The Western Independent Bankers association will be hosting a webinar on September 26th. This webinar, "Exploring Changes in the Risk Universe", is going to focus on both the importance of and the how to involved in creating an Enterprise Risk Management program that will help you and your organization meet their business objectives.

Every year, we gather our user community together from all around the country to meet at one of our two conference locations, to lead WolfPAC product trainings and clarify industry standards and best practices. We also use this opportunity to listen to your needs and show off the ways we're improving our software solution to meet those needs. It's an important event for us and our community, and this year we're hoping to have the most successful conference yet!

Within our most recent software release, we have made a ton of updates and changes to our Business Continuity Solution. These enhancements have been made through a deliberate updating process, as well as feedback from our clients about what pain points they experience during business continuity plan creation.

WolfPAC Integrated Risk Management has added another association to our already long list of partner groups, by joining the Texas Bankers Association! We are very excited to be a part of the oldest and largest state banking association in the nation, and look forward to different ways we can support this partnership.

You’ve been busy on your business continuity plan ("BCP"). You know how long it will take you to get your systems back up. Your alternate site is selected and ready to spring into action should the need arise. But what about everything that comes before? Do the people in your organization know what to do prior to the disaster declaration? Are you 100% certain they would know what to do and who’s responsible for what? Are you willing to bet the organization on it? If you can’t respond with a resounding yes then conducting a Tabletop Exercise could be the missing piece in your BCP Testing program.

The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) implemented Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Services Companies with the goal of protecting New York financial service institutions and their customers from cyber-threats. This unprecedented rule covers entities who fall under the authority of the NYDFS, including banks, insurance companies and financial service institutions with limited exemptions based on employee and asset size. Although the rules are effective on March 1^st, there is a transitional period ranging from 180 days to 2 years for the regulatory requirements.

Building a culture of compliance within your institution can be difficult, but it's one of the most important things you can do to ensure your Enterprise Risk Management program is comprehensive, effective, and efficient.

Every month since December, we have hosted a webinar focused on giving our clients and prospects a ton of information about the changes happening to our Information Technology module. We have covered the common controls framework that manages how often you have to input a specific control that spans all technologies. We have showed off our contextual questionnaires that cut down the number of questions your team has to answer for each risk assessment, so they only have to fill out what's relevant to that technology. We've also showed you how to map your controls to your threats, to ensure that you identify any gaps you may currently have in your system, to quickly and easily remediate them.

Every year, the American Bankers Association hosts their ABA Risk Management Conference, focused on the evolution of risk in the financial industry, and the methods used to help analyze and control them within your institution. This year promises to be no different, with over 30 strategic and practical sessions built into the three day conference to help parse through some of the biggest upcoming changes we are likely to encounter.

On March 7th at 11am PST (2pm EST), Mike Cohn, Director of the WolfPAC Solutions Group will be presenting a webinar hosted by Western Independent Bankers: