Hiring experienced compliance professionals has become difficult, particularly for credit unions. The need for an individual with an extensive skill set in the evolving and expanding new rules and regulations only increases.
The Des Moines, Iowa-based credit union compliance solutions firm PolicyWorks' Director of Compliance Services Brian Godwin and Business Development Manager Jason Harpenau addressed some of the issues related to the compliance talent gap, including the added difficulty of retaining compliance professionals in a white paper, "Talent Gap Complicates Credit Union Compliance."
As an alternative, according to PolicyWorks, outsourcing a portion of their compliance strategy and duties has become a solution for many credit unions, as they search for a way to obtain that extensive compliance knowledge. Access to a readymade team for either temporary on ongoing compliance support can help a credit union fill the gaps.
"It is difficult to find experienced, well-rounded talent. It's creating a lot of problems for cooperatives trying to meet the arduous demands of regulatory compliance, Harpenau said.
"The challenge we face in a market like ours is large employers can pay top dollar for compliance expertise," Gary Fillman, director of risk advisory services for the $615 million Omaha, Neb.-based Centris Federal Credit Union, said in the whitepaper.
Also sourced for the paper is human resources expert Lindsay Biggins, a CareerBuilder major account executive. Biggins shared hard-numbers evidence that skilled compliance professionals may soon become even harder to find and retain.
Godwin and Harpenau wrote about the Silver Tsunami, the mass exodus of baby boomers from the list of professionals sure to have an impact on the credit union industry's network of compliance specialists, and cited CareerBuilder data that indicates well over half of the individuals who hold a compliance officer position is over 45. Nearly 28% of them are over 55.
Some credit unions are filling the talent gap with outsourced skills. Paul Emanuels, vice president of lending and collections for the $583 million Valley First Credit Union in Modesto, Calif., explained in the paper how the combination of in-house and outsourced expertise has been invaluable to the evolution of his cooperative's strategic compliance effort. Valley First retains a relationship with PolicyWorks to manage day-to-day compliance questions and the credit union also relies on an Iowa firm for routine loan audits.
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Roy Urrico
Roy W. Urrico specializes in articles about financial technology and services for Credit Union Times, as well as ghostwriting, copywriting, and case studies. Also: writer/editor of a semi-annual newsletter for Association for Financial Technology since 1997 and history projects funded by the U.S Interior Department, National Park Service and Warren County (N.Y.).
