Compliance Corner: The Shield Client Success Quarterly Newsletter

Welcome to our first issue of Compliance Corner, a quarterly newsletter with information designed to facilitate your compliance efforts using Shield Engage and Shield Assure.

As many of you are probably noticing, competition is intensifying in the cannabis banking space. This is creating pressure on financial institutions to operate more efficiently while delivering more client-centric services. When it comes to meeting compliance obligations, banks and credit unions that employ strategies to achieve greater efficiency can dramatically lessen their compliance burden and that of their customers.

Shield Engage and Shield Assure are designed to help you achieve these efficiencies and deliver a better customer experience. And, the Shield Customer Success Team is dedicated to helping you leverage all the tools and features in these products so you can gain that competitive advantage.

Whether you are a new client or a long-time client, there is always something new to learn! Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or suggestions for how we can support you.

Jenna Meyer

Director of Client Success

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Infused Banking to provide our bankers with a 25% discount on membership, including access to Infused Banking’s Learning Platform, training, certifications, webinars, and more. We’re also excited to share that we are working on creating exclusive content that will be available to Shield clients later this year.

Request Discounted Access to Infused Banking ›

Infused Banking’s comprehensive on-demand Learning Platform is tailored specifically for cannabis and banking professionals and includes a diverse range of curated content, interactive learning modules, and real-world case studies. It also includes a library of resources such as policies, procedures, and best practices, as well as an Ask the Experts forum where members can ask questions and get answers from other industry professionals.

Did You Know?

There is a balancing act between managing cases and leveraging other tools to monitor your clients in Shield Assure. As portfolios grow, many bankers seek ways to consolidate their review activity and focus on specific case types. The periodic compliance review allows the bankers to review the critical aspects of the relationship all at once. Reviews can be created for one or many calendar months, automatically compiling key information for analyst analysis. Review items include:

• Dates key items (including OFAC and negative news) were last verified. 
• A summary of sales and transaction activity for the period, including transaction types with counts and totals.  
• Household level summary information. 
• Detailed information regarding each entity in the household, including licenses, owners, and related parties.  
• A recap of cases flagged for further review and due diligence items completed.
• A table of all cases generated for the entities, allowing users to easily review any outstanding or closed cases.  

Many financial institutions use the compliance review as the foundation for their annual review process. Creating the automated compliance review (and narrative) takes only a minute, allowing the analyst to spend more time analyzing the data and ensuring the relationship meets the FI’s standards. Sales data and transactions are automatically analyzed and summarized, eliminating manual mis-keying or miscalculations.

Access compliance review functionality, create regularly scheduled reviews, or change your case settings. ›

Quick Links

The Shield Client Success Team is working hard to provide features within Shield Engage and Shield Assure that can help streamline your compliance efforts, along with a variety of tools to help you use these products more efficiently. We hope you’ll check out some of the following resources:

Help widget within Shield Assure: 

• Create support tickets 
• Search frequently asked questions 
• Find how-to guides and in-depth user guides 
• Watch new interactive videos within solution articles 
• Access sample client communications 

Online Resources 

• Our client support page, support.shieldbanking.com: Access all of the functionality listed above, the support tickets you’ve submitted, and our online Forums where you can vote on upcoming enhancements and provide feedback.
• Client Exchange SharePoint: Access your organization’s specific information, including client communication, reports, and training recordings.
• Shield’s LinkedIn: Periodic industry news and updates.

Banking Satisfaction Survey

We have contracted with market research firm Sage Projections to obtain feedback from licensed operators about their banking satisfaction. Our outreach to these operators includes email using a third-party list service, social media, and referrals from industry partners. We’re collecting survey results from companies regardless of where they bank. Since many of your clients know you work with Shield, we didn’t want you to be surprised if you were asked about the survey. 

The results of the survey will be shared at Shield Client Connect in October. If you'd like to obtain the results of the survey specific to your financial institution, please reach out to Tony Repanich.

One Last Thing...

We are in the process of updating our cannabis banking benchmark survey and value your input. A member of our client success team will be contacting you shortly. Thanks in advance for your participation! 

We’ll be sharing the results of the benchmark survey at Shield Client Connect, October 3-5, 2023, in Seattle, WA. 

Please note that Friday, June 30th, is the last day to secure early bird rates to attend the event.
 

We'll have content geared for everyone in your cannabis banking operation, from analysts working directly with CRBs to executives making programmatic decisions, so please register today!