Risks to Consider When Reopening Your Branches

With the country slowly reopening from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s time to consider the risks associated with reopening your branch locations.

With the ultimate goal of providing a safe environment where customers and branch employees can conduct banking business and essential operations, banks must be proactive in their risk mitigation efforts. While considering how to reopen branches or expand operations, it’s key that financial institutions review and incorporate the requirements of the CDC, OSHA, EEOC, DHS, WHO, DOL, and FFCRA into their plans. On top of this, banks should be following the guidance issued by state and local officials. Bank policy should be assisting in next steps and determination of priorities when reopening or expanding operations.

Plans for reopening should also address key risks and the associated mitigation efforts surrounding strategic, safety, operational, security, and compliance risks. 

  • Strategic risks arise from business decisions. Developing or reviewing the bank’s re-opening/continuing operations strategic plan to ensure it includes the bank’s mission, vision, external and internal environments, and business continuity plan is essential for making business decisions consistent with the bank’s values. Insurance providers should also be engaged to assess coverage associated with the risks of reopening.
  • Safety risks arise from potential harm to customer and employees. Deep cleaning high traffic areas, installing partitions, and providing appropriate PPE is crucial for the well-being of all individuals who enter the branch location.  Developing a temperature screening practice for all employees and customers, developing customer limits, and posting signage regarding the bank’s COVID-19 response are also essential for keeping all parties safe. 
  • Operational risks arise form a failure of process, people, and systems. Providing appropriate training to branch personnel, developing “Know Your Customer” procedures that keep all parties protected, and assigning personnel monitor and administer safety and crowd control practices are important for addressing the operational risks.
  • Security risks arise from the possible threat from a person or situation. Developing and executing new “Know Your Customer” procedures that effectively allow you to identify the customer without risking the health of either party is essential. With many individuals continuing to wear masks even when not required by orders, it will be more difficult to identify customers, however it is important that measures be to taken to identify those individuals while respecting their personal health concerns. The number of individuals wearing masks also increases the security risks associated with bank robberies, as the identity of individuals is partially hidden.
  • Compliance risks arise from failure to comply with state, federal, and financial regulators and their various laws and regulations associated with business operations. Assessing the bank’s ability to comply with the laws and regulations set forth by the various regulatory bodies should be the impetus for decision making surrounding reopening branch locations or expanding operations.

Failure to assess risks and develop risk mitigation strategies can impact your bank’s ability to successfully reopen branch locations.

You’ve heard our thoughts… We’d like to hear yours

The Schneider Downs Our Thoughts On blog exists to create a dialogue on issues that are important to organizations and individuals. While we enjoy sharing our ideas and insights, we’re especially interested in what you may have to say. If you have a question or a comment about this article – or any article from the Our Thoughts On blog – we hope you’ll share it with us. After all, a dialogue is an exchange of ideas, and we’d like to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].

Material discussed is meant for informational purposes only, and it is not to be construed as investment, tax, or legal advice. Please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, this information should be relied upon when coordinated with individual professional advice.

© 2024 Schneider Downs. All rights-reserved. All content on this site is property of Schneider Downs unless otherwise noted and should not be used without written permission.

our thoughts on
IPE 101 – Differentiating Populations and Key Reports
IPE 101 – Defining and Understanding Information Produced by Entity
SEC Adopts Final Climate Disclosure Rules
HMDA: Common 2022 Violations and How Community Banks Can Address Them Before the 2023 Filing
Community Reinvestment Act Strengthening: What it means for community banks
Register to receive our weekly newsletter with our most recent columns and insights.
Have a question? Ask us!

We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a note, and we’ll respond to you as quickly as possible.

Ask us
contact us
Pittsburgh

This site uses cookies to ensure that we give you the best user experience. Cookies assist in navigation, analyzing traffic and in our marketing efforts as described in our Privacy Policy.

×