Embracing ERM Is Crucial to Protecting Home and Work. Picture your house in your mind. Think of all the doors and windows you have in your home. Are they all secure –at all times? (Not just when you go on vacation for a few days or simply away for the day but also when you are in the house.) Who is watching over each window and door in your house? Who ensures there are no threats to fires or floods on a daily basis? What measures have you taken to ensure your house is safe for your family to live in? Is everyone in your household aware of the potential threats and events that could occur in your house? That’s what Enterprise Risk Management ( ERM ) is all about.

Just as you try to protect your assets at home, you need to protect your business assets with the same level of awareness and care. Enterprise Risk Management, at its simplest form, is “an ongoing process to protect all business assets while achieving the organization’s vision and mission.” That’s my simple, personal definition. I thought of making the analogy of your home because you live in one. You are aware of the ever present threats that surround you. For example, the threat of a house fire if you’re not careful in the kitchen, with the grill, smoking in the house, or an electrical fire due to a malfunctioning appliance, is a real, daily threat. Then there is the threat of a flood due to an issue with an appliance or a plugged toilet or sewer. There is also the threat of theft—an intruder coming into your home and stealing physical things—the old fashion way of stealing. And, of course, there is nowadays the constant threat of identity theft and hacking into your personal accounts. Everything that can happen to your personal life can also happen to your business.

My point is that when you treat your business with the same care and have the same awareness as you have with your personal assets, your perspective changes with ERM at work. Even when you are not the owner of the company, you can learn to treat it as if it is. The moment you do that, you start asking yourself several questions such as, “Who is actually looking out for this department or that area of the company?” or you start realizing that “My area can be affected by that other area if something happens to them.” Other thoughts could be, “Wow! I didn’t know how important that department is to the survival of the entire company.”

In your home, you establish precautions, train the kids who to call and what to do in case of an emergency, create some routines such as going around the house at night locking all the windows and doors. Similarly, in your business, you establish “mitigating factors” to mitigate and hopefully eliminate some risks and you establish policies and procedures to protect your company assets from risks.

There are many articles and information about Enterprise Risk Management these days. Instead of looking the other way or saying you’re tired of hearing about it, or thinking that it doesn’t apply to your area of business, I encourage you to embrace the concept. Embrace ERM. It’s not going away and it applies to your company, not just community banks and credit unions — for profit and nonprofits alike.

A way of embracing ERM is to learn about it and not be intimidated by the term. Every company has risks. Becoming educated and then ensuring everyone in the organization is “risk aware” will ensure your company’s success in years to come. If your organization does not currently have an ERM Program, I encourage you to seek outside expertise.

Ten Benefits to Having a Complete ERM Program. “I can’t give you any feedback on your Enterprise Risk Management ( ERM ) Program. You’re the only small community bank that at $250MM in assets, has a complete ERM Program. Keep doing what you’re doing.” Those were the words of our FDIC examiner when I presented to them the first complete ERM program for the bank I helped start. At that point back in 2012, the bank had just reached the $250MM asset size and was about seven years old. During another conversation, the FDIC examiners told me that the bank “had a strong foundation and a solid infrastructure.”

As the CFO & COO of the bank and later as the CRO, those words made me feel good and I can tell you I slept well the almost ten years I spent with the bank from inception until I left to start Malzahn Strategic. However, those words also left me with the feeling that I was on my own, with very little guidance to continue developing the ERM program. The lack of guidance is precisely one of the main reasons small community banks and credit unions are not ready, nor able in many cases, to create a complete ERM program. The other reason is because creating an ERM program is not, at least not yet for small community banks and credit unions under a certain asset size, a regulatory requirement.

I would never want more regulatory requirements for banks and credit unions. Instead, I strongly recommend that institutions under $500MM in assets establish a complete, yet simple, ERM program. There are several ERM software packages available. However, some are too expensive and too cumbersome for institutions to use. They simply don’t have the time, resources, internal expertise, or the energy to devote to such programs. But small community banks and credit unions don’t have to use those sophisticated and intimidating software packages. What the regulators want is for institutions to know all their risks, put mitigating factors in place, and be aware of the residual risks they have in every area. Regulators want to know that you know your story from the risk perspective.

Even though credit risk is one of the biggest risks for community financial institutions, they now also have to focus on other important risks such as technology and operational risk. Unfortunately all the risks are interrelated. If one high risk area is affected, the ripple effects flow to the other risk areas such as capital, earnings, legal, or reputational, for example.

There is the perception that creating a complete ERM program is monumental and institutions then tend to focus on certain pieces such as Cyber Security, or Compliance, or the Disaster Recovery Plan, and they are not looking at the “enterprise-wide” approach. They are missing opportunities to make their bank or credit union the best it can be. They are missing all the benefits of having a complete ERM program. So today I would like to share Ten Benefits to Having a Complete ERM Program:

1. Establish best practices enterprise-wide. When you create an ERM program, it forces you to look at your entire organization and many of the practices that get implemented are best practices that will help the organization overall, not just to mitigate a specific risk.
2. Increase efficiencies. The same way, as you establish new best practices, you find other ways of doing things and, as a byproduct, your institution becomes more efficient. Efficiency ratio is a key measurement of profitability and most are looking for ways to become more efficient.
3. Establish an ERM process. One of the best practices that you should establish is an “ERM process,” which means now you have a process to run new ideas through. For example, if you are thinking of adding a new division or a new product, you answer a series of questions such as “What are the new risks we will have by adding this new division or product?” and “How are we going to mitigate those new risks?” “Is the reward worth the new risks?” Going through this process will eliminate not only new unnecessary risks, but will also save your staff valuable time wasted on new products or divisions that may not be profitable.
4. Build the team. One of the best results of creating an ERM program is creating an ERM team. When creating an ERM team, carefully select one person from each area to represent that area and to bring their opinion and expertise to the table. This practice not only helps create a complete program but it also builds the team. Now each team member learns about other areas and learns the importance of each of those areas. They also see how the organization works as a whole, as one company.
5. Create awareness, enterprise-wide. When you establish an ERM program across the organization, employees learn about other areas and become aware of potential risks the company may encounter in the future. The program, as a byproduct, creates a “risk aware” culture. Everyone is looking out for the good of the company.
6. Opportunity to assess risk, enterprise-wide. The process of conducting a risk assessment organization-wide, uncovers risks that most owners/leaders had not thought about in the past. As you put in place mitigating factors, and educate the staff, you improve processes across the board and are able to eliminate some of the risks.
7. Prepare for the future. There is nothing like knowing your current risks and potential new risks to help you prepare for the future. The process of testing your processes, current systems, disaster recovery plan, or business continuity plan, opens your eyes to be prepared for the future.
8. Create accountability. The ERM team meets with regularity through the year (even as little as quarterly) and team members have an on-going list of monitoring and reporting tasks. Results of testing, running new products through the ERM process, and the reporting to the Board of Directors, creates continued accountability within the organization.
9. Educate and involve the Board of Directors. Very few community banks or credit unions have completed a Board Risk Appetite and Tolerance Statement. But this is a very important step to complete. This is the summary of all your institution’s policies along with the level of tolerance/risk you’re willing to take in the various risk categories. From here, you can sound the alarm when you are approaching the high level of tolerance in the various risk categories.
10. Create a sound infrastructure and a solid foundation. Putting in place a complete, yet simple, ERM program, in the end creates a sound infrastructure and a solid foundation upon which your institution will grow into the future.

Tell your story from the risk perspective. Once your ERM program is complete you will feel equipped to tell your institution’s story from the risk perspective—not just the credit risk perspective but from all potential risks you could possibly be faced with now and in the future.