Dear valued member:

As America hopefully exits the pandemic soon, bankers will begin to deal with the economic and regulatory aftermath of our historic response to COVID-19. Your Colorado Bankers Association is taking unprecedented, proactive steps to assist you in this high-stakes process to anticipate issues and face unique challenges during upcoming regulatory examinations.

The general public and our public officials relied on banks’ critical role in the pandemic response. And to deliver crucial support to small businesses, banks relied on regulators’ commitments. You stepped up on PPP and other programs, and your reaction to this pandemic’s economic crisis presents challenges for your next exam. Anticipating the essence of that next exam will have a big impact on the future of your bank and our industry. As you continue to work with customers, it is critical that regulators take a consistent and fair approach and that your bank is prepared for success. We all need to know the focus of examiners.

CBA proudly joins other state bankers associations across the country in announcing a new powerful resource to assist you in preparing for your upcoming regulatory exams. It is called the Bank Exam Prep Center, and it has been developed in association with the Regulatory Feedback Initiative (RFI), presented by the Coalition of Bankers Associations (Coalition). For 10 years, the RFI has asked banks to complete an anonymous Post Exam Survey after each exam and visitation. The data from those surveys provides us with critical exam insights that allow us to 1) help you prepare for your next exam; 2) work with regulators to ensure that bank exams are fair and consistent from agency to agency and region to region; and 3) assist us in auditing regulators’ practices.

The Coalition, made up of state bankers associations from across the U.S., unveiled the new Bank Exam Prep Center website the week of March 22nd through a series of webinars for bankers. We urge you and your team members to join us for the webinar that fits best into your schedules.

In the meantime, if you have had an exam or visitation in the past 12 months and have not completed a Post Exam Survey, please go to allbankers.org and anonymously take the 15-minute Post-Exam Survey. The information you provide about your exam experience is confidential and cannot be traced back to your institution, but it will make the resources available at the Bank Exam Prep Center even more helpful to the industry. For more information, go to allbankers.org.

Thank you for considering the following action steps:

• Participate in a webinar on the new Bank Exam Prep Center website: register.gotowebinar.com
• Go to allbankers.org and review the background about RFI and its resources
• Provide your anonymous exam feedback after each exam or visitation
• Utilize the Bank Exam Prep Center resources to prepare for future exams
• Sign up for Bank Exam Prep Center updates as they are released in the future

The new Bank Exam Prep Center is a great resource for preparing for your next exam. However, it will only work to its fullest if we all provide our exam feedback through the anonymous RFI survey.

Thank you for joining us in this critically important effort. Bank Exam Prep Center resources are available from our website coloradobankers.org/or at allbankers.org. Please contact Lindsay Muniz (lindsay@coloradobankers.org) or Becky Wilkes (bwilkes@uba.com) if you have questions or concerns.

Knowledge is power — especially as we face unique challenges together.