A Direct Line Blog

By Donya Parrish, MCU VP Risk Management

Fraud has become a regular topic of conversation — in the news, during credit union staff meetings, and hopefully, in the board room too. In your role governing the organization, it is important for you to know the major factors that are impacting the credit union’s bottom line, membership, and reputation. Fraud touches all of them!

While credit unions work to keep up with the variety of methods of fraud that members might fall victim to, your board should be receiving regular updates about the impact of these events at your credit union. It doesn’t have to be an in-depth discussion of each type of fraud. Instead, a report of overall strategies and tracking of what is prevented and what is reported can go a long way toward keeping directors informed.

I recently sat down with Brittany DeVries from Clearwater Credit Union to talk about her credit union’s proactive approach to mitigating fraud losses. She shared some valuable insight on how she keeps management and their board in the loop on her team’s work. Give it a listen and consider requesting an agenda item, so you’re fully updated on your credit union’s fraud prevention strategy and current risk status.

Next week, I’ll cover what we are doing collectively across Montana credit unions to assist each other. I’ll also include some questions you can ask if you are curious and not feeling informed of the credit union’s direction on combatting fraud.