VIDEO: Leading BSA Board Training

In this Compliance Clip (video), Adam covers a few best practices to use when conducting BSA training for the Board. As this is often something that is done on an annual basis, BSA training can be repetitive and directors can easily "check out" of the meeting and not have great retention - which defeats the purpose of the meeting. By using best practices in training directors on BSA, your training can be effective, efficient, and even entertaining - which is exactly what your directors want. View this video for a few quick tips on providing BSA training to your board.

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Video Transcript

The following is a transcript of this video.

This Compliance Clip is going to talk about leading BSA board training for your Board of Directors. If you're a compliance officer or a BSA officer, risk manager or somebody who has to present BSA training to your Board, this video is for you.

The challenge with board training, of course, is that your directors are typically not bankers and oftentimes not even in the financial industry, but they're ultimately responsible for BSA compliance in your financial institution. But the question is, how much do they really need to know and how deep do you need to dive into your BSA board training?

The reality is that you could spend hours upon hours, if not a couple of days, talking about BSA - all the rules and regulations, case studies, enforcement actions, and even your processes and systems in your financial institution - and your directors definitely don't need that, right? They need something different.

So when I am talking from a high level perspective of what directors need, they typically need something like an introduction and history of BSA. They need to understand the five pillars and the core requirements for financial institutions for BSA programs in the United States. They also need to have an annual update of changes - Now, I don't think that this has to happen every year, but it should happen at least on a rotating basis where they're getting an update of things that have changed in the BSA world so they're being apprised of this information. And then finally, it's important for them to understand how BSA applies to them.

Let's break this down a little bit and give you some practical tips that I've learned over the years in providing BSA training to a number of boards of directors throughout the Midwest, and really throughout the United States. So when I give a BSA training, there's a couple of things I like to focus on and so here are a couple of tips that I have found to be useful.

First of all, it's important to keep your training comprehensive, but short. I've found that with directors, sometimes the shorter the meeting, the better it's received. And it's not that they don't care about a certain area, but what I've found is like a good piece of artwork, the more that we can focus on the details and make it efficient, the more your directors are going to appreciate that. So, I could just come in and information dump and talk easily for an hour to a board of directors, but the more concise I am and the more I refine that training and if I can break out all of the junk and focus in on the key things that apply to them and knock it down to 20 or 30 minutes, I found that those trainings are usually the best and go over the best and most well received. So, keep it comprehensive but keep it short and concise and that's going to go a long way.

Secondly, keep it high-level. Again, your directors are not bankers. They don't need all the details. What are the biggest things that cause the biggest risk in your organization? Focus on those things.

Also, what I like to do typically is to provide a handout as proof of content so your examiners and auditors can see exactly what your directors received. But years ago, I had a director tell me that what they hated was that somebody would give them a handout, they would read it ahead of time because it was given to them before the meeting and then in the meeting the presenter would take time to read the handout that they had already read. So if you're providing this handout in advance, don't read it during your board meeting. Just point out the key things that need to be covered and point out those key things and then tell stories and explain it and ask if there's any questions. So don't be redundant in the process. But a handout is always a really good tool for directors so that they can learn more on their own time.

Another tip I found is let your directors complete their training outside of the board meeting and do it on their own time. The reason for this is board meetings have to be short by nature and, in fact, when a meeting goes longer than an hour and a half or two and a half hours long your directors lose focus and have a hard time concentrating on extremely detailed things. So sometimes conducting the training and letting your directors take it on their own time before or after the board meeting, allows them to actually comprehend it better than they would inside the board meeting. This is something that can be extremely beneficial and I found this to be very, very well received in a lot of financial institutions over the recent years.

Now, one tip is don't make that training too long just because you have their attention outside of a board meeting. Keep it short and concise as well. But providing it outside of a board meeting gives your directors an opportunity to comprehend it at a time that works really well for them.

Also, as you're presenting, don't forget to tell stories and try to keep it entertaining. Your directors love to hear stories about SARs, suspicious activity, money laundering, and other problems that financial institutions have run into. If you talk about all the details, you're going to lose your directors, but figure out a way to include those details into a story that's going to go a long way for you in your presentation.

Also, directors like to know the bottom line. They want to know what applies to them and what they need to be doing. So make sure you're always thinking from the director's perspective on how this applies to them and your training is going to be a lot more successful as you present it to your board of directors.

Now, of course, at the Compliance cohort, we do have a couple of board training programs available. If you're not a presenter, and I understand not everybody likes to present to the Board, or if your Board has heard you speak for years and years and years, you might want a different voice. And if you want to try something different to change it up for your directors, then we have a couple of programs that you can take a look at.

Our first program is the Board BSA Foundations program. And then our second program is the Board BSA annual update. The foundations program just covers the five pillars and what applies to directors where the annual update program covers a little bit of that, but also things that happened over the last 12 months. And it can be renewed on an annual basis if you want to utilize this training each year.

Now, both of our training programs are less than 30 minutes. But to keep it short and concise, we provide the need to know, bottom line information for your directors. We include a comprehensive training manual and it's designed to be presented either by us in video format, just like what you see here. And in fact, we can set you up with a private portal your directors can view before or after your board meeting - so outside of your board meeting. It's very easy for them to access that or you can stream the video during the board meeting. So those are two options there, but also if you want to present it, we offer the slides so you can download them. You can watch our video and then you could present it yourself in front of the directors. So a couple of different options on presenting it.

Here's the thing: we are happy to let you sample this ahead of time before you purchase it. We just use the honor system and the honor code that you'll just use it to preview and make sure it's right for your director. So if you want a demo of this, just contact us. We'll set you up with a demo so that you can preview this before you purchase it so you can make sure it's a good fit for your directors.

Hopefully this video has been helpful in giving you a couple of tools you can use in conducting training yourself or some solutions you can use if you don't want to conduct the training yourself to your Board of Directors.