Regulations aren’t usually a big part of the Las Vegas experience. Disclosures—being transparent—isn’t always synonymous in a town where “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But at the Consumer Bankers Association annual meeting at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, consumer protection and disclosures were front and center.
Along with my colleagues Michael Bedard and Chris Kenney, the team at Naehas was thrilled to be part of CBA Live ‘23. We utilized our booth space to illustrate how bank consumer offers absolutely need proper disclosures. Attending bankers were surprised to understand this process can be automated from the design of the offer, with accompanying product disclosures, all the way to offer fulfillment by leveraging Naehas’ enterprise SaaS technology. And happily, our solutions tied in directly with what everyone was talking about: banks being open and transparent while reducing risk.
CBA Live 2023 was all about the future. Here’s what we talked about.
The CFPB at CBA Live
What really set the tone for the week was the fireside chat on day two. This was a conversation between CBA CEO Lindsey Johnson and the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra. Having perhaps the nation’s most important consumer advocate speak to the audience really demonstrated the focus on what we can all do to promote responsibility.
One clear topic was the run on Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed in part because it didn’t have the liquidity to manage a mass withdrawal. Chopra talked about that, and about how they could manage such problems in the future, saying:
“I think you’ll start seeing greater attention about liquidity, managing interest rate risk, making sure that there is a robust capital framework, and of course, quite a bit more on resolution planning and stress testing.”
This is a central area of interest to many banks, and to us at Naehas. This will become increasingly more important if there are tighter regulations in the wake of SVB.
That makes Enterprise Product and Pricing, Offer Management, and the automated and integrated management of Disclosures even more demanding. The goal, as we all know, is to get deposits, which requires creating incentives programs for consumers. All of those offers have to meet regulations, and the rewards — either immediate or not time-dependent — have to be redeemed for those who qualify. Doing so quickly and at scale requires smart, automated offer management.
Section 1071
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing that Chopra talked about. We also heard about an amendment to Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank. This requires financial institutions to “compile, maintain, and submit to the Bureau certain data on applications for credit for women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses.”
This isn’t going to be immediate; Chopra talked openly about the need for “phasing implementation,” due to the amount of data they have to acquire and understand. Of course, that means all banks are going to have to make sure their data is completely up-to-date and quickly accessible.
Mitigate Regulatory Risk Through Disclosure Management
The Chairman said it best. “Consumer and retail banking is the closest thing to real banking, in my view. It’s about serving people and […] it’s helping people and businesses reach their dreams.”
That’s what banks do for their consumers. And they can do that best when they mitigate their own risk. That’s one of the reasons why we focus so much on disclosure management. It’s a control banks can use to lower their exposure.
The new era of regulations means that banks might be asked to show records to prove compliance. That makes sense, but it also means a lot of work. At our Naehas booth, we talked about how our tools speed up the process around disclosures.
Disclosure management helps manage risk for banks of all sizes. It basically lets you scale up your disclosure processes, which is really what is underpinning offers. And that helps you get out the offers you need to cover your regulatory requirements.
Working Together for a Better Future
The spirit of problem solving is what we really liked about being at CBA Live ‘23. People were excited about the future. We all saw how working together with regulators will help protect consumers and strengthen the finserv industry. That’s a win-win.
Of course, with regulations comes responsibility. That’s why we were so glad to be able to talk to people about the Naehas Suite of Solutions and how they enable banks to transparently manage and disclose product and pricing information. We all want to move fast. We all want to stay compliant. We all want to mitigate risk. And every bank wants to serve their customers, but do so transparently and judiciously, Naehas solves both problems.
