Credit unions deal with countless compliance demands. It’s just part and parcel of the credit union industry.
Credit union compliance resources come in all shapes and sizes. Some people, including the nice folks at the NCUA, offer guides and study materials. Other companies develop software to help with governance, risk, and compliance.
And then there are those who focus on audits. So, with that in mind, here’s why audit software is a critical credit union compliance resource.
Improving Audit Efficiency
One of the biggest reasons why audit software is a critical credit union compliance resource is its efficiency. Audit tools like Redboard include automated workflows to simplify and speed up tedious, manual audit processes. It helps save credit unions a lot of time and effort.
Just as importantly, that efficiency and audit automation help maintain compliance. Keeping an adequate audit trail is a crucial component to good audit results and smooth audit processes. Keeping a robust audit trail just makes everything that much better. Audit software that can create and manage an audit trail can help your credit union’s audit team out significantly. If any examiners or auditors have questions about who created, worked on, edited, or otherwise affected a document will be able to see who did it, when they did it, and why.
Transparency, communication, and a good paper trail are critical components to great audit results. But that’s only part of the efficiency story. The other part is reduced error.
Credit unions who use automated audit software see fewer errors, missed deadlines, or things falling through the cracks. Perhaps counterintuitively, this is partially the result of a faster audit process!
Automated audit software for credit unions helps save time, which is worthwhile on its own. However, the way that credit unions reinvest that saved time is part of what makes audit software so useful. Many credit unions reinvest the time they save on an audit back into the audit itself. Those extra hours are important for reviewing, revising, and otherwise ensuring a top-quality submission.
Improving Audit Effectiveness
Essentially, audits are just labor-intensive ways to make sure that a business is operating as designed. They show governing bodies that a business has safe processes that occur regularly, that work, and that are repeatable and reliable.
Having an audit run as smoothly as your credit union does is a major plus. Just like all your financials and services, you want an audit that occurs regularly, that works, and is repeatable and reliable.
(You’d probably hate it if you gave your auditors two different answers to the same question. You probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about repeat findings, either!)
Automated audit software for credit unions takes a lot of the tedious minutiae out of the audit process. That means that you can rely on your process to deliver great audit results every time.
FREE: Audit Checklist for Credit Unions
4 key principles and 9 questions to jumpstart your audit planning. From leading credit unions.Additional Reading
Recently, we put together a few helpful resources for credit unions that are about to start an audit or an exam. We’ve included them in this post to help you prepare for your audit(s).
11 audit efficiency tips for credit unions
Audit team member responsibilities
Prepare with the AIRES questionnaire and the NCUA Supervisory Priorities Letter
Tips for credit union CEOS preparing for a regulatory examination
Subscribe to our blog if you’d like to read more pieces like this one and the ones above, or follow the links below if you’d like to let fate take the wheel!
AUDIT CHECKLIST FOR CREDIT UNIONS
HOW TO IMPROVE AN ALREADY-SOUND CREDIT UNION AUDIT PROGRAM
