CRI Articles: Financial Institutions & Community Banks

Financial institutions don't rely on luck for success; they rely on the expertise of their management and CPAs like CRI who specialize in community banks. The community bank CPAs of CRI offer services including external audits, internal audits, loan reviews, and regulatory compliance that are designed to protect financial institutions - including community banks and credit unions - and their assets.

Demystifying Penetration and Vulnerability Testing
Most banks have excellent security defenses against external malicious attacks. Part of this success revolves around the valuable information gained about bank information technology (IT) systems by good security practices such as an external vulnerability assessment and a penetration (pen) test. However, statistics show that about 75-80% of all malicious activities come from WITHIN an organization, and not external to the organization. So the question becomes, how wells does a bank defend itself internally?

Attention Community Banks: Best Practices for Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL)
Since bank examiners pay special attention to the allowance for loan and lease losses (ALLL) in questionable economic times, it doesn't pay for community banks' management to stick their heads in the sand. Why? The consequences of a bank's ALLL being underfunded can be steep and may include: downgrading the bank's CAMEL rating, requiring increased capital levels, and taking other remedial action.

CRI Helps Community Banks Strengthen Their Grip on Internal Controls
New technologies and the economic decline have created a need for strong internal controls in order to go for the gold. For a community bank, understanding borrowers' control systems is a required step of loan due diligence because borrowers with weak internal controls expose community banks to greater risk of problems in their loan portfolio.

Looking for additional financial institution articles written by CRI's team of community bank CPAs? Join CRI's conversation in the financial institutions section of CRI's Blog.