Cornerstone works with you to design a presentation customized to fit your meeting’s theme and the specific needs of your group. Or, working from a list of prepared topics, we can modify our materials to ensure the most effective delivery to your audience.
Our speakers are enthusiastic about their subject matter and, whenever practical, enjoy a strong audience interaction. Attendees at a Cornerstone seminar or workshop should come prepared to evaluate real-life business scenarios and solve tough strategic challenges. Our presentation handouts are designed as effective take-aways that provide ongoing value. Here are a few of our most popular topics:
Topic List:
I. Risk ManagementII. Strategy
III. Technology
IV. Efficiency
V. Operations
Risk Management
Practical Risk Management for Financial Institutions
Risk is the integral part of banking that drives earnings. High performing financial institutions are those that have embraced and learned to effectively manage risk. In this informative session, participants will get an overview of the key risk issues facing banks and credit unions today and learn practical, effective methods for establishing a successful enterprise risk management program, including:
- Understanding how an institution’s business objectives affect its risk environment
- Approaches for assessing and managing risk
- Methods and systems for monitoring and reporting on risk
- Setting risk management roles, responsibilities and organization
Managing Risk without Breaking the Bank:
A Benchmarking Update
Oh man! Every time a banker turns around there’s a new regulation heading our way preparing to kick us where it counts. In this session, Cornerstone will move past the typical “regulations will be burdensome” hand-wringing and instead discuss how banks can more efficiently and effectively absorb new compliance mandates without soaking up all the bank’s earnings. We will share insights and select industry benchmarking results from the latest Cornerstone Report concerning how banks are organizing and staffing their Enterprise Risk functions. In addition, Cornerstone will share pragmatic management, reporting and automation approaches for developing a risk management culture that does more than appease regulators. It also helps banks manage risk in a more focused manner than ever before.
Taking the Stress out of Stress Testing
Bankers cannot continue driving forward while looking in the rearview mirror. Thriving in the new post-crisis financial institution environment will require the ability to effectively forecast the results of business decisions and current circumstances in an environment of uncertainty. Relying on static information to manage the future of the bank is like standing immobile for too long on the interstate. Those who do are road kill. Participants in this session will learn about current methods and systems for forecasting funding needs and stressing the institution’s liquidity, identifying potential areas of credit weakness and estimating loss reserve requirements using stress testing and evaluating the adequacy of capital based on possible future outcomes.
Managing Information Security Risks
New technologies have provided important benefits to financial services providers and their customers. Unfortunately, they have also exposed both to increased risk. Regulatory authorities now require financial institutions to evaluate these risks and deploy a comprehensive information security program to ensure the security of customer and bank information. In this session, participants will learn about the key risk information security issues facing financial institutions today; security incidents, such as the ZeuS.bot and others that have resulted in losses and reputational damage; and understand how to establish an effective information security risk management program, including how to:
- Classify critical, confidential customer and company data and information systems
- Identify threats to the company’s information systems, both electronic and non-electronic
- Establish and implement appropriate security policies
- Ensure appropriate director oversight
- Implement a vendor risk rating and management program
- Ensure there are appropriate back-up, recovery and business continuity plans, at the company and its vendors
Managing Credit Risk
As the last three years have shown, managing credit risk effectively can be the difference between a financial institution surviving or thriving. In this session, for senior management and directors, participants will learn about “best practice” techniques for monitoring and managing credit risk. Participants will learn how to effectively establish the financial institution’s credit risk “appetite”; structure an effective credit risk management organization; develop comprehensive lending policies; control the loan origination process; monitor compliance with policy and regulatory guidelines; monitor the quality of the loan portfolio using stress testing, loan review and other techniques; manage problem credits and workouts; and establish and maintain the allowance for loan and lease losses.
Business Continuity Planning: Ten Steps to an Effective Plan
From earthquakes and hurricanes, to fires and floods, financial institutions have experienced them all. Those that were prepared for them survived, managed the recovery cost effectively and enhanced their reputation with their customers. While developing a business continuity plan is never easy, the chances of successfully developing an effective plan can be significantly improved following these 10 critical steps. Participants in this session will learn how to organize the planning, execution and business recovery effort, identify and mitigate threats to the financial institution’s operations, provide for appropriate back-up, document and test the disaster response plan and manage the financial institution’s recovery.
Barbarians at the Gate! Preparing for the Next Regulatory Visit
While the recent wave of enforcement actions and fines make it appear the regulators are sacking and pillaging the village, they have been quite tolerant regarding banks’ efforts to comply with regulations and address various safety and soundness issues. You can expect, however, that by the third year following new regulations, or the suggestion that a safety and soundness issue be addressed, their patience will be a bit thin.
Consequently, visits from bank regulators often create a great deal of apprehension, even panic, as well as last-minute scrambling to gather up all the data they’ve requested. Sometimes these efforts highlight areas in which the bank is not quite adequately prepared. Intense regulatory interest in issues like Anti-Money Laundering, Information Security, Business Continuity Planning and others, as well as emerging issues like Sarbanes-Oxley, make it imperative to prepare for and manage the regulatory process. While management attention to these issues is sometimes hard to obtain, nothing focuses their attention like an impending regulatory visit.
Instead of waiting until they are at the gate, proactive management of relationships with regulators and preparation of the right information not only reduce the anxiety of regulatory visits, but maximize the opportunities that regulatory attention can generate. During this session, participants will learn about:
- The latest regulatory “hot-buttons” – Anti-Money
- Laundering, Information Security and others – and practical methods to prepare for them now
- Best practices for evaluating and preparing for areas of regulatory attention
- Specific actions bankers can take prior to and between regulatory visits
- Maximizing the strategic and tactical bottom-line improvement opportunities regulatory visits create
Participants will be provided with and have access to a variety of practical compliance policy templates and risk assessment tools discussed in connection with this session.
Enterprise Risk Management - The Director’s Role
This half-day workshop is designed for board members and will provide directors with practical information about Enterprise Risk Management in financial institutions. Participants completing the session will leave with knowledge of risk management fundamentals and increased confidence in their ability to play an effective part in the risk management process. Topics covered include:
- Current risk environment, both local and national
- Strategic decision-making and its risk implications
- Determining the financial institution’s risk “appetite” and establishing risk tolerance guidelines
- Regulatory risk management requirements
- Keys to evaluating, controlling and monitoring risk in the categories outlined by regulators (i.e., 2010 Large Bank Risk Factors)
- Managing technology risk
- Essential risk management strategies and methods
- The Enterprise Risk Management model
- Organizing and structuring the ERM effort
- Role of directors in the ERM effort
- Risk monitoring through the use of key risk indicator dashboards and other information
The material presented will incorporate case studies, covering key risk decisions made by selected financial institutions and their resulting consequences and well as information on recent bank failures.
Take me back to the topic list!Strategy
Out of the Crisis, Past the Regs and Into the Future
Attendeees at this session will hear pragmatic advice on how financial institutions can ensure their viability, relevance and success in the most difficult industry environment ever known. The presenter will share key strategic priorities that financial institutions should be facing from the vantage point of the CEO, CFO, CIO, Chief Risk Officer, Marketing Officer and Human Resources Director. Included will be emerging mandates and best practices for institutions to adopt.
A Guided Tour of the Best Practice Bank
While the concept of “best practices” is widely used in banking today, financial institutions can often struggle with translating the idea of best practices into concrete goals and action plans. This session will present a sampling of the best practices Cornerstone has observed in working with hundreds of financial institutions over the past decade. The functional areas illustrated in this tour will include retail delivery, consumer lending, business banking and information technology. Cornerstone will also share its methodology for developing a “scorecard” that can be used to measure the performance of key groups within the organization, with specific topics including:
- Criteria used to measure performance
- Finding and using industry peer data for comparison
- Characteristics of high performers
Attendees will apply this new knowledge to the creation of best practice scorecards that they can take back to their organizations.
No Guts, No Glory - Tackling the Crisis Head On
This session will provide a profile of the “winners” in the next era of financial services and highlight best practices from banks, non-banks and credit unions that are forging through the most difficult time in recent history. Hear insight into strategy, technology, marketing and talent management based upon Cornerstone’s work with hundreds of financial institutions around the country and the firm’s leading industry benchmarks. Join us for a candid discussion of what it will take to survive and thrive in the years ahead.
Technology, Customer Service and Being the Best Community Banker You Can Be!
Being a community banker has always been about providing better customer service. As technology continues to evolve, however, and delivery channels become more automated and less “personal” in nature, where will the community banker find his or her edge? Will the “personal” relationships with our customers be lost in the name of technology? How do we offer the advantage of leading edge technology and still maintain the image and perception of providing better customer service?
This motivational and thought-provoking presentation brings to light some serious questions, questions that pose a serious threat to the very fabric of what community bankers have always hung their hat on – providing better customer service. There are and always will be ways for community bankers to demonstrate the “added value” that they provide to their customers and their communities. Technology is not a threat unless it is viewed as such. By harnessing the power of technology and maintaining a balance in a “click and mortar” environment, community bankers can deliver better service than ever before.
Changing Times Requires Changed Thinking
The marketplace is changing, the banking industry continues to change, and the rate of change in the technology industry continues to escalate. The change is constant, but for many community bankers, re-engineering their bank, re-inventing how they do business is a monumental struggle. Why is that? What is holding them back? Most of all, is changed thinking enough to help bankers achieve their business objectives in today’s new reality of banking? This session explores the difference between changed thinking and creative thinking and why the latter is critical if any bank is to reinvent itself. Using real-world examples of other businesses that came from nowhere to become icons in American industry, attendees will be challenged to ask themselves, “Why can’t we be creative like that in our business?” The presentation closes with five ways in which any bank can think more creatively and benefit in the process.
The Future of Credit Union Mergers
As credit unions seek to rebuild capital and scale their organizations to address an increasing regulatory burden, industry consolidation is likely to accelerate. This session includes a discussion of aspects of both healthy and regulatory assisted credit union mergers as well as insights on how the board should be involved in the integration of two credit unions.
How to Raise Your Stock Value as a Bank Marketer
This session will present eight basic disciplines to help financial marketers move up from ingrained tactical thinking to the strategic level and increasing their value to top management. Concepts to be discussed include:
- Ask the CEO what he wants – and give him more
- Learn to talk trash with your CFO
- Make product development a ladder to higher personal value
- Become the undisputed leader in “bang for the buck”
The Right Way to Deploy Business Services
While many financial institutions have ventured into business services and business lending over the past five to seven years, our industry’s focus has been too centered on larger commercial real estate transactions and not enough on core small business relationships. In this session, participants will learn about a “new playbook” for developing services for small business customers and growing these relationships. Included is a discussion of product offerings, pricing strategies, delivery channels and internal staffing requirements to make business services a strong contributor to your institution’s future growth.
Making Mortgages a Relationship Product
Healthy banks and credit unions are facing an incredible strategic opportunity to gain market share in the mortgage business after the Great Recession. However, smart competitors realize that success will not be measured by the volume produced in the mortgage group. Rather, financial institutions are hoping to acquire and deepen retail banking relationships using the mortgage product as an important “anchor” product. This session will present emerging best practices for integrating the mortgage business into the organization’s overall retail relationship banking strategy. Key topics will include:
- How mortgage products are being marketed
- How originators are being held accountable for broader relationships
- How cross-sell strategies are being developed between mortgage and retail
Improved retail integration and cross-sell is one of the highest strategic priorities for the next generation mortgage manager.
Take me back to the topic list!Technology
Technology Challenges and Opportunities for Financial Institutions
This discussion covers the future of technology in the financial services industry, strategic industry trends and challenges financial institutions face in implementing new technology. Special issues addressed in the presentation include:
- Keeping up with changing technologies on a budget
- Key technologies that a financial institution can use to compete more effectively
- Technology staffing challenges
- Strategies to better manage outsourcing relationships and new trends in the outsourcing market
- Implementing an effective technology plan
- Ensuring a financial payback on technology investments
During this informative session, attendees will hear best practices and war stories from Cornerstone’s work with hundreds of financial institutions on technology planning and implementation and receive pragmatic, actionable advice for their institutions.
Top 10 Technology Trends
What technology trends will change banking as we know it today? This presentation will highlight the top 10 emerging technologies for banks that will impact financial institutions and their customers in the next five years, including Web services, fraud and security technologies, enterprise-wide imaging systems and electronic payments. The session will illustrate what best practice community banks are doing and which vendors are gaining traction. Plus, attendees will hear about some best practices to consider as they evaluate these intriguing, but often costly bells and whistles.
Driving Card Profitability A.D. (“After Durbin”)
The continued assault on debit and credit card profitability continues as the Card Act and Durbin Amendment are implemented. The new environment is forcing banks to think about retail product design, pricing/fee strategies, loyalty program modifications and whether existing branding, network and processing partners are best suited for the next wave of the card business. This webinar will provide an overview of the new ideas emerging to drive card profitability and introduce new analytic concepts that banks should be employing to maximize and monitor their revenue from cardbased payments.
Multi-Channel Integration: Projects and Milestones for Success
Increased loyalty from positive customer experiences… better sales opportunities… reduced costs – the promises of integrated channel delivery are compelling. However, the successful execution of that vision is a long-term process requiring careful steps that must address disparate systems, vendors, business rules, employee needs and customer expectations. This session presents a planning methodology that can be used to prioritize and successfully execute each project on the path to multi-channel integration. It also outlines a pragmatic project “road map” that details realistic milestones and measurable goals for each major delivery channel (Internet banking, branch, call center, lending) for the next two-three years.
Mobile Commerce – What Financial Institutions Need to Know
Mobile commerce is being embraced, especially by younger consumers. Remote deposit capture, mobile banking, online banking, instant online loan approvals are just a few of the financial services available to consumers. What do financial institutions need to know in order to compete effectively? What does this mean for the future of branches—will branches be displaced, or will they work in harmony with mobile commerce? This session will summarize emerging best practice among various remote channels and share thoughts on how branch and remote delivery should be managed in an integrated fashion to optimize costs while striking a strategic differentiation in service levels and convenience. Banks have no choice whether to invest in remote delivery, but it will take wise investment decisions given extreme efficiency pressures in our industry today.
10 Questions Bankers Should Ask Before Investing in New Technology
Among the challenges of successfully running a bank is the need to constantly evaluate existing and new technology based solutions. Bankers have been told for years (mainly by the vendor community) that newer technology would give them a “competitive edge” – but is it really true? How can bankers be sure they are asking the right questions when they evaluate any new type of technology for their bank? To help bankers think through the “why” of their technology investments and the “how” of those investments’ ability to improve the overall operation of the institution, this presentation provides 10 simple, straightforward questions that will empower any banker to make better informed technology decisions for his organization.
Competing with the Mega-Banks through Mobile and Web Channels
Ever since the JP Morgan Chase commercials ran during 2010 with a newlywed couple doing remote check deposit with an iPhone in their bed (not your usual honeymoon priority!), it’s become clear that mobile banking has moved beyond interesting to a mainstream channel with growing consumer demand. While most banks are dying to stay up with the innovators, they also face severe budget and project constraints. This session provides a discussion of how financial institutions should prioritize and sequence their next generation of mobile and Web investments and how they can work to drive better “monetization” of the online channel.
Managing Technology Strategy for Success and Profitability
Many of the major technology issues facing financial institutions today have more to do with internal management than vendors or specific technologies. They include:
- Aligning investments with strategy
- Getting the promised payoff from investments
- Training
- Applying technology to improve process
- Determining when best-of-breed systems are justified
- Project management
This presentation focuses on pragmatic steps financial institutions can take to better manage technology. Specifics to be discussed include:
- Making all technology decisions in a consistent way
- Managing resources, particularly internal staff
- Project management discipline
- Justifying technology investments when traditional ROI won’t work
Technology and Lending
Despite years of talk about automated “lender workbenches,” the commercial lending process is still very fragmented, paper-intensive and poorly leveraged. With the rise of the Internet and fast-moving competitors, it’s time for lending departments to get serious about reinventing their shops with new technology. This discussion focuses on how technology has changed the lending function, particularly in the commercial lending area. New technologies, the players and best practices are discussed, and in-depth guidance is provided for financial institutions attempting to prioritize and justify these investments. Scorecards are introduced that enable an institution to judge how effectively its technology is working.
Keys to Successfully Implementing New Technology in Your Institution
Why is it that the same product solution, sold from the same vendor, has such totally different levels of success in different banks that implement that solution? It is the same product and it is typically installed and supported by the same vendor organization, so why would the results vary so from institution to institution? This session examines the pitfalls of implementing new, technology-based solutions in a financial institution and identifies some characteristics synonymous with those institutions that tend to see a better return on their technology investment.
Justifying Technology Investments in a Non-ROI World
Financial institutions are increasingly being forced to make investments even when the traditional return on investment analysis doesn’t support them. This presentation discusses what types of investments still should require traditional ROI justification. It also outlines ways to focus the organization on how to measure payback when the direct ROI model doesn’t apply.
Take me back to the topic list!Efficiency
Beyond Paperclips: Five Bank Efficiency Priorities for 2011
Banks have worked vigilantly to reduce expenses over the past two years, and now all the “low hanging fruit” has been devoured. In this session, Cornerstone will review five major areas that may still have stones left unturned and provide actionable advice for how to burn these opportunities into your 2011 business plan. Based upon its leading industry benchmarking, technology and vendor knowledge, Cornerstone will share stories from the trenches concerning banks that are continuing to improve their efficiency ratios.
Best Practices in Financial Institution Efficiency
Regardless of what transpires with interest rates, fees, growth and other factors, financial institutions can count on one thing – they will need to be more efficient, more automated, faster in their delivery, and more nimble in markets. This session explores industry best practices in benchmarking and efficiency, with particular focus on the following:
- How to concentrate efforts where they will bring the best results
- How and when to use peer numbers vs. internal benchmarks
- How to differentiate between efficiency opportunities that reduce costs and those that enable more growth
- How to tie benchmarking and efficiency initiatives to key strategic goals and desired competencies
Operations
How to Become a Paperless Bank in Only 24 Months
Most banks today have invested in document imaging or “ECM” systems and have made initial steps into image archive and records management. At the same time, only best practice leaders have been able to transform their operations into workflow-enabled, paperless environments and gain breakout productivity improvements. ECM is hard work organizationally, and its implementation often gets crowded out by other initiatives. This session includes a discussion on how to take your institution’s current image archive environment and leverage it aggressively to create streamlined, automated workflows. Attendees will also gain insight into how to organize, roll out and manage enterprise imaging initiatives and ensure that this important work maintains momentum inside your organization.
Managing Your Projects So They Don’t Manage You
What stands between a financial institution and its vision of the future are projects – lots of projects. While many institutions have experience in the execution of a project plan once it is approved using project management software and other tools, many don’t have a formal method of managing the front end of the process – project identification, prioritization and resource allocation.
This workshop explores how management can be in better command of the overall project methodology. The interactive, hands-on session focuses on practical ideas that can be taken back to the organization to make planning and project management one of your key strengths for the future. Sample templates and project plan write ups are provided for each major area discussed.
Take me back to the topic list!