The windy city was extra breezy this week. Over 1,500 compliance geeks descended on the city for the annual ABA Regulatory Compliance Conference (RCC). The Hyatt Regency Chicago hosted the event.
Starting with a special fair lending session on Saturday the RCC offered over 40 sessions on every aspect of compliance. The session titles were interesting.
- The presentation titled Managing the Evolving Compliance Risk for Small Banks – The Impact of Incorporating Other Risk Assessments (from UDAAP to BSA/AML) to Current Methodologies wins the award for the longest session title. Reportedly after the program moderator introduced the speaker and stated the name of the session the allocated time expired and the audience moved on to the next session.
- The most interesting session title went to Capturing that Risky UDAAP Beast Before You Get Trapped. The session, lead by UDAAP Hunters, discussed how you too can venture forward to observe the beast in its natural habitat and then set traps in order to control it.
- The session entitled Defiance-Alliance-Compliance: The Path to Implementing Change for Small Banks advocated that now is the time to make plans to manage the extensive changes that are coming in the months ahead. The title describes the real world defiance to change, and the need to build alliances within your bank in order to achieve compliance. This was a very worthwhile presentation. It is a shame there is no recording available for purchase.
- Of course there were several presentations dedicated to the new Dodd-Frank regulations published in January.
- The closing session was entitled What to Tell Your CEO When You Return Home. You just spent the better part of four days and thousands of the bank’s dollars trying to understand a ton of new compliance information. Then you have to try to distill what you’ve learned into a brief presentation to your CEO/Senior Management. I thought what happened in Chicago stayed in Chicago, at least that is what I promised Frank (last name intentionally deleted) following his post Cub game activities.
There was a lot of criticism directed towards the ABA’s decision to not make recordings of the sessions available. The cost of the RCC and related travel is very high. Many community banks can’t afford the expense and the recordings were a reasonable priced alternative. It is almost impossible for one person to attend every session. Historically many banks sent one person and they attended as many sessions as possible and purchased the recordings for the remainder, but the ABA closed the door on that option.
Next year the RCC is in New Orleans. Frank could get into some real trouble there.