Looking at the "account administration" information: am i right in thinking that a federally regulated bank cannot "request an institution account" until the Registry is up and running on Jan. 31? (I"m referring to page 3.)

Another question on the audit function/account administrator roles: how can someone audit without being an account administrator? To audit, don't you have to have access to the Registry and the internal information (MLO, etc.)? And to have that access, don't you have to be an account administrator?

That's how I understand it.

Correct.

As far as auditting, my plan is to audit the bank's compliance with the rule. Does the bank have P&P? Has the bank conducted training? Does the bank have an institution record? Does the bank mantain a list of MLOs and their NMLS ID numbers? Do MLOs deliver their ID numbers prior to acting as an MLO? How do they deliver it? HAve all MLOs been registered? Have all MLOs and the bank renewed on time? Have Bank procedures been followed regarding registration and renewals? Have hiring procedures been followed? Have CBC reviews been conducted? And whatever else.

Our procedures have put the verification of personal information on the administrator. The audit will review whether or not HR has done that according to procedures. Basically HR will review the personal info and document when it reviewed and include comments on whether corrections were made or not. Same thing for the CBCs....document that the CBC was reivewed, what date, and any action taken based on findings.

That's the plan for now anyway.

Although I won't be the admin (HR), I also won't be auditing because I'll be training and I wrote the policy/procedures. I'm going to either have our internal auditor test or have this included in our scopre for outside consultants to review sometime before the end of the year.

I guess that's where i'm getting hung up. I wrote the policy and procedures and will be doing training. Our HR director will be the system administrator (and Dani...thanks for the clarification...she WILL have to be the one checking that the MLO information entered jibes with internal records....correct?).....having said that.....can I perform the audits you are referring to or no?

And....ignorant question alert: What does CBC stand for? (sorry, here CBC is my credit bureau provider, so that's all i can think of)

CBC = Criminal Background Check

Ahhh....thanks AIT.

I wrote the P&P in conjunction with HR and I will be doing the training (ie assigning a course via our online training website). That being said, we don't have enough employees to assign the audit to someone else (who is qualified to do an audit) so I will also have to do the audit, which means that I don't have complete independence. It's not ideal, however, for the size and complexity of our institution, it's the only way right now.

My independence is compromised somewhat, however, I feel like the auditting portion is really more about testing the registration function.....input, renewals, customer disclosure, etc. Our P&P follows the rule and will be tested by examiners when they come anyway. Our training is well documented. If the MLOs and Administrators pass their parts of the audit, the training will prove itself sufficient.

From a risk standpoint, I think there is lower risk if I audit than if an administrator was to audit.

Ok.....i think we're kinda in the same boat then and i feel like i'll plunge ahead with what we had planned. Just getting information overload from all the stuff i've printed off and been scanning the last few days. Thanks as always.

Ditto.

I am getting it started for HR, then turning it over to them.

wow, after reading everyone's comments guess I'm going to have to reanalize what I should and should not be doing regarding the SAFE act.
Feeling very overloaded with all the changes we've had and still coming.

I am proposing HR have two people act as administrators, so they can check each other (essentially) and then I will monitor for compliance and internal audit will audit. My question is who is your contact person? It says the contact person receives all mailings on behalf of the bank or federal examiners re: NMLS records. Should that be compliance or HR? Also - would that person have to get Verisign authentication?

bump.

Both of our system administrators are in HR. The SAFE Act Officer is the HR Officer. Our explanation, in addition to leaving us independent enough to audit it internally is that this becomes part of the background check. Since a new LO can't originate loans without the unique identifier in place and since we don't always know when an LO is hired (we have a lot of them), we convinced HR that it was an HR function. Our responsibility was to do the legal research, get a basic policy in place before the October 2010 deadline, and then hand it off. That said, we went to lunch with the HR Officer today and talked through everything that we expect to see when we do the audit, asked how they'd be tracking the info, supplied the info on the training sessions being offered by the Registry, and handed it off.

That is my plan too, but one of the entries we need to make is the Control person (or whatever I said in the previous post). Is this going to be one of the 2 HR people? In other words, are you saying the contact with the regulators would go to the HR person rather than compliance because you believe the contact will be limited to HR-type concerns?

Is any one else having push back issues from management?

GOOD NEWS! With all of your help, I finally convinced management that HR is the only appropriate place for SAFE Administration responsibilities.

I just advised that I polled all of the BOL professionals, and the overwhelming response was that "all" of their banks were utilizing HR for the Administration role.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Here, its a never ending battle to delegate compliance responsibilities. I guess the position is that compliance is a total cost center, and most outside of the compliance department don't believe there's very much to keep us busy. Good thing there's a decent amount of executive management buy-in at my bank, or I'd have trouble doing my job well.

Good luck!

I am hearing from clients that management doesn't want to believe this is real, doesn't see why "salary" is "payment", can't believe they have to register lenders who do a lot of commercial loans but also consumer real estate loans, and want to push this on to compliance.

Mine thinks this is going to "go away."

Mine do as I say.

I get that the consensus is that a MLO can not be an administrator. We are a small bank - the VP and I will be the two admins (I am operations and whatever else comes my way- HR, compliance, etc.)The VP however is also wanting to start to dabble in loans (we are going to register her), but that would not be her full time job. Can she still be one of the admins? FYI - We have a total of 12 ee's (which includes 4 part time ee's to equal 2 full time ees).

Thanks