• Developing independent testing of training effectiveness

Front-line Fundamentals of this fast-paced webinar is all about expertise and performance. Focusing on the key issues the front-line must manage effectively every day, Front-line Fundamentals, will heighten awareness, teach techniques and provide information concerning selling, service delivery and compliance follow-through.

You will learn how to stay alert for money laundering scams, understand the critical pieces to REG CC and BSA for the front-line, turn a complaint into an opportunity, manage difficult questions and people like a pro, convey in customer-friendly language the why’s and how’s associated with policies and regulations, quickly identify what products/services are a good match for your customer, improve your persuasion skills, master the art of referrals and do your part to increase investments, deposits and loans, increase your cross-selling ratios and tie the customer to your bank.

For more details please visit us at: Teaching your Front-line How to Ask BSA Questions?

New Guidelines from the EEOC in Handling Harassment Claims

New EEOC Focus on Harassment Claims

Dealing with sexual harassment claims is one of the most daunting tasks employers face.  It is even more daunting when the employer has to address those who are responsible for the company being in existence – its customers.  Now, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has recently issued new guidelines that set forth new ways in which the EEOC will investigate sexual harassment claims. Join expert Susan Desmond who will give a complete overview on The New EEOC focus on Harassment Claims and how to handle harassment charges.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued proposed guidance crystallizing the agency’s expectation that employers be proactive in eliminating workplace harassment.

Five core principles that the EEOC states have generally proven effective in preventing and addressing harassment:

•   Committed and engaged leadership

•   Consistent and demonstrated accountability 

•   Strong and comprehensive harassment policies

•   Trusted and accessible complaint procedures

•   Regular, interactive training tailored to the audience and organization

The employer is automatically liable for harassment by a supervisor that results in a negative employment action such as termination, failure to promote or hire, and loss of wages. If the supervisor's harassment results in a hostile work environment, the employer can avoid liability only if it can prove that: a) it reasonably tried to prevent and promptly correct the harassing behavior; and b) the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer.

Prevention is the best tool to eliminate harassment in the workplace. Employers are encouraged to take appropriate steps to prevent and correct unlawful harassment. They should clearly communicate to employees that unwelcome harassing conduct will not be tolerated. They can do this by establishing an effective complaint or grievance process, providing anti-harassment training to their managers and employees, and taking immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains. Employers should strive to create an environment in which employees feel free to raise concerns and are confident that those concerns will be addressed.

Employees are encouraged to inform the harasser directly that the conduct is unwelcome and must stop. Employees should also report harassment to management at an early stage to prevent its escalation.

Register for this interactive webinar at a discounted price - New Guidelines from the EEOC in Handling Harassment Claims