Make A Silk Purse Out Of A Sow's Ear!

I just spent a week with financial institution security officers at the American Bankers Association National Security School at the University of Maryland.

There was the usual grousing about lack of budgets and personnel-and a lot of complaining about the difficulty of robbery training with so many part-time employees. But one of the more interesting trends was the shift of thinking on the responsibilities of a security officer.

There is an initial shock when someone who has been in administration or retail suddenly finds themselves appointed security officer and discovers there is a whole lot more to the job than alarms, opening procedures and robbery training. And an even bigger eye opener when the new security officer is ex-law enforcement and finds about a neat thing we have in this industry called "compliance."

Broad scope of duties
In order to pass any of the certification programs, a security officer must be versed in most of an awesome list of subjects involving a wide scope of knowledge. Among them are: regulatory requirements; security devices; robbery guidelines; risk assessment; training; criminal referral forms; administrative duties; electronic funds transfers; alarm systems; surveillance cameras; access control; ATMs; night deposits; vaults; barriers; communication devices; embezzlement; falsification of records; conflict of interest; fraud; kidnapping and extortion; polygraph; drug recognition, testing, and analysis; disaster recovery; due diligence; evacuation; and robbery, burglary and larceny prevention and reporting.

Add "Compliance"
After instruction in many of these areas, the security officer then often discovers that they also share in compliance duties.

Compliance is a big word these days in the financial industry. The cost of not being "in compliance" is much too high-especially when it involves any of the Bank Secrecy or Fair Lending areas, which at the moment are the two hottest buttons you can find.

Compliance officers, lending officers and auditors need all the help they can get-and that help is often in the scope of the security officer. (Of course, in some institutions, compliance and security are the same person!)

Good security officers are trained investigators, and there is no better source for checking, verifying or getting information than through them. Whether it's for a loan, a new account, or an internal investigation, the security officer can probably help.

In many cases, the security officer is an ex-law enforcement officer, who has either retired or switched careers. These capable people have a different mind-set from a banker. I have a banker friend who, although he counted many security officers among his friends, used to tease them by saying, "It's easier to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear than to make a banker out of a cop!"

It's now time to try! Your security officer may not know how to offer assistance for problems in other areas. Don't be afraid to ask him or her for help. The security officers I talk to would be more than happy to assist in other areas, but don't want to appear to be interfering.

Whether it's in CRA or ADA or credit or character investigating or due diligence-count on your security officer to help you. They know how to get the information you need.

Copyright © 1994 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 4, No. 9, 3/94